Our Father in heaven,
hallowed be your name,
your kingdom come,
your will be done,
on earth as in heaven.
Give us today our daily bread.
Forgive us our sins
as we forgive those who sin against us.
Lead us not into temptation
but deliver us from evil.
For the kingdom, the power,
and the glory are yours
now and for ever.
Amen.
I don't know how I have been so blind before.
I remember Mike Cain happily from my Bristol days. I haven't finished it yet but I think this is a great little book. It's winsome and encourages further thought. It is not an introduction to Christianity but more a primer to encourage further exploration. It presents Christianity as full of life and not at all stale.
2. Christianity ExploredSomething else I have not yet finished but which I'm also loving. I started doing this with my church and a friend recently with sinfully small expectations. However it is excellent for at least 3 reasons:
I really have not done it justice. I am loving it! ... and loving seeing what God is doing through it!
3. Tim Keller's talks from The Reason for God website
| From the series "The Trouble with Christianity: Why it's so Hard to Believe It" | ||
| Exclusivity: How can there be just one true religion? | Download Audio | Study Guide |
| Suffering: If God is good, why is there so much evil in the world? | Download Audio | Study Guide |
| Absolutism: Don't we all have to find truth for ourselves? | Download Audio | Study Guide |
| Injustice: Hasn't Christianity been an instrument for oppression? | Download Audio | Study Guide |
| Hell: Isn't the God of Christianity an angry Judge? | Download Audio | Study Guide |
| Doubt: What should I do with my doubts? (by David Bisgrove) | Download Audio | Study Guide |
| Literalism: Isn't the Bible historically unreliable and regressive? | Download Audio | Study Guide |
Again I haven't finished them all, and I'm not sure that I agree with everything in the one on Hell, but he is an amazingly engaging and thoughtful speaker. I'm buying the book off the back of them.
Was there one?
I'm not convinced. Partly because sermons on Colossians I have heard always seem to take a long time explaining it because it is not at all clear from the text. And whenever they have finished explaining it I never feel that anything has been added to the exposition.
However false teachings clearly are in view. Paul's purpose for the letter seems to be found in Colossians 2:1-5:
For I want you to know how great a struggle I have for you and for those at Laodicea and for all who have not seen me face to face, that their hearts may be encouraged, being knit together in love, to reach all the riches of full assurance of understanding and the knowledge of God's mystery, which is Christ, in whom are hidden all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge. I say this in order that no one may delude you with plausible arguments. For though I am absent in body, yet I am with you in spirit, rejoicing to see your good order and the firmness of your faith in Christ.
Focussing on this particular passage we learn that:
A bit of a rambling post but hopefully you get my drift.
Plea to preachers: don't get sidetracked from the exultation of Christ which is so clear in this wonderful letter.
When people first hear about the depth of human sin, the bondage of the will, and the unconditional grace of God in Christ [...] they almost always ask one of two questions: question 6 or question 9 (from Rom 6 and 9). The concordists address question 6 in article 4: Is grace just license to do whatever we please? Or, in the words of Romans 6:1, "Should we continue in sin in order that grace may abound?" (Just don't tell the kids!) Question 9 is posed in Romans 9:3, What about "my kindred according to the flesh"?
(p.183, Wengert, Timothy J., A Formula for Parish Practice: Using the Formula of Concord in Congregations).
I will here briefly recount these [5] articles of the Christian faith to which everyone is above all things to pay attention and hold fast.
The first is the law of God,which is to be preached so that one thereby reveals and teaches how to recognize sin (Rom 3[:20] and 7[:7]), as we have often shown in our writings. However, these prophets do not understand this correctly, for this means a truly spiritual preaching of the law, as Paul says in Rom 7[:14], and a right use of the law, as he says in I Tim 1[:8].
Secondly, when now sin is recognized and the law is so preached that the conscience is alarmed and humbled before God's wrath, we are then to preach the comforting word of the gospel and the forgiveness of sins, so that the conscience again may be comforted and established in the grace of God, etc.
Christ himself teaches these two articles in such an order (Luke 24[:47]). One must preach repentance and teh forgiveness of sins in his name. "And the Spirit (he says in John [16:8]) will convince the world of sin and of righteousness and of judgment." You do not find either of these two articles in this one or any other of the false prophets. They also do not understand them, and yet these are the most important and necessary articles.
(p.160, Martin Luther, Against the Heavenly Prophets in the Matter of Images and Sacraments (1925), in Selected Writings of Martin Luther ed. T.G. Tappert)
More sweeping generalisations which may not be true. Perhaps I should call them hypotheses for testing.
Please disprove my hypothesis.
Passages from Luther suggesting he thought the Baptism should be universal (indiscriminate) because the New Covenant included all:
If [inclusion in the kingdom, justification] was brought about with the Jews in the Old Testament through the medium of circumcision, why would God not do the same thing with the Gentiles through the medium of the new covenant (novo pacto) of baptism? The command pertains to all (praeceptum universale est): "Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptising them …" Hence whereas circumcision was commanded only to the descendants of Abraham, baptism is commanded to all the nations, with the promise of salvation if they believe.
(WA 42,622,19-25 = LW3,104 on Gen 17:3-6 cited in Baptism in the Theology of Martin Luther By Jonathan D. Trigg, p.105)
Our baptism, thus, is a strong and sure foundation, affirming that God has made a covenant with all the world to be a God of the heathen in all the world, as the gospel says. Also that Christ has commanded the gospel to be preached in all the world, as also the prophets have declared in many ways. As a sign of this covenant he has insituted baptism, commanded and enjoined upon all heathen, as Matt. declares: "Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptising them in the name of the Father," etc.
(Martin Luther, pp. 257-258, Concerning Rebaptism in Martin Luther's Basic Theological Writings)
I'm not sure that this is right but it is seeming from my reading that:
If this is a true summary then the different beliefs about baptism are simple to explain. However, I am 90% sure that my sweeping generalisation is wrong. But I'm trying to get things right in my head as I go.
Please, please, please correct me where I'm wrong.
This blog seems to have turned into my notebook. I don't know if this a good or a bad thing. It must make reading it intolerable though. My lack of readers may be due to this, but on the up side my lack of readers also ensures that it doesn't matter.
Assume that the first baptism is without faith. Tell me which is the greater and the more important in the second baptism, the Word of God or faith? Is it not true that the Word of God is greater and more important than faith, since faith builds and is founded on the Word of God rather than God's Word on faith? Furthermore faith may waver and change but God's Word remains forever. Then too, tell me, if one of these two should be otherwise, which should it rather be: the immutable Word or the changeable faith? Would it not more reasonably be the faith that should be subject to change rather than the Word of God? It is fairer to assume that the Word of God would change faith, if a right one were lacking, than that faith would change the Word of God.
(Concerning Rebaptism, pp. 257-258 of Basic Theological Writings)
I guess credobaptists realise this and so that is why they don't accept that baptism is primarily an arrow down.
Bruce McCormack has been weighing in on the debate about Peter Enns' book (see here and here if you missed it and are curious), and as a aside mentions something I have noticed but haven't had the theological knowledge to put a fancy Greek name to:
The last thing most of my friends want is a truly Protestant theology (whether Lutheran or Reformed); theosis is the hot topic in soteriology and both Lutheran and Reformed theologians are struggling mightily to find something akin to a theosis doctrine in their own church fathers (in Luther but also in Calvin - as Todd Billings’ recent book amply demonstrates). (source HT: Michael Bird)
Not only do I not have the knowledge to put a fancy name to it but I find it too mind-bending to try and analyse theosis in the light of the Bible. Similarly I can't really make up my mind about the whole Enn's saga (bizarrely, or perhaps not, I think Peter Leithart has managed the best critique of the book). But it is nice to be aware of what is hot in theology at the moment as it all trickles down and I often swallow stuff before realising later that its not as straight forward as I thought. I hate swallowing stuff unknowingly.
BTW I must remember to get round to reading Bruce McCormack properly. The tiny amount I have read has been very stimulating.
It is easy in some ways to see the structure of Genesis as the author kindly provides us with section headings (although slightly confusingly when X is in the title it is the children of X and not X himself in focus):
Lot's to think about in this structure but I've been thinking about Judah and Tamar again due to Peter Dray's prompting. Gordon Wenham comments on this episode that:
If scholars had taken more seriously the editor's title in 37:2, "This is the family history of Jacob," they might not have been so wont to write off this chapter as irrelevant. Chaps. 37-50 are not just the story of Joseph but the story of Jacob's family. Therefore, to have sections entirely devoted to other sons of Jacob should not be surprising.
However when you think about that there is a further problem which jumps out at you. Why are what are perhaps the most significant stories about some of Jacob's children (Simeon, Levi, Dinah and Reuben) in the wrong section? Why are they in Genesis 34 and Genesis 35:22 when naturally they belong in Chapters 37-50? The answer seems to come in what I think is the climax of Genesis: Jacob's blessing of his sons. Jacob starts with considering his eldest sons:
"Reuben, you are my firstborn, my might, and the firstfruits of my strength, preeminent in dignity and preeminent in power. Unstable as water, you shall not have preeminence, because you went up to your father's bed; then you defiled it—he went up to my couch! "Simeon and Levi are brothers; weapons of violence are their swords. Let my soul come not into their council; O my glory, be not joined to their company. For in their anger they killed men, and in their willfulness they hamstrung oxen. Cursed be their anger, for it is fierce, and their wrath, for it is cruel! I will divide them in Jacob and scatter them in Israel."
Not much of a blessing! In fact it is clear that Jacob is excluding his 3 eldest son's from the promise because of their behaviour in the other section of the book. Then, In a way that seems difficult to hold together Jacob blesses both Judah and Joseph in very strong terms which in one breath give prominence to Judah and in another to Joseph. It is clear how Joseph justifies these high blessings but the story of Judah and Tamar hardly seems to make Judah fit for "the ruler's staff". In a way this is of course typical of God, for he is a God of grace, but yet there may still be a reason for it. Wenham again:
There is a glaring contrast between Jacob's inconsolable grief over the "death" of Joseph, described at the end of chap.37, and the absence of any mourning by Judah when two of his sons died, as described in 38:7-10. Judah seems to be a hard and callous man. [...] In this story, he not only fails to mourn the death of his two sons but he summarily orders his daughter-in-law to be burned. Yet what a different Judah we meet in 44:18-34. Here he appeals for Benjamin's release with great warmth and tenderness [...] Clearly, Judah is a changed man, and this story shows the beginning of the transformation when he admits "She is in the right, not I" (38:26). [...] in its biographical sketches, character change is what Genesis is all about: Abram becomes Abraham; Jacob becomes Israel.
So Genesis 38 is a turning point in the life of Judah. Here he repents of sin which contrasts with Simeon and Levi in Genesis 34:30-31 who they are defiant in their own righteousness in the face of a stinging rebuke from their father. Wenham mentions Judah's new tenderness later in Genesis but there he also seems to take the role of the leader amongst the brothers in Joseph's absence. In Genesis 43:1-10 Judah speaks on behalf of his brothers in conversation with Jacob and pledges for Benjamin's safety. In Genesis 44 we also read of "Judah and his brothers" where Judah again acts as spokesman for his brothers when talking to Joseph.
So perhaps the key to Genesis 38 comes in its final verses:
Those are just some thoughts to keep me going anyway.
I have been re-reading Oscar Cullmann's brilliant Baptism in the New Testament again. He concludes his little, but influential, book like this:
In the New Testament it is certainly proved that Baptism is applied to adult Jews and heathen who come over to Christianity. Proof of infant Baptism is at best indirectly demonstrable from observable indications. On the other hand, infant Baptism is in every detail congruous with the doctrine of Baptism, in the following ways:
- in so far as Christ in his death and resurrection procures for all men and independent of them a general Baptism [i.e. judgment overcome with new life];
- in so far as God in the entirely sovereign act of grace of Church Baptism permits the person baptised, through an incorporation into the fellowship of the Body of Christ at a specific place, to take part in that once-for-all saving event;
- in so far as faith as response to this grace is decisive;
- in so far as Baptism in its nature is the completion of circumcision and of the proselyte baptism connected, with it.
From these final conclusions, both adult and infant Baptism are to be regarded as equally biblical. (p.70)
Wonderfully this book is now on the internet here (pdf). Go read it if you can.
Glen Scrivener comments that Mike Reeves says that "the sacraments are not our 'arrow up' to God and the world. They’re His 'arrow down'. His promise to us, not our promise to Him." I was reminded of that comment when reading Melanchthon today who writes in his Loci Communes (1543):
Profane people think that the sacraments are signs of profession which distinguish us from other people [...] or are symbols of certain functions regarding other people [...] But although many purposes have been ordained for the sacraments, yet far at the head of all of these must be placed this chief purpose, namely that they might be signs of God's will toward us, that is, added testimonies of the promise of grace [...] These rites are not human spectacles like the tragedies of the Greeks, which were set up so that some kind of commemoration of things done might be handed down to posterity; but they have far higher purposes. (p.139)
Thanks to Sovereign Grace Music for bringing this old hymn alive with a modern setting (you can download the mp3 free here). I didn't know the hymn before but the words are amazing.
In evil long I took delight,
Unawed by shame or fear;
Till a new object struck my sight,
And stopped my wild career.
I saw one hanging on a tree,
In agonies and blood;
Who fixed his languid eyes on me,
As near his cross I stood.
Sure, never till my latest breath,
Can I forget that look;
It seemed to charge me with his death,
Though not a word he spoke.
My conscience felt, and owned the guilt,
And plunged me in despair;
I saw my sins his blood had spilt,
And helped to nail him there.
Alas! I knew not what I did,
But now my tears are vain;
Where shall my trembling soul be hid?
For I the LORD have slain.
A second look he gave, which said,
"I freely all forgive;
This blood is for thy ransom paid,
I die, that thou may’st live."
Thus, while his death my sin displays,
In all its blackest hue;
(Such is the mystery of grace)
It seals my pardon too.
With pleasing grief and mournful joy,
My spirit now is filled;
That I should such a life destroy,
Yet live by him I killed.
One of the best things about blogs is you can save stuff for yourself at a later date.
