This blog is written by a man, a Reformation Man, for the purpose of exploring how to live out the outrageous truths of the world view exposed, clarified and demonstrated in the lives and writings of a string of unusual characters who appeared across the ages.

These people include:

• A young man in the book of Job
• Rahab, a harlot in the flax business
• Abigail, the wife of an angry bozo
• David, a King of Israel who committed adultery and murder-by-proxy
• Solomon, son of David
• Daniel and his three friends, officials in the Babylonian and early Persian empires
• Ezra, an early Rabbi
• A brazen young woman with long hair and a bottle of ointment
• Saul of Tarsus, aka Paul
• Augustine, a former libertine turned church elder
• John Wycliffe
• Martin Luther, a Catholic monk
• Jean Calvin, a Catholic who wrote a comprehensive survey of biblical doctrines
• John Knox
• G. K. Chesterton
• Francis Schaeffer

Reformation Man shares similarities with, but also is clearly distinct from his historical twin, Renaissance Man.  Like Renaissance Man, Reformation Man is fascinated by all aspects of life: the craftsmanship of work, the arts, romance, literature and politics.  This fascination compels him to engage in all of them with vigor and hope.

Renaissance Man sees the world without God.  He presupposes, a priori, that any deities that may exist are irrelevant.  At most, his god is a weak, flimsy kind of force or a cartoon blend of grandfather and superman.  He worships a combination of himself, chance, beauty, technology and something he calls “Nature”.  He builds his identity on a variety of things: what other people say about him; how he performs; what he controls; his experiences.  He guides his behavior with his own mind, informed by whatever he finds interesting.

Reformation Man, in stark contrast, sees the world as requiring an active personal God–a strong and imposing God, existing outside of time and space, to whom the only proper response is a combination of attention and honor, respect and obedience.  He finds this God speaking in the books of the Bible.  He builds his identity solely on what this God says he is.  He guides his behavior with the revealed mind of God.

 

Where this blog provides excerpts from the Bible, it uses the English Standard Version accessed at http://www.esvbible.org/.

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