Nathanael King

Setting the Captives Free: Churches Raiding Slave Ships

2012-01-19T15:21:00.000-08:00

There are a lot of hot-button social justice issues that come and go in Christian culture. Whether it be starving children in Ethiopia, orphans in China, medical relief in Haiti, or saving unborn babies, interest in these issues seems--at least to me--to come in waves. I can think of a few reasons these issues come and go. (1) Maybe they come and go because they are simply fads. What seems to be a cool unique cause eventually becomes tiresome and boring until a new cool unique cause comes along. This is a pretty cynical way of looking at these issues. (2) Perhaps they come and go because they are areas where God wants the Church to focus its attention and join Him in what he is doing. Maybe God is the one stirs the Church to be about certain issues at certain strategic times in history so that his love and justice can reach the maximum amount of people possible. If so, then the Church is simply reflecting God's focus and heart for the world about these issues. (3) Perhaps they come and go because the Church sometimes neglects certain areas of ministry and justice, and needs it's attention refocused and it's heart rekindled so that the heart of the Church is realigned with the place where God's heart and passion have been all along. I suspect that reasons (2) and (3) are somewhere close to the truth of the matter. The reality is that God deeply loves people, and because he loves people, he is doing something in this world to bring about justice and knowledge of Himself.

One current hot-button social justice issue is human trafficking. I recently heard about Augustine’s Letter to Alypius (# 10, ca. 428 AD) where he refers to an increase in slave trafficking by abduction in North Africa and how groups of Christians raided slave ships to set the prisoners free. Listen to this:

Even the examples of this outrage that I have personally encountered are too many for me to list, if I wished to do so. Let me give you just one example, and you can estimate from it the total extent of their activity throughout Africa and along its coasts. About four months before I wrote this letter, a crowd of people collected from different regions, but particularly from Numidia, were brought here by Galatian merchants to be transported from the shores of Hippo (It is only, or at least mainly, the Galatians who are so eager to engage in this form of commerce). However, a faithful Christian was at hand, who was aware of our practice of performing acts of mercy in such cases; and he brought the news to the church. Immediately, about 120 people were set free by us (though I was absent at the time), some from the ship which they had to board, others from a place where they had been hidden before being put on board. We discovered that barely five or six of these had been sold by their parents. On hearing about the misfortunes that had led the rest of them to the Galatians, via their abductors and kidnappers, hardly one of us could restrain their tears. (HT: Michael Bird)

This is a good reminder that Christians called to action. If we want our lives to truly demonstrate our beliefs, then we should actively engage in acts of justice and mercy. "By this we know love, that he laid down his life for us, and we ought to lay down our lives for the brothers. But if anyone has the world's goods and sees his brother in need, yet closes his heart against him, how does God's love abide in him? Little children, let us not love in word or talk but in deed and in truth" (1 John 3:16-18 ESV). So what did you do after church last Sunday? Go out to a restaurant for lunch, went home for a nap, did some light shopping, or mounted a rescue mission for slaves? What would it mean for your church or your small group or your friends to get together and "raid a slave ship?" What is the "slave ship" in your life? Who is in need of justice that you are capable of supplying? The Church must always be about social justice because the Church must be about God, and God is about justice. God is about the oppressed, the alone, and the destitute. He cares for children, the weak, and the helpless--and so must we. "Religion that is pure and undefiled before God, the Father, is this: to visit orphans and widows in their affliction, and to keep oneself unstained from the world" (James 1:27 ESV). This gets dangerous when the message of the gospel is divorced from or blurred by the focus on the social justice issues, but that should not deter us from displaying and incarnating God's heart towards the world. Instead, it should simply make us all the more vigilant to keep the gospel central to all that we do and to not separate the good news from good works.

The letter above goes to show that the efforts of Christians to set the slaves free did not begin with William Wilberforce but has ancient origins. Freedom for the captives is not just a fad, but a historical mantra for the church of God. This makes me all the more thankful for the work on the International Justice Mission who advocate for those caught in human trafficking. See also the following books:

God in a Brothel - by Daniel Walker (see also the interview with Walker at Patheos)
Generous Justice - by Tim Keller
When Helping Hurts - by Brian Fikkert and Steve Corbett

The Advocate

2012-01-09T00:10:00.000-08:00

One of my favorite hymns is "Before the Throne of God Above." The author, Charitie Lees Smith, was born in 1841 in the vicinity of Dublin, Ireland. She was the daughter of a minister of the Church of Ireland. Not much is known about her life, but it appears that she was widowed twice: although she married Arthur Bancroft in 1869, she died under the name Charitie de Cheney in California in 1923. Charitie published her poetry in leaflet form as early as 1860, and a number of her collected works were eventually published as Within the Veil in 1867. “Before the Throne” was written in 1863 under the title “The Advocate.” I really appreciate how this hymn gives a clear picture of the confidence believers have before God--not due to themselves, but due to their strong Advocate--Christ Jesus.

Before the throne of God above
I have a strong and perfect plea. (Heb 4:15-16)
A great High Priest whose Name is Love (Heb 4:14)
Who ever lives and pleads for me. (Heb 7:25)
My name is graven on His hands, (Isa 49:16)
My name is written on His heart.
I know that while in Heaven He stands
No tongue can bid me thence depart. (Rom 8:34)

When Satan tempts me to despair (Luke 22:31-32)
And tells me of the guilt within,
Upward I look and see Him there (Acts 7:55-56)
Who made an end of all my sin. (Col 2:13-14)
Because the sinless Savior died
My sinful soul is counted free.
For God the just is satisfied
To look on Him and pardon me. (Rom 3:24-26)

Behold Him there the risen Lamb, (Rev 5:6)
My perfect spotless righteousness, (1 Cor 1:30; 1 Peter 1:18-19)
The great unchangeable I AM, (Heb 13:8; John 8:58)
The King of glory and of grace,
One in Himself I cannot die.
My soul is purchased by His blood, (Acts 20:28)
My life is hid with Christ on high, (Col 3:3)
With Christ my Savior and my God! (Tit 2:13)

“Before the Throne of God Above” draws heavily from Scripture for its pictures and language. It is a hymn which finds its theme in the perfect security which believers find in Christ, Who intercedes for them “before the throne of God above.” The following Scriptures find echoes in the song, whether Charitie is drawing conceptually from them or merely using their language.

1 John 2:1: "My little children, I am writing these things to you so that you may not sin. But if anyone does sin, we have an advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous." ("The Advocate," title).
Hebrews 4:14-16: “Since then we have a great high priest who has passed through the heavens, Jesus, the Son of God, let us hold fast our confession. For we do not have a high priest who is unable to sympathize with our weaknesses, but one who in every respect has been tempted as we are, yet without sin. Let us then with confidence draw near to the throne of grace, that we may receive mercy and find grace to help in time of need.” (“a great High Priest”, st. 1, and general conceptual background)
Hebrews 7:25: “Consequently, he is able to save to the uttermost those who draw near to God through him, since he always lives to make intercession for them.” (“Who ever lives and pleads for me,” st. 1)
1 John 4:8-9: "Anyone who does not love does not know God, because God is love. In this the love of God was made manifest among us, that God sent his only Son into the world, so that we might live through him." ("whose Name is Love, st. 1")
Isaiah 49:16a: “Behold, I have engraved you on the palms of my hands;” (“My name is written on His hands,” st. 1)
Romans 8:34: “Who is to condemn? Christ Jesus is the one who died—more than that, who was raised— who is at the right hand of God, who indeed is interceding for us.” (“I know that while in Heaven He stands, no tongue can bid me thence depart,” st. 1)

In verse 2, Charitie may have had the following texts in mind:

Luke 22:31-32a: “Simon, Simon, behold, Satan demanded to have you, that he might sift you like wheat, but I have prayed for you that your faith may not fail.” (“When Satan tempts me to despair, and tells me of the guilt within,” st. 2)
Acts 7:55-56: “But [Stephen], full of the Holy Spirit, gazed into heaven and saw the glory of God, and Jesus standing at the right hand of God. And he said, ‘Behold, I see the heavens opened, and the Son of Man standing at the right hand of God.’” (“Upward I look and see Him there,” st. 2)
Colossians 2:13-14: “And you, who were dead in your trespasses and the uncircumcision of your flesh, God made alive together with him, having forgiven us all our trespasses, by canceling the record of debt that stood against us with its legal demands. This he set aside, nailing it to the cross.” (“Who made an end to all my sin,” st. 2)
Romans 3:24-26: “. . . and are justified by his grace as a gift, through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus, whom God put forward as a propitiation by his blood, to be received by faith. This was to show God’s righteousness, because in his divine forbearance he had passed over former sins. It was to show his righteousness at the present time, so that he might be just and the justifier of the one who has faith in Jesus.” (“God the just is satisfied to look on Him and pardon me,” v. 2)

Likewise, verse 3:

Revelation 5:6: “And between the throne and the four living creatures and among the elders I saw a Lamb standing, as though it had been slain, with seven horns and with seven eyes, which are the seven spirits of God sent out into all the earth.” (“Behold Him there, the risen Lamb,” st. 2)
1 Corinthians 1:30: “[God] is the source of your life in Christ Jesus, whom God made our wisdom and our righteousness and sanctification and redemption.” (“My perfect spotless righteousness,” st. 2)
1 Peter 1:18-19: “. . . knowing that you were ransomed from the futile ways inherited from your forefathers, not with perishable things such as silver or gold, but with the precious blood of Christ, like that of a lamb without blemish or spot.” (“spotless,” st. 2)
Hebrews 13:8: “Jesus Christ is the same yesterday and today and forever.” (“unchangeable,” st. 2)
John 8:58: “Jesus said to them, ‘Truly, truly, I say to you, before Abraham was, I am.’” (“I AM,” st. 2)
Acts 20:28: “. . . the church of God, which he obtained with his own blood.” (“my soul is purchased by His blood,” st. 2)
Colossians 3:3: “For you have died, and your life is hidden with Christ in God.” (“My life is hid with Christ on high,” st. 3)
Titus 2:13: “. . . waiting for our blessed hope, the appearing of the glory of our great God and Savior Jesus Christ,” (“Christ my Savior and my God,” st. 3)

Roots

2011-12-02T10:52:00.000-08:00

Roots are important. They help you know where you came from. The give you a sense of identity, heritage, and history. The people of Israel had a deep sense of history and they knew their roots. They learned from their ancestors in ways that we have largely lost. They saw themselves as part of something bigger and more important than themselves--something God was doing in history. In our individualistic, narcissistic, ahistorical culture, roots are something we are lacking and we desperately need. Narcissism breeds isolation, and for the most part we've become islands unto ourselves. We've lost our sense of legacy. I wish I knew more about my family's history--where we came from, how we navigated through hard times, how we celebrated good times, and how God worked through my family to do great things in history. While my understanding of my roots might be small, I do know some things about my roots, and I'm working on learning more. One person who inspires me is my grandfather, who is now with the Lord in glory, David King. Below is a little bit about his story.

My grandfather on my father's side was named David Albert King. Before the United States entered World War II, when we were isolationists for the most-part, my grandfather had the foresight to see that Hitler was an evil man who needed to be stopped. He decided therefore to enter the merchant marines. The merchant marines were one of the few groups of Americans who helped the British in the war efforts in those early days before the U.S. officially entered the war. They would send loads and loads of supplies across the Atlantic to keep the British supplied with medicine, ammunition, food, and whatever else was needed.

After joining the merchant marines, he was given the position of navigator. Back then, that didn't include radar or GPS. He would guide ships across the Atlantic simply by using the stars, a compass, some maps, and his knowledge of tides. He continued doing this after the United States had entered the war post-Pearl Harbor. On one occasion, England was in dire need of supplies, and my grandfather's vessel was at the head of a massive supply convoy. The other ships were following his ship, so he was acting as the navigator for the entire convoy. As the convoy approached the British coast, a thick fog set in. This fog was so thick, my grandfather later recalled that he couldn't see his hand in front of his face, two feet away. The convoy slowed down to a crawl to avoid crashing into the rocky coast. The ships constantly sounded their fog horns to avoid hitting each other. This thick fog persisted for days.

Finally, it was decided that Britain could wait no longer. People were dying because they needed the supplies in those ships. But many more could die if the ships ran aground or sank. It's hard to appreciate the difficulty this situation presented. When one is on the open sea, they are largely blind to their location and movement because their are no fixed points of reference--except the stars. Take them away, add days of drift in a blinding fog, and an entire convoy of vessels, some of which are filled with sensitive munitions and gunpower and you have a sense of the magnitude of this task. Nonetheless, like someone threading a needle with their eyes shut, my grandfather carefully and skillfully navigated the entire convoy safely into the harbor--even though he hadn't seen the stars in days. He relied solely on the heading he had marked out days earlier and his compass. This was a great and heroic feat--one so great that after he arrived, Winston Churchhill himself sent for my grandfather and personally gave him a medal.

When my grandfather returned to the United States, he entered New York harbor, and as his ship entered the harbor, he could hear the harbor patrol calling his name. He wasn't sure what to make of this, but when he got to the harbor patrol, they loaded him into a black car, and drove him from New York to Washington D.C. To his amazement, the driver pulled right up to the White House, and he was escorted out of the car and into the oval office. By this time it was night. Franklin D. Roosevelt was in his pajamas, and there, in the oval office, my grandfather met President Roosevelt in his pajamas. To thank my grandfather for heroically navigating the convoy into the harbor, President Roosevelt gave my grandfather a license to navigate any ship of any tonnage on any ocean. Later, my grandfather speculated that Roosevelt didn't want to be 1-uped by Churchhill--especially when it came to honoring a U.S. soldier.

Later in the war, my grandfather was navigating a vessel in the Pacific theater. He had known for some time that God had called him to be a pastor, but he was resisting God in this. One time during a horrible battle, there were ships sinking around him, and he looked up to see a Kamikaze headed straight towards his ship. At that moment, he fell to his knees and told God "Yes!" "Yes, I will serve you however you want me to." "Yes, I will follow you despite my trepidation." "Yes!" He told God that if he got out of this mess, he'd spend the rest of his life devoted to preaching the gospel. As he prayed this prayer, the crew was calling out "Kamikaze!" to one another, and the two machine gunners on either end of the ship started shooting in a panic as they searched for the rogue plane. Their shots came no where near to the plane, but nonetheless the pilot seemed to be startled by the gunfire, and pulled up slightly on the stick, just enough to miss the ship and crash into the water.

After the war, my grandfather married my grandmother, Flora Mae King, and he faithfully served God as the pastor of the First Baptist Church of Bell for over 40 years. He shepherded a small flock that was entrusted to his care with diligence and faithfulness. He watched as the church grew, and eventually dwindled as his town transitioned from a predominantly Caucasian community to a predominantly Hispanic community. As this transition took place, my grandfather had the foresight to begin mentoring a Mexican pastor, who eventually took over the church. Today, his church is thriving, teaching God's Word, and spreading the gospel. Through the ups and downs, my grandfather was faithful and he made the kingdom of God his priority. He sought God's kingdom and righteousness above his own, and as a result, he lived a powerful life.

There's a few things I can learn about my heritage from my grandfather. I can learn something about the character of King men. King men are men who exercise great foresight, they are men who do what's necessary to stop evil and injustice, they are men who step up to the plate when there's a need, they are stubborn men--who sometimes resist to God's call on their lives, and they are men who eventually submit to God's call and serve Him with faithful endurance. That's a little bit of my roots, and I'm better for knowing it. I hope to learn more about my roots, and I hope you'll do the same.

Best Hebrews Sermon Ever

2011-10-28T11:49:00.000-07:00

I want to do this someday.

Jesus Wants the Rose!

2011-10-20T21:00:00.000-07:00

These Inward Trials

2011-10-16T20:00:00.000-07:00

The life of John Newton reads like a fictional story. You might not have heard his name before, but I'm willing to bet you know his hymn, the most-recorded song in history, "Amazing Grace." In the year 1743 when he was young, Newton was on his way to visit some friends when he was captured and forced into naval service. He lived as a loner with a disregard for authority. When he attempted to desert the navy, he was captured and as punishment, he was stripped to the waist, tied to the grating, received a flogging of one dozen lashes, and was demoted to the lowest of ranks. As a result of this, he contemplated suicide for a time.

Eventually, he was released from the military and joined the crew of an Africa-bound slave ship. After a series of disagreements with the crew of the ship, he was left in Africa where he was enslaved to a slave-trader who brutally mistreated him. Eventually, he was rescued by a sea captain who had been asked by Newton's father to search for him. Later in life, he became the captain of a ship, and when the ship was about to sink in the midst of a great storm, he called out to God. After calling out to God, it seems that the cargo of the ship plugged a hole in the hull, so the ship stopped filling up with water and drifted to safety. As he sailed home to Britain over the next few months, he devoted his time to reading the Bible. By the time he had reached home, he had given his allegiance and trust to Christ.

Newton later became an Anglican minister, and in addition to writing a number of hymns, he worked to abolish slavery, and he served as a mentor to William Wilberforce. Newton died shortly after Wilberforce had succeeded in his campaign to abolish the slave-trade in England, which is an amazing story itself.

To read more about John Newton, I'd recommend either Newton's own autobiography, entitled Out of the Depths, or Jonathan Aitken's new biography, John Newton: From Disgrace to Amazing Grace. Also of interest to some may be William Wilberforce's biography by Eric Metaxas, Amazing Grace: William Wilberforce and the Heroic Campaign to End Slavery or the movie chronicling this story, Amazing Grace.

One of my favorite of John Newton's lesser-known hymns is "I Asked the Lord, That I Might Grow." It is below. Enjoy!

I asked the Lord, that I might grow
In faith, and love, and every grace;
Might more of His salvation know,
And seek more earnestly His face.

’Twas He who taught me thus to pray,
And He, I trust, has answered prayer!
But it has been in such a way,
As almost drove me to despair.

I hoped that in some favoured hour
At once He'd answer my request,
And by His love's constraining power
Subdue my sins, and give me rest.

Instead of this, He made me feel
The hidden evils of my heart;
And let the angry powers of hell
Assault my soul in every part.

Yea more, with His own hand He seemed
Intent to aggravate my woe;
Crossed all the fair designs I schemed,
Blasted my gourds, and laid me low.

"Lord, why is this?" I trembling cried,
"Wilt thou pursue Thy worm to death?"
"'Tis in this way," the Lord replied,
"I answer prayer for grace and faith.

These inward trials I employ
From self and pride to set thee free;
And break thy schemes of earthly joy,
That thou may'st seek thy all in me."

Enthralling the Mind with God

2011-10-09T20:00:00.000-07:00

How do we help people to love what is lovely? Very simply, we cause them, ask them, help them to place their minds on the lovely thing concerned. We assist them to do this in every way possible. Saint Thomas Aquinas remarks that “love is born of an earnest consideration of the object loved.” And: “Love follows knowledge.” Love is an emotional response aroused in the will by visions of the good. Contrary to what is often said, love is never blind, though it may not see rightly. It cannot exist without some vision of the beloved.
     As teachers we therefore bring the lovely thing—in this case, God—before the disciple as fully and as forcibly as possible, putting our best efforts into it. But we never forget that in the last analysis, as we have already learned from Emily Dickinson, “the soul selects her own society, then shuts the door.” Though we act, and as intelligently and responsibly as possible, we are always in the position of asking: asking them, asking God, and responding to their responses.
     God has placed the only key to the innermost parts of the human soul in its own hands and will never take it back to himself or give it to another. You may even be able to destroy the soul of another, but you will never unlock it against his or her will. The soul, to continue the words of the poet just quoted, can “close the valves of her attention, like stone.” She can even lose the key, and have to have help finding it. She can even refuse the help she desperately needs. But she will never cease to need to love, which is deeper than the need to be loved.
     A popular saying is “Take time to smell the roses.” What does this mean? To enjoy the rose it is necessary to focus on it and bring the rose as fully before our senses and mind as possible. To smell a rose you must get close, and you must linger. When we do so, we delight in it. We love it.
     Taking time to smell the roses leaves enduring impressions of a dear glory that, if sufficiently reengaged , can change the quality of our entire life. The rose in a very special way—and more generally the flower, even in its most humble forms—is a fragile but irrepressible witness on earth to a “larger” world where good is somehow safe.
     This simple illustration contains profound truths. If anyone is to love God and have his or her life filled with that love, God in his glorious reality must be brought before the mind and kept there in such a way that the mind takes root and stays fixed there. Of course the individual must be willing for this to happen, but any genuine apprentice to Jesus will be willing. This is the very lesson apprentices have enrolled in his school to learn.
     So the question for the first part of our curriculum is simply how to bring God adequately before the mind and spirit of the disciple. This is to be done in such a way that love for and delight in God will be elicited and established as the pervasive orientation of the whole self. It will fill the mind of the willing soul and progress toward an easy and delightful governance of the entire personality.

—Dallas Willard, The Divine Conspiracy

A World Without Jobs

2011-10-05T23:52:00.000-07:00

Steve Jobs, the Thomas Edison of my day, has died. I pray that Jobs reached out to the Savior before succumbing to death. I hope to meet him one day. However, I can't help but be reminded that the overarching theme of Jobs' life was one of elegant, sleek, empty, secular hope. I am reminded of the insightful article that Andy Couch wrote in January of this year. There are excerpts from it below.

As remarkable as Steve Jobs is in countless ways—as a designer, an innovator, a (ruthless and demanding) leader—his most singular quality has been his ability to articulate a perfectly secular form of hope. Nothing exemplifies that ability more than Apple’s early logo, which slapped a rainbow on the very archetype of human fallenness and failure—the bitten fruit—and made it a sign of promise and progress....

Steve Jobs was the evangelist of this particular kind of progress—and he was the perfect evangelist because he had no competing source of hope. In his celebrated Stanford commencement address (which is itself an elegant, excellent model of the genre), he spoke frankly about his initial cancer diagnosis in 2003. It’s worth pondering what Jobs did, and didn’t, say:
No one wants to die. Even people who want to go to heaven don’t want to die to get there. And yet death is the destination we all share. No one has ever escaped it. And that is as it should be, because death is very likely the single best invention of life. It’s life’s change agent; it clears out the old to make way for the new. Right now, the new is you. But someday, not too long from now, you will gradually become the old and be cleared away. Sorry to be so dramatic, but it’s quite true. Your time is limited, so don’t waste it living someone else’s life. Don’t be trapped by dogma, which is living with the results of other people’s thinking. Don’t let the noise of others’ opinions drown out your own inner voice, heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become.
This is the gospel of a secular age. It has the great virtue of being based only on what we can all perceive—it requires neither revelation nor dogma. And it promises nothing it cannot deliver—since all that is promised is the opportunity to live your own unique life, a hope that is manifestly realizable since it is offered by one who has so spectacularly succeeded by following his own “inner voice, heart and intuition....”

But the genius of Steve Jobs has been to persuade us, at least for a little while, that cold comfort is enough. The world—at least the part of the world in our laptop bags and our pockets, the devices that display our unique lives to others and reflect them to ourselves—will get better. This is the sense in which the tired old cliché of “the Apple faithful” and the “cult of the Mac” is true. It is a religion of hope in a hopeless world, hope that your ordinary and mortal life can be elegant and meaningful, even if it will soon be dated, dusty, and discarded like a 2001 iPod.

A friend of mine says that human beings can live for forty days without food, four days without water, and four minutes without air. But we cannot live for four seconds without hope....

Steve Jobs’s gospel is, in the end, a set of beautifully polished empty promises. But I look on my secular neighbors, millions of them, like sheep without a shepherd, who no longer believe in anything they cannot see, and I cannot help feeling compassion for them, and something like fear. When, not if, Steve Jobs departs the stage, will there be anyone left who can convince them to hope?

180

2011-10-02T13:09:00.000-07:00

The movie below is a riveting documentary dealing with one of the most controversial issues of our time. It'll take 30 minutes, but it's worth the watch.

The Clarion Call to Watered Down Evangelicalism

2011-09-25T23:44:00.000-07:00

Asbury Theological Seminary President, Timothy Tennent, gave the following address at their September Convocation at Asbury this month. This is one of the most adept and scathing critiques of modern evangelical Christianity I've ever read. Every Christian leader should read, ponder, and heed these words.

Our Mission to “theologically educate”
by
Timothy C. Tennent, Ph.D
Fall Convocation, 2011

In his 1937 landmark book, The Kingdom of God in America, Richard Niebuhr memorably described the message of Protestant liberalism as “A God without wrath brought men without sin into a kingdom without judgement through the ministrations of a Christ without a cross.”¹ In the ensuing years Niebuhr’s statement has become one of the more well known summaries of the failure of Protestant liberalism to properly reflect the apostolic message. Tragically, Niebuhr’s devastating critique is on the brink of being equally applicable to contemporary, evangelical Christianity. Who has lost sight more of the depth of human sin, the certainty of God’s judgment and the call to repentance and transformation at the feet of a crucified savior than today’s populistic, evangelical churches? I knew something was amiss when I read the line from the well known pastor Walt Kallestad who wrote in his book, Entertainment Evangelism that “the church needs to be friendlier than Disneyland.”² I knew that somehow we had lost our way when prayers of repentance and confession quietly disappeared from the order of services. I knew we were charting some new path when I heard Jason Upton’s worship chorus, “Into the Sky.” Thankfully, there is a growing realization among many of us who call ourselves evangelical that we have inadvertently participated in an obscuring of the gospel which is not unlike what we have so vociferously decried in Protestant liberalism. It seems that Satan can work at both ends of the shop. Asbury Theological Seminary is perhaps better poised than many to observe these dynamics since we have so many feet in so many different Christian worlds. We have one foot in the mainline church (we provide more ordained ministers for the United Methodist church than any seminary in America), one foot in the holiness movement (we were founded by a 19th C. holiness, revivalistic preacher) and one foot in contemporary evangelicalism (we serve over 90 different denominations, many of them part of the evangelical movement).   I guess this makes us a three footed toad!

It may be true that the house of liberal Protestantism has nearly burned to the ground and we’ve been standing there screaming with our water hose for almost a century, but, brothers and sisters, we must recognize that our own kitchen is on fire and within one generation, the whole evangelical house will soon be engulfed in flames. If liberalism is guilty of demythologizing the miraculous, we have surely been guilty of trivializing it. If liberalism is guilty of turning all theological statements into anthropological ones, surely we must be found guilty of making Christianity just another face of the multi-headed Hydra of American, market-driven consumerism. If liberalism can be charged with making the church a gentler, kindler version of the Kiwanis club, we must be willing to accept the charge that we have managed to reinvent the gospel, turning it into a privatized subset of one’s individual faith journey. I realize that there are powerful, faithful churches in every tradition who are already modeling the very future this message envisions, but we must also allow our prophetic imagination to enable us to see what threatens to engulf us.

I’ve been among those who have pointed out the theological weakness captured by such phrases of Protestant liberalism, “Open hearts, open minds, open doors,” or “open, progressive and inclusive.” These type phrases are filled with considerable cultural codes which say many things about many things, but precious little about the Christian gospel. But, perhaps we would do well to exegete some of our own signs and slogans.

A common evangelical sign which could be found across America might read something like this: “Traditional service, 8:30, contemporary 10:00, blended service, 11:30.” Next line: “Welcome – come as you are, no need to dress up.” Then, on the final line there will inevitably be some pithy gospel message. Let me share a few signs actually displayed outside evangelical churches: “Free Coffee, Everlasting Life – Yes, membership has its privileges.” Another sign reads, “Try Jesus – if you don’t like him, the Devil will take you back.” Also cited is this: “Walmart is not the only saving place.” A church near a busy highway put this sign up: “Keep using my name in vain – I’ll make the rush hour longer – God” Of course, if it is Christmas time, you will inevitably see the classic one, “Jesus is the Reason for the Season!”

If you think I am being unfair by citing these examples of public messaging, I suggest that the inside message is often not much different.

Evangelicalism is awash with the constant drumbeat message of informality, the assumed wisdom of consumerism, reliance on technology, love of entertainment, pursuit of comfort, materialism and personal autonomy – all held together by easy-to-swallow, pithy gospel statements. But, let’s push the pause button and do a little exegesis of ourselves, shall we?

(1) I don’t like that style of worship

The worship style choice lines reminds us how deeply we evangelicals have become commodified and “market driven.” Market driven language pervades contemporary evangelicalism at every turn. This democratizing spirit tacitly assumes that there are no higher points of reference for establishing the shape and practice of the church, ministry and worship than popular opinion and the will of the majority. The premise of all marketing is that the consumer’s needs are king, and the customer is always right – and yet, as David Wells has argued in God in the Wasteland, these are very points which the gospel refuses to concede.³ There are surely many good reasons for starting a separate contemporary worship service, but what concerns me is the lack of theological reflection about what just might be lost in the process.

Separating generations over worship just might be cutting the very relational tie between elder and younger which is so crucial for discipleship. Providing worship style options just might be reinforcing that worship is somehow “for us,” i.e. to meet our needs. Endless discussions over the style of music just might obscure the deeper, often neglected, conversation about the content of our words of worship which is increasingly drawn from the world of Christian entertainment and performance, not from the church. Furthermore, the “style choice” emphasis pushes the Psalms even further from the heart of Christian worship.

Evangelicals are, of course, masters at dodging any criticism that we ourselves could ever be co-opted by culture. We disguise our lack of theological reflection by our constant commitment to “relevance” or saying that we are reaching people “where they are.” Of course, who would deny that the church needs to have a profound understanding of “where people are.”   That is not the problem. We are quite adept at measuring where people are culturally, but we are at best careless in any sustained theological reflection about where they should be culturally. So, for example, if the wider culture has become apathetic about ritual, tradition, symbolism, poetic expressions, the value of history, or the necessity of intergenerational relationships, then, no problem, we say, it is the evangelical version of the prime directive to always adapt to culture. But what if these very prejudices are actually part of the cultural malaise to which the church has been called to provide a stunning alternative? How easily we seem to forget that the gospel doesn’t need our help in being made relevant. The gospel is always relevant, and it is we who need to be made relevant to the gospel. If we spent as much time really immersing ourselves into apostolic orthodoxy as we do trying to capture, if I can use Tom Oden’s phrase, “predictive sociological expertise” on the latest cultural wave coming,⁴ our churches would be far better off. We have accepted almost without question certain definitions of success and what a successful church looks like. However, we must not forget that, as I told this past year’s graduates, if the cross teaches us anything, it is that God sometimes does his greatest redemptive work under a cloak of failure. Only sustained theological reflection is able to penetrate and unmask the pragmatic, market driven assumptions which largely go unchecked in today’s evangelical churches.

(2) God is, like, my pal

Let us turn now to the “come as you are – no need to dress up” line.   Richard Weaver in 1948 (Ideas have Consequences) and the linguist John McWhorter in 2003 (Doing our own thing: The Degradation of Language and Music and Why We Should, like, Care), among others, have argued that the contemporary preference for informality and the movement away from formal language in reference to God or human authority structures is deeply tied to cultural suspicions about authority and distrust of hierarchy. Post-modernity flattens all hierarchies: No high king, no high God. There are deep theological moorings behind all of this informality which have not been understood by pastors in the evangelical landscape.

Somewhere in America at some church meeting a decision was reached to change the name of the place they worshipped from the word “sanctuary” to “worship center” or “celebration center.” Furthermore, they decided to build a space which could be used as a gymnasium during the week and a place of worship on Sunday. Having a dedicated space only for worship seemed liked a shocking waste of money. Indeed, they had at least 5 good reasons for doing this. What concerns me is that they probably never stopped to reflect theologically that there just might be 6 reasons to not do it. Of course, maybe there were only four and the “celebration center” in the gym would have carried the day. The point is, that reflection never even happened.

Somewhere in America on some Sunday morning the first man or woman walked into a worship service with a baseball cap on and a cup of coffee in their hand. It is now quite common. The pastor would surely offer three or four impressive reasons why this was the “missional” way to go, but I can assure you that when the decision was made, serious theological concerns were not invited to participate.

These examples all seem so small and insignificant. Yet, that’s how all drift happens. You see, liberal Protestants never woke up one morning and said to themselves, “Hey, let’s adopt an Arian Christology, shall we?” No one said “Wouldn’t it be just wonderful if we could devote the next 50 years to undermining the apostolic faith.” No! I’ve read their writings. They were deeply concerned, as we are, to make the gospel relevant to modern people. Evangelicals have not openly abandoned apostolic Christianity. No one set out to cheapen the gospel, diminish God’s holiness or downplay the cost of discipleship. It’s just happening. A baseball cap here, omitting the word “wretch” from Amazing Grace there. The pressure to bring in new members made it best to just drop the required confirmation class for membership. Besides, people are just too busy to attend a new members class and it might hurt our annual membership goals. The call to career missions slowly became short term missions which slowly became vacations with a purpose. It all happened so seamlessly. We brought in a new youth director. He doesn’t have any biblical or theological training, but, oh, how the youth love him. You should see the new worship leader we have! He doesn’t know any theology, but he’s just picking the choruses each week, and he can really play the guitar! You see, it happens in ten thousand small skirmishes, rarely in any big, bloody battle.

(3) Bumper sticker Christianity

“Jesus is the Reason for the Season.” It is evangelicals who have cried out the most against the commercialization of Christmas, but then became co-opted by turning the phrase “Jesus is the reason for the season” into one of the most commercialized phrases of all time, blazoned across t-shirts, coffee mugs and yes, church signs. They can be purchased at any local Christian book store, 10% off if you pick up a precious memory angel along with it.

“Free coffee, everlasting life – yes, membership has its privileges!” or “Walmart is not the only saving place.“ Do you hear what lies behind all of these messages?

Evangelicals have become experts in finding a thousand new ways to ask the same question, “What is the least one has to do to become a Christian.” That’s our defining question. We’ve become masters at theological and soteriological minimalism. We are the ones who have boiled the entire glorious gospel down to a single phrase, a simple emotive transaction, or some silly slogan. It is time for a new generation of Christians, committed to apostolic faith, to declare this minimalistic, reductionistic Christianity a failed project! It is wrong to try to get as many people as possible, to acknowledge as superficially as allowable, a gospel which is theologically unsustainable. We need to be reminded of the words of Søren Kierkegaard, in his Attack Upon Christendom, where he declared, “Christianity is the profoundest wound that can be inflicted upon us, calculated on the most dreadful scale to collide with everything.”⁵ We, on the other hand, have made entrance into the Christian faith painless and almost seamless. In the process, we have managed to produce as many nominal Christians as Christendom ever did. If the liberal project taught us that denying Apostolic Christianity renders the gospel inert and non-reproducible (note rapid decline of mainline churches), evangelical minimalistic Christianity has taught us that the gospel cannot be reduced to a bite sized piece for mass consumption.

The gospel is about the in-breaking kingdom and the New Creation claims the whole sphere. Christians can’t simply choose to play in one small corner of the chessboard – you have to play the whole board, or you will lose. The gospel must be embodied in a redeemed community and touch the whole of life. That is why the Wesley brothers set up class meetings, fed the poor, wrote books on physics, gave preachers a series of canonical sermons, catechized the young, preached at the brick yards, promoted prison reform, rode 250,000 miles on horseback, preached 40,000 sermons, superintended orphanages, were avid abolitionists, and wrote theologically laden hymns for the church, etc. You see, they were capturing every sphere with the gospel. The New Creation does not simply break into one little square on the chess-board – it crashes into the whole of life! If Wesley teaches us anything, it is that salvation is not something which is merely announced to us, it is something which God works in us – the forceful intrusion of his holiness into our history.

Brothers and sisters, it is time for us to capture a fresh vision of the great meta-narrative of the Christian gospel for our times!   The bumper sticker ‘God is my co-pilot‘ will not get us there. We have, in effect, been criss-crossing the world telling people to make God a player, even a major player in our drama. But the gospel is about being swept up into His great drama. It is about our dying to self, taking up the cross, and being swept up into the great theo-drama of the universe! Christ has come as the Second Adam to inaugurate the restoration of the whole of creation by redeeming a people who are saved in their full humanity and called together into a new redeemed community known as the church, the outpost of the New Creation in Adam’s world. Discipleship, worship of the Triune God, covenant faithfulness, suffering for the sake of the gospel, abiding loyalty to Christ’s holy church, theological depth, and a renewed mission to serve the poor and disenfranchised – these must become the great impulses of our lives.

There are serious flaws in the foundations of contemporary evangelicalism. Our theological underpinnings are too weak, our knowledge of church history is too vague, our understanding of the text of Scripture too superficial, our being formed in the practice of ministry insufficiently reflective. Thus, while some are declaring that the day of the seminary is over, that we are hopelessly irrelevant, out of touch with culture, and the churches can “take it from here,” I want to declare today that there is perhaps no institution more vital for the proper recovery of biblical, apostolic Christianity than the seminary. With every fiber of my being I believe in the mission of Asbury Theological Seminary. Our faculty, under God’s care, will lead an entire generation of new Christian leaders back to the fountain of sustained theological work. Oh, I know we are in the world of Google and Wikipedia and we now all dwell under the fountain of endless information. Indeed, what theological term, or movement in church history, or Greek word cannot be illumined with a few clicks of a mouse. But one cannot help but think of Dylan Thomas’ remembrance of his childhood Christmas presents, which included, “books that told me everything about the wasp, except why.”⁶ In the midst of the twitterization of all knowledge, we need profound, thoughtful, nuanced, men and women who are, to use the language of our mission statement, “theologically educated” and who will bring that to the service of Christ’s holy church. We need sustained theological reflection, in contrast to Thomas Friedman’s description of our digital world as “continuous partial attention.” Without this deep reflection, the gospel will simply be one more commodity on offer in the marketplace of autonomous choices at the smorgasbord of spirituality and personal fulfillment.

Theologically educate

Brothers and sisters, as your President, I call this community to serious, sustained theological reflection. Our mission statement calls for us to “theologically educate.”   What does this mean? Properly speaking to “theologically educate” forms heart, mind and action. Beloved, it is not enough to declare that “your heart is in the right place.” Your mind must also be in the right place. Your feet and hands must also be in the right place.   Traditionally, theology has served four functions: catechetical, apologetical, homiletical and pastoral. Catechetical is to train children and new believers in the faith, thus assuring that the apostolic message and not some “other gospel” is being transmitted. This happens in homes, in daily life and in confirmation classes. Catechesis comes from the verb “to echo.” We must assure that new and current believers under our charge fully understand and “echo” the apostolic faith. Apologetical is the role of theology in helping to apply the biblical text to whatever challenges happen to beset the church in any given generation. For us, this might mean everything from postmodern epistemologies, to philosophical relativism, to the new atheism, to the commoditization of culture, and so forth. The homiletical function is our commitment to train men and women to properly and effectively proclaim God’s word, evangelistically to the world as well as faithful instruction to the church by applying the Word of God faithfully to our lives. Finally, the pastoral function calls us to shepherd God’s flock, care for those in need, comfort the bereaved, and counsel the distressed. Today, looking across the evangelical landscape, catechesis is in disarray, apologetics is weak; our preaching has ground down to bland moralizing, and our pastoral efforts have become captive to pragmatism.

Asbury stands ready, with this esteemed faculty, to theologically educate a new generation of church leaders. Theology matters. It was Thomas Oden who famously remarked that “when a pastor (theologian) fails to distinguish between orthodoxy and heterodoxy, it is roughly equivalent to a physician forgetting the difference between disease and health.”⁷ For if we don’t have theological stability, we cannot have ethical stability, and if we don’t have ethical stability, we won’t have stability of worship, and if we do not have stability of worship, then we are no longer related vitally and necessarily to the headship of Jesus Christ. The Apostolic proclamation will be lost in a post-modern sea of autonomous self-definitions.

If today’s evangelical church is really marked by shallowness, thinness and cultural sameness, then, to use the phrase of Jack Davis, perhaps it is time we become “deep, thick and different.” A deep church is one which takes the encounter with a holy God seriously and is shaped by spiritual disciplines, holiness and catechesis. A deep church is the opposite of a shallow one. We are to exhibit a deep understanding of the holiness and weightiness of God. In Hebrew the word for honor and glory is kbd (kabod), meaning “heavy.” God has become far too lightweight in contemporary evangelicalism. The great sense of God’s transcendence and holiness must, once again, overtake post-modernity’s sense of over familiarity and casualness in God’s presence. Indeed, we are profoundly in need of recapturing the sense of God’s presence.   Nietzsche’s madman who described churches as “the tombs and sepulchers of God” does, in fact, capture something of the movement from the real presence of Christ to the real absence of Christ in the experience of many church’s today. A thick church contrasts with a thin one and is characterized by thick relationships and commitments and where worship is not a product we consume, but the great ontological orientation of our lives. We are the people of the Risen Lord. The consumeristic, therapeutic self of modernity is, through the gospel, the trinitarian, ecclesial self of the New Creation. A different church is one not marked by cultural sameness, but, instead, is a manifestation of the in-breaking of the New Creation. A visitor should feel somewhat out of place when they walk into our midst, as they encounter people with a radically distinctive orientation. A different church is one which is profoundly distinct from the culture in its “ontology, theology, worship and moral behavior.”⁸ To be different is to be a community marked by metanoia. Brothers and sisters, may the shallowness, thinness and cultural sameness of our churches become churches, under God and your leadership, which are deep, thick and different.

This church-focused, theologically informed new vision I am calling for today will not eagerly embrace “top down” political strategies as effective methods for cultural transformation. This new vision sees the local church, not the para-church, as the central locus of evangelism and discipleship. This new vision eschews niche-marketing strategies for drawing unbelievers to church. It will abandon simplistic formulas and presentations of the gospel opting instead for invitations to living communities of men and women who have been transformed by the gospel.

We have much work to do, and likely this kind of church which I am envisioning will not come about without prayer and fasting. But, we at Asbury Theological Seminary are poised to face these challenges and to produce a new generation of pastors, teachers, evangelists and church planters who are theologically educated. Don’t be discouraged by the enormity of this task. Instead, rise to the challenge. I am optimistic because I believe in the men and women of this faculty and staff who are called to educate and invest themselves in your formation. I am optimistic because Jesus Christ is the Risen Lord. I am optimistic because as the hymn declares, “though the cause of evil prosper, yet the truth alone is strong; though her portion be the scaffold, and upon the throne be wrong; yet that scaffold sways the future, and behind the dim unknown, standeth God within the shadow, keeping watch above his own.“ I am optimistic because Yahweh “has sworn and will not change his mind!” I am optimistic because I recall the dying words of John Wesley when he said, “The best of all is, God is with us.” I am optimistic because the church of Jesus Christ will weather every storm from Gnosticism, to Arianism, to Constantinianism, to Protestant liberalism, to Evangelical reductionism, to the new atheism. Through it all, Christ renews his church, calls forth better readers of the Scriptures, and makes good on his sacred promise, “I will build my church and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it.” Amen.

[1] Richard Niebuhr, The Kingdom of God in America (NY: Harper Row, 1959 edition), 193.
[2] Walt Kallestad, Entertainment Evangelism (Nashville, Abingdon, 1996), 81.
[3] David Wells, God in the Wasteland (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, ) 82.
[4] Thomas C. Oden, Agenda for Theology: After Modernity, What? (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1990), 191.
[5] Walter Lowrie, trans., Kierkeegard’s Attack Upon Christendom (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1944), 258.
[6] Dylan Thomas, A Child’s Christmas in Wales (NY: New Directions, 1995), 29.
[7] Thomas C. Oden, 59.
[8] John Jefferson Davis, Worship and the Reality of God (Grand Rapids: IVP Academic, 2010), 32.

Note: This post originated at Ben Witherington's Blog.

Holy Sonnet 14

2011-09-18T21:58:00.000-07:00

Batter my heart, three-personed God; for, you
As yet but knock, breath, shine, and seek to mend;
That I may rise, and stand, o'erthrow me, and bend
Your force to break, blow, burn, and make me new.
I, like an usurped town, to another due,
Labour to admit you, but oh, to no end.
Reason, your viceroy in me, me should defend,
But is captived, and proves weak or untrue.
Yet dearly I love you, and would be loved fain,
But am betrothed unto Your enemy;
Divorce me, untie, or break that knot again,
Take me to You, imprison me, for I
Except You enthrall me, never shall be free,
Nor ever chaste, except you ravish me.

—John Donne, “Holy Sonnet 14”

The Biblical Case for Old Earth Creationism

2011-06-10T08:00:00.000-07:00

Introduction

An old earth creationist is not a theistic evolutionist. Often these positions are equated; however, this paper is written from a non-evolutionist perspective. It is the position of this paper that viewing the "days" of Genesis 1 as epochs/eras is a better interpretative option than viewing them as 24-hour-periods based on a grammatical-literal interpretation of God's Word. The following is a cursory argument for this interpretation of Genesis 1-2.

First, it is important to affirm that the Bible teaches that creation is a valid source of truth (cf. Job 10:8-14, Ps 8, Ps. 98:2-3, Ps. 104, Hab. 3:3, Acts 7:24-31, Rom 1:18-25, Col 1:23). Therefore, one cannot discount scientific evidence. It must be carefully considered; however, it ought not to be the determining factor in our exegetical conclusions. Having said that, I think that the biblical evidence alone provides an extremely compelling case for an old-earth scenario:

1. Hebrew grammar and semantics

There are 3 literal meanings for the Hebrew word yom: (1) a literal day, (2) a 12-hour period from sunrise to sunset, and (3) an epoch, era, or longer period of time. The Hebrew word for day functions much like the English word “day”: “day” can mean 24 hours, daytime, or an unspecified period of time (i.e. "back in the day"). So, how do we determine what sense the word is being used in Genesis 1-2? The context provides us with some clues. In the context of Genesis 1-2, we find that there is one definite usage of the word yom being used as an epoch, era, or longer period of time in 2:4: "This is the account of the heavens and the earth when they were created, in the day that the LORD God made earth and heaven." Here is one clear case of the word yom being used in the sense of an epoch/era within the context of Genesis 1-2 because it refers to the entire creation episode as one day! It seems unlikely that the author would suddenly change the way that he uses the word. Therefore, the rest of the occurrences in Genesis 1 seem to refer to an epoch. (In agreement with this, the Hebrew words for “morning” and “evening” [ereb and boqer] can refer to the beginning and ending of a period of time respectively).

This is completely in line with Hebrew grammar—especially considering the awkward way that the Genesis account enumerates the days. Literally, it states "and was evening and was morning day Xth." If "day Xth" were intended as the noun complement for the one evening and morning together, the linking verb should appear just once, in plural form (as the King James Version renders it: "And the evening and the morning were the Xth day"). We would expect the literal Hebrew to say, "and were evening and morning day Xth." However, as was stated above, this is not how the literal Hebrew reads. This syntactic ambiguity does not constitute a proof. However, it does at least suggest an indefinite period for each phase of the creation.

Qualification: It is often claimed that there is no place in the Bible where yom refers to an epoch/era when it is used with a numeric modifier, and so it does not refer to an epoch/era here. However, the obvious response to this argument is that of course there’s no other place where yom is used with a numerical modifier to refer to an unspecified amount of time! Indeed, there’s no other occasion in the Bible to enumerate numerous epochs of time successively.

2. The events of the 6th day

Another reason to think that the "days" of Genesis are not 24-hour periods is that the events of the 6^th day seem to span a much longer period of time. Genesis 2 zooms in on the 6^th day and records a detailed account of the events that occurred therein. If we hold to a 24-hour period scenario, then we have to believe that in 24 hours, God made Adam, God planted a garden, Adam cared for the garden, Adam named the animals, Adam discovered that no animals were suitable helpers, and God created Eve. This seems highly unlikely. Also, when God presents Eve to Adam in Genesis 2:23, Adam states happa'am—a phrase carrying the connotation of "at last!" This indicates that Adam had been waiting at least some time for Eve.

3. The gap theory

One interpretive option of the creation account hypothesizes that there is a gap of time between Genesis 1:1-2 and the rest of the creation episode. On this view, Genesis 1:1 describes the original creation of the universe, and Genesis 1:2 describes a great, cataclysmic judgment of the earth in which “the earth became formless and void,” possibly due to the angelic fall (see Isaiah 14 and Ezekiel 28). The account in Genesis 1:3 and following therefore is the account of the recreation of the heavens and the earth as God began to do a new work focused on man. While it is beyond the scope of this paper to argue for this position, this remains a possible way to understand the timing of the angelic fall (and thus explain Satan’s presence in chapter 3). Additionally, when the words translated "formeless and void" (tohu and bohu) are used in proximity, they seem to describe a situation resulting from judgment (cf. Isa 34:11; Jer 4:23). If this view is correct, then it is possible that a great amount of time passed during the period between Genesis 1:1-2 and the rest of the creation account.

4. God's existence is compared to the longevity of the mountains

Numerous passages including Psalm 90:2-6, Proverbs 8:22-31, Ecclesiastes 1:3-11, Micah 6:2, and Habakkuk 3:6 all indicate that the age of the universe is analogous to the age of God's Presence and plans (i.e. immeasurably ancient). This suggests that the age of the universe is so ancient that it is beyond human comprehension.

5. The analogy with God's work week.

Exodus 20:10-11 states, "…for in six days the Lord made the heavens and the earth and rested on the seventh." However, as Hebrew scholar Gleason Archer states, "By no means does this demonstrate that 24-hour intervals were involved in the first six 'days,' any more than the 8-day celebration of the Feast of Tabernacles proves that the wilderness wanderings under Moses occupied only eight days."[1] This is similar to the Sabbath year, which also is analogous to the 7 days of creation (cf. Leviticus 25:4). Therefore, the emphasis in Exodus 20 is on the principle of one out of seven, not on the duration of the days of creation.

6. The poetic nature of Genesis 1:1-2:3

The literary genre of Genesis 1:1-2:3 has been described as prose narrative. In other words, it is a narrative sequence that has strong poetic elements. One example of a poetic element is that the days of creation appear to be organized such that days 1-3 describe locations, while days 4-6 describe the inhabitants of those locations:

Location Inhabitants

1. light and dark 4. lights of day and night

2. sea and sky 5. animals of water and air

3. fertile earth 6. land animals and man

7. rest and enjoyment

As C. John Collins notes, “we may simply conclude from this high level of patterning that the order of events and even lengths of time are not part of the author’s focus; this is the basis of what is often called the literary framework scheme of interpretation. In this understanding, the six workdays are a literary device to display the creation week as a careful and artful effort.”[2] However, while recognizing the poetic literary structure of Genesis 1:1-2:3 can be helpful in interpreting the passage, it would be a mistake to simply dismiss the truth-claims of this passage as being purely metaphorical and poetic. This passage is not simply prose—it is prose narrative. Therefore, it is wrong to dismiss the order of events and lengths of time as being altogether unimportant in interpreting this passage. Rather, what we should expect from a prose narrative is that poetic forms are used to communicate real truth. Thus we should expect to find words used in an idiomatic and poetic sense. This perfectly accords with seeing the “days” in this passage as being epochs or eras.

7. The nature of the 7^th day.

Finally the 7^th day in Genesis is not closed out—we are still in it. All of the other days state, "and there was evening, and there was morning, the Xth day"—thus closing out the day. However, the 7^th day is never closed out. It is as though we are still in the 7^th day. This is confirmed by a clear understanding of the nature of God's rest on the 7^th day. As an omnipotent Being, God does not get tired or weary, and so the best way to understand His rest is that He ceased all activity of special creation. He obviously did not stop all activity for one day because everything would disintegrate without His sustaining hand upon creation. Finally, another reason to believe that we are still in the 7^th day is that Hebrews 4:4-10 and Ps. 95:7-11 indicate that God is still resting in the "7^th day." One day God will continue His creative activity, and he will create a new heavens and a new earth. If we are still in the 7^th day, then it follows that the 7^th day is an epoch; and if the 7^th day is an epoch, then so are the other “days” of creation.

Conclusion

These are just a few biblical reasons to believe in an old earth. For more information, I would recommend the following books:

Genesis 1-4: A Linguistic, Literary, and Theological Commentary by C. John Collins
The Genesis Question and A Matter of Days both by Hugh Ross
A Survey of Old Testament Introduction by Gleason Archer
Three Views on Creation and Evolution by J.P. Moreland and John Mark Reynolds
The Genesis Debate by David Hagopian.
The Lost World of Genesis One by John Walton
Christianity and the Nature of Science: A Philosophical Investigation by J.P. Moreland

The following is a scientific description of the possible development of days of creation that is adapted from Ross’ The Genesis Question:

Introductory remark:

Note that the vantage point from which creation is described is the surface of the earth (Gen. 1:2).

Heavenly bodies created (Gen. 1:1) – The big bang theory states that space time and matter all came into existence from a “singularity.” This remarkably resembles Genesis 1:1 – “In the beginning (time), God created the heavens (space) and the earth (matter). The earth was initially covered with a thick layer of gas and dust not allowing light to penetrate. This is probably a standard condition of planets of the earth’s mass and temperature. The initial conditions described in the Bible are accepted by science: dark, formless, and void.
“Let there be light” (Gen. 1:3) – Atmosphere became translucent to allow some light to reach the surface of the water, a critical prerequisite for the introduction of life (photosynthesis).
Development of the hydrologic cycle (Gen. 1:6) – The perfect conditions of temperature, pressure and distance from the sun would allow all forms of H₂O (ice, liquid, and gas) – all necessary for life.
Formation of land and sea (Gen. 1:9-10) – Seismic and volcanic activity occur in the precise proportion to allow 30 percent of the surface to become and remain land. Scientists have determined that this is the ideal ration to promote the greatest complexity of life forms.
Creation of vegetation (Gen. 1:11) – Light, water and large amounts of CO₂ set the stage for vegetation. God miraculously creates vegetation, and this was the first form of life.
Atmospheric transparency (Gen. 1:14) – Plants gradually produced oxygen to a level of 21%. This (and other factors) caused a transparent atmosphere to form and permitted “lights in the heavens” to become visible, thus marking day, night, and the seasons.[3]
Creation of small sea animals and birds (Gen. 1:20) – Scientists agree that these were the first animal life forms of all classes discussed in the Bible.
Creation of land animals (Gen 1:24) – The final life-forms prior to Man were created: quadrupeds and rodents.
Creation of Man (Gen 1:26) – Final creature appearing on earth.
No additional creation (Gen. 2:2) – No unique creation has occurred since.

[1] Archer, Gleason L. "A Response to The Trustworthiness of Scripture in Areas Relating to Natural Science," in Hermeneutics, Inerrancy, and the Bible. Edited by Earl D. Radmacher and Robert D. Preus. (Grand Rapids, Michigan: Academic Books, 1986), pp.329.

[2] Collins, C. John. Genesis 1-4. (Phillipsburg, New Jersey: P&R Publishing, 2006), pp. 73.

[3] A thorough understanding of Genesis 1 requires considering the original Hebrew text. In verse 16, the 4^th day is described and one might assume that the sun and the moon were created after the formation of plants. However, the actual Hebrew verb and tense used in conjunction with the words in Genesis 1:1 correctly indicate that the sun and moon “became visible” on the surface of the earth on day 4. (Note that the vantage point of creation is the surface of the earth [Gen. 1:2]).

Nouwen on Mutualism

2011-06-03T08:00:00.000-07:00

Recently, I've been reading Henri J.M. Nouwen's book, In the Name of Jesus: Reflections on Christian Leadership. Before his conversion to evangelicalism in 1996, Nouwen and I would surely have some important theological and exegetical disagreements (in 1996 he went to be with the Lord). :) However, regardless of our disagreements, I find that he understands the human soul well and is insightful in his writing. In this book, he discusses Jesus' three temptations in the wilderness and uses them as a paradigm for the temptations that Christian leaders experience. In the first temptation of turning the stone into bread we find a lesson of moving from being relevant to prayer. Our great need is to be connected to Christ--not just to have something culturally relevant to say about Him. In the second temptation of casting himself down that God would save him, Nouwen finds a lesson about moving from being spectacular to being a shepherd who lives in a mutualistic relationship with his sheep. I was struck by the poignancy of his discussion of what it means for a Christian leader to live in a mutualistic relationship with those he shepherds. In this section, he attacks the rampant individualism that has found it's way into the church telling ministers that they must be self-made heroes and stars who should be able to do it all and do it successfully.

Jesus, speaking about his own shepherding ministry, says, "I am the good shepherd. I know my own and my own know me, just as the Father knows me and I know the Father; and I lay down my life for my sheep" (John 10:14-15). As Jesus ministers, so he wants us to minister. He wants Peter to feed his sheep and care for them, not as "professionals" who know their clients' problems and take care of them, but as vulnerable brothers and sisters who know and are known, who care and are cared for, who forgive and are being forgiven, who love and are being loved.

Somehow we have come to believe that good leadership requires a safe distance from those we are called to lead. Medicine, psychiatry, and social work all offer us models in which "service" takes place in a one-way direction. Someone serves, someone else is being served, and be sure not to mix up the roles! But how can we lay down our life for those with whom we are not even allowed to enter into a deep personal relationship? Laying down your life means making your own faith and doubt, hope and despair, joy and sadness, courage and fear available to others as ways of getting in touch with the Lord of life.

We are not the healers, we are not the reconcilers, we are not the givers of life. We are sinful, broken, vulnerable people who need as much care as anyone we care for. The mystery of ministry is that we have been chosen to make our own limited and very conditional love the gateway for the unlimited and unconditional love of God.

Therefore, true ministry must be mutual. When the members of a community of faith cannot truly know and love their shepherd, shepherding quickly becomes a subtle way of exercising power over others and begins to show authoritarian and dictatorial traits. The world in which we live--a world of efficiency and control--has no models to offer those who want to be shepherds in the way Jesus was a shepherd. Even the so-called "helping professions" have been so thoroughly secularized that mutuality can only be seen as a weakness and a dangerous form of role confusion. The leadership about which Jesus speaks is of a radically different kind from the leadership offered by the world. It is a servant leadership--to use Robert Greenleaf's term*--in which the leader is a vulnerable servant who needs the people as much as they need their leader.

From this it is clear that a whole new type of leadership is asked for in the church of tomorrow, a leadership that is not modeled on the power games of the world, but on the servant-leader Jesus, who came to give his life for the salvation of many.

________________________________________
*Robert K. Greenleaf, Servant Leadership: A Journey into the Nature of Legitimate Power and Greatness (New York: Paulist Press, 1977). See also Robert K Greenleaf, The Power of Servant Leadership (San Francisco: Berrett-Koehler Publishers, 1998).

Only One Life

2011-05-26T17:05:00.000-07:00

I very rarely write in my Bibles. I've found that the things I write in my Bible are soon less relevant to my life than I originally thought. My underlining and highlighting keeps my eyes focused only on certain verses, and then sometimes I miss the riches found in the surrounding verses, or I am distracted from a flow of thought by only focusing on the individual verses. Very rarely does something make it into my Bible, but there are a couple of quotes that I've written in my Bibles that are near and dear to me. These quotes declare truths that I need to be reminded of often. One of these quotes is the following: "Only one life, 'twill soon be past; Only what's done for Christ will last." I recently discovered that this quote was originally written as part of a larger poem by C.T. Studd, a great missionary to China, India, and Africa. The poem is below:

Two little lines I heard one day,
Traveling along life’s busy way;
Bringing conviction to my heart,
And from my mind would not depart;
Only one life, ’twill soon be past,
Only what’s done for Christ will last.

Only one life, yes only one,
Soon will its fleeting hours be done;
Then, in ‘that day’ my Lord to meet,
And stand before His Judgement seat;
Only one life,’twill soon be past,
Only what’s done for Christ will last.

Only one life, the still small voice,
Gently pleads for a better choice
Bidding me selfish aims to leave,
And to God’s holy will to cleave;
Only one life, ’twill soon be past,
Only what’s done for Christ will last.

Only one life, a few brief years,
Each with its burdens, hopes, and fears;
Each with its clays I must fulfill,
living for self or in His will;
Only one life, ’twill soon be past,
Only what’s done for Christ will last.

When this bright world would tempt me sore,
When Satan would a victory score;
When self would seek to have its way,
Then help me Lord with joy to say;
Only one life, ’twill soon be past,
Only what’s done for Christ will last.

Give me Father, a purpose deep,
In joy or sorrow Thy word to keep;
Faithful and true what e’er the strife,
Pleasing Thee in my daily life;
Only one life, ’twill soon be past,
Only what’s done for Christ will last.

Oh let my love with fervor burn,
And from the world now let me turn;
Living for Thee, and Thee alone,
Bringing Thee pleasure on Thy throne;
Only one life, “twill soon be past,
Only what’s done for Christ will last.

Only one life, yes only one,
Now let me say, "Thy will be done";
And when at last I’ll hear the call,
I know I’ll say "twas worth it all";
Only one life,’twill soon be past,
Only what’s done for Christ will last.

— extra stanza —

Only one life, ’twill soon be past,
Only what’s done for Christ will last.
And when I am dying, how happy I’ll be,
If the lamp of my life has been burned out for Thee.

C.T. Studd

C.S. Lewis' Advice For Writers

2010-10-19T11:27:00.000-07:00

Here's some tidbits of advice from C.S. Lewis on writing well. Lewis had a knack for expressing profound truths clearly, plainly, and memorably. He knew how to use language beautifully to grip readers, evoke emotion, paint a picture, and draw you into his thoughts and world. Writers and preachers alike should heed his advice.

C.S. Lewis’s last interview was on May 7, 1963—six months before he died. One of Sherwood Wirt’s questions was on writing: “How would you suggest a young Christian writer go about developing a style?” Lewis responded:

The way for a person to develop a style is (a) to know exactly what he wants to say, and (b) to be sure he is saying exactly that.
The reader, we must remember, does not start by knowing what we mean. If our words are ambiguous, our meaning will escape him.
I sometimes think that writing is like driving sheep down a road. If there is any gate open to the left or the right the reader will most certainly go into it.

Here's advice on writing from a couple of C.S. Lewis' letters:

"Letter of 26 June 1956," Collected Letters, Volume III, pp. 765-766.

Always try to use the language so as to make quite clear what you mean and make sure yr. sentence couldn't mean anything else.
Always prefer the plain direct word to the long, vague one. Don't implement promises, but keep them.
Never use abstract nouns when concrete ones will do. If you mean 'More people died' don't say 'Mortality rose'
In writing. Don't use adjectives which merely tell us how you want us to feel about the thing you are describing. I mean, instead of telling us a thing was 'terrible', describe it so that we'll be terrified. Don't say it was 'delightful': make us say 'delightful' when we've read the description. You see, all those words, (horrifying, wonderful, hideous, exquisite) are only like saying to your readers 'Please will you do my job for me.'
Don't use words too big for the subject. Don't say 'infinitely' when you mean 'very': otherwise you'll have no word left when you want to talk about something really infinite.

"Letter of 14 December 1959," Collected Letters, Volume III, pp. 1108-1109.

Turn off the Radio.
Read all the good books you can, and avoid nearly all magazines.
Always write (and read) with the ear, not the eye. You shd. hear every sentence you write as if it was being read aloud or spoken. If it does not sound nice, try again.
Write about what really interests you, whether it is real things or imaginary things, and nothing else. (Notice this means that if you are interested only in writing you will never be a writer, because you will have nothing to write about . . .)
Take great pains to be clear. Remember that though you start by knowing what you mean, the reader doesn't, and a single ill-chosen word may lead him to a total misunderstanding. In a story it is terribly easy just to forget that you have not told the reader something that he needs to know -- the whole picture is so clear in your own mind that you forget that it isn't the same in his.
When you give up a bit of work don't (unless it is hopelessly bad) throw it away. Put it in a drawer. It may come in useful later. Much of my best work, or what I think my best, is the re-writing of things begun and abandoned years earlier.
Don't use a typewriter. The noise will destroy your sense of rhythm, which still needs years of training.
Be sure you know the meaning (or meanings) of every word you use.

Revival Hymn

2010-07-31T17:33:00.000-07:00

J.I. Packer on Justification

2010-07-25T01:50:00.000-07:00

J.I. Packer accurately captures how union with Christ is the mechanism of imputation:

“[God] reckons righteousness to them, not because he accounts them to have kept his law personally (which would be a false judgment), but because he accounts them to be united to one who kept it representatively (and that is a true judgment)”

—J. I. Packer, “Justification,” in Evangelical Dictionary of Theology, ed. Walter A. Elwell [Grand Rapids, MI: Baker, 1984], p. 596.

Wright on God Seeking His Own Glory

2010-06-23T13:06:00.000-07:00

Below is an excerpt is from N.T. Wright's book, Justification: God's Plan and Paul's Vision. In this section of the book, Wright is critiquing John Piper's idiosyncratic view of God's righteousness as 'God's concern for His own glory.' While I think Wright's comments regarding God's concern for His glory are a fairly accurate assessment of the Scriptural data, I'd also say that Wright's view of God's righteousness as 'covenant faithfulness' also seems to have flaws. Instead, I think I'd follow Mark Seifrid who argues that "All 'covenant-keeping' is righteous behavior, but not all righteous behavior is 'covenant keeping,'" but I'd qualify this by saying that 'covenant faithfulness' is often a correct interpretation of God's righteousness in a setting where the God's covenant is contextually paramount.

There is a sense in which what Piper claims about 'God's righteousness' could be seen as going in exactly the wrong direction. He sees it as God's concern for God's own glory, which implies that God's primary concern returns, as it were, to himself. There is always of course a sense in which that is true. But the great story of scripture, from creation and covenant right on through to the New Jerusalem, is constantly about God's overflowing, generous, creative love--God's concern, if you like, for the flourishing and well-being of everything else. Of course, this too will redound to God's glory because God, as the creator, is glorified when creation is flourishing and able to praise him gladly and freely. And of course there are plenty of passages where God does what he does precisely not because anybody deserves it but simply 'for the sake of his own name.' But 'God's righteousness' is regularly invoked in scripture, not when God is acting thus, but when his concern is going out to those in need, particularly to his covenant people. The tsedaqah elohim, the dikaiosyne theou, is an outward-looking characteristic of God, linked of course to the concern for God's own glory but essentially going, as it were, in the opposite direction, that of God's creative, healing, restorative love. God's concern for God's glory is precisely rescued from the appearance of divine narcissism because God, not least God as Trinity, is always giving out, pouring out, lavishing generous love on undeserving people, undeserving Israel, and an undeserving world. That is the sort of God he is, and 'God's righteousness' is a way of saying, Yes, and God will be true to that character. Indeed, it is because God will be true to that outward-facing generous, creative love that he must also curse those ways of life, particularly those ways of life within his covenant people, which embody and express the opposite. It isn't that God basically wants to condemn and then finds a way to rescue some from that disaster. It is that God longs to bless, to bless lavishly, and so to rescue and bless those in danger of tragedy--and therefore must curse everything that thwarts and destroys the blessing of his world and his people. (pp. 51-52)

The Problems with Divine Determinism

2010-04-19T01:37:00.000-07:00

William Lane Craig just posted a wonderful summary of some of the problems with divine determinism, which is what most Calvinists believe in the form of compatibilistic human freedom. He suggests that Molinism (or middle-knowledge) gives a much more coherent and powerful explanation of how divine sovereignty and human freedom coexist. Indeed, the Molinist maintains a robust account of human freedom and at the same time wholeheartedly affirms the following statement from the Westminster Confession: "God from all eternity did by the most wise and holy counsel of his own will, freely and unchangeably ordain whatsoever comes to pass; yet so as thereby neither is God the author of sin; nor is violence offered to the will of creatures, nor is the liberty or contingency of second causes taken away, but rather established." (Section III).

Below are the problems Craig lists with divine determinism:
1. Universal, divine, causal determinism cannot offer a coherent interpretation of Scripture. The classical Reformed divines recognized this. They acknowledge that the reconciliation of Scriptural texts affirming human freedom and contingency with Scriptural texts affirming divine sovereignty is inscrutable. D. A. Carson identifies nine streams of texts affirming human freedom: (1) People face a multitude of divine exhortations and commands, (2) people are said to obey, believe, and choose God, (3) people sin and rebel against God, (4) people’s sins are judged by God, (5) people are tested by God, (6) people receive divine rewards, (7) the elect are responsible to respond to God’s initiative, (8) prayers are not mere showpieces scripted by God, and (9) God literally pleads with sinners to repent and be saved (Divine Sovereignty and Human Responsibility: Biblical Perspectives in Tension, pp. 18-22). These passages rule out a deterministic understanding of divine providence, which would preclude human freedom. Determinists reconcile universal, divine, causal determinism with human freedom by re-interpreting freedom in compatibilist terms. Compatibilism entails determinism, so there’s no mystery here. The problem is that adopting compatibilism achieves reconciliation only at the expense of denying what various Scriptural texts seem clearly to affirm: genuine indeterminacy and contingency.
2. Universal causal determinism cannot be rationally affirmed. There is a sort of dizzying, self-defeating character to determinism. For if one comes to believe that determinism is true, one has to believe that the reason he has come to believe it is simply that he was determined to do so. One has not in fact been able to weigh the arguments pro and con and freely make up one’s mind on that basis. The difference between the person who weighs the arguments for determinism and rejects them and the person who weighs them and accepts them is wholly that one was determined by causal factors outside himself to believe and the other not to believe. When you come to realize that your decision to believe in determinism was itself determined and that even your present realization of that fact right now is likewise determined, a sort of vertigo sets in, for everything that you think, even this very thought itself, is outside your control. Determinism could be true; but it is very hard to see how it could ever be rationally affirmed, since its affirmation undermines the rationality of its affirmation.
3. Universal, divine, determinism makes God the author of sin and precludes human responsibility. In contrast to the Molinist view, on the deterministic view even the movement of the human will is caused by God. God moves people to choose evil, and they cannot do otherwise. God determines their choices and makes them do wrong. If it is evil to make another person do wrong, then on this view God is not only the cause of sin and evil, but becomes evil Himself, which is absurd. By the same token, all human responsibility for sin has been removed. For our choices are not really up to us: God causes us to make them. We cannot be responsible for our actions, for nothing we think or do is up to us.
4. Universal, divine, determinism nullifies human agency. Since our choices are not up to us but are caused by God, human beings cannot be said to be real agents. They are mere instruments by means of which God acts to produce some effect, much like a man using a stick to move a stone. Of course, secondary causes retain all their properties and powers as intermediate causes, as the Reformed divines remind us, just as a stick retains its properties and powers which make it suitable for the purposes of the one who uses it. Reformed thinkers need not be occasionalists like Nicholas Malebranche, who held that God is the only cause there is. But these intermediate causes are not agents themselves but mere instrumental causes, for they have no power to initiate action. Hence, it’s dubious that on divine determinism there really is more than one agent in the world, namely, God. This conclusion not only flies in the face of our knowledge of ourselves as agents but makes it inexplicable why God then treats us as agents, holding us responsible for what He caused us and used us to do.
5. Universal, divine determinism makes reality into a farce. On the deterministic view, the whole world becomes a vain and empty spectacle. There are no free agents in rebellion against God, whom God seeks to win through His love, and no one who freely responds to that love and freely gives his love and praise to God in return. The whole spectacle is a charade whose only real actor is God Himself. Far from glorifying God, the deterministic view, I’m convinced, denigrates God for engaging in a such a farcical charade. It is deeply insulting to God to think that He would create beings which are in every respect causally determined by Him and then treat them as though they were free agents, punishing them for the wrong actions He made them do or loving them as though they were freely responding agents. God would be like a child who sets up his toy soldiers and moves them about his play world, pretending that they are real persons whose every motion is not in fact of his own doing and pretending that they merit praise or blame. I’m certain that Reformed determinists, in contrast to classical Reformed divines, will bristle at such a comparison. But why it’s inapt for the doctrine of universal, divine, causal determinism is a mystery to me.

Romans 7: Not a Christian Struggle (Part 3)

2010-02-26T13:00:00.000-08:00

One of the central issues surrounding the Pauline doctrine of sanctification is the identity of the “I” that Paul uses in Romans 7. When Paul uses the first person singular pronoun who, exactly, is he referencing? This issue gets at the heart of spiritual formation because our understanding of this passage largely dictates what we expect the Christian battle with sin to entail. In Romans 7, Paul uses the first-person singular pronoun to depict a person in a state of inner turmoil—this person is depicted as simultaneously having a genuine love for God’s Law, and yet faced with the dilemma of being unable to fulfill it: "For I do not do what I want, but I do the very thing I hate" (7:15). In this post, I will be explaining the different interpretive options.

At this point, everyone agrees that Paul is not speaking purely autobiographically. He is speaking as a rhetorical representative of a group of people. He's speaking in solidarity with a group of people to make a rhetorical point. The question is, "Which group of people is in view?" The major options are below:

1. "I" = Paul as a non-Christian (viewed from his present Christian perspective).

2. "I" = the experience of any person, Christian or non-Christian, who tries to live under law (i.e., tries to be good and holy by their own efforts).

3. "I" = Adam, or to mankind in Adam, with the Genesis narrative being in the background.

4. "I" = Paul in the years immediately following his conversion when he still tried to live under the Law before learning to live by the Spirit (= "the Victorious Christian Life" view).

5. "I" = a picture of Paul and any normal Christian who is "simultaneously justified, yet still a sinner" and is struggling with the normal tension in the Christian life (this is again the dominant view and has been since Augustine).

6. "I" = Israel in her initial encounter with the Law at Mt. Sinai and then throughout her history through the eyes of a pious, believing Israelite ("I" = Paul's rhetorical figure of speech as a representative Israelite).

To interpret this passage correctly, you have to make sure you're asking the right questions. Often we think in categories that are foreign, or at least secondary, to the categories in which the biblical authors thought and lived and breathed. In our age, the division between Jews and Gentiles is not prominent in our daily thought life and interactions. However, in Paul's day, and in his dealings with the Roman church in particular, the prominent categories in his thoughts were Jew vs. Gentile, Old Covenant vs. New Covenant, Era of Law vs. Era of Grace. So, when we approach this text and ask whether Paul is speaking as a Christian or a non-Christian, we are actually asking a question that Paul was not intending to answer. Instead, a better question would be, "Is Paul speaking as a Jew or Gentile?" or, more precisely, "Is Paul speaking as an Old Covenant Jew under the Law, or a New Covenant believer indwelt by God's Spirit?" I'll wait until my next post to answer these questions and give my interpretation of Romans 7, but for now, I'll make a few observations that I think are crucial to any accurate interpretation of Romans 7:

1. Paul is addressing a Jewish audience. We know this from his address in Romans 7:1 (brothers who know the Law) and the example of Romans 7:1-4 which is an example taken directly from the Mosaic Law.

2. Paul's concern is with the Law, not anthropology. Two rhetorical questions are asked about the Law which frame his entire discussion (7:7, 7:13), showing that Paul's concern is with the historical function of the Mosaic Law.

3. How you understand Romans 7:9-11 will largely dictate how you understand the passage as a whole. These verses are crux of interpreting this passage.

4. Romans 7:5-6 serves as a summary thesis statement for Romans 7:7-8:17. Romans 7:5 is the thesis for Romans 7:7-25, and Romans 7:6 is the thesis for Romans 8:1-17.

5. Romans 7 deals with a temporal contrast. This is seen in the thesis statement of Romans 7:5-6 and the continuation of thought in Romans 8:1.

6. "I" is a rhetorical device used to represent a group of people (as discussed above).

Michael Horton Reviews N.T. Wright on Justification

2009-10-29T09:56:00.000-07:00

Thanks to Trevin Wax, below is a list of Michael Horton 's series at the White Horse Inn on N.T. Wright 's new and important book, Justification. I'd highly recommend the book to those not acquainted with Wright's work. While I'd want to qualify or challenge some of Horton's criticisms, overall I think he's evenhanded in his review. At the very least, what Horton's review shows is that Wright is not a left-wing nutball who we can just dismiss. While he might sometimes be overly enthusiastic in his interpretations of Paul, Wright offers many important insights that we would do well to benefit from.

Horton's conclusion admits this much:

In spite of exaggerations and false dilemmas, Wright reminds us that justification is inextricably tied to God’s covenantal, historical, cosmic, and eschatological purposes for “summing up all things in Christ.” Even if it is in some ways an over-correction, he does remind us that justification does not emerge simply out of need for personal or pastoral needs, but out of an unfolding plan that revolves around God’s faithfulness to his own righteousness and results not only in saved individuals but in a church and a kingdom. Even if he tends sometimes to confuse this kingdom with his own political agenda, Wright properly reminds us that even in its seminal and liminal existence in this time between Christ’s advents, it is already true that Jesus is Lord.

As a funny anecdote, Horton recalls that N.T. Wright's early book, The Grace of God in the Gospel was instrumental in Horton "inviting Calvin into his heart" as a young student. When Horton told Wright this, Wright replied with the equally tongue-in-cheek comment, "Now let me help you invite Paul into your heart." :) Enjoy!

1. Introduction
2. Justification and God’s single plan: The Covenant and History
3. Justification and God’s people
4. Justification and God’s Righteousness: Imputation and Future Hope
5. Justification and God’s Righteousness: Covenant and Eschatology
6. Justification, Faith, and Faithfulness: The Works of the Law
7. Justification and the Testimony of Paul
8. Justification and Romans
9. “Works of the Law” – Soteriology and Ecclesiology
10. Conclusion

1000 Years of Peace That Christians Like To Fight About

2009-10-12T18:04:00.000-07:00

The Millennial Reign of Christ is one of the most debated and divisive topics among Christians. But it's also a central point of eschatology and one's view on the Millennium often contributes to their hermeneutic. Desiring God just hosted a very good discussion of the Millennium. The contributors were:

John Piper - moderator
Doug Wilson - postmillennial
Sam Storms - amillennial
Jim Hamilton - premillennial

I found the premillennial position to be the most compelling (which isn't surprising given my theological bent!). But the other positions were very interesting and thought provoking. What do you think?

http://www.desiringgod.org/ResourceLibrary/MediaPlayer/4262/Video/

Romans 7: Not a Christian Struggle (Part 2)

2009-08-14T13:19:00.001-07:00

Below are a couple of recent blogs I read on the subject of Romans 7. Since I started a series on this topic and have not yet had time to follow up, I thought I'd post these blogs to continue the series. This first blog is by David Kirk:

In Romans 5 Paul expands the basis for justification by faith (which he introduced in chapter 3) – the work of Jesus Christ on the cross. For Paul, we are 'justified in/by His blood' (5:9). Can't get clearer than that! Chapter 6 then emphasises that believers have been made new (we have died and risen to new life – spiritually). Christians must consider themselves dead to sin and alive to God in Christ Jesus (6:11). That means a commitment to righteous living – hence Paul's imperatives (5:12,13,19).

In Chapter 7, Paul writes specifically to Jews (7:1). If you don't pick that up, then interpreting this next section is (more) problematic. Paul's great concern is to explain that the Law has served it's purpose (the argument here ties in very well with that in Galatians 3:15-29, esp 24-25). Obviously, as becomes clearer later in the letter (and is evidenced in other parts of the NT), Jewish Christians' attitude to the Law was a major stumbling block to church unity. So, Paul tackles this in the Roman church. If he can address it there, then he has addressed in in the congregations at the centre of the known world. The Law is holy and good (but Paul would still maintain that Christ has superseded the Law). It provided a framework for covenantal obedience, and highlighted sin, revealing to the attentive Jew the need for forgiveness and the importance of faith.

In this context, the problematic section in 7:14-25 then is not about the Christian life, but about the experience of a Jew. Paul could possibly be speaking autobiographically, but I prefer the view that he assumes the persona of a faithful Jew. He is obviously not describing a legalistic, or careless, Jew since the 'I' is joyfully concurring with the law of God in the inner man. That he is describing a Christian is unlikely, simply because he describes the general experience of not doing the good that he wishes, and doing the evil that he does not wish. I don't believe that's a description of the Christian life. It is likely that this is a description of life under the Law. Paul then makes the transitional argument at the beginning of Chapter 8 that there is 'therefore now' no condemnation. That's an eschatological 'now': now, in the New Age, the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus has set you/me free from the law of sin and death (the situation he described in 7:14-25). If this is true then Chapter 7 helps us to answer the theological question about the different experience of God's people under the Old and New Covenants, leading into the practical effect of the adoption as sons (8:15, cf8:23), which is an eschatological benefit of the New Covenant.

Interestingly, I think Lloyd-Jones recognised the problem of interpreting this as a description of a Christian and took the view that Paul here was describing the experience of someone becoming a Christian. I wouldn’t agree, but this view has more merit than others.

This second blog is by Michael Bird:

I've been preparing further notes on Romans 7 for one of my courses today. Here's my solid gold, top four arguments why the Wretched Man is not a Christian:

(1) Paul asks two questions in Rom 7.7 (What then should we say? That the law is sin?) and Rom. 7.13 (Did what is good, then, bring death to me?) which relates to the thoughts about pre-conversion stated in Rom 7.5 about how the law aroused sin and lead to death. Paul argues that while the law activated sin leading to death, the law is not the author of sin and death.

(2) The references to being in the ‘flesh’ (vv. 14, 18, 25) show that 7.14-25 are a commentary on what the life in flesh first mentioned in 7.5 looks like.

(3) When Paul describes the ‘I’ as ‘sold under sin’ (Rom. 7.14) this conflicts with what he says about Christians in Romans 6 where he declares that they have been freed from sin (Rom. 6.6-7, 17-18, 22).

(4) The subject struggles to obey the law (Rom. 7.22, 25), while Christians are free from the law (Rom. 6.14-15; 7.6).

Paul Meyer wrote: ‘There is not a syllable in Romans 7:7-25 about life in Christ, and … Paul himself has signaled to his readings in both 7:6 and 8:1-2 that the rest of chapter 7 is to be understood as the antithesis to chapter 8 and not in simple continuity with it’.[1].Ultimately what is described here is not the Christian’s struggle with sin, but the absolute defeat of the self by sin’s power in the unregenerate state.[2]

[1] Paul W. Meyer, ‘The Worm at the Core of the Apple: Exegetical Reflections on Romans 7,’ in The Conversation Continues: Studies in Paul and John, ed. R.T. Fortna and B.R. Gaventa (Nashville: Abingdon, 1990), 68.
[2] Charles H. Talbert, Romans (Macon, GA: Smyth & Helwys, 2002), 188-89.

The Cult of Youth

2009-08-09T16:33:00.001-07:00

The following is from Dr. John Mark Reynolds' blog a few years ago. I thought it was an excellent commentary on the culture of youth in which we live, and so I saved it. Reynolds is responding to an article which describes how a teenager advocated abortion and argued that the voice of teenagers ought to be heard. It is amazing how counter-cultural it is to say that the opinions children ought not to be heard!

[Teen abortion] Advocate travels to raise her voice about her beliefs:

"'Kids need to be concerned about more than themselves,' she said. 'They have valid viewpoints, and they need help from adults to implement their passions and concerns.' "

Here is a thought:

Kids do need to be concerned about more than themselves. Unlike Miss Abortion 2004, this altruism does not consist of making everyone else share your puerile concerns, but getting new ones. This remarkable process is called "growing up." Given their age, the young usually have foolish viewpoints. They need help from adults in gaining proper perspective, passions, and concerns.

The Cult of Youth marches on in our culture. We worship the mostly facile opinions of the ill prepared. I would say that almost everything I thought before I was twenty-two was not worth hearing. I needed to sit in tutorials and do hard work, not have people take me seriously. Of course, critics think this still true, but they can trust me that I was even worse as a young man than I am now.

There is a reason minors are not allowed to do many, many things. The reason: they cannot make informed decisions. Period. By the way, this applies equally to conservative groups who parade teens out mouthing conservative opinions they have hardly digested. Liberals since the sixties have been the worst at this. Even an aging hippie wants to be young, because they fantasize that there is some great purity and wisdom in the young. Well, no. Youth are to be protected and educated, not put in positions of power.

Ignatius, the Ultimate Youth Pastor

2009-07-09T11:17:00.000-07:00

Valley of Vision

2009-06-09T08:25:00.000-07:00

Below is a puritan prayer that I read recently. It's particularly profound. Enjoy!

Lord, high and holy, meek and lowly,

Thou hast brought me to the valley of vision,

where I live in the depths but see Thee in the heights;

hemmed in by mountains of sin I behold Thy glory.

Let me learn by paradox

that the way down is the way up,

that to be low is to be high,

that the broken heart is the healed heart,

that the contrite spirit is the rejoicing spirit,

that the repenting soul is the victorious soul,

that to have nothing is to possess all,

that to bear the cross is to wear the crown,

that to give is to receive,

that the valley is the place of vision.

Lord, in the daytime stars can be seen from deepest wells,

and the deeper the wells the brighter Thy stars shine;

Let me find Thy light in my darkness,

Thy life in my death,

Thy joy in my sorrow,

Thy grace in my sin,

Thy riches in my poverty,

Thy glory in my valley.

Romans 7: Not a Christian Struggle (Part 1)

2009-04-20T10:34:00.000-07:00

Here are 10 reasons why a Christian cannot have a Romans 7 struggle. These are taken verbatim from my mentor and friend, Walt Russell. I plan on following this up with a post or two on Romans 7 and the Christian's struggle with sin.

1) This chapter is a message addressed to a very specific group of people in Romans 7:1 and they are clearly specified as "those who know the Law," not all Christians.

2) The principle of Romans 7:2-4 is not drawn from general Christian experience, but it is drawn only from the experience of those within Israel who had believed in Jesus Christ and the principle is applied ONLY to them.

3) The issue of this chapter that is introduced and summarized in Romans 7:5-6 is not a general Christian issue, but it is one that is only relevant to a specific group of people: those who had been in the flesh, i.e. under the Mosaic Law.

4) In Romans 7:7-25, Paul represents a certain group with his "I" language and the most likely representation drawn from his previous categories in Romans 1-6 and from his framing of the issue in Romans 7:1-6 is NOT Christians, but Jews/Israelites who had lived under the Mosaic Law.

5) The focus on the dividedness of the person in Romans 7:7-25 is not ultimately on the internal struggle, but on the external constraints or boundaries of the age that caused this struggle.

6) The purpose of the struggle in Romans 7:7-25 is very specific: to show the Mosaic Law's limited ability to restrain sin during the Mosaic Law era, NOT to reveal the struggle of Christians with God's general demands.

7) The rhetorical reason why Paul recounts the struggle in Romans 7:7-25 is to persuade the Jewish Christians that the Mosaic Law is not an appropriate restraint for Christian behavior in light of its designed limitations.

8) The pervasive sense of condemnation and wretchedness in Romans 7:14-24 cannot apply to Christians because those IN CHRIST have no condemnation, as Romans 8:1-4 makes clear.

9) The person described in Romans 7:7-25 is "of flesh, sold into bondage to sin" and not "spiritual" like the Mosaic Law (7:14), but this cannot possibly be true of Christians who ahve been set free from the law of sin and of death and who are not in the flesh (Romans 8:5-9).

10) The summary of the believer's dividedness between their mind and their flesh in Romans 7:25b cannot possibly refer to a Christian because Christians have been removed from the moral realm of flesh and placed in the realm of the Spirit (Romans 8:9-11).

He Is Risen!

2009-04-12T08:14:00.000-07:00

My favorite Easter Sunday song:

I'll be rockin' this song all day long... He is risen; He is risen indeed!

Debate Review

2009-04-07T18:29:00.000-07:00

On Saturday night, I attended a debate at Biola University between William Lane Craig and Christopher Hitchins on the question, "Does God Exist?" Craig began the debate with the same opening argument he uses in all debates on God's existence. He began by making two broad claims (1) there are no good arguments for atheism, and (2) there are several good arguments for God's existence that provide a powerful cumulative case. He mentioned this because he wanted to make the point that in order for atheism to be a rational position in this debate, Hitchens would have to tear down each of his arguments for God's existence, and then erect his own arguments against God's existence. In other words, in the absence of good arguments for atheism, all we are left with is agnosticism at the most; we are not justified in being atheists simply because of a lack of evidence for God's existence.

Craig then went on to adduce 5 arguments for God's existence as follows:
(1) Kalam cosmological argument - God is the cause of the beginning of the universe.
(2) Teleological argument - God is the designer of the universe because it is specifically designed to be life-permitting.
(3) Axiological argument - God is the only ground for objective moral values.
(4) Argument from Jesus' resurrection - God's existence is the best explanation of the historical facts regarding Jesus' resurrection.
(5) Experiential argument - Ultimately, belief in God is properly basic; we do not need arguments in order to believe in God--rather our direct experience of God is grounds enough for belief.

Hitchens opening statement was much less orderly than Craig's. He accused Craig of being an inconsistent evidentialist because he, like all Christians, appeals to evidence that was not available to Christians several centuries ago. He pointed to the biological evolution and asserted that now that this view has become mainstream, theists have attempted to use this as evidence for God's existence, or at least to see it as being compatible with God's existence. He further asserted that Craig need to prove with certainty that God existed. He also claimed that physicists acknowledge that "we hardly know what we don't know" about the origin of the universe, and so to arrive at the conclusion that God exists is extremely premature. Finally, he concluded with three reasons to reject the design of the universe: (a) Prior to the beginning of the universe was there pre-existing matter?, (b) Who designed the designer?, and (c) the designer seems to have designed poorly because the universe will eventually die in a heat death. In sum, Hitchens opening statement was not very well thought out, did not have arguments that were understandable, and included a lot of unsupported assertions.

The following are what I considered to be the highlights of the debate:

1. Hitchins tried to claim that an atheist was actually just an a-theist, that is, a non-theist. Craig pushed him on this and asked him what kind of a-theist he was: (a) what we usually mean by atheist (someone who positively asserts "God does not exist"), (b) an agnostic (someone who withholds belief in God but does not assert that "God does not exist"), or (c) a verificationist (someone who believes that the statements "God exists" and "God does not exist" are meaningless). When pushed, Hitchins backpedalled to affirm that he is an atheist in the traditional sense, which made his long spiel about being an a-theist irrelevant. The point of all this was that Hitchins did not want to have the burden of proof for God's non-existence. Craig could easily have pushed Hitchens further, but he was running out of time. Had Craig pushed further, he would have discussed whether the absence of evidence for God's existence is actually evidence of the absence of God. He would further have argued that absence of evidence is only evidence of absence when we would expect more evidence than we have. This puts the atheist in the position of having to argue that if God exists, he would have provided more evidence of His existence--which is an extremely doubtful point and probably impossible to prove.

2. Hitchens briefly mentioned the theory of evolution in passing. Craig struck back on this point powerfully by showing that the probability of evolution is so infinitesimally small that if evolution did occur, it is literally a miracle which would be powerful evidence for God's existence.

3. Hitchens attempted to portray the atheist position as a tolerant position of intellectual humility, and the theist position as being the height of arrogance and hubris. Craig countered this forcefully and graciously by showing that the atheist position is a claim to exclusive truth. In the same way that evangelical Christians believe that Christianity is true and all other religions are false, the atheist claims that atheism is true, and all claims to the contrary are false. Craig pointed out that Hitchens made his own truth claims on behalf of atheism, but did so without supporting arguments. In his own words, "you've got to come to a debate prepared with arguments." Any arguments that Hitchens did produce were irrelevant, disjointed, and unclear.

4. At one point, Hitchens asserted that he believed in freewill as though Craig had attacked him on this point. He wasted a good amount of time discussing this when he could have been responding to some of Craig's actual arguments. This was kind of humorous to me, because it is obviously a weak point for the naturalist who believes that humans are nothing more than complex materialistic machines. On a naturalist worldview, the only type of freewill that makes any sense is compatibilistic freedom--which I doubt is genuine freedom at all.

5. Hitchens completely missed the point of Craig's moral argument for God's existence. Craig argued that (1) If objective moral values exist, then God exists, (2) objective moral values exist, (3) therefore, God exists. Hitchens continually tried to respond to this by stating that he could still do good actions without believing in God. This completely missed the point and force of Craig's argument that if moral values are not grounded in God, then there is nothing about them that is objective. There's nothing about rape or genocide or torture that is actually wrong; rather they might be distasteful to my personal preferences, but there is nothing objectively wrong with these actions if God does not exist. I began to wonder if Hitchens really did understand Craig's argument, did not have a response, and so was just rambling on about how he could do a good action wholly apart from belief in God.

6. At the close of the debate, Hitchens yielded the time he could have used to wrap up, and allowed that time to go towards the question and answer time. I'm not sure why he did this.

Doug Geivett was sitting right behind me with his daughter. He summarized the debate well in a recent blog:

...this debate exposed a difference in preparation on the part of these two debaters. This is far more significant than it might seem at first. William Lane Craig has debated this topic dozens of times, without wavering from the same basic pattern of argument. He presents the same arguments in the same form, and presses his opponents in the same way for arguments in defense of their own worldviews. He’s consistent. He’s predictable. One might think that this is a liability, that it’s too risky to face a new opponent who has so much opportunity to review Craig’s specific strategy. But tonight’s debate proves otherwise. Hitchens can have no excuse for dropping arguments when he knows—or should know—exactly what to expect. Suppose one replies that William Craig is a more experienced debater and a trained philosopher, while Christopher Hitchens is a journalist working outside the Academy. That simply won’t do as a defense of Hitchens. First, Hitchens is no stranger to debate. Second, he is clearly a skillful polemicist. Third—and most important—Hitchens published a book, god Is Not Great, in which he makes bold claims against religion in general and Christianity in particular. With his book, he threw down the challenge. To his credit, he rose to meet a skillful challenger. But did he rise to the occasion? Did he acquit himself well? At one point he acknowledged that some of his objections to the designer argument were “layman’s” objections. His book, I believe, is also the work of a layman. It appears to have been written for popular consumption and without concern for accountability to Christians whose lives are dedicated to the defense of the Gospel.

I think Doug is right. Hitchens should have prepared more, but even if he had, there's no way he would have had a chance debating Craig. Craig is a debating machine, and his skills and knowledge are unrivaled by any atheist opponent. I would have liked a better debate, because it would have shown the strength of the theistic position more clearly. But it was a fun night, and my little brother was able to meet Bill Craig and get his book signed by him. And most importantly, God was honored as the weakness of the atheistic position was exposed in a gracious, loving, and sincere manner.

For more on this debate, check out William Lane Craig's website. You'll be able to purchase a DVD of this debate in the future, and audio of the debate will probably made available for a free download sometime in the near future. You can find many of Craig's debates on his website right now for free. If you've never read anything by Craig before, I highly recommend his books, Reasonable Faith and Philosophical Foundations for a Christian Worldview. I believe that every American pastor ought to interact with the material in these books.

Book Preview: Arminian Theology

2009-03-30T00:07:00.000-07:00

I've recently been reading the book, Arminian Theology: Myths and Realities by Roger E. Olsen. I'd highly recommend this book to Calvinists and Arminians alike. The author rightly distinguishes popular Arminianism (which is actually Pelagianism) from classical Arminianism, and then proceeds to dispel common myths about Arminianism. The table of contents will give you a taste of the substance of the book:

Myth #1: Arminian Theology is the Opposite of Calvinist/Reformed Theology
Jacob Arminius and most of his faithful followers fall into the broad understanding of the Reformed tradition; the common ground between Arminianism and Calvinism is significant.
Myth #2: A Hybrid of Calvinism and Arminianism is Possible
In spite of common ground, Calvinism and Arminianism are incommensurable systems of Christian theology; on issues crucial to both there is no stable middle ground between them.
Myth #3: Arminianism is Not an Orthodox Evangelical Option
Classical Arminian theology heartily affirms the fundamentals of Christian orthodoxy and promotes the hallmarks of evangelical faith; it is neither Arian nor liberal.
Myth #4: The Heart of Arminianism Is Belief in Free Will
The true heart of Arminian theology is God's loving and just character; the formal principle of Arminianism is the universal will of God for salvation.
Myth #5: Arminian Theology Denies the Sovereignty of God
Classical Arminianism interprets God's sovereignty and providence differently from Calvinism without in any way denying them; God is in charge of everything without controlling everything.
Myth #6: Arminianism Is a Human-Centered Theology
An optimistic anthropology is alien to true Arminianism which is thoroughly God-centered. Arminian theology confesses human depravity, including the bondage of the will.
Myth #7: Arminian Theology is Not a Theology of Grace
The material principle of classical Arminian thought is prevenient grace. All of salvation is wholly and entirely of God's grace.
Myth #8: Arminians Do Not Believe in Predestination
Predestination is a biblical concept; classical Arminians interpret it differently than Calvinists without denying it. It is God's sovereign decree to elect believers in Jesus Christ and includes God's foreknowledge of those believers' faith.
Myth #9: Arminian Theology Denies Justification by Grace Alone Through Faith Alone
Classical Arminian theology is a Reformation theology. It embraces divine imputation of righteousness by God's grace through faith alone and preserves the distinction between justification and sanctification.
Myth #10: All Arminians Believe in the Governmental Theory of the Atonement
There is no one Arminian doctrine of Christ's atonement. Many Arminians accept the penal substitution theory enthusiastically while others prefer the governmental theory.

The book is a historical explanation of Arminian thought in which the author moves easily from Arminius himself, to Wesley, and finally to modern Arminian thinkers. He explains Arminian thought and judiciously shows how it compares and contrasts to Calvinist thought. This book is needed because Arminianism is often demonized by neo-reformed thinkers who equate Arminian thought with the heresy of Pelagianism. It can be embraced by Calvinists for at least three reasons: (1) Calvinists will be educated as to not misrepresent Arminianism so that genuine dialoge and critique can take place, (2) Calvinists can earnestly hope that the large number of people who Olsen rightly recognizes to be Pelagians will be converted to classical evangelical Arminians, and (3) Calvinists may realize that they are closer to Arminian thought than they once realized. Arminians will appreciate this book as an excellent historical statement of their views which will dispel the Pelagianism that has infiltrated our culture. And finally, those who read this post without an understanding (or perhaps only a vague understanding) of the terms "Arminian," "Calvinist," and "Pelagian" will appreciate this book because it will help them grow in their understanding of theology, salvation, and God Himself.

New Gospel Tract: A Wonderful Life?

2009-03-12T10:17:00.000-07:00

Apparently, Campus Crusade rejected this one. ;)

Actually, after thinking about it, the statement "God loves you and has a wonderful plan for your life" remains true even in circumstances as dire as above. The key difference is a difference of perspective. How do we define "wonderful?" The problem is that for many, "wonderful" is synonymous with "pleasant." But it's false that God has a pleasant plan for my life. A non-Christian might define a "wonderful plan for my life" in many ways: finding a spouse, having a nice family, being financially sound, having friends, no hell, etc. But as a Christian, my definition of a "wonderful life" must be reoriented to a paradigm in which God is the center of the universe and the Person for Whom everything exists. When we become Christians, we must undergo a Copernican revolution in which we realize that the Son is the center of the universe, not my life here on earth. Let me say this again. We are not the center of the universe. God is not circling around us. We are circling around him. This will immediately change our definition of a "wonderful life." A wonderful life is a life that glorifies God and fulfills His purposes in this world. A wonderful life is a life "worthy of God, who calls you into his own kingdom and glory" (1 Thes 2:12). It is one in which the Lamb that was slain receives the reward of His suffering. If God's purpose for my life is for me to stand for Him, empowered by His Spirit, as a ferocious lion devours my flesh, and for thousands of onlookers to watch as I glorify God in my death, then that would be a wonderful life.

Consider the examples of the wonderful lives we are given in Hebrews 11:32-38:

And what more shall I say? For time would fail me to tell of Gideon, Barak, Samson, Jephthah, of David and Samuel and the prophets—who through faith conquered kingdoms, enforced justice, obtained promises, stopped the mouths of lions, quenched the power of fire, escaped the edge of the sword, were made strong out of weakness, became mighty in war, put foreign armies to flight. Women received back their dead by resurrection. Some were tortured, refusing to accept release, so that they might rise again to a better life. Others suffered mocking and flogging, and even chains and imprisonment. They were stoned, they were sawn in two, they were killed with the sword. They went about in skins of sheep and goats, destitute, afflicted, mistreated—of whom the world was not worthy—wandering about in deserts and mountains, and in dens and caves of the earth. (ESV, emphasis mine).

These were truly wonderful lives.

Justification Debate: Wright versus Piper

2009-03-06T10:05:00.000-08:00

VS.

Yesterday I received a new book by N.T. Wright entitled Justification: God's Plan and Paul's Vision. This book is the most recent addition in an ongoing debate between John Piper and N.T. Wright on the issue of justification. In 2007, John Piper wrote a book entitled The Future of Justification: A Response to N.T. Wright. Since Wright had never written a full treatise on justification, Piper was responding to a number of things Wright has written including his books, What Saint Paul Really Said, Paul: In Fresh Perspective, Wright's commentary on Romans, as well as a number of articles Wright has written. Wright's most recent installment in the debate is a focused treatment of the doctrine of justification, including a section which details his exegesis on important selected passages of Scripture.

N.T. Wright is probably the most important theologian and biblical scholar of our times. He's written a number of massive tomes, the most important being his projected 6-volume series, Christian Origins and the Question of God. In addition to being a prominent biblical scholar, he is also pastoral in his approach as he is the presiding Bishop of Durham. Piper, on the other hand, is the influential pastor of Bethlehem Baptist Church in Minneapolis, Minnesota. He is probably the best model of a pastor that I know, and has written some scholarly works, but for the the most part has focused on popular level works. The scholarly works he has written tend to be idiosyncratic and so are not widely regarded in academic circles. In terms of their scholarly influence Piper is clearly the underdog. I don't say this to be demeaning to Piper. On the contrary, I believe that Piper has some good points that need to be taken seriously. One reason I respect him so much is that he is an excellent pastor who thinks it is important to interact with the highest levels of biblical scholarship.

Wright initially responded to Piper's book in an interview saying, "Piper’s criticism is very interesting. I warmed to him. He sent me a copy of it with a charming hand-written dedication, so on. He has clearly bent over backwards to try to understand where I and others are coming from. Sometimes he does and sometimes he doesn’t. He nearly gets to the point where he sees what I’m trying to say, and then the old worldview reasserts itself and he just can’t see through those lenses. I don’t want to say this patronizingly, but it is very frustrating." Wright has a tendency to write-off people who disagree with him as simply misunderstanding him. However, having said that, when I read Piper's book I was continually struck by the thought, "I don't think that's an accurate assessment of Wright's view." Wright was recently interviewed regarding his newest book which can be accessed here for those interested. I have been unable to find a response by Piper to Wright's newest book. If anyone finds a response please leave a comment.

In any case, it's clear from the reviews that Wright's newest book is an important contribution that should help clarify the issues, and could possibly push all of us towards a closer reading of Scripture. Scot McKnight said of Wright's book, "Tom Wright has out-Reformed America's newest religious zealots--the neo-Reformed--by taking them back to Scripture and to its meaning in its historical context. Wright reveals that the neo-Reformed are more committed to tradition than to the sacred text. This irony is palpable on every page of this judicious, hard-hitting, respectful study."

I'm excited to read the new Wright book and watch as these two great pastor/theologians spar. One thing that makes these books a joy to read is the irenic spirit that both Piper and Wright continually exhibit. This is how an issue ought to be debated among Christians. Everyone who wants to understand the doctrine of justification by faith ought to read these two books.

The All-Importance of Motive

2009-02-24T18:07:00.000-08:00

Below is an excerpt from A.W. Tozer's book, The Root of the Righteous. Enjoy!

The test by which all conduct must be judged is motive.

As water cannot rise higher than its source, so the moral quality in an act can never be higher than the motive that inspires it. For this reason no act that arises from an evil motive can be good, even though some good may appear to come out of it. Every deed done out of anger or spite, for instance, will be found at last to have been done for the enemy and against the Kingdom of God.

Unfortunately the nature of religious activity is such that much of it can be carried on for reasons that are not good, such as anger, jealousy, ambition, vanity and avarice. All such activity is essentially evil and will be counted as such at the judgment.

In this matter of motive, as in so many other things, the Pharisees afford us clear examples. They remain the world’s most dismal religious failures, not because of doctrinal error nor because they were careless or lukewarm, nor because they were outwardly persons of dissolute life. Their whole trouble lay in the quality of their religious motives. They prayed, but they prayed ot be heard of men, and thus their motive ruined their prayers and rendered them not only useless but actually evil. They gave generously to the service of the temple, but they sometimes did it to escape their duty toward their parents, and this was evil. They judged sin and stood against it when they found it in others, but this they did from self-righteousness and hardness of heart. So with almost everything they did. Their activities had about them an outward appearance of holiness, and those same activities if carried on out of pure motives would have been good and praiseworthy. The whole weakness of the Pharisees lay in the quality of their motives.

That this is not a small matter may be gathered from the fact that those orthodox and proper religionists went on in their blindness till they at last crucified the Lord of glory with no inkling of the gravity of their crime.

Religious acts done out of low motives are twice evil, evil in themselves and evil because they are done in the name of God. This is equivalent to sinning in the name of the sinless One, lying in the name of the One who cannot lie and hating in the name of the One whose nature is love.

Christians, and especially very active ones, should take time out frequently to search their souls to be sure of their motives. Many a solo is sung to show off; many a sermon I preached as an exhibition of talent; many a church is founded as a slap at some other church. Even missionary activity may become competitive, and soul winning may degenerate into a sort of brush-salesman project to satisfy the flesh. Do not forget, the Pharisees were great missionaries and would compass the sea and land to make a convert.

A good way to avoid the snare of empty religious activity is to appear before God every once in a while with our Bibles open to the thirteenth chapter of First Corinthians. This passage, though rated one of the most beautiful in the Bible, is also one of the severest to be found in Sacred Writ. The apostle takes the highest religious service and consigns it to futility unless it is motivated by love. Lacking love, prophets, teachers, orators, philanthropists and martyrs are sent away without reward.

To sum it up, we may say simply that in the sight of God we are judged not so much by what we do as by our reasons for doing it. Not what but why will be the important question when we Christians appear at the judgment seat to give account of the deeds done in the body.

The Two Tasks

2009-02-12T13:33:00.000-08:00

The following is an excerpt from an address given by the late Charles Malik entitled "The Two Tasks" given at the dedication of the Billy Graham Center in Wheaton, Illinois in the fall of 1980. Charles Malik was the Lebanese ambassador to the United States and president of the United Nations. He had a Ph.D. in philosophy from Harvard, and over 50 honorary doctorates. This speech is available in it's entirety as part of the book, The Two Tasks of the Christian Scholar by William Lane Craig.

I speak to you as a Christian. Jesus Christ is my Lord and God and Savior and Song day and night. I can live without food, without drink, without sleep, without air—but I cannot live without Jesus. Without him I would have perished long ago. Without him and his Church reconciling man to God the world would have perished long ago. I live in and on the Bible for long hours every day. The Bible is the source of every good thought and impulse I have. In the Bible God himself, the Creator of everything from nothing, speaks to me and to the world directly—about himself, about ourselves and about his will for the course of events and for the consummation of history. And believe me: Not a day passes without my crying from the bottom of my heart, “Come, Lord Jesus!” I know he is coming with glory to judge the living and the dead, but in my impatience I sometimes cannot wait and I find myself in my infirmity crying with David, “How long, Lord?” And I know his kingdom shall have no end....

In the nature of the case evangelization is always the most important task to be undertaken by mortal man. For proud and rebellious and self-sufficient man—and pride and rebellion and self-sufficiency are the same thing—to be brought to his knees and to his tears before the actual majesty and grace and power of Jesus Christ is the greatest event that can happen to any man....

But just as we are not alone with God and the Bible but also with others, so we are not only endowed with a soul and a will to be saved but also with a reason to be sharpened and satisfied. This reason wonders about everything, including God, and we are to seek and love and worship the Lord our God with all our strength and all our mind. And because we are with others we are arguing and reasoning with one another all the time. Indeed every sentence and every discourse is a product of reason. And so it is neither a shame nor a sin to discipline and cultivate our reason to the utmost. It is a necessity, it is a duty, it is an honor to do so.

Therefore if evangelization is the most important task, the task that comes immediately after it—not in the tenth place, or even the third place, but in the second place—is not politics, or economics, or the quest of comfort and security and ease, but to find out exactly what is happening to the mind and the spirit in the schools and universities. And once a Christian discovers that there is a total divorce between mind and spirit in the schools and universities, between the perfection of thought and the perfection of soul and character, between intellectual sophistication and the spiritual worth of the individual human person, between reason and faith, between the pride of knowledge and the contrition of heart consequent upon being a mere creature, and once he realizes that Jesus Christ will find himself less at home on the campuses of the great universities in Europe and America than almost anywhere else, he will be profoundly disturbed, and he will inquire what can be done to recapture the great universities for Jesus Christ—the universities which would not have come into being in the first place without him.

What can the poor Church even at its best do, what can evangelization even at its most inspired do, what can the poor family even at its purest and noblest do, if the children spend between fifteen and twenty years of their life—and indeed the most formative period of their life—in school and college in an atmosphere of formal denial of any relevance of God and spirit and soul and faith to the formation of their mind? The enormity of what is happening is beyond words.

The Church and the family, each already encumbered with its own strains and ordeals, are fighting a losing battle so far as the bearing of the university on the spiritual health and wholeness of youth is concerned. All the preaching in the world, and all the loving care of even the best parents between whom there are no problems whatever, will amount to little, if not to nothing, so long as what the children are exposed to day in and day out for fifteen to twenty years in the school and university virtually cancels out morally and spiritually what they hear and see and learn at home and in the church. Therefore the problem of the school and university is the most critical problem afflicting western civilization.

At the heart of all the problems facing western civilization—the general nervousness and restlessness, the dearth of grace and beauty and quiet and peace of soul, the manifold blemishes and perversions of personal character; problems of the family and of social relations in general, problems of economics and politics, problems of the media, problems affecting the school itself and the Church itself, problems in the international order—at the heart of the crisis in western civilization lies the state of the mind and the spirit in the universities.

The problem is not only to win souls but also to save minds. If you win the whole world and lose the mind of the world, you will soon discover that you have not won the world. Indeed it may turn out that you have actually lost the world.

This is a solemn occasion. I must be frank with you: The greatest danger besetting American evangelical Christianity is the danger of anti-intellectualism. The mind as to its greatest and deepest reaches is not cared for enough. This cannot take place apart from profound immersion for a period of years in the history of thought and the spirit. People are in a hurry to get out of the university and start earning money or serving the Church or preaching the gospel. They have no idea of the infinite value of spending years of leisure in conversing with the greatest minds and souls of the past and thereby ripening and sharpening and enlarging their powers of thinking. The result is that the arena of creative thinking is abdicated and vacated to the enemy. Who among evangelicals can stand up to the great secular or naturalistic or atheistic scholars on their own terms of scholarship and research? Who among evangelical scholars is quoted as a normative source by the greatest secular authorities on history or philosophy or psychology or sociology or politics? Does your mode of thinking have the slightest chance of becoming the dominant mode of thinking in the great universities of Europe and America, which stamp your entire civilization with their own spirit and ideas?

For the sake of greater effectiveness in witnessing to Jesus Christ himself, as well as for their own sakes, evangelicals cannot afford to keep on living on the periphery of responsible intellectual existence.

Responsible Christians face two tasks—that of saving the soul, and that of saving the mind.... If it is the will of the Holy Spirit that we attend to the soul, certainly it is not his will that we neglect the mind. No civilization can endure with its mind being as confused and disordered as ours is today. All our ills stem proximately from the false philosophies that have been let loose in the world and that are now being taught in the universities, and ultimately of course...from the devil, whether or not the human agents know it. Save the university and you save western civilization and therewith the world.

Wake up, my friends, wake up: The great universities control the mind of the world! Therefore how can evangelism consider its task accomplished if it leaves the university un-evangelized? And how can evangelism evangelize the university if it cannot speak to the university? And how can it speak to the university if it is not itself already intellectualized? Therefore evangelism must first intellectualize itself to be able to speak to the university and therefore to be able to evangelize the university and therefore to save the world. This is the great task, the historic task, the most needed task, the task required loud and clear by the Holy Ghost Himself.

A Review of "There Is a God" by Antony Flew

2009-02-08T13:00:00.000-08:00

I recently finished reading the book, There is A God by Antony Flew. The subtitle for the book is "How the World's Most Notorious Atheist Changed His Mind," which is especially apropos considering Flew's contributions to modern philosophical atheology. Flew has been an important force in academic philosophy for the past half-century. He wrote a number of important articles and books that have shaped the subsequent discussion in philosophy of religion. Among his more important works are "Theology and Falsification," God and Philosophy, and The Presumption of Atheism. He was even involved in the debates with C.S. Lewis in the Socratic Club at Oxford. The atheists today who have gained much attention in the media have really not contributed much to the philosophical debate of God's existence. Those like Dawkins, Dennet, Wolpert, Harris, and Stenger tend to just rehash old arguments, many of which were originally put forth by Flew. (Some of the arguments they put forth are simply bad arguments, which they have made up themselves.)

The book begins by telling Flew's story. It describes how he arrived at an atheistic position, the reasoning the led him there, and some brief autobiographical details. The second half of the book consists of the reasons that led to Flew's conversion from atheism to deism. Flew lays his cards on the table stating, "I now believe that the universe was brought into existence by an infinite Intelligence. I believe that this universe's intricate laws manifest what scientists have called the Mind of God. I believe that life and reproduction originate in a divine Source" (88). The titles of the chapters in this section are telling about what led to Flew's conversion: "A Pilgrimage of Reason," "Who Wrote the Laws of Nature?," "Did the Universe Know We Were Coming?," "How Did Life Go Live?," "Did Something Come From Nothing?," "Finding Space For God," and "Open to Omnipotence." As one might guess, some of the issues that led to Flew's conversion include the origin of the laws of nature, the fine-tuning of the universe, the intelligent design of life, how to make sense of life and freewill in a purely materialistic universe, and the cosmological argument. Flew's catalog of his intellectual journey is an interesting read, and it's also informative on the history of philosophy of religion. The book concludes with two appendixes. The first appendix was written by Roy Abraham Varghese and it critiques the so-called "new atheists." The second appendix is a dialog between Flew and N.T. Wright, the prominent British theologian and historian, in which Flew asks Wright a number of questions about the self-revelation of God in the person of Jesus.

This book is important on at least two levels. First, it is important because it signals that a renaissance is taking place among modern Christian theistic philosophy. The preface of the book cites a Time Magazine article from April, 1980, which says, "In a quiet revolution in thought and argument that hardly anyone would have foreseen only two decades ago, God is making a comeback. Most intriguingly this is happening ... in the crisp intellectual circles of academic philosophers." Unquestionably, there has been a resurgence of theism, and especially Christian theism, among academic philosophers. Thirty years ago, there was almost no such thing as a Christian philosophy professor at a major university. Today, Christian philosophy professors are common at major universities, and theistic positions are seen as highly respectable. God is not even close to being dead in the academy. On the contrary, He is alive and doing a mighty work.

Secondly, this book is important because one man is a step closer to trusting the Lord Jesus. I remember a debate I attended in 1998 in which William Lane Craig debated Antony Flew on the question of God's existence. (This debate is available in written form as the book, Does God Exist? The Craig-Flew Debate edited by Stan W. Wallace). After the debate I remember praying for Flew. It seems that perhaps God is taking steps towards answering my prayers. Flew does not consider himself a Christian at this point. Rather he believes in God, but the God he believes in is a deistic God who does not interact with people. However, in regards to Christianity Flew states, "I think that the Christian religion is the one religion that most clearly deserves to be honored and respected whether or not its claim to be a divine revelation is true. There is nothing like the combination of a charismatic figure like Jesus and a first-class intellectual like St. Paul" (185-186). Flew concludes his book stating, "Some claim to have made contact with this Mind. I have not--yet. But who knows what could happen next? Someday I might hear a Voice that says, 'Can you hear me now?'" (158). Please join me in praying that God would graciously call Antony Flew to Himself.

Horton Hears a Gospel

2009-01-28T23:14:00.000-08:00

Last night I attended an outstanding lecture by Dr. Michael Horton, Westminster Seminary California professor of systematic theology and apologetics. His topic was "The Gospel: Good News or Good Advice?" He discussed the trend in our culture to relativise the gospel message to our felt needs, and in particular, how this relativistic gospel is vastly different from the true gospel message that was recaptured by the reformers. This is a much-needed message a culture that glorifies the gospel of self-help, life-improvement, and happy feelings. Our culture is drifting closer and closer towards the empty-self, infantile, sensate narcissism depicted so marvelously in Aldous Huxley's vision of A Brave New World. Sadly, this drifting culture has resulted in a drifting church that is creeping towards a false Christianity that is more concerned with having your best life now than it is with being restored to right relationship with God through the cross. Our drifting church desperately needs the anchor of the true Gospel, which was basic thesis of Horton's message.

Horton began by discussing various false relativised gospels, such as the gospel of "personal relationship with Jesus," and the gospel of "make Jesus the Lord of your life." Horton then proceeded from discussing these relativistic gospels to a discussion of what the true gospel is. He moved throughout the book of Romans, explaining the gospel from a reformed perspective, with a particular emphasis on our need to understand and recognize our personal sinful state before God. He argued we must comprehend our sinfulness so that we can rightly see our need, and therefore understand the good news of the atoning victory that Jesus accomplished on our behalf. He did an excellent job of explaining the doctrine of justification by faith from a reformed perspective, as well as challenging the audience to stand (or maybe "fall" is a better word) in Christ's grace alone.

I did have few minor qualms with Horton's presentation. Most of these problems do not have to do with what he said, but rather with what he did not say:
(1) Horton equated the gospel with justification by faith. For Horton, it seems that the gospel is the message that by grace through faith alone in the atoning work of Christ on the cross sinners can be made right before God. I would never want to detract from the centrality and importance of this message, but if I am trying to be faithful to the Bible, I cannot be satisfied that this is the whole of the gospel. An examination of Paul's usage of the word gospel (euangelion) reveals that "gospel" is used much more broadly than just referring to Jesus' death, burial, and resurrection. Rather, it seems that when Paul uses the word "gospel," he is referring to God's entire plan/program of salvation thoughout history, the core and center of which is Jesus' substitutionary death, burial, and resurrection (see Gal 3:8, Rom 1:9, 1 Cor 15:3-8; see also Mark 1:14-15). For example, in Galatians 3:8 we are told that the gospel was preached to Abraham as "In you shall all the nations be blessed." The gospel is not simply the message of Jesus' death, burial, and resurrection. Rather it is the movement of God throughout history that reaches it's climax in Jesus' death, burial, and resurrection. This is why Paul can say in Romans 1:9 that he serves God "in the gospel of his Son." Paul recognized that he was now part of the movement of God that has been occuring throughout history to bless all nations. The goal of this "gospel" is the creation of a single people for God from both Jews and Gentiles (see Gal 3:8 and Eph 2:14-18). It seemed strange that Horton did not mention this broad definition of the gospel after he asked the question, "Is God a supporting actor in the movie of your life, or have you taken a supporting role in God's drama of redemption?" (This was my favorite quote of the night by the way). The gospel is God's drama of redemption, which we are called to be part of, and of which the core and center is Jesus' death and resurrection.
(2) Horton did not address the political dimension of the gospel. This is something that I've been particularly interested in partly because I'm currently reading Seyoon Kim's new book, Christ and Caesar: The Gospel and the Roman Empire in the Writings of Paul and Luke. Many scholars argue that Paul's proclamation that "Jesus is Lord" necessarily implied that "Jesus is Lord and Caesar is not." Paul lived during a time when the Caesar was elevated to the status of a god, and pax romana (peace of Rome) was hailed as Caesar's gift to the world. It is undisputed that certain portions of Paul's letters (and indeed the reason he was imprisoned on occassion) were influenced by this context. I am currently undecided on the way(s) and extent that this should influence our understanding of the gospel. (I certainly disagree with those who would say that this means we should be against American military actions and American multi-national corporations). But whether or not Paul was using the gospel as a polemic against the Roman imperial cult, we should certainly understand Jesus' resurrection as a victory over sin, death, AND the evil powers/rulers of this age--and this should be understood as part of the gospel.
(3) Horton did not address the new creational aspect of the gospel. Something I've noticed is that people who tend to emphasize the substitutionary death of Jesus tend to recognize their forgiveness before God, but sometimes neglect the new life they have in Christ. In the same way, people who tend to emphasize the resurrection of Christ tend to focus on the new life they have in Christ, but sometimes neglect the fact that they are forgiven. (Someday I'm going to blog on this topic). Both Jesus' death and Jesus' resurrection are certainly part of Paul's definition of the gospel, but Horton emphasized Jesus' substitutionary death. As such, it seems that he neglected Jesus' resurrection and therefore the new life that we have in Christ that certainly should be understood as part of the gospel. Part of the good news is that we are given new lives in Christ and God's Spirit is placed within us to help us live a radically different kind of life (see Gal 5:22). When Jesus was preaching the gospel of the kingdom, He was inviting people to a radically different kind of life--the kind of life that one can only have by being forgiven and made a new creation. This is why in Romans 8 Paul can say that "...the righteous requirement of the Law might be fulfilled in us..." (8:4). This is not talking about justification, but sanctification--the context mandates this. We are given God's Spirit, and we are thereby given the ability to live as God intends us to live. And this is part of what makes the good news good! We are not just forgiven--we're forgiven, made new, and born to a radically different kind of life in which we are not condemned to fail in our sins (as the person does in Romans 7). Do not misunderstand me to be saying that we can attain some sort of perfection. Rather I'm saying that part of the gospel is that we are given a new Source of life, and are able to make substantial progress in personal holiness. Righteousness is not only imputed to us--it is also imparted to us in our daily experience. And this is part of Paul's gospel and indeed, Jesus' gospel.

These criticisms should not be understood as indicating that I substantially disagreed with Horton. On the contrary, I found myself "Amening" to 99.9% of what he said. I just would have liked the explanation of the gospel to be a bit more well-rounded. But let's be honest... He had limited time, and maybe I'm asking too much! So let me sum up by saying that Horton did an outstanding job. He's a sharp guy and very engaging to listen to. In any case, Horton's message is much-needed at the present time, and I would commend it to anyone who is interested (and to those not interested). If anyone is aware of a recording of the event that is available for download, I'd appreciate it if you commented below on where it could be found. Thanks!

Thank You, President Bush

2009-01-21T16:08:00.000-08:00

Yesterday, the torch passed from President George W. Bush to President Barack H. Obama. It seems that many Americans believe that Bush is the worst president this nation has ever had, and that Obama will be the best president that this nation has ever had (or at least that's what you'd believe from listening to the media). However, I am thankful for George W. Bush's presidency, and believe him to be a great man.

George W. Bush embodies what the Bible tells us is important for those in positions of leadership. The Bible states that the qualifications for those in positions of leadership in the church are primarily character attributes--not functional skills. Shepherding a church is, in some very important ways, a much greater responsibility than governing a nation, but nevertheless it remains that when the Bible gives qualifications for leaders, these qualifications primarily deal with a person's character (1 Tim. 3:2-7, Tit. 1:6-9, 1 Pet. 5:1-3).

I believe that in his presidency, George W. Bush demonstrated a tremendous amount of character. Even his critics often admit that he is sincere, honest, and a man of integrity. It's apparent from watching him that he is genuine and does not take himself too seriously. At the same time, he took his responsibility as the President with the utmost seriousness. This is a difficult balance for anyone to maintain. The only way to maintain this balance is to have the humility that comes from trusting God on a daily basis. George Bush made it known that he depended on His Savior for strength. The story of his addiction to alcohol, and the dramatic transformation that occurred when he trusted in Christ is no secret. And it was his relationship with Jesus Christ that gave him the strength to lead our nation through some of the most trying times in our nation's history.

George W. Bush made difficult decisions in hard times and did what he believed was right--not what was popular. He led us through 9/11 with courage and leadership. He established the department of Homeland Security, and prevented any further terrorist attacks on U.S. soil. He passed the Patriot Act, and vastly improved our nations intelligence gathering capabilities. He led us through Katrina. He removed an evil tyrant (who was guilty of genocide) from power. He transformed Iraq from a dictatorship led by fear to a democracy with real hope. He gave the courts conservative judges who take the constitution seriously. He did more for AIDS in Africa than any other president or nation in recent history (though this is not well known). For the vast majority of his presidency, the economy flourished due to his tax reductions. And he even saw through the beginnings of a recovery to the economic woes caused by the mortgage crisis (which I attribute mostly to the irresponsibility of people/banks who took/gave bad loans). Sure, there were bumps and hiccups along the way. Sure, there were mistakes; all presidents make mistakes, especially wartime presidents. But I despise the arrogant cynical attitude that focuses only on the bumps and hiccups rather than the big picture. It's easy to criticize someone in a position of tremendous responsibility.

George Bush's presidency was far more successful than not. And there's a key element to his presidency that deserves to be recognized: his courage. Time and again, Bush did what others would not have done, and for that very thing he was vilified: he defiantly did the right thing. He did the right thing though it was unpopular and difficult. And in the end, this is what will distinguish his presidency. He is a man of courage and integrity.

I will pray for President Obama: that God give him wisdom, courage, and integrity throughout his presidency. And that he too will have the humility that stems from a deep dependence upon the Only True God. But for now, I'd like to say thank you, President Bush, for your service to our country over the past several years. Thank you for leading our nation through some of the most difficult crises that any president in recent history has seen. Thank you for doing the right thing when it wasn't popular, and for being a man of courage and integrity. I will miss your leadership.

The Profound Effect of Caring

2009-01-15T11:51:00.000-08:00

Check out this video. This is a clip of the the magician and outspoken atheist Penn from the act, "Penn and Teller." He has a TV show on Showtime called "B.S." (only spelled-out) where he criticizes various things including Christianity and theism. It's amazing how one act of humble, sincere, loving obedience can have a profound effect on even the most vehement atheists.

1 Peter 2:12 "Keep your conduct among the Gentiles honorable, so that when they speak against you as evildoers, they may see your good deeds and glorify God on the day of visitation."
1 Peter 3:15-16 "But in your hearts honor Christ the Lord as holy, always being prepared to make a defense to anyone who asks you for a reason for the hope that is in you; yet do it with gentleness and respect, having a good conscience, so that, when you are slandered, those who revile your good behavior in Christ may be put to shame. "

Thanks to Dan for telling me about this.

Christians and Video Games

2009-01-09T12:00:00.000-08:00

I have a confession to make: I am a gamer. I've been a gamer ever since I got my first Nintendo Entertainment System, pushed the "A" button, and was amazed to see Mario jump across the TV screen. Since then I've progressed across various systems including the original Nintendo, Atari, Super Nintendo, Gameboy, Nintendo 64, Playstation, Playstation 2, Wii, and my two current favorites: the PC and the Playstation 3.

So now it's out in the open: I am a gamer. But I am also a Christian, and as a Christian, I need to evaluate whether it is okay for me to play video games, and if so, what types of video games are acceptable. Let's start with the question of whether or not it is okay to play video games.

What is the justification for playing video games? The easy answer: "It's fun." Fun is a good reason to do a thing, but not good enough. Christianity teaches that joy is a great good, so fun is a good sign that there is something worthwhile about a thing. But many things mix worthwhile parts with enough worthless harms to ruin them. Some good does not justify even more bad. I loathe the attitude of some that being fun is a good reason to worry about the goodness of a thing, but I equally worry that in our consumerist culture, we might justify too much in the name of fun. So what further justification is there beyond fun? I can think of four:

(1) Video games can promote high-order thinking skills. These skills include components such as reading, strategic thinking, creative problem solving, dependency-based logic, interpretive analysis, plan formulation and execution, and adaptation to rapid change. Nearly every video game teaches one or more of these skills.
(2) Video games can promote creativity and art. Many games invite players to design their own levels, customize characters, create their own add-on content, and even modify the game in drastic ways.
(3) Video games can promote community and interpersonal skills. This community promotion includes both online community and local community. Community can be created by sharing online experiences with people from around the world (especially with the advent of Bluetooth headsets and video chats becoming available in games). Video games can also be a venue for personal fellowship locally. It's a ton of fun to sit next to a friend challenging them at your favorite game. I've personally known people who established relationships with others over a video game, and then invited that person to church and seen a dramatic transformation occur. Because video games can promote community, they necessarily can teach interpersonal skills, especially teamwork.
(4) Video games can teach moral lessons. This is a somewhat controversial point because video games can teach either positive or negative moral lessons, depending on the game. However, I would submit that there are many positive lessons to be had from video games.

Of course, these positive factors need to be tempered by the fact that all video games can be harmful in excess. The same is true with nearly everything God created to be enjoyed by us. Sex is a good thing (within marriage), but if someone becomes preoccupied with sex, this desire can become destructive. In the same way, we must be careful that we do not become preoccupied with video games so that they consume our souls and our time. We are given a limited amount of time on this earth, and we need to make sure we use this time wisely. We must pray with the Psalmist, "Teach us to number our days that we may get a heart of wisdom" (Ps. 90:12). Often our time can be better spent than playing video games. But it would be wrong to say that all time spent on video games (or personal entertainment in general) is wrong. God knows we need times of rest and relaxation, and these are not sinful. So is it okay for Christians to play video games? I conclude that it is okay for Christians to play video games in moderation. This brings us to our second question.

What types of games are acceptable for Christians to play? It doesn't cut it just to say "a game that is well made" since such a statement is as irrelevant to the morality of the game as the efficiency of a murder plan is to its moral status.

The essential question players ought to ask is whether playing a game hurts us... and by hurting us hurts those who love us. Does playing a game make us less loving, more apt to spew hateful crudities, decrease intimacy, make us more likely to objectify men and women, more prone to detach our emotions from our experiences? Does playing this game harm my soul? This is the central question we must be ask. There are a number of ways that games can do this. I will briefly discuss six such ways:

(1) The depiction of evil. Many games depict unspeakable evils. However, this does not necessarily make them wrong. Not all presentations of evil are evil themselves. We can all agree that showing the raw side of life does not make a thing bad. The Bible itself quite often depicts the raw side of life. It seems that the relevant question is how that evil is presented. A film that presented genocide in a favorable manner would not be good for the culture. A film that showed the ugliness of genocide would be very, very hard to watch, but might be good for me. The book of Judges in the Bible has horrific things in it, but they are presented as the hard truth about evil. Some games present evil things as evil. For example, the Call of Duty series presents the atrocities of the Nazis in World War II as evil acts that warranted a war. However, other games present evil as the norm or even cool. In Grand Theft Auto, the goal of the game is to work your way up in an organized crime network by stealing cars, visiting prostitutes, going to strip clubs, avoiding the police, and robbing people. This game depicts evil as cool, and thus cannot be considered morally right. Therefore in evaluating whether we ought to play a game or not, we must consider how evil is presented in the game. Is it evil depicted as evil, or is it depicted as exciting, normal, cool, or good?

(2) Participation in virtual violence. Psychologists have said that participation in virtual violence can have harmful effects on one's disposition (see this article). Gamers like to respond that the Old Testament contains violent themes and images. This is a valid point that ought to be considered. Not all violence is evil or harmful to one's soul. Some violence is heroic and good for one's soul. For example, consider watching the violence that occurs in the film The Passion of the Christ. Although the violence in this film is perhaps the most horrific violence ever depicted in film, it is nonetheless arguably good for one's soul. Therefore we must ask ourselves in what sort of virtual violence are we participating? Is the violence heroic or senseless? Pretending for hours at a time to be an allied fighter pilot in World War II (as in Blazing Angels) is not morally the same as pretending to be a street thug who beats up an elderly woman for fun (as in Grand Theft Auto). Killing in combat seems morally different from killing in a robbery. Thus in assessing whether we ought to play a game, we should assess the type of virtual violence within the game.

(3) Encouragement of false beliefs about reality. Many games encourage false and anti-biblical beliefs about reality. This occurs mainly through stereotypes and the depiction of false worldviews. In playing a video game, we must be aware of the stereotypes and worldviews found within, and be able to separate these from reality. If we cannot do so, then a game may be harmful to our souls. However, if we are able to distinguish the truth from the lie, then this can become an exercise in critical thinking and help one to develop a more holistic Christian worldview. Of course, a game that encourages false beliefs would still be harmful to the general culture even if Christians were able to rightly discern the truth.

(4) Exposure to pornography and crudity. The pornography and crudity in a video game is real and not virtual. As someone who wants (however difficult it is) to have a great love and share intimacy with just one person, I cannot expose myself to a video game that includes pornography. (And for those of you who are unaware, there are plenty of games that feature pornographic material of some sort). By crudity I mean the foul language and ugliness involved in many video games. Does this impact me? Of course, it does. If innocence and gentleness of spirit are good, then we ought to consider that games with crudity make such attitudes hard. To avoid becoming jaded, we ought to avoid games with pornography and crudity. As Paul said, "I want you to be wise as to what is good and innocent as to what is evil" (Rom 16:19).

(5) Detachment from reality. One of the greatest dangers of video games is that they encourage distancing oneself from one's own experience. Gamers frequently say that highly realistic games do not make them killers or thieves. This is true. It does, however, encourage (like the consumption of all media) distancing oneself from what one sees and hears. Do we really want to make ourselves distant from our experiences? Do we want to become detached from our own emotions? What if we cannot "turn off" this distancing mechanism? If we cannot do so, then we may end up treating people as "means to an end" rather than "ends" themselves. It may even become difficult for us to experience appropriate emotional responses to people and events in our everyday lives. We must be careful that we do not become detached from reality by playing video games. It's for this reason that I recommend that people who do play video games fast from the games they play every once in a while to keep themselves in check.

(6) Addiction to adrenaline. It's easy to get in the habit of constantly seeking another thrill--seeking the next adrenaline rush. Often video games are like action scenes in a movie that never let up. This constant excitement can become addictive. In a world of elevator music where we almost never have time to hear ourselves think, it's important to be able to quiet and compose our souls before the Lord so that we are able to hear from Him and walk with Him (see Ps. 131). Sometimes playing video games can foster an adrenaline addiction that makes this almost impossible. Video games are not the only thing that do this. The sensate, consumerist, media-driven nature of our culture makes this a real danger for anyone who experiences the normal media that someone sees in a day. It's for this reason that we must be careful to play video games in moderation and to make silence and solitude regular spiritual disciplines.

So while all video games are not bad, some video games certainly are. In evaluating whether a video game is acceptable for a Christian to play, the above six criteria are helpful in evaluating a game. To conclude this post, my hope is that this has served as a model of how to thoughtfully integrate the Christian worldview with a normal, everyday issue. As Christians, we ought to be in the habit of thinking about how our behavior effects our souls. In order to have a holistic Christian worldview, this should extend to every area of life, including the video games we play. If anyone has a PS3 and wants to play with me online, my PSN ID is "eRaCer001" (without the quotation marks). Happy gaming!

Note: My thoughts on this subject are based partially and in some cases verbatim on a couple of blog posts by John Mark Reynolds, which can be found here and here.

Praise God for the Furnace

2009-01-03T10:12:00.000-08:00

Below is an excerpt from A.W. Tozer's book, The Root of the Righteous. The "Rutherford" Tozer refers to is the great Scottish Presbyterian theologian and author, Samuel Rutherford. Of his Letters, Spurgeon once said, "let the world know that Spurgeon held Rutherfurd's Letters to be the nearest thing to inspiration which can be found in all the writings of men... none penetrated further into the innermost heart of holy fellowship with Jesus." Enjoy!

It was the enraptured Rutherford who could shout in the midst of serious and painful trials, “Praise God for the hammer, the file and the furnace.”

The hammer is a useful tool, but the nail, if it had feeling and intelligence, could present another side of the story. For the nail knows the hammer only as an opponent, a brutal, merciless enemy who lives to pound it into submission, to beat it down out of sight and clinch it into place. That is the nail’s view of the hammer, and it is accurate except for one thing: The nail forgets that both it and the hammer are servants of the same workman. Let the nail but remember that the hammer is held by the workman and all resentment toward it will disappear. The carpenter decides whose head shall be beaten next and what hammer shall be used in the beating. That is his sovereign right. When the nail has surrendered to the will of the workman and has gotten a little glimpse of his benign plans for its future it will yield to the hammer without complaint.

The file is more painful still, for its business is to bite into the soft metal, scraping and eating away the edges till it has shaped the metal to its will. Yet the file has, in truth, no real will in the matter but serves another master as the metal does also. It is the master and not the file that decides how much shall be eaten away, what shape the metal shall take, and how long the painful filing shall continue. Let the metal accept the will of the master and it will not try to dictate when or how it shall be filed.

As for the furnace, it is the worst of all. Ruthless and savage, it leaps at every combustible thing that enters it and never relaxes its fury till it has reduced it all to shapeless ashes. All that refuses to burn is melted to a mass of helpless matter, without will or purpose of its own. When everything is melted that will melt and all is burned that will burn, then and not till then the furnace calms down and rests from its destructive fury.

With all this known to him, how could Rutherford find it in his heart to praise God for the hammer, the file and the furnace? The answer is simply that he loved the Master of the hammer, he adored the Workman who wielded the file, he worshiped the Lord who heated the furnace for the everlasting blessing of His children. He had felt the hammer till its rough beatings no longer hurt; he had endured the file till he had come actually to enjoy its bitings; he had walked with God in the furnace so long that it had become as his natural habitat. That does not overstate the facts. His letters reveal as much.

Such doctrine as this does not find much sympathy among Christians in these soft and carnal days. We tend to think of Christianity as a painless system by which we can escape the penalty of past sins and attain to heaven at last. The flaming desire to be rid of every unholy thing and to put on the likeness of Christ at any cost is not to be found among us. We expect to enter the everlasting kingdom of our Father and to sit down around the table with sages, saints and martyrs; and through the grace of God, maybe we shall; yes, maybe we shall. But for most of us it could prove at first an embarrassing experience. Ours might be the silence of the untried soldier in the presence of the battle-hardened heroes who have fought the fight and won the victory and who have scars to prove that they were present when the battle was joined.

The devil, things and people being what they are, it is necessary for God to use the hammer, the file and the furnace in His holy work of preparing a saint for true sainthood. It is doubtful whether God can bless a man greatly until He has hurt him deeply.

Without doubt we of this generation have become too soft to scale great spiritual heights. Salvation has come to mean deliverance from unpleasant things. Our hymns and sermons create for us a religion of consolation and pleasantness. We overlook the place of the thorns, the cross and the blood. We ignore the function of the hammer and the file.

Strange as it may sound, it is yet true that much of the suffering we are called upon to endure on the highway of holiness is an inward suffering for which scarcely an external cause can be found. For our journey is an inward journey, and our real foes are invisible to the eyes of men. Attacks of darkness, of despondency, of acute self-depreciation may be endured without any change in our outward circumstances. Only the enemy and God and the hard-pressed Christian know what has taken place. The inward suffering has been great and a mighty work of purification has been accomplished, but the heart knoweth its own sorrow and no one else can share it. God has cleansed His child in the only way He can, circumstances being what they are. Thank God for the furnace.

Is faith a gift? Yes and No.

2008-12-21T21:00:00.000-08:00

Is faith a gift? This is an important question for those interested in soteriology. To answer this question, we must begin by clarifying our terms.

First, "faith." What type of faith are we referring to? Some options are:

(a) saving faith - initial faith we place in Christ that results in our salvation.

(b) persevering faith - enduring faith that continues often in the midst of suffering.

(d) the Christian faith - the set of truths comprising the doctrines of the Christian religion.

(e) conscience - i.e. "I cannot do that in good faith."

There is often overlap between these different types of faith, but when we ask if faith is a gift, we are generally referring to definition (a), saving faith. Saving faith must have at least three components to qualify as genuine: (1) content - understanding the content of the Christian faith, (2) mental assent - the assent of the intellect to the propositional truths of the Christian faith, (3) trust - reliance upon God.

Second, let's consider what we mean by "gift." When we ask if faith is a gift, what we are really asking is whether the act of trusting is something that originates in God and is imparted to us, or whether it originates in us as a response to God. Of course, there are components of faith that certainly originate in God. For example our ability to have faith at all is ours because God created us in His image. The content of our faith is possible because God has accomplished salvation in Christ. But does the act of trusting originate in God or in us? This is what we mean when we ask, "Is faith a gift?". Let's examine the relevant biblical passages.

Ephesians 2:8 - "For by grace you are saved through faith; and this is not of yourselves, it is the gift of God."
This is perhaps the most popular biblical passage used to answer his question. This, it is argued, is a clear example of faith being called a "gift of God." However, when one examines the original Greek, it becomes quite apparent that this is incorrect. The key to understanding this passage is the Greek demonstrative pronoun translating "this" (touto) in the phrase "this is not of yourselves; it is the gift of God." This word refers back to some antecedent. Possible options are
(1) "faith,"
(2) "grace,"
(3) the concept of grace-by-faith salvation,
(4) adverbial force with no antecedent.
The demonstrative pronoun touto ("this") is in the neuter gender, while chariti ("grace") and pisteoos ("faith") are in the feminine gender. Therefore it cannot refer to "grace" or "faith." The fourth option is that the word touto has an adverbial force with no antecedent. In this case, we would translate the demonstrative pronoun as "and especially." The third option, which I take to be the correct option, understands the antecedent of touto to be the concept of salvation. In conclusion, the first two options are ruled out by the rules of grammar, and so one of the latter options must be correct. In either of the latter options, faith is not the gift, and so we must conclude that this passage does not teach that faith is a gift. Rather salvation is a gift that is received through faith.

Hebrews 12:2 - "...looking to Jesus, the author and perfecter of our faith..."
If Jesus is the "author" of our faith, doesn't that mean that it originates in Him? Not according to this passage. Throughout Hebrews 11 there are numerous examples of people who were examples of great faith. These examples are used by the author to encourage his readers to persevere in their faith. When we come to Hebrews 12, the author moves from various examples to our Example par excellence: Jesus. The author of Hebrews chooses to use the metaphor of a race to depict how we are to live our lives as Christians. We are encouraged with the words, "let us run with endurance the race that is set before us, fixing our eyes on Jesus, the author and perfecter of faith." The word translated "author" (arkegos) has a dual range of meaning, and can denote either a "ruler" or a "beginnner." Given the imagery of a race being used in this passage, the word is probably referring to Jesus as the pioneer of faith. In the "race" of the faith in God, Jesus is the One who made the race possible, and the first one to complete the race (which occurred on the cross). He is the forerunner who marked out the path of the race, and the champion who completed the race. This is what it means for Jesus to be the author and finisher of faith. And so this passage does not teach that our individual trust originates in God. Rather, this passage teaches that Jesus is the Original and Ultimate Example of One who placed His faith in God. Jesus is the Champion of the race we are to emulate.

Philippians 1:29 - "For it has been granted to you that for the sake of Christ you should not only believe in him but also suffer for his sake."
Because believing (or "faith" [pisteuein]) is said to be granted (or "graced" [echaristhe]), it is argued that this is an example of faith being a gift from God. I'd make two points about this passage:
(1) It seems that the "believing" referred to here does not refer to the initial conversion act of faith, but rather to continuing, enduring faith in the midst of suffering. It is not initial faith, but rather persevering faith. This is apparent from the historical context of the letter.
(2) The gift is not "believing" itself or "suffering" itself, but rather "believing in Christ," and "suffering for Christ." What makes the activity of believing/suffering gracious is not the activity itself, but rather the extreme worth of the object of that activity (i.e. Christ). And so you could translate the verse, "For to you has been granted the privilege on behalf of Christ not only to believe in him but also to suffer for his sake." This verse emphasizes Christ as the central object of worth--not belief or suffering.
So does this passage teach that faith is a gift? Not in the sense that faith originates in God. However, faith is a gift in the sense that we have a precious Savior in whom we are privileged to place our faith.

In conclusion, faith is not a gift in the sense that the act of trusting originates in God. Rather the act of trusting originates in us as a response to God. However, it is a deep honor and privilege to place our faith in so marvelous a Savior. Let's recognize the extreme worth of our Lord and be thankful for the privilege of being able to place our faith in Him.

Chuck Norris, True American Hero

2008-12-14T23:27:00.000-08:00

I just came across this a website with Chuck Norris facts. Quite impressive. Here's some of the more interesting ones:

1. When Chuck Norris does a pushup, he isn’t lifting himself up, he’s pushing the Earth down.

2. There is no theory of evolution. Just a list of creatures Chuck Norris has allowed to live.

3. There is no chin under Chuck Norris' beard. There is only another fist.

4. Chuck Norris has two speeds. Walk, and Kill.

5. When the Boogeyman goes to sleep every night, he checks his closet for Chuck Norris.

6. If you spell "Chuck Norris" in Scrabble, you win. Forever.

7. Chuck Norris does not sleep. He waits.

8. Chuck Norris once shot down a German fighter plane with his finger, by yelling, "Bang!"

9. Chuck Norris doesn't read books. He stares them down until he gets the information he wants.

10. Anytime someone is elected president in the United States, they must ask permission from Chuck Norris to live in the White House. The reason for this is because Chuck Norris has won every Federal, State, and Local election since 1777. He just allows others to run the country in his place.

11. Chuck Norris destroyed the periodic table, because Chuck Norris only recognizes the element of surprise.

12. In a fight between Batman and Darth Vader, the winner would be Chuck Norris.

13. Chuck Norris is suing Myspace for taking the name of what he calls everything around you.

14. The opening scene of the movie Saving Private Ryan is loosely based on games of dodgeball Chuck Norris played in second grade.

15. Remember the Soviet Union? They decided to quit after watching a DeltaForce marathon on Satellite TV.

16. Chuck Norris is currently suing NBC, claiming "Law and Order" are trademarked names for his left and right legs.

17. Every time someone uses the word "intense," Chuck Norris always replies, "You know what else is intense?" followed by a roundhouse kick to the face.

18. Chuck Norris is so fast, he can run around the world and punch himself in the back of the head.

19. There are no steroids in baseball. Only players Chuck Norris has breathed on.

20. In fine print on the last page of The Guiness Book of World Records, it notes that all world records are held by Chuck Norris, and those listed in the book are simply the closest anyone else has ever gotten.

21. Chuck Norris can divide by zero.

22. Chuck Norris once kicked a horse in the chin. It's descendants are known today as Giraffes.

23. Chuck Norris has the greatest poker face of all time. He won the 1983 World Series of Poker, despite holding only a joker, a Monopoly get-out-of-jail-free card, a two of clubs, a seven of spades, and a green #4 card from the game UNO.

24. Chuck Norris counted to infinity -- twice.

25. We live in an expanding universe. All of it is trying to get away from Chuck Norris.

For more, see this website: http://www.chucknorrisfacts.com

A Winning Fight

2008-11-26T09:00:00.000-08:00

"Christians are not perfect, just forgiven." I've seen this bumper sticker hundreds of times. If you see it, please rip it off. This is not the message we want to be sending. Christians are not just forgiven. We're forgiven and born to a radically new kind of life! We are much much more than "just forgiven."

What kind of fight is the Christian life? It is a winning fight. A victorious fight. A conquering fight.

God has given us His Spirit, and because His Spirit resides in us, we will see fruit in our lives. We will advance. We will make headway. We will progress. Fruit naturally grows on trees. It is the nature of an apple tree to produce apples. It is the nature of a believer in whom God's Spirit dwells to produce fruit. Love. Joy. Peace. Patience. Kindness. Goodness. Faithfulness. Gentleness. Self-Control. Fruit.

Why is it important to remember this? Because one of the greatest obstacles to growth is unbelief in the possibility of growth. We ought to see ourselves as people who will make genuine progress in our lives, so that in five years the sin that I used to battle with everyday is no longer a significant temptation. The addiction I felt is no longer enslaving me. The sinful attitudes I struggled with have been replaced with good fruit. The fight is a winning fight.

So Christians are not sinners who happen to be forgiven. Christians are forgiven, redeemed, Spirit-indwelt, new creation saints who happen to struggle with sin. Let me say that again! We are not sinners who happen to be forgiven. We are saints who happen to sin. Our primary identity--the core of who we are--has been radically changed. We are new creations (2 Cor 5:17)! This perspective on our identity and on the Christian life in general is a main staple of Pauline theology. The Christian life is a fight, to be sure (see my previous post), but it is a winning fight.

The Christian Life: Flawless or Fight?

2008-11-25T22:11:00.000-08:00

The Christian life is not primarily a life of flawlessness--but a fight! A fight not of flesh and blood--but of faith. As Paul says, "Not that I have already obtained this or am already perfect, but I press on to make it my own, because Christ Jesus has made me his own" (Phil 3:12; see also 2 Cor 10:3-6; Eph 6:12; 1 Tim 6:12; 2 Tim 2:3-4, 4:7). The Christian life is a pressing on.

While I don't always agree with John Piper on doctrinal issues, he is a model of what a pastor ought to look like, and I would do well to imitate him. Below are a couple of powerful quotations from him.

"The mark of a true Christian, and the mark of a church member in good standing, is not perfection, but the persistent fight of faith that recognizes sin as sin, confesses it, and turns from it in new resolves of holiness again and again." From this sermon.

"And this faith will fight anything that get's between it and Christ. The distinguishing mark of saving faith is not perfection. The mark of faith is not that I never sin sexually. The mark of faith is that I fight. I fight anything that dims my sight of Jesus as my glorious Savior. I fight anything that diminishes the fullness of the lordship of Jesus in my life. I fight anything that threatens to replace Jesus as the supreme Treasure of my life. Anything that stands between me and receiving Jesus faith fights—not with fists or knives or guns or bombs, but with the truth of Christ." From this sermon.

Follow up on "Rabbi Jesus" in Velvet Elvis

2008-10-05T23:02:00.000-07:00

The following is a follow-up on my previous post reviewing "Velvet Elvis" by Rob Bell. If you haven't read the previous post, I suggest you read this first.

In regards to Jesus' status as a rabbi, I should have been a bit more precise... Jesus is called "Rabbi" at several points in the gospels (see Mark 9:5; 1:21; 14:45; 10:51; John 20:16). There are numerous times also when Jesus is called the Greek equivalents of the Hebrew word "Rabbi" (epistata "master" and didaskalos "teacher"). However, the word "Rabbi" did not refer to a formally trained, ordained rabbi in the sense that Rob Bell indicates. It did not begin to take on this meaning until 70 AD. The New Testament scholar, Craig Evans states, "...prior to 70 CE the designation 'Rabbi' is informal, even vague, and lacks the later connotations of formal training and ordination, which obtain sometime after the destruction of Jerusalem and the Temple..." (Craig Evans, "Jewish Scripture and the Literacy of Jesus," From Biblical Criticism to Biblical Faith, p. 42). Notice that in John 20:16, the word "Rabboni" is even defined for the reader--confirming that it was not a formally defined status: "She turned and said to him in Aramaic, 'Rabboni!' (which means Teacher)."

In 66 AD the Jews rebelled against the Romans, and eventually in 70 AD Jerusalem was besieged. This ended in 70 AD when the Romans captured Jerusalem, and obliterated the Temple. Judaism following the destruction of their temple and their capital took on a much different flavor than Judaism prior to AD 70. Prior to 70 AD Jewish worship centered around the Temple and the sacrifices performed there. Jerusalem was the center of Judaism. Post AD 70, Jews were scattered around the world and faced the need to redesign religious activities without the Temple. The Essenes, Sadducee's, and Zealots largely disappear from the scene and the Pharisaic movement leads the way forward in Judaism. During the siege, a teacher named Johanan ben Zakkai was smuggled out of the city in a coffin and secured permission from the Roman authorities to reestablish his academy at Jamnia. Johanan was of the school of Hillel and favored submission to Rome. This academy became the dominant rabbinic school following the destruction of Jerusalem because it was officially authorized by Rome to represent the Jewish people.

The academy at Jamnia marks the beginning of the change from a temple-oriented Judaism comprising a variety of sects to a more united Judaism centered around the local synagogues. It was at this point that "rabbinic Judaism" came into being where "Rabbi" was defined as an ordained appointment to an office that gave one judicial authority in interpreting the Jewish law. Interestingly, the council of Jamnia also recognized the Old Testament canon for the first time. Other things also changed in Judaism during this period. Everett Ferguson describes this period: "...the rabbis produced significant changes in Judaism: making the study of Torah a central act of piety incumbent on all male Jews, and developing prayer into a communal act of service to God. In the process, the rabbis elevated a new type of holy man -- the scholar replaced the priest as the religious leader. Although the result in the circumstances of the post-70 period was something new, the rabbis were drawing on elements in earlier Jewish tradition in fashioning 'rabbinic Judaism'" (Everett Ferguson, Backgrounds of Early Christianity, p. 573). It was during this period that the Mishnah was written, which can be dated at about AD 200, and then around AD 500 the Gemara was written, which together form the Talmud. The mistake Bell makes is reading the Talmud and especially the Mishnah back into Jesus' times. But as Jimmy Dunn says, "...the portrayals of rabbinic Judaism in Mishnah and Talmud may not simply be projected backwards into the first century" (James Dunn, Jesus Remembered, p. 90).

As you can see, the history is complex and I couldn't find an easily accessible source of info other than maybe wikipedia... You can check out a general book on NT backgrounds like the book I cited by Everret Ferguson, or maybe the one by James Jeffers called The Greco-Roman World in the New Testament Era. N.T. Wright's book, NT and the People of God is also helpful on this.... There are full-scale technical treatments of this issue by Lee Levine, and Jacob Neusner, and others... but they're big expensive books that are extremely technical. But this is the consensus view... there might be a couple of wacky scholars out there who disagree, but on a whole scholarship accepts the view I gave above.

Review of "Velvet Elvis" by Rob Bell

2008-10-05T23:00:00.000-07:00

To begin with, I should say that Bell's writing style is very flowery. He uses a lot of pictures, metaphors, questions, and one-liners, so it's sometimes difficult to pin down exactly what he's saying. This is intentional, I'm sure, because Bell wants to communicate post-modern's; he's not attempting to write a theologically precise book.

I'll begin with what I liked about the book:

Bell does a good job of emphasizing that the church ought to function as a community. I think that in a lot of ways our individualistic culture has lost this aspect of the church. We ought to see our church as our family in a very real sense, and we ought to do life together in community. Bell emphasizes this, which is good. Along the same lines, he challenges our contemporary model of church where one person uses their gift of teaching and everyone else listens. If people go to a church meeting and just listen to a sermon and then go home, and this is the extent of their involvement, then I doubt biblically if this could count as being a member of that local body.

I thought Bell's emphasis on the presence of the Kingdom of God on earth is a needed corrective in our culture that tends to see God's kingdom as wholly in the future and somewhere else (in heaven). He does a good job of correcting eschatelogical naivetés by emphasizing that heaven will come to earth in the end. Also, I liked that Bell encouraged people to take a personal sabbath rest. This is much needed in our culture where busyness is seen as a virtue.

One area I particularly thought was good was Bell's treatment of sanctification (he didn't call it this). Bell states that we are not primarily identified as sinners, but as new creatures. He stresses that rather than focusing on sin management, we ought to focus on who we are in Christ, and then we will naturally begin to live as Jesus lived. This, I think, is a very powerful message and a much needed corrective. Along the same lines, he states that transformation in actions occurs when there is a genuine belief/trust in true reality--the reality that is described in the Bible. He ties this in with the idea that 'all truth is God's truth,' and the implications he draws from this for missions, evangelism, and other areas are good and useful.

Now I'll address the negative things about the book, which I'm sad to say, I think outweigh the positive things. I'll organize my thoughts under two headings: Philosophical issues, and exegetical issues.

A. Philosophical-Theological Issues
Bell begins by assuming that God cannot be described in human terms, so all our theology/doctrine are human constructs. This is a very dangerous false idea. It is true that we cannot capture all of who God is with language, but we can speak truly about God. In fact, you can't capture all of any person with language because persons are not static objects. In heaven, I will grow in my relationship with God more and more each day forever--even if I come to understand every Bible passage and theological doctrine with complete understanding--because God is a person. I will also continue to grow in knowing my wife, and every other Christian for all eternity. You can never fully know a person. However, just because I don't fully know my wife, doesn't mean that I don't know a whole lot about her. In the same way, although we may not be able to fully describe every aspect of who God is with language, we can describe Him truly. Dan was absolutely right without even reading the book. Bell is "conflating God's incomprehensibility with His ineffability." Bell also seems to draw a false dichotomy between knowledge and wonder. According to Bell, if you really knew God, then this leaves no room for wonder and awe about God. I would argue that the opposite is true. If you don't know God, then you will be without wonder and awe, and as you come to know Him and see Him as He truly is, you will grow in your wonder and awe of Him. God chose to inspire a book to teach us about Himself, and the words in that book give us true and accurate knowledge about God.

A second philosophical problem with the book is that Bell is relativistic. He seems to assume that all 'paintings' of Christianity are equally valid. According to Bell, the pre-reformation Catholic 'painting' is just different than the Reformer's 'painting.' But these two 'paintings' cannot be equally valid because they are diametrically opposed at important points. Furthermore, this idea is self-refuting because the idea that all 'paintings' of the Christian faith are equally valid, is itself a painting of the Christian faith. Is the 'painting' that says, "there is only one valid way to be a Christian" itself a valid 'painting' of the Christian faith? It seems to me that Bell has been unduly influenced by our culture's views about pluralism and tolerance. He seems to buy that in order to be tolerant, you have to accept other people's ideas as true. The real definition of tolerance is to allow someone to hold a different viewpoint even though you fundamentally disagree with them. Bell's relativism extends to two important areas: doctrine, and Scripture.

Doctrine
With reference to doctrine, Bell argues that we ought to see doctrine as the springs on a trampoline, that we jump on as we live in Christ. The springs are not the main point; they merely facilitate the main goal of "finding our lives in God." Now there is some truth to this analogy, but it is also very dangerous. If we don't like a doctrine or two, we can just take them off the trampoline and keep jumping. Here's Bell's take on the Trinity: "It is a spring, and people jumped for thousands of years without it. It was added later. We can take it out and examine it. Discuss it, probe it, question it. It flexes, and it stretches" (22). And then again, here's Bell's take on the virgin birth: "What if that spring was seriously questioned? Could a person keep jumping? Could a person still love God? Could you still be a Christian?" (26). Bell's unspoken conclusion seems to be that we could still be Christians without these fundamental doctrines; we could still keep jumping. But clearly we would consider someone who had rejected the Trinity and the Virgin Birth as being a non-Christian. You simply cannot throw out the core doctrines of the Christian faith and still call yourself a Christian. The idea of progressive revelation is that although a doctrine might be revealed over time, once that doctrine is revealed it is our obligation to believe it. People once did not believe in Jesus, but that's because Jesus had not been revealed. Now that he's been revealed, it is our obligation as Christians to believe in Him. The same goes for the Trinity and the virgin birth. If Bell wants to open up dialog to seriously discuss these doctrines, then that's great. But when he implies that we can do without them, that is unacceptable.

Scripture
Bell's relativism also extends to the interpretation of Scripture. Bell argues that the Bible has to be interpreted, a point with which very few people would disagree. But Bell goes further than this. He wants his readers to understand that they are entitled to interpret the Bible as much as anyone else (50). Furthermore, no one's interpretation is any better than anyone else's; they are all equally valid. He states, "When you hear people say they are just going to tell you what the Bible means, it is not true. They are telling you what they think it means. They are giving their own opinions about the Bible" (54). Earlier he writes, "Everyone's interpretation is essentially his or her own opinion. No one is objective" (53). Bell applies this principle asking why we worship on Sunday rather than Saturday? "At one point in church history, a group of Christians decided that the Sabbath is not Saturday, but Sunday" (56). He goes on to ask why we do not sell all our possessions for the poor, or make women wear head coverings, or why do we say a wife's role is to submit to her husband? Bell answers, "This is because someone somewhere made a decision about those texts...Somebody in your history decided certain Bible verses still apply and others don't" (55-56). The effect of all this is making people feel bewildered at ever really understanding what the Bible says. It's true that every Christian can interpret the Bible for themselves (this is what we call the priesthood of believers), but the point is to get as close as possible to the author's original intended meaning, and some interpretations are flat out wrong, and some are better than others. Furthermore, although it's true that no one comes to the Bible without any pre-understandings, this does not mean that we cannot arrive at valid interpretations of a text. By being aware of our own biases and tendencies, and examining the context and flow of a passage, we can come to an accurate interpretation of a text.

B. Exegetical Issues
In addition to the philosophical problems in the book, there are numerous exegetical problems.

1. Jesus is not a rabbi as Bell indicates. Bell seems to read the Talmud and Mishnah back into Jesus' times, when in fact these books describe Judaism after the two Jewish wars when Judaism was whittled down to Pharisaism and was much more focused on the Torah. You'll notice in the Bible that Jesus never has encounters with Rabbi's... Pharisee's, Sadducee's, Scribe's, and priests, but no rabbi's. The reason for this is that there were no rabbi's hanging out around synagogues in Jesus' day. In fact there is no archaeological evidence that there were any schools anywhere in Galilee. There were some schools in Jerusalem, but this was far from Galilee. There simply were no ordained rabbi's in Jesus day like the one's that Bell describes. These ordained rabbis did not become prevalent until much later. This mistake of using a later rabbinic grid to interpret Jesus leads to a number of errors. One of the most prevalent errors is Bell's usage of Jesus' binding and loosing (Mt 16:19; 18:18). When Jesus speaks of 'binding' and 'loosing,' he's not talking about forbidding and allowing certain interpretations of the Old Testament texts. To 'bind' means to make a ruling that is binding, not to forbid something. To 'loose' means to free someone from the obligation or debt that was once bound upon them. Binding and loosing are mentioned only two times in the New Testament (Matt 16:19; Matt 18:18; see also John 20:23). In Matthew 16, Peter has just made a confession that Jesus is the Christ, and in response Jesus gave him the keys of the kingdom and told him, "whatever you bind on earth shall be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven." The point here is that Peter (and all disciples of Jesus) have the authority to admit and exclude people to the Kingdom of God. They do this by the proclamation of the gospel (this is why this follows Peter's confession of Jesus' identity). Similarly, in Matthew 18, the context deals with church discipline, and the point is that the church has the authority to admit/exclude people from God's Kingdom by declaring the terms under which sins are forgiven or retained. So contrary to what Bell contends, the Jerusalem council in Acts is not an example of 'binding' and 'loosing.'

2. Bell's Greek/Hebrew and history need some work. First, he seems to treat the biblical languages like they are a magic key that makes the text mean something different than it says in English. Whenever a teacher does this, you can assume (1) they're interpretation is probably wrong, and (2) they probably don't know Greek or Hebrew very well. In Bell's case, both are true. There's numerous examples, but one example is Bell's reference to the word 'virgin' in Matthew (26). He states that the word Matthew uses for virgin actually comes from Isaiah, and that the Hebrew word for virgin means several things. He says this to suggest that the virgin birth may not be a doctrine found in the Bible. In reality, the Hebrew word used in Isaiah 7:14 is almah, which means 'young woman.' In an honor/shame culture, this word surely included virginity, but would not focus exclusively on that trait. However, Matthew is not quoting the Hebrew, but the Greek translation of the Hebrew Old Testament (the Septuagint), where the word parthenos is used. Parthenos is equivalent to our English word virgin. Further, Bell suggests that the reason that Matthew includes a reference to a virgin birth is that it appealed to the members of the cults of Mithras and Dionysius. The Mithras cult did not exist until well after the writing of Matthew, and the cults of Mithras, Attis, and Dionysius did not focus on real historical persons. The worshipers knew that the gods they worshiped were not historical individuals. They therefore did not talk about actual virgin births. Finally it is simply not true that Julius Caesar or the other Emperors were said to be born of virgin births. Bell is right about the word euangelion (good news) being used by the Emperor cult, and that it was adopted by Christians to make their own claims about Jesus. As N.T. Wright says, "Jesus is the reality of which Caesar was only the parody." In short, it seems that Bell knows just enough Greek, Hebrew, and history to sound knowledgeable and therefore be dangerous.

3. There are numerous other questionable exegetical issues, but it would take too long to examine each of them. Some of the more flagrant one's are as follows:
- When Peter was walking on water, Peter lost faith in himself so it follows that I need to understand that Jesus believes in me, rather than focusing on believing in Jesus.
- The Bible states that all things are reconciled to God. So all people are forgiven--even those in hell.
- Hell is full of forgiven people who simply have chosen to live in their own version of their story, rather than in God's version of it (146).

In conclusion, Bell seems to write from a very relativistic perspective. The book has serious philosophical and exegetical problems. Looking over Bell's sources, it seems that he reads a lot of authors who hold esoteric and minority positions. Finally, Bell seems to lack a focus on the glory of God. In my opinion, Rob Bell should refrain from writing more books until he learns to control his creativity, and learns to answer more questions than he asks. I'm concerned that readers of Bell's book will finish it with a greater sense of relativism, less confidence in their knowledge of the truth, and a cynicism towards contemporary Christianity.

"The Shack" by William P. Young: The Good, the Bad, and The Ugly

2008-09-22T20:22:00.000-07:00

The Shack, by William P. Young, is a book that has created a flurry of activity--both praising it's merits and denigrating it as heresy. After questions by numerous friends, I decided to read it and write a small review.

The Good

To begin with, the story is emotionally gripping. The Shack tells the story of Mac--a father whose daughter is abducted by a child molester, and murdered in a shack. Following this ordeal, Mac receives a note from God inviting him to meet God ("Papa," as He is affectionately referred to throughout the book) at the shack where his daughter was murdered. Mac decides to go to the shack, not fully knowing what to expect, and ends up meeting with God. In the pages that follow, Mac works through the loss of his daughter with God and ultimately learns to forgive his daughter's killer.

A second positive feature of the book is that it emphasizes relationship with God. The bulk of the book concentrates on a series of conversations Mac has with different persons of the Trinity. In these conversations, there is an emphasis on relationship with God as opposed to following a list of rules or religious expectations. In general, this is a good thing (but see my criticisms below for more on this point).

Finally, the book does a good job attempting to answer the emotional problem of evil. In his conversations with God, the deep grief that Mac is experiencing is met with the simple truths of the Bible. Mac therefore learns to accept the simple truths of Christianity in the midst of his suffering. These truths include simple realities such as:

God loves you,
you can trust God,
God has a purpose you cannot see,
and God is with you when you don't sense Him.

Most of the theological truths in the book are not anything especially deep or new, but rather standard truths of orthodox Christianity. One thing that I appreciated about the book is that it does not attempt to answer the "Why?" question with a specific answer. Instead, the book offers general truths regarding God's nature and care, and Mac learns to stand in the reality of these truths. This is how the emotional problem of evil (in distinction to the intellectual problem of evil) ought to be dealt with.

The Bad

While there are good things about The Shack, there is also a number of negative things present in the book. To begin with, relationship with God is emphasized to the neglect of other truths about God such as His majesty, holiness, wrath, and justice. When Mac goes to the shack, the three persons of the Trinity appear to Mac: the Father in the form of an African-American woman, the Holy Spirit in the form of an Asian woman, and Jesus in the form of a Middle-Eastern Jewish man. God the Father is known throughout the book as "Papa," and it seems that Papa is always in the kitchen baking some delicious food for Mac and is always available to have conversations around the kitchen table or on the front porch. This portrayal of God emphasizes God as being our friend, but greatly neglects God as King and Lord of the universe. In our culture where the gravity of God's holiness is rarely felt, this does not help produce respect for the Almighty God. Part of the way that this low view of God is conveyed is by how Mack approaches God's presence. He does so without any sense of unworthiness and without a reverent fear of God. Because this is more of an attitude than a propositional truth in the book, it is easily transferred to readers without their conscious knowledge. This makes it especially dangerous.

Much has been made of God's depiction as a female. It should be said that the book explicitly points out that God does not have a gender, and that both genders are derived from the nature of God, and that God can reveal himself in many ways. The book explains that the reason God chose to reveal himself as masculine in the Bible is that God knew that sin would result in a lack of good fathers. This reasoning is a conjecture without any biblical support that probably is more telling about American culture and the author's personal experience than it is about God's purposes in the Bible. While it is beyond the scope of this critique to argue for this point, I believe that God's depiction of Himself in the masculine throughout Scripture goes to the very nature of masculinity and the nature God Himself. It is therefore problematic to portray God as the opposite of how He has repeatedly chosen to reveal Himself. Instead, we ought to respect God's self-revelation in the Bible.

There are things mentioned in the book that run completely contrary to orthodoxy. Probably the most flagrant of these is religious pluralism that borders on universalism. In the book, the idea is expressed that people of all religions are believers in Jesus (perhaps by other names). Additionally, non-Christians are referred to as God's children throughout the book. At one point, it is expressed that sin is it's own punisher, and God does not need to actively punish sin. This is in line with the general theme that God is our friend, as opposed to our King. The book's depiction of God makes it almost unthinkable that God would exhibit wrath towards sinners. These types of errors are found subtly throughout the book.

Finally, there is a general attitude that pervades the book that portrays the institution of the church as dry, empty and without substance. Orthodoxy is seen as missing the "deep truths" about God's love, friendship, relationship, and grace and is instead seen to be focused on rules, expectations, and law. And likewise seminary is seen as being a place of cold useless knowledge. This general attitude pervades much of the current emergent literature, and is the result of a post-modern tendency to see authority with disdain. In reality, the main theological insights that the book offers are simply restatements of orthodox Chrisitianity, although they are portrayed as "deep truths" only accessible through this special encounter with God at the shack. At one point, Sunday School and even the Bible itself are portrayed with this negative attitude! It is simply unacceptable that the book portrays the Bible with disdain instead of the prominent position that the Bible demands as God's unique form of revelation to us. Because this is an attitude that pervades the book, it is especially easy to see how readers could unintentionally adopt the same general attitude, which is dangerous.

One thing that makes The Shack dangerous is that the misinformation above is presented as the thoughts of a man coping with the tragic loss of his daughter. It therefore makes one prone not to question these issues, but instead let them slide by with the grace that we normally would give to someone grieving a tremendous loss. However, because this is a fictional book depicting God Himself, we ought to be careful that we do not inadvertently gain false views about God by accepting these thoughts of a grieving fictional character. It would be easy to allow the emotional impact of the book bypass our discernment so that we don't consider which statements about God are true and false.

The Ugly

One of the most popular critiques of The Shack is a sermon by Seattle pastor, Mark Driscoll. After listening to Driscoll's take on The Shack, I'd have to say I think he blows some of the statements in the book out of proportion. (His view on The Shack can be found here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pK65Jfny70Y ). He has four charges against The Shack:

1. The depiction of the Father and the Holy Spirit as humans violates the command to not make a graven image unto yourself.

In context, this 2nd commandment is dealing with the way in which God is worshiped. We are commanded not to make an image for the purpose of worship or veneration. The full verse states,
"You shall not make for yourself a carved image, or any likeness of anything that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth. You shall not bow down to them or serve them, for I the Lord your God am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers on the children to the third and the fourth generation of those who hate me, but showing steadfast love to thousands of those who love me and keep my commandments." Exodus 20:4-6
God commanded images to be made of serpents and cherubim, so this must be specifically forbidding the creation of images for the purpose of worship--not the creation of images in general. It is a stretch to say that this precludes us from using any metaphor or symbol to understand God--otherwise it would be wrong to represent Jesus as a lion in the Chronicles of Narnia, not to mention the numerous biblical metaphors used for God (i.e. fortress, rock, shepherd, father, etc.). Additionally, God has chosen to reveal Himself in numerous forms: a burning bush, a pillar of fire, a cloud, etc. However, I will say that the particular metaphors/forms that Young uses do not promote a high view of God, and in some ways run contrary to the biblical view of God. To the extent that they create a false conception of God in our minds and therefore our worship, they are sinful.

2. The depiction of the Father as an African-American female and the Holy Spirit as an an Asian female is goddess worship.

Simply because the author describes God as revealing Himself as a female does not mean that the book advocates goddess worship anymore than metaphors in the Bible about God being like an eagle, lion, or lamb means that we are engaged in animal worship. Later in the book God the Father reveals himself as a Gandolf-looking grandfather figure. I suspect that this is a resistance to the particular metaphor of a woman representing God. I am sympathetic to this as my above criticisms indicate, but I think that saying this is goddess worship is going a bit far. Indeed, within the pages of Scripture the metaphor of a mother is used of Paul and even God (1 Thes 2:7; Psalm 131).

3. The book advocates modalism.

This is Driscoll's weakest point, and this point makes me question whether he even read the book. Modalism is the heretical view that God is one Person who reveals Himself in 3 different forms or modes of being. This is contrary to the biblical doctrine of the Trinity in which there is one God who eternally exists as 3 Persons. Driscoll cites a passage in which Papa states, "I am truly human in Jesus," claiming that this is modalism. In this passage the author is emphasizing the same point that Jesus makes in John 14 saying, "Whoever has seen the me has seen the Father." In other words, Jesus is an exact example of the character of God--Jesus is God in the flesh. This is not modalism. At worst, this is just imprecise theological wording--which might be excusable given the genre of the book. The book is a fictional story, and therefore we should not apply the same rules of interpretation to it as we would apply to a systematic theology. If the book does lean towards a trinitarian heresy, it would not be modalism, but instead tri-theism (there are 3 gods) because we see constant interactions between the Persons of the Trinity, without seeing how these Persons are unified as One Being.

4. The book indicates that there is no hierarchy in the Trinity, but instead only a circle of relationship because heirarchy only makes sense among sinners.

I think this is Driscoll's best point. The book indeed indicates that there is no heirarchy in the Trinity, but instead emphasizes God's unity. In one sense, the book is correct. The book emphasizes that when making decisions, the Godhead is unified in their decisions and there is no conflict in which one Person of the Trinity overrules another Person of the Trinity using their power/authority. Rather there is a relationship of complete trust/unity between the Persons of the Trinity. So when Jesus prays in Gethsemene saying, "Take this cup from me, yet not what I will but what you will," He is in an attitude of absolute trust towards His Father. Having said that, the book does error in advancing the view that there is absolutely no heirarchy in the Trinity. This is a result of the common post-modern assumption that all heirarchy results from power plays and manipulation of others. In contrast biblical heirarchy involves a mutual understanding of roles and humble submission and trust. Just as there are roles within the husband/wife relationship, although husbands and wives are equal in their being and worth, so within the Trinity there are roles which create a heirarchy, but there is no heirarchy when it comes to the being or worth of the members of the Trinity.

Conclusion

While some of the criticisms of The Shack are unwarranted and overblown, there are reasons to be cautious of this popular book. After reading it, I would not recommend it to a friend. The errors in it are subtle and therefore dangerous. Additionally there are a number of excellent (better written!) books available on dealing with loss and grief, and each of these would address the same issues as The Shack without the negative baggage. In contrast to The Shack, I would not hesitate in recommending the following books on loss and grief (in this order):

Job
Baffled to Fight Better by Oswald Chambers
A Grief Observed by C.S. Lewis
A Severe Mercy by Sheldon Van Hauken
A Grace Disguised by Gerald Sittser
The New Freedom of Forgiveness by David Augsburger

In any case, the author of The Shack has made it clear that they intend on producing a film based on the book, and therefore Christians ought to be informed on the good and bad found in this story so that they can serve as a guide to others. It's very easy to unconsciously adopt the attitudes in this book, and therefore Christians must exercise extreme discernment in confronting subversive attitudes and statements found within it. Below are a couple of other reviews for people interested in further reading.

http://www.boundless.org/2005/articles/a0001788.cfm
http://www.challies.com/archives/book-reviews/the-shack-by-william-p-young.php

Philosophy of Christian Education

2008-09-22T16:50:00.000-07:00

I believe that the goal of Christian education is to equip students in mind and character to impact the world for the Lord Jesus Christ.

The universe is created to reflect God’s glory, and therefore ‘all truth is God’s truth.’ Consequently, all subjects from spelling to science ought to be taught from a distinctively Christian worldview whereby the source and meaning of life is rooted in God Himself. God has uniquely revealed Himself through His authoritative Word—the Bible. Therefore we ought to see the Bible as the most relevant book on earth, and must study it with absolute precision and care. The teachings of the Bible should permeate every subject taught. Christians have a responsibility to be able to give an articulate, reasoned defense of their beliefs (1 Pet. 3:15-16; Jude 3), and to play an active role in reaching people from every tongue, tribe, and nation for Christ (Mat. 28:19-20). A Christian education ought to equip and motivate students to lovingly fulfill these responsibilities.

The primary means of sanctification is the transformation of mind in accordance with the truth (Rom. 12:2; Eph. 4:22-24; Col. 3:10). Through Christian education students should increasingly see reality rightly, and thus be transformed. Recognizing that we almost never act contrary to what we truly believe, it is imperative that an open and honest educational environment is maintained where students are free to discover truth, rather than forced to regurgitate ideas they do not believe. In this way students will develop a holistic Christian worldview that impacts all areas of life rather than a compartmentalized faith impotent to effect genuine transformation. In sum, Christian education ought to result in the creation of intelligent, thoughtful, warm-hearted Christians who wear Christ attractively.

Philosophy of Ministry

2008-09-22T16:48:00.000-07:00

I believe that all members of the Body of Christ are called to be ministers to one another, and ministry is largely a synergistic team-activity whereby the Body of Christ builds itself up in love. The role of church leaders is to equip the saints for that ministry (Eph. 4:11-16). As such, we should be in the business of releasing ministry rather than holding onto ministry, which means that our job is to create and nurture an environment which frees and empowers all the body to function under the guidance and enabling ministry of the Holy Spirit. Therefore, an accurate assessment of our ministry is not how large our ministry is, but rather how confident and active people are in using their Spirit-given gifts. Recognizing that ministry rolls forward on the ball-bearings of relationships, it is important that leaders approach their connection with the body primarily in relational not professional terms--all the while being guided by the rails of God's Word.

I believe that the leadership of the church should be undertaken by a team of godly men under the authority of God’s inerrant Word, with Jesus Himself as the Chief and Head Pastor.

Core Values

2008-09-19T16:22:00.000-07:00

It's important to know what's important to you. Unless you identify what's important to you, it will be impossible to live strategically in accordance with your priorities. I have identified four core values in my life:

International Vision – God has commissioned believers to play an active role in reaching people from every tongue, tribe, and nation for Christ. This involves these people being personally attached to the Triune God and their growth towards maturity (Matt. 28:19-20). Therefore it is crucial that the body of Christ sees and reaches out to the world. This especially involves preaching the gospel where Christ has never been preached.

Biblical Literacy – God has given believers His Holy Word so that they might know and follow Him. It is a great privilege for believers to be able to study and understand His Word for themselves. Therefore the body of Christ must be equipped to accurately handle the Word of Truth so that they might be fit for every task to which God has called them (2 Tim. 2:15; 3:16-17). The church should see the Bible as the most relevant book on earth, and must study it with absolute precision and care.

Mobilized Community – God has gifted each member of the body of Christ uniquely, and the church grows to maturity as each part functions within the body to build itself up in love (Eph. 4:11-16). Therefore members of the body must learn to develop and use their gifts as they are empowered by the Spirit for the edification of the whole body. This is accomplished as leaders help people find their place so that they are rightly arranged to function with the rest of the body, and as they encourage people towards the proper exercise of their gifts.

Cogent Thinking – God has created the universe to reflect His glory, and as Christians, we have the ability to see reality rightly. As such, it is imperative that we emphasize the development of the Christian mind so that people think rightly about reality (Rom. 12:2) and are able to articulate what and why they believe with gentleness and respect (1 Pet 3:15). The church should be in the job of creating intelligent, thoughtful, warm-hearted Christians who wear Christ attractively.