the 48 files

The Bible is all about ...

2012-01-28T11:45:00.008Z

David, Goliath and Jesus

Jesus is the greater David, who defeated the enemies of God, even though he was weak.

Jesus is the greater Goliath, who represented not just one nation opposed to God but the whole world and was brutally killed by the power of God.

David, Goliath and me

In Jesus, though weak, I am more than a conqueror over all that seeks to enslave and kill me.

In Jesus my old self is put to death never to rise again.

In Jesus, the true Israel, I find myself on the sidelines watching my hero kill my greatest fear.

PS our church youth group enjoyed this video the other day.

Questions about theologies of the cross

2012-01-26T07:05:00.003Z

If God's glory, sovereignty and power is Jesus' death, then:

Why did the Father bother raising Jesus from the dead? and
Is God fundamentally unhappy?

Would it be better to say that God's glory, sovereignty and power are found "in" and "through" Jesus' death?

Some things that have caught my eye

2012-01-19T21:38:00.005Z

In place of my normal blogging, here is some wonderful stuff to get your teeth into.

God who Writes Like Dostoevsky by Fred Sanders

Dostoevsky peoples his novels with “characters that speak in their own voices, not merely as mouthpieces for their author.” Zosima speaks his own point of view, which may be right or wrong; Ivan Karamazov argues the devil’s point of view so forcefully that the author seems helpless to silence him. If Dostoevsky were a director of a war movie, one gets the sense he would equip the actors with live ammunition. “What Dostoevsky projects into the world of his works is not a finished plot but unfinished voice ideas.” (p. 330) [incidentally, in my more heretical moments I have pondered whether God writes like Kierkegaard... ask me about it sometime]

"I hear the words of love2 by Horatius Bonar

I change, He changes not,
The Christ can never die;
His love, not mine, the resting-place,
His truth, not mine, the tie.

The Secularization of Justification: An Interview with Bishop C. Fitzsimmons-Allison

logizomai [imputation], is logos - in the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God. And it's the verb form of logos. And it's not merely that by his action Jesus Christ has made it possible for us to have mercy, but that it's because of what the Logos did - it was the verb, the action of the Logos. I am imputed as righteous even though I am not righteous, and by that wording of me as righteous, I begin to become that kind of righteousness that we see in the second person of the Trinity.

Global Abortion Rates by the Economist

Posts on Rowan Williams by Jason Daniels and Chris Green on Per Crucem ad Lucem

the Archbishop’s theological reflections sound quasi-masochistic. For example, he returns again and again in his work to the idea that the ‘inner readiness to come to judgment’ (OCT, p. 32) is the mark of the true disciple... I would argue, however, that it belongs to a complex of other readinesses that together constitute the form of faithfulness. In other words, openness to judgment is genuinely Christian only insofar as it is wedded to the humble audacity—to take up the S. Bulgakov’s idiom—also to receive blessings and to offer judgments in Christ’s name.

The Problem with Christus Victor by Mark Galli

Both [Penal Substitution and Christus Victor] actually include dimensions of personal guilt and victimhood, but as I listen to the discussion today, it seems that Christus Victor highlights our state as victims. Substitutionary atonement focuses on our guilt. In Christus Victor, we are liberated from hostile powers out there. In substitution, we are forgiven, and liberation is from ourselves and our addiction to our sin. Naturally, both models speak to truths of the human condition! And both have nuances worth exploring. But I'm concerned at the rising popularity of Christus Victor when it comes at the expense of substitution.

I've also been think a lot about Luke 7:47:

Therefore I tell you, her sins, which are many, are forgiven—for she loved much. But he who is forgiven little, loves little.

If I want to love God more the answer is not to dwell on his essence, but on his action. I say that not because his essence is not essentially important (intentional pun ;-)), but because the way to his essence is his action.

"to know Christ means to know his benefits, and not as they teach to reflect upon his natures" (p. 21f, Philip Melanchthon, Loci Communes 1521 in Melanchthon and Bucer)

Rowan Williams on Tim Keller

2011-12-30T17:58:00.004Z

Interesting to see what Rowan Williams has been reading:

The American Presbyterian writer Timothy Keller has recently published a book on Mark’s gospel, entitled King’s Cross. It is a vividly written and often very moving presentation of the great themes of the gospel (and incidentally offers a forceful defence of substitutionary language for the atonement that might give second thoughts to some who find this difficult); but perhaps its simplest and most dominant insight is that Christianity is not advice but news. The world has changed; humanity is not what it was. We are still working out, often in floundering and stumbling ways, what this means, but the one thing to beware of is reducing the news to exhortation, sound moral or even spiritual teaching, alone. We must always be beginning again with the news that God has shown himself to be a God who does not abandon – even when all the evidence has pointed to his absence, he recovers himself and us in the great act of vindication, homecoming and transfiguration that is the resurrection; a moment so alarmingly beyond all expectation that Mark can only present it with the silence, the fear and trembling, of his famous ending at 16.8. And I suppose that what I am pleading for in our discussion today is a revitalised sense of the news we have, the event we celebrate as having changed everything.

(General Synod Presidential Address, July 2011, HT Todd Brewer in his tasty selection of Christian books in 2011)

Interesting, but more importantly truths to celebrate.

An extended illustration

2011-12-24T10:10:00.003Z

Famine

Hitler invaded and occupied France and exploited it and its people. But most collaborated with their new master and many welcomed him. The French were both victims and perpetrators of sin.

The Devil invaded God's creation and exploited it its people. Everyone collaborated with their new masters and welcomed him. We are both victims and perpetrators of sin.

Firstfruits

The Allies landed at Normandy and at great cost liberated its people. Victory and freedom the rest of France was certain once that bridgehead was established.

Christ landed in a manger in Bethlehem and at the ultimate cost saw the first fruits of New Creation when his Father raised him from the dead by his Spirit. Victory and freedom for the rest of creation was certain once that bridgehead was established. But even as he was dying to establish that bridgehead he pronounced forgiveness to all collaborators with the Devil.

Full harvest

The collaborators with Nazis were full of fear. The French resistance grew in strength and those who had collaborated were persecuted by those now full of hope for freedom.

Christ's proclamation of forgiveness for those who collaborated with the Devil in crucifying him means that there is no fear from the completion of his victory. Past guilt is no reason to fear only love for the present order. Living out of the promise of the Resurrection we take up arms and join the resistance.

[with thanks to Oscar Cullmann and Steven Paulson]

Music

2011-12-24T09:57:00.002Z

I've just discovered this guy's youtube channel. He has been merrily uploading all my favourite Christian worship music: Gettys, Townend, Sojourn Music, Sovereign Grace, High Street Hymns, Red Mountain and others. I'm never quite sure about the morality of that, but here are a few samples of great stuff that I've (re)discovered through him (and Gill ;-)): First something Christmassy, then a bit of Good Friday. Approach my soul, the mercy seat Where Holy One and helpless meet There fall before my Judgesʼ feet Thy promise is my only plea, O God Send wings to lift the clutch of sin You who dwell between the cherubim From war without and fear within Relieve the grief from the shoulders of crumbling men O God – Pour out your mercy to me My God, Oh what striking love to bleed. Fashion my heart in your alchemy With the brass to front the devilʼs purgery And surefire grace my Jesus speaks I must. I will. I do believe. Oh Lord. Jamie Barnes/John Newton To See the King of Heaven Fall (Gethsemane) To see the King of heaven fall In anguish to His knees, The Light and Hope of all the world Now overwhelmed with grief. What nameless horrors must He see, To cry out in the garden: “Oh, take this cup away from me – Yet not my will but Yours, Yet not my will but Yours.”

To know each friend will fall away, And heaven’s voice be still, For hell to have its vengeful day Upon Golgotha’s hill. No words describe the Savior’s plight - To be by God forsaken Till wrath and love are satisfied And every sin is paid And every sin is paid

What took Him to this wretched place, What kept Him on this road? His love for Adam’s curséd race, For every broken soul. No sin too slight to overlook, No crime too great to carry, All mingled in this poisoned cup – And yet He drank it all, The Savior drank it all, The Savior drank it all. Stuart Townend & Keith Getty Copyright © 2009 Thankyou Music

Who is in your boat?

2011-12-21T22:50:00.004Z

Generally, I'm a little sceptical about stories that say "I've been in the same boat" because that's not sufficient.

If Christ is in the boat then it's just fine. But if it's just the two of us then it is likely it is going to go down.

(1 hr, 14min, Lecture 1, James Nestingen)

WE built a monster

2011-12-21T21:24:00.010Z

...or our heart is a factory of idols.

Two hot things to say in my circles these days are:

People trust in the idols of sex, money and power and they fail to deliver.
Too many 'Christians' preach an ugly, tyrannical god

I agree with both statements, but I'm afraid I have to admit that to a large degree I still trust and promote both the first and second set of idols.

We are not in the habit of disbelieving monster gods, we're in the habit of making them!

And that applies to non-Christians as well. My non-Christian friends and family do not disbelieve in the God of Jesus Christ because they perceive him to be a distant bully, whatever they may say. And the reason I don't believe them when they tell me that is because the gods they do believe in are just as monstrous as anything I have heard preached by someone who calls them Christian. Their gods are killing them and giving them nothing in return - but they love them anyway.

Only God by his Spirit and through his Word, which kills the old heart and creates a new one ex nihilo, will we see change in the God we love so that we love beauty.

Luther and his coming King

2011-12-21T19:26:00.004Z

"Behold, your king is coming to you"

Luther, from his sermon on Matthew 21:1-9 on the first Sunday in Advent, 1521:

This is what is meant by "Thy king cometh." You do not seek him, but he seeks you. You do not find him, he finds you. For the preachers come from him, not from you; their sermons come from him, not from you; your faith comes from him, not from you; everything that faith works in you comes from him, not from you; and where he does not come, you remain outside; and where there is no Gospel there is no God, but only sin and damnation, free will may do, suffer, work and live as it may and can. Therefore you should not ask, where to begin to be godly; there is no beginning, except where the king enters and is proclaimed.

Sixthly, he cometh "unto thee." Thee, thee, what does this mean? Is it not enough that he is your king? If he is yours how can he say, he comes to you? All this is stated by the prophet to present Christ in an endearing way and invite to faith. It is not enough that Christ saves us from the rule and tyranny of sin, death and hell, and becomes our king, but he offers himself to us for our possession, that whatever he is and has may be ours, as St. Paul writes, Rom. 8, 32: "He that spared not his own Son, but delivered him up for us all, how shall he not also with him freely give us all things?"...

Behold, this means that he comes to you, for your welfare, as your own; in that he is your king, you receive grace from him into your heart, so that he delivers you from sin and death, and thus becomes your king and you his subject. In coming to you he becomes your own, so that you partake of his treasures, as a bride, by the jewelry the bridegroom puts on her, becomes partner of his possessions. Oh, this is a joyful, comforting form of speech! Who would despair and be afraid of death and hell, if he believes in these words and wins Christ as his own?

Already and not-yet in John

2011-12-15T22:51:00.005Z

To the Samaritan woman:

"the hour is coming, and is now here, when the true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and truth, for the Father is seeking such people to worship him" (4:23)

To the Jews:

"an hour is coming, and is now here, when the dead will hear the voice of the Son of God, and those who hear will live" (4:23)

To the Disciples:

"the hour is coming, indeed it has come, when you will be scattered, each to his own home, and will leave me alone." (16:32)

So "the hour" in John seems to be Christ's death and resurrection and the breaking in of that Old Creation death and New Creation life into our present.

Abandoned

2011-12-15T22:30:00.005Z

"The wrath of God is being revealed from heaven against all the godlessness and wickedness of men" ([Rom] 1.18). When we ask how that wrath comes to expression, we have a threefold expression that God's wrath is God's abandonment. "Therefore God gave them over (paredoken) to the sinful desires of their hearts" (v.24), "God gave them over (paredoken) to shameful lusts" (v.26), "He gave them over (paredoken) to a depraved mind" (v.28). It is no coincidence that it is this key verb paradidomi (=to abandon, to give up), which is used again in Romans 8.32, He who did not spare his own Son, but gave him up (paredoken) for us all" etc... In order to do anything for those who because of sin have been given up to sin's destructive power, and lethal consequences (Romans 6.23a), the Son of God had to identify himself with them, by himself being treated as one who is abandoned and given up by God.

(p. 116, Thomas Smail, The Forgotten Father)

I never get tired of that. The punishment that belonged to us, fell on him!

While I'm here, a few thoughts on the idea often taught from Romans 1 that the wrath of God being God passively stepping back and giving us what we want:

To the person enslaved by his own sin, the experience of being able to 'freely' sin is very rarely that we get what we want - "what I want to do I do not do, but what I hate I do" (Rom 7:15)
If God's wrath/hell is simply giving someone over to what they want, then how did Jesus experience God's wrath?

Is prayer grasping the gift, or asking for the gift?

2011-12-15T20:50:00.005Z

One of my favourite blogs these days is Martin Yee, a Singaporean Lutheran. Here is something to put in your theological pipe from his recent digest of a Philip Cary article:

Augustine gives us the gist of the prayer for grace in a famous formulation that irked Pelagius: “Give what you command, and command what you will.” To bring the difference between Luther and Augustine into focus, we can contrast this prayer with a formulation in Luther’s treatise, The Freedom of a Christian (1520): “The promises of God give what the commandments of God demand”. This formulation both echoes Augustine’s prayer for grace and replaces it with something new. Instead of human words of prayer, it draws our attention to the divine word of promise, which Luther elsewhere calls by the name “Gospel.” The distinction he draws in this treatise between commandments and promises as the two types of the Word of God is clearly the same as the distinction he draws elsewhere between Law and Gospel. The crucial point about the Gospel promise is always that it gives what it promises to those who believe it. So for Luther faith does not mean praying for grace and righteousness, but obtaining them by taking hold of Christ in the Gospel.

A depressing bit of RE teaching

2011-12-12T20:49:00.005Z

Amongst a load of classroom posters explaining various attributes of God/gods.

Just goes to show that even when you say something like 'God is love' you cannot assume people know what you mean...

"By this we know love, that he laid down his life for us" (1 John 3:16)

I'm not dead

2011-11-30T21:58:00.004Z

My life has just changed quite a lot over recent months and weeks.

I miss blogging but life is good and God is good to me.

Read Glen's blogs instead.

PS Mike Horton's Systematic Theology is worth a read.

the difference

2011-11-06T23:25:00.000Z

The biggest difference made by responses to the Word is the difference they make to us, for us, and in us. They decide not whether the Word will achieve his purposes but whether we will enjoy his achievement - or find ourselves in opposition to it.
(p. 73, kingdom, grace, judgment: paradox, outrage, and vindication in the parables of Jesus)

The day of the Lord

2011-10-30T21:45:00.004Z

The day of the Lord will come like a thief in the night (1 Thes 5:2).

People sleep during the night or stay up getting drunk. Either way they are not alert (v.7).

Christians live in the daytime (v.4), even though for the world it is still dark. They are experiencing the already even though it is not-yet. Therefore, they should be alert for Christ's appearing and doing the things of the day. That doesn't mean having your head in the clouds and being idle, but working (v.12-14)

Tomorrow's Monday, so unglamorous as it sounds, I'll be at the office as a child of the day. Today was the Lord's day, but so is Monday.

Disarmed

2011-10-30T21:11:00.005Z

Halloween approaches when people make a mockery of the devil, demons and all sorts of evil. Personally, I tend to think it would be a good thing for Christians to participate in, but not non-Christians (much like the Lord's Supper).

For Christians the devil and demons are no kind of threat because they have been 'disarmed' (Col 2:15). The devil's only power is because he is Satan (trans. "the accuser"), and his only weapon is the law with which stands against us. But the debt to the law has been nailed to the cross and cannot be taken down and used again on those in Christ (2:14). So death and the devil have lost their sting because Christ takes the victory that would otherwise be theirs.

So when the devil, or those who join in his game of judging us or accusing us (even our own consciences) need never be taken seriously (Col 2:16). We are free from all judgment of sin and measurement of performance. That message is why Halloween and Reformation Day actually belong together.

[Not quite the same, but do check out Peter Dray and Jim Jordan's thoughts on Halloween, or Justin Holcomb].

Why does God allow suffering?

2011-10-26T07:09:00.003+01:00

The job of the Christian apologist is to make that question harder to answer, not easier.

Discuss.

Suffering in this world (and the next) is more horrible than you think, God is more powerful over evil than you can conceive and he is more loving towards you than you can imagine. So... "My God, why have you forsaken me?"

In us and for us

2011-10-21T21:05:00.008+01:00

Listening to: Mozart: Don Giovanni

[In] the Lutheran tradition [...] any emphasis on the work of the Spirit "in us" is seen to be in latent competition with the work of Christ "for us", to the point that it sometimes seems that the believer magnifies the freeness of God's grace more as a forgiven but unchanged sinner, than as a man in whom the crucified Saviour has worked his regenerating and renewing change. Lutherans are afraid that if anything happens within us, that happening rather than Christ's work will be seen as the basis of our standing with God.

(p. 26, Thomas A. Smail, The Forgotten Father)

I think that criticism is fair. Two quick observations on the two emphases:

One is marked by an over-realised eschatology (i.e. high-expectations and dreamy optimism), and the other an under-realised eschatology (i.e. low-expectations and realistic pessimism).
One is marked by joy and the other by seriousness.

It's not balance that we need, but a church aware of both where its citizenship is, but also where it is sojourning in at the moment.

The Forgotten Father

2011-10-21T20:56:00.003+01:00

we have had in recent years a Jesus movement and a charismatic movement. The one has almost disappeared and the other is threatening to run out of steam, perhaps because each is in a different way inadequate to the gospel, which is basically a Father movement... It starts not with the cross of Jesus or with the gift of the Spirit, but with the Father who so loved the world that he gave his Son in his Spirit. And it achieves its purpose, not when the body of Christ is gloriously renewed in very part without spot or wrinkle (Ephesians 5:27), not even when the enthroned Christ has subdued all his enemies and brought every knee to bow before him (Philipians 2:11), but rather when that same Christ "hands over the kingdom to the Father, after he has destroyed all dominion, authority and power" (1 Corinthians 15:24). "When he has done this, then the Son himself will be subject to him who put everything under him, so that God may be all in all" (1 Corinthians 15:28).

(p.20, Thomas A. Smail, 1980, The Forgotten Father)

I like Tom Smail. He ought to be more widely read. His Charismatic Anglican Trinitarian Theology has a lightness of touch, while retaining real depth, which is really refreshing.

Considering those verses from 1 and 2 Corinthians it is striking that the Father is involved not just at the beginning and end but in the middle where he is the one who puts everything under Jesus' feet.

Gospel & Culture: A Faith and Work Conference

2011-10-21T20:14:00.003+01:00

Redeemer, NY has arranged some big name lecturers to talk about the Gospel and Culture. Video here, or audio here. Looks fascinating.

After You Believe - N.T. Wright
Why Business Matters to God - Jeff Van Duzer
Creating Power - Andy Crouch
Why Work Matters - Dr. Timothy J. Keller
Art Matters for God's Sake - Adrienne Chaplin
Natural Law, God, and Human Dignity - Robert P. George
Challenging the Darkness - Towards a New Christian Renaissance - Os Guinness
Culture As Liturgy - James K. A. Smith
Faith-Based Diplomacy: Bridging the Religious Divide - Douglas Johnston

Faith then love

2011-10-20T21:49:00.004+01:00

Listening to: Bach: Violin Concertos (Hahn)

Love can only be fruit, it cannot take the place of the tree of faith. But there is a constant attempt in the legal scheme to substitute love for faith [...]

[In] Luke's story of the woman in the house of a Pharisee who anointed Jesus' feet from an alabaster jar. The Pharisee, Simon, was found outstripped by the woman not only in faith, but also in his pride - the righteousness of the law (which is love). Jesus said to the woman, "Your faith has saved you; go in peace" (Luke 7:50). Her faith came from the preached word heard earlier: "Your sins are forgiven," and this finally revealed what Jesus meant when he told Simon, "Her sins, which were many, have been forgiven; hence she has shown great love" (Luke 7:47). Love, it turns out, is either understood in relation to the law - in which case it is a work and cannot bear our trust - or it is simply what happens when Christ has forgiven a sinner.

(pp.235-236, Steven Paulson, Lutheran Theology)

So, when we preach the law, we tell people to "love the Lord your God". But when we preach the Gospel we call people to "believe the Lord your God", and out of that belief (which is receiving the seed of the promise of God himself and his forgiveness) love springs spontaneously. Love is greater because love is the eternal goal (1 Cor 13:13), but it cannot be found without faith receiving the Spirit in the promise of Christ who creates it.

Christ present in the preached word

2011-10-20T21:07:00.004+01:00

the righteousness based on faith says, “Do not say in your heart, ‘Who will ascend into heaven?’” (that is, to bring Christ down) “or ‘Who will descend into the abyss?’” (that is, to bring Christ up from the dead). But what does it say? “The word is near you, in your mouth and in your heart” (that is, the word of faith that we proclaim)...Jesus is Lord

(Romans 10:6-9)

Paul is arguing that by faith we find Christ present in the preached word we hear from our pastors, evangelists and missionaries. So Christ is not a distant goal to be attained to, or in the first instance somebody who has walked the way of the perfect life for you to follow, instead he is here for us to confess and call upon and be saved. If we have a preacher, Christ is never distant, but in our hearts, and because he cannot be contained we find him overflowing our hearts through our mouths.

Paul used Deuteronomy 30 "the word is near you," just this way. Moses' original use of this word concerned the law, and he thought it meant there was no longer any need to go find the law in a voyage over the sea or going down to the depths since now it had come near in the tablets of stone. But for Paul [...] "up" and "down" describe Christ's ascent into heaven and descent into hell. this is the crucial matter of the presence of Christ around which all of Lutheran theology circulates. Descent into hell is legally inappropriate for the infinite God, and ascent into heaven is impossible for a finite man. The communication of attributes nevertheless accomplished both at once. Christ's ascent into heaven is normally taken as "escape" or absence, consequently whenever Christ's presence is considered following his "humiliation" (as theology calls Christ's descent) and his "exaltation" (to the right hand of the Father) it is spiritualized in a pagan sense. Christ's body is removed from his presence, and more importantly, God himself is removed from the word that is preached... Where is Christ now?... where Moses law once was: "the word is near you... that is, the word we preach" (Romans 10:8)

(pp. 226-227, Steven Paulson, Lutheran Theology)

For more on the preached word try Glen Scrivener's seminars.

Christ on the brain

2011-10-20T20:47:00.002+01:00

Death is not defeated by having you avert it, but undergo it in the flesh, and then the Spirit raises our dead bodies - because when he sees the baptized dead, he sees only Christ and cannot resist raising him...

the Holy Spirit's proper work is given a Christological fixation. It is not your human goal that matters any longer, but the Holy Spirit's goal. Your goal is flesh, and flesh is hostile to God; the Spirit's goal is "life and peace" because the Spirit's goal is Christ alone. If Christ is in you, the Spirit raises your dead bodies to life since the Holy Spirit has Christ on the brain. In opposition to this, spiritualism seeks to unlink the Spirit from Christ in order to bypass the cross in its immediate relation to God, but the Spirit's proper work never goes anywhere without Christ, and does nothing apart from resurrecting Christ. The Holy Spirit does not moonlight in another job than to witness, show, and drive everything in the universe to Christ.

(pp. 196-197, Steven Paulson, Lutheran Theology)

He's not quite PT Forsyth, but Paulson really does have a nice turn of phrase.

Where do we go from here?

2011-10-19T22:04:00.004+01:00

Listening to: Handel: Balshazzar (Pinnock)

Correct me if I'm wrong...!

Where do the Biblical writers go from when they meditate on God's works? In particular where do they go after thinking on the cross and resurrection?

Occasionally they go backwards: "If Christ died on a cross then in eternity past [fill in the blank]".

Sometimes they go upwards: "If Christ died on a cross then God must be [fill in the blank]"

Most often they go forwards: "If Christ died on a cross then now/in the future [fill in the blank]."

I can't really do a scientific survey but I think that's right. Do you agree? Does it make a difference?

I would argue that it means that we need to deal more in promises than revelation (although both indwell each other).

A thought prompted by a unknown questioner in Glen's excellent course.

Expressions

2011-10-18T22:08:00.004+01:00

Glory is the expression of someone by their love.

A word is the expression someone by their breath (Heb: ruach).

The Son is the expression of God the Father by his Spirit.

Michelangelo and glory

2011-10-18T21:46:00.004+01:00

Who is greater, Michelangelo or Lorenzo de' Medici?

Lorenzo was the patron of Michelangelo, so in the act of paying Michelangelo he gave glory to the artist. Is the one who receives the glory or the one who gives it the more glorious?

Michelangelo is more glorious because the glory that he receives was only recognising the glory of the genius that he already possessed. That is why Michelangelo is remembered and glorified by millions today, and Lorenzo remembered less often and less admiringly.

God the Father gave glory to the Son. The glory that the Father gave was a recognition of the glory that the Son already possessed, so you may argue that the Son is more glorious. However, unlike Michelangelo, Jesus received even his 'inherent' glory from the Father who gave him life. So when Jesus received glory from the Father he gives it back. It is as if Lorenzo was not just Michelangelo's patron but his teacher. If that were the case Lorenzo would glorify Michelangelo by commissioning work from him, but receive back the glory as Michelangelo admitted that he learnt all he knew from Lorenzo. As a consequence as Michelangelo's fame increased so would Lorenzo's. In fact, you could say Michelangelo was the glory (or 'pride') or Lorenzo.

In contrast, we receive glory from the Son, but not in recognition of glory we already possess but as an incomprehensible gift of grace. All the glory we do receive is a gift from the Son and so we admit that before the world and give him back the glory - and through him the Father.

... that was a bit all over the place but hopefully you get the drift.

Why the doctrine of the Trinity is hard

2011-10-18T18:51:00.006+01:00

Glen says that the doctrine of the Trinity is simple: it's just three persons united in love.

Glen argues that the reason we tie ourselves in knots is because we try to reconcile the 'omnibeing' with the Trinity: an impossible task because the two are not the same.

I'm thankful to Glen and others for giving me a crash course in the doctrine of the Trinity a few years ago and for continuing to teach me. Before, the doctrine was largely a maths problem I couldn't solve, but now I understand it far better than I did. Nevertheless, I still don't think I really understand the Trinity.

In part the problem is metaphysical, but more substantial is the failure of my imagination and experience. Three persons united in love don't exist in the world in which we live. Perfect, self-giving love is something I can barely grasp. I know and have experienced amazing love in relationships, family and church, but the more I know love the more I see how deeply broken it often is. I suspect those of you who are married can list off as many ways in which you are disunited as united, just as I can with my family and friendships. And the church is no exception in its present fractured-yet-united state. So until the sinless new creation I don't think I will ever be able to say that three persons united in love is simple.

In summary, the 'problem' of the Trinity lies not in logic but sin. If you do have a problem with the logic, then its probably not the Trinity you have a problem with.

Active passivity

2011-10-13T20:51:00.007+01:00

a rescuing deity results in gratitude, never in expanded humanity. Constant gratitude, which the story of the cross seems to encourage, creates only weakness, childishness and dependency.

(Bishop Spong cited in DA Carson, The God Who is There)

Sadly Bishop Spong sees that as a reason to reject the cross while Christianity sees it as a reason to embrace the cross and celebrate weakness, childishness and dependency. And yet Spong is right to have some concerns because the Bible also celebrates strength and maturity.

I think the Bible celebrates both because Coram Deo (toward God) we are weak, childish and dependent, but that means that Coram Mundum (toward the world) we are strong, mature and live independent of a need for the world's blessing.

I presume Spong is afraid of Christians who 'drop out' and become passive in the world because they have been saved by God. In contrast, Luther loved the God who rescued him when he couldn't man-up and rescue himself. He saw that God's rescue would meant those rescued would become like their God. In his teaching on two kinds of righteousness, he would strongly emphasise that we are passive Coram Deo as we receive with gratitude from our Father. But, precisely because of that we become active people Coram Mundum as we seek to serve others.

Union with Christ's death

2011-10-13T19:31:00.004+01:00

Listening to: Mozart: Mass in C Minor

I think Steven Paulson's book Lutheran Theology is much stronger rhetorically and substantively in describing death, sin and alienation than life, righteousness and reconciliation. That's a real shame. I think it is also true to say that as an introduction to Lutheran theology the book is pretty dire. Despite that it is compelling reading because he can say true things in a very striking way.

Baptism into Christ is an even more offensive claim than "you have died." It says your baptism is unity with Christ, and that unity is first a unity with his death [...] Christ takes the sinner's sin, but the exchange that takes place does not leave the recipient as she was - only without sin. The sins were not just possessions of mine, but they were me. They were not appendages, but my very heart [...] For this reason the first exchange with Christ is death. Christ does not offer an escape from sin and death, like the Gnostics dreamed about, but he came down from heaven into sinners, under them, and suffered to take the sins - and with them he took "me" - or my heart [...] Christ took the world's sin including my own, even in his own body, and became a curse on the cross. I cannot reclaim as my property those old sins by the old theory of distributive justice - though strangely this is precisely what sinners desire. Sin is a matter of the heart, and when sins are removed from a sinner the heart just manufactures more like the government mint printing money. The value of money, it is said, depends upon trust in the government that stands behind it. For this reason an unfaithful heart cannot merely be cleaned off in the way soap removes dirt from the hands [...]

Christ's death on the cross took the sins of the world, but this must now be preached and given so that the person no longer remains more-or-less intact after sin is removed - endlessly able to produce false trust in idols. That heart, and so the entire person to his or her roots, must die to sin, just as Christ did on the cross. A heart after all is more than just the organ of love (as the world supposes) in the form of erotic love, it is the source of faith and so unfaith in idolatry. To destroy Adam's heart and receive the new heart in Christ, God uses nothing else but the instruments of his words preached to a sinner that are first given in baptism.

(pp. 158-160)

Stockholm Syndrome and the French Underground

2011-10-13T19:22:00.002+01:00

Steven Paulson does have a great turn of phrase sometimes. Take these for a few examples:

"Christ gave this description when he said in Mark 3:27, that the Strong Man must be bound before his house can be pillaged, and Christ had come to do just that. Yet, it is an odd reality, called in the modern world the "Stockholm syndrome," that prisoners identify themselves with their captors, and even desire in their hearts to be imprisoned to them" (p.159, Lutheran Theology)

"Being a theologian of the cross means the Christian's life is hid under the sign of its opposite (death, bondage, suffering) so that the prisoner of sin has now become the French underground, the embedded terrorist to the body of sin, and so faith is not the end of struggle but its beginning." (p. 171, ibid)

Last words

2011-10-12T23:28:00.004+01:00

In the last few months of his life Karl Barth was on a radio program which was a bit like Desert Island Discs ("Music for a Guest – A radio Broadcast"). The transcript can be found in the book Final Testimonies.

Near the beginning of the program he states that "What I hear in Mozart is a final word about life insofar as this can be spoken by man". Therefore, perhaps it is appropriate that he ends the program with this brilliant paragraph about God's Word about life in Christ, and Mozart's music addressed to the Word.

Grace itself is only a provisional word. The last word that I have to say as a theologian or politician is not a concept like grace but a name: Jesus Christ. He is grace and he is the ultimate one beyond world and church and even theology. We cannot lay hold of him. But we have to do with him. And my own concern in my long life has been increasingly to emphasize this name and to say: "In him." There is no salvation but in this name. In him is grace. In him is the spur to work, warfare, and fellowship. In him is all that I have attempted in my life in weakness and folly. It is there in him. I suggest then that we finish with Mozart as a sacred composer. I myself have always been very fond of the little Missa Brevis in D Major, again by the young Mozart... I suggest that we play the conclusion: Agnus dei, qui tollis peccata mundi, miserere nobis, dona nobis pacem: "O Lamb of God, that takest away the sins of the world, have mercy upon us, grant us thy peace". This is what we shall now hear.

Enjoy!

God who offers too little or too much to the sufferer

2011-10-12T23:05:00.004+01:00

I believe that one of the most important discoveries of Trinitarian theology in our time is the discovery of the suffering love of the suffering triune God. All cheap and easy talk about a God of sovereign power who is in control of a world in which there is so much poverty, suffering and injustice is obscene... The only gospel that makes sense and can help in what Moltmann calls our "godless and godforsaken" world is the good news of a god who loves enough to suffer with and for a suffering humanity.

But such a gospel, especially as it has caught on and become popular, has its dangers too. Too much talk about the "presence" of God in "solidarity" with suffering can become a way of hiding a deep skepticism about whether God is powerful enough to do anything about their suffering... People who suffer for one reason or another want more than just "God suffers with you and we Christians do too." They want to know whether there are a God and a people of God who can and will do anything to help them. Whether they know it or not, they want to hear about and experience the good news of a Trinitarian God who wills and preserves life, who liberates oppressed people from whatever or whoever oppresses them. They want to hear about and experience a crucified and risen Christ who is stronger than the powers of sickness, suffering, sin, and death. They want to hear about and experience the power of the Holy Spirit who brings new life where there is death and new beginnings where there are dead ends.

One of the biggest problems in theology today is how we can find our way between a theology of the suffering love of God that offers too little and a theology of the sovereign power of God that promises too much. I believe that the solution lies in thinking through the implications of what we said earlier about faith in the sovereignty of God as hope for the future - faith that God's loving and just will will be done.

(italics original, pp. 53-54, Shirley Guthrie, Always being reformed: faith for a fragmented world)

I just stumbled across this quotation by accident. It is from a man who turns out to be a significant American mainline Presbyterian. I think it is a great reflection of someone who has thought and lived deeply.

As I mused on it it struck me that the measure of whether we believe that God is both these things is prayer. You do not pray to someone who you think does not sympathise with your condition, but also you don't pray to someone who you think can do nothing about it. Therefore, one of the best ways we can communicate to a sufferer that God is both sympathetic and is powerful is praying for/with them.

Hearing is believing - at least in this age

2011-10-11T21:47:00.010+01:00

"Faith is in something, it needs some-thing to believe; specifically it lives from an incarnate and crucified promise, who is none other than Christ, the promised Messiah." (p.199, Paulson, Lutheran Theology)

"Faith is never without a thing in which it trusts; but when faith's "thing" is a promise from God whose "yes" is Christ, then it has something that "counts" before God. Christ counts before God - not as a token of law, but quite apart from the law since the Father gives everything to the Son, and the Son gives everything back freely" (p. 122)

"Faith does not stand upon what it feels or sees; it is only an ear and the ear listens solely to Christ" (p.136)

"In faith we do not see glory; instead we see suffering, and if that were not enough, by the seventh chapter of Romans, Paul says we feel and see in our own flesh the very sin that Christ is promised to have taken and defeated. Everything promised to faith seems to be taken away immediately in experience: glory turns to suffering; seeing turns to hearing; resurrection to dying" (p.141)

"Boasting in a hope that is not yet seen is exercising a freedom of speech that the world does not know by means of suffering God's love - not being attracted to it" (p.148)

Paulson's Lutheranism is sadly an under-realised version which is clearer on death than resurrection. In that it stands in bold contrast with a contemporary Christian culture that is dominated by an over-realised eschatology. I will never forget Dick Lucas' comment that Christians today are great at speaking about faith and love, but poor at hope. We are profoundly a this-worldly church and yet simultaneously world-despising church because we do not look to the future through the past in Christ (not just for salvation but revelation).

Christ is what was promised (so we do see him) but also the promise of the future (which we hear of and do not yet see). You could say we see in a mirror dimly!

To say that we see Christ's loveliness clearly is to teach sinless perfectionism and that the resurrection has already happened (2 Tim 2:18). On the other hand to say that we only see the ugly crucified man who bids us die and not the loveliness of the resurrected Saviour that bids us live is to deny the new-birth and presence of the Spirit.

[Very rough notes... maybe I'll write a post soon... but long work-days are catching up on me]

The parable of the Great Banquet

2011-10-09T00:08:00.007+01:00

I was chatting today with a friend who is preaching on the Parable of the Great Banquet in Luke 14:15-23 soon.

It's a popular passage, and rightly so. It beautifully depicts the free offer of the Gospel and the celebratory and joyful nature of the Kingdom of God. However, from Luke 14:15-23 alone you could easily gloss over the brief mention of anger and preach the Gospel as a nice invitation to a party that is worth accepting, but that if you choose to try out your oxen or spend time with your wife then that's okay. You're missing out, but each to his own.

Matthew's account in 22:1-14 is a bit more chilling. In his account the servant carrying the invitation is killed and the king responds by destroying the murderers and burning their city. A guy then turns up without a wedding garment and is cast out into the outer darkness. There is still a party, but I suspect Luke's account is the more popular one today.

But my friend pointed out that Luke's account in chapter 14 follows chapter 13 which includes some stark warnings of its own. For example, Jesus in verse 22 is the servant carrying the invitation by preaching the through the towns and villages. He is the door into the Kingdom of God, but there will be a time when the door will be shut and people will plead to enter but will not be admitted. Outside the house he says there will be 'weeping and gnashing of teeth' but inside there will be feasting (vv. 28-29).

Luke's Jesus is not the 'nice' Jesus. Both Matthew and Luke depict a Jesus who preaches judgement to come. Very sobering for me to be reminded.

Justification = adoption

2011-10-08T23:35:00.005+01:00

I think justification is an under-appreciated doctrine, and that's partly because it has been cut off from Jesus.

Justification is not just being forgiven and having the slate wiped clean. It is not only 'just-as-if-I've-never-sinned', but it is also not 'just-as-if-I-had-lived-a-perfect-life'. Actually, its 'just-as-if-I-was-Jesus'.

Among other things, this means that justification is not a necessary step to being adopted as sons. In fact, I may be as bold to say that justification = adoption.

Jesus was justified by God in his resurrection from the dead (Rom 4:25; 1 Tim 3:16). The Jews, and God the Father through them, declared him a sinner. God the Father by the Spirit then raised him from the dead, overturning their verdict and declaring him righteous (Acts 2:3-24).

But in the covenantal context righteousness is not just doing good according to the natural law (although it is not less than that), it is being the people God called Israel to be - and God called Israel to be his son (Ex 4:22; Rom 9:4). Sadly, instead they acted like sons of Satan and crucified the one who not only called God Father, but by his life showed himself to be God's only Son. So, when God the Father raised Jesus from the dead he declared him to be the Son of God in power (Rom 1:4).

If we are united in Christ by Baptism in faith then that same declaration of God the Father over Jesus as he came out of his water-Baptism 'grave' and his blood-Baptism grave is declared over us as well (Matt 3:17). We are sons in whom the Father is well pleased!

So, don't downplay justification, or teach it reductionistically, but celebrate it in all it's riches!

Serpent crushing

2011-10-05T21:51:00.003+01:00

"I will put enmity between you and the woman,
and between your offspring and her offspring;
hhe shall bruise your head,
and you shall bruise his heel." (Genesis 3:15)

Ed Clowney just taught me that Satan's quotation of Psalm 91:11-12 when tempting Jesus is significant in a surprising way. It is significant not just because he was quoting Scripture, and quoting Scripture in a Christocentric way that found Christ in David's psalm, but also for the context of the verses.

Like so many of us Satan knew when to stop the quote when it got to the bit that made him uncomfortable. However, for Jesus knowing what came next must have been a great encouragement to resist Satan's temptation because if he was the Messiah of verses 11-12 he was also the Messiah for whom it was promised:

"You will tread on the lion and the adder;
the young lion and the serpent you will trample underfoot." (v.13)

The good news for us is that although all the promises find their "yes" in Jesus, he does not cling onto what is his but shares this birth-right to those he is not ashamed to call his brothers. For this reason, contrary to what you may expect, the only direct references to treading on serpents in the NT (correct me if I'm wrong) are about Christians rather than Christ!

"I have given you authority to tread on serpents and scorpions, and over all the power of the enemy, and nothing shall hurt you." (Luke 10:19)

"The God of peace will soon crush Satan under your feet." (Romans 16:20a)

Because Jesus defeated Satan in his temptation, when Israel and Adam had both failed to, we can share in his victory no matter how tempting the sin or powerful the enemy.

All sin

2011-10-04T22:32:00.003+01:00

God made him who had no sin to be sin for us (2 Cor 5:21)

Christ redeemed us from the curse of the law by becoming a curse for us (Gal 3:13)

Sometimes a person is so associated with something that we stop using an adjective and use the substative. A body builder can, at a certain point, cease "having muscles" and we call him "all muscle." Christ becomes so exclusively associated with sin that it loses any sense for anyone else, and we say of him not only that he is a sinner, but the Sinner.

(p. 108, Steven Paulson, Lutheran Theology)

Wow!

A thief in the night

2011-10-04T22:13:00.007+01:00

Less than an hour after I read Dave Bish's post saying that Jesus gives and doesn't take, I read this:

Christ is determined not to stop until he has taken everything of yours. He comes as a thief in the night, and thieves not only surprise us with their untimely arrival, but actually rob us of our possessions. Jesus robs us of our best stuff - our righteous deeds by the law, our good hopes that things will work out (with a little grace), and the belief that God will find us pleasing on our own account - but he also robs us of our worst...Jesus exchanges his priceless worth for our filth.

(p. 106, Steven Paulson, Lutheran Theology)

It reminds me of the legend of someone walking up to Luther and saying, "do you really mean that I have nothing whatsoever to contribute to my salvation?" And Luther supposedly answering, "I'm very sorry if I have given that impression. There's lots you can contribute. Your greed, your lust, your anger...."

It is shocking that Christ is an unusual king who gives lavishly of all that he has, but only after he has become a servant and taken our place and received our due. The good news and the offense are so tied together.

[Incidentally, when I read the Paulson quote I did wonder whether he was using the expression 'thief in the night' out of its biblical context, but when you look at 1 Thessalonians 5 the day of the Lord that comes like a thief does bring destruction and rob everyone of everything. But with the armour that belongs to God, which he gives us, we will come through the destruction to life and salvation with him.]

God is dead

2011-10-04T21:29:00.004+01:00

Interesting factoid of the day... Hegel popularised the phrase "God is dead", but probably picked it up from the second verse of this hymn, which in the original German says "God himself is dead". Nietzche then took it from Hegel. It's a suitably bleak Good Friday hymn that was very popular in Germany.

1. O darkest woe!
Ye tears, forth flow!
Has earth so sad a wonder?
God the Father's only Son
Now is buried yonder.

2. O sorrow dread!
God's Son is dead!
But by His expiation
Of our guilt upon the cross
Gained for us salvation.

3. O sinful man!
It was the ban
Of death on thee that brought Him
Down to suffer for thy sins
And such woe hath wrought Him.

4. Lo, stained with blood,
The Lamb of God,
The Bridegroom, lies before thee,
Pouring out His life that He
May life restore thee.

5. O Ground of faith,
Laid low in death.
Sweet lips. now silent sleeping!
Surely all that live must mourn
Here with bitter weeping.

6. Oh. blest shall be
Eternally
Who oft in faith will ponder
Why the glorious Prince of Life
Should be buried yonder.

7. O Jesus blest,
My Help and Rest
With tears I now entreat Thee:
Make me love Thee to the last,
Till in heaven I greet Thee!

Unknown, 1628, Stanza 1
Author: Johann Rist, 1641, ab, Stanzas 2-7
Translated by: Catherine Winkworth, 1863, alt.

Justifying Job

2011-10-03T23:02:00.005+01:00

Job, is one of many Biblical books that I struggle to understand. But here is one take on it you don't often hear... it's a book about justification!

The opening scene: the great accuser (trans. Satan) appears before God. God justifies his servant Job, declaring him righteous before Satan, but Satan declares God's verdict to be false (not for the first, or last time). Satan de-justifies God.
The dialogue between the 3 friends and Job: The friends take on Satan's accusing role and reason like this:
- God is just + Job is suffering => Job is unjust
Job works with similar logic, but to his credit only toys with the conclusion and doesn't commit to it:
- I am just + I am suffering => God is unjust
Elihu: Elihu is a bit difficult to pin down. He recognises that Job is trying to justify himself by de-justifying God. He justifies God himself, but he doesn't justify Job. He anticipates God's speeches, but he only has some light to shed on Job's confusing darkness.
God's speeches: God has two points in his two speeches:
1. Give up on your logic-games. Job is just and I am just. How those are both true you will never be able to fathom by reason... so give up the quest.
2. I control the accuser who brings suffering, so there is hope in me as the only one who can tame the leviathan of Satan.
The epilogue: Job repents, God justifies Job before his friends and the whole world. He declares him righteous and justly gives the blessings of wealth and health which belong to the righteous.

I've blogged about this a little before, so I'll be bold and quote myself saying it quite well!

Elihu was angry with Job because he was 'justifying himself rather than God' (32:2) and YHWH isn't too happy about that either (40:8). But actually Elihu admits that he wants to justify Job (33:32) and YHWH does so in the end too (42:7). Job is justified through YHWH's own justification. Only when YHWH is allowed to be just in a way above human comprehension, can we too be justified.

The power of love

2011-10-03T22:29:00.006+01:00

Some half-baked musings...

Some people argue that saying the Holy Spirit is the love between the Father and the Son depersonalises the Spirit. Other people argue that saying the Glory of God is the Son personalises God's glory. I don't think you can have it both ways, although I think there is truth to both. It depends whether the controlling definition of 'love' or 'glory' comes from the Triune God revealed in the Christ of the Scriptures. If it is not then the Father, Son and Holy Spirit will be all be depersonalised, but if not then personality will overflow into those terms and out into our lives. Personally I'm all for saying the Spirit is the love of God as Augustine did, arguing from 1 John 4:7-16 and Romans 5:5.

Having said that, in the Bible the Spirit is more closely linked with strength and power than anything else. In which case we should not pit power against love, but find how actually true divine power is loving, and true divine love is powerful.

If there is a more common biblical association with the Spirit than power it must be life. Life is marked by love and power. Desires and actions can be disordered or wrongly directed, but as long as we live we are desiring and acting creatures.

Past performance is no guarantee of future results

2011-10-02T21:47:00.007+01:00

Most financial products come with the warning:

past performance is no guarantee of future results

House prices may have gone up the last 5 years, but that doesn't mean they will this year. From mere facts, we can make educated guesses about the future, but there is always at least an undercurrent of fear because of the uncertainty.

This is what life is like without a preacher, and was the disadvantage suffered by the Gentiles until the missionaries came (Romans 3:1)...

Jews have a preacher, many preachers in fact, and so they have been given God's words. The Gentiles had none, until Paul - Apostle - and thus before the preacher arrived they were reduced to investigating a fallen creation for clues as to who their hidden God was (Paul found them in Athens worshipping a statue that said, "To the unknown God"). Usually God is known by his mighty acts of the past so that even the Gentiles could learn something of God this way. The words that gave Jews an advantage in life were promises by which God could be known in terms of the future...When one is able to trust God by means of a word one speaks very differently to him - in the way husband and wife speak to one another as opposed to the way an advertisement addresses an unknown client.

(pp.54-55, Steven Paulson, Lutheran Theology)

Sadly, many unreached peoples are still in the same situation. Trembling at the sound of a falling leaf (as both Calvin and Luther said).

The person AND work of Christ

2011-09-27T21:29:00.011+01:00

Some of us talk a lot about the Gospel and criticise legalism. We rejoice a lot in what God has done in the cross of Christ, but less in Christ himself. The Gospel, or perhaps more commonly 'grace' is abstracted and made into a principle or scheme. We are not very good at saying what we are saved to, or who we are reconciled to. We are good at talking about redemption, but not revelation. We should rejoice more in the person of Christ, not just because of what he has done.

Some of us talk a lot about Jesus and criticise monster-God alternatives. We rejoice a lot in who God is, but are remarkably uninterested in what he has done. Jesus becomes a cipher or an idealised God-as-I'd-like-him and not a real person who acts and interacts with us in our fallen state. We are are not very good at saying that we are saved or reconciled and God is being offered as a nice option on the menu we can freely choose. We are good at talking about revelation, but not redemption. We should rejoice more in the work of Christ, not just because it shows us who he is.

I wish I could say that better than I have... I say 'we' in the post because I am always overbalancing one way or another, but lets be people who rejoice in the person and work of Christ (which, incidentally, saves us from both the power and the penalty of sin)

Christian notes on the beginning of Samuel

2011-09-27T20:47:00.007+01:00

Hannah's prayer (1 Samuel 2:1-10) begins with her heart exulting and her horn exalting! It ends with YHWH exalting his anointed king.

This is striking because as yet there is no king of Israel, only judges. This is compounded by verse 10 which says that YHWH himself will judge, not just Israel, but the earth.

It is also striking because it implies that Hannah has united her exaltation with the exaltation of the Messiah. Hannah sees that she will be exalted in the Messiah's exaltation. Christ's resurrection and glorification will be her resurrection and glorification. This is a gift she could only grasp by faith!

Union with Christ in his death and resurrection comes out in the middle of the prayer. The middle is marked by great reversals, the greatest of which is that "The Lord kills and brings to life; he brings down to Sheol and raises up." God will bring the rich to poverty and the poor to prosperity, the childless will give birth, the hungry will eat, etc.

Standing at the beginning of the book of Samuel we see this movement of death to new life in all the messianic shadows in the book:

The judges: Eli dies and Samuel is the new and better judge.
The priests: Eli dies and all his line is gradually wiped out (only completed in 1 Kings 1-2), and Samuel and then ultimately Zadok are the new and better priests.
The kings: Saul dies and David is the new and better king.

Luke picks up a lot of Samuel's messianic shadows.

It is often noted that Mary, who like Hannah has no possibility of having a child humanly speaking, sings a Hannah-like song in the Magnificat. She too rejoices in the Lord and in the great reversals he will bring about. Zechariah also sees God raising up a horn of salvation (Luke 1:69). In fact, Zechariah can be seen to perform a role similar to that of Eli. Eli is a flawed priest who does recognise what God is doing with Samuel and accepts the judgement on his line. Zechariah is also flawed but sees what God is doing in Christ.

Simeon prophesies that Jesus will be the cause of the "falling and rising of many in Israel" just as Samuel is. What neither he, nor Mary or Zechariah mention when they mention the great reversals is that Jesus will be the cause of these things by both happening in him. He will fall and rise again. All those apart from him will fall in their condemnation of him. All those united to him will fall into the grave too, but rise again by the power of the Father's Spirit.

Finally, just to bolt on the end. It is mentioned a number of times that Samuel grows up (1 Samuel 2:21; 3:19) and the same is said of Jesus in Luke (1:80; 2:52). Another indication that Luke had Samuel on the mind....

Speak Jesus

2011-09-18T15:38:00.007+01:00

Not all Christian jargon is good, but today I heard about 'speaking Jesus', which I think is great!

But perhaps you think it is just bad grammar. After all, how can you 'speak Jesus'? You can understand how to speak 'about Jesus', or 'to Jesus', but not simply 'speak Jesus'.

Jack Kilcrease has recently commented on postmodernism. He says it could be described as 'provisionalism' because it teaches that all representation of reality is provisional because it is not the thing it represents. So, the sign (e.g. the word 'tree') can never wholly convey the thing signified (e.g. the tree itself). However, Lutherans teach that by the promise of God the thing signified could be 'in, with and under' the sign. That is not the case with everything, but if God promises then he will perform the miracle.

The language of 'in, with and under' comes from the teaching that Christ is really present in the Lord's Supper. But you could also say the same about Baptism, and the words of absolution.

The same thing could then be applied to the Bible. It is not just about Jesus, but Jesus is really present when it is read. Similarly, when I speak faithfully about Jesus he is there with us. That's how I understand Matthew 18; Jesus is present when two are three are gathered because, and only because, of the words spoken. In this sense the Bible doesn't simply contain the Word of God in parts, but is the Word of God.

This can also be applied to the Church. Christ is 'in, with and under' the Church, so that it really is the Body of Christ and when you persecute the Church you persecute Christ (Acts 26:14).

This is all achieved by the Father sending the Spirit to create a mystical union.

I don't claim to understand Barth (perhaps Dan B could help me out), but I've always been struck by hearing that he taught that "God is his revelation", so there is no God other than the God who is Jesus Christ. Mike Reeves at NWA showed from Ezekiel and elsewhere that "God is his glory", or more specifically God the Father's glory has the name Jesus Christ. It is a bit mind-bending, and I think the language of 'in, with and under' (which, probably not coincidentally, are the words Paul uses for our union with Christ) are more helpful because the identification is not strict (otherwise Barth would be a Christomonist and I would believe that the Christ is the worldwide Church).

Does that make sense to people?

It could probably do with a lot more meditation and definitely a better written post than I have time for today, but I think I may adopt that lovely bit of Christian jargon: 'Speak Jesus to people'.

Why blogging is light

2011-09-15T21:38:00.007+01:00

The reason my blogging is limited and pretty low-grade at the moment is that I've just moved cities and started a new and challenging job (Trainee Solicitor).

Time will tell whether blogging can continue in a meaningful way. I'm thankful for my new job but at the same time I found the following quotation from Luther, on the Shepherds outside Bethlehem, encouraging today:

Next to faith this is the highest art — to be content with the calling in which God has placed you. I have not learned it yet.

It's good to know you're not alone.

HT Steve

Something to spark some thoughts

2011-09-15T21:21:00.004+01:00

"I think people tend not to believe in God until they need him." (David Zahl)

"God won't be your only hope, until he is your only hope." (Jared Wilson)

...Is that true? Is it true wholly or partly? What are the implications for our dealing with suffering? What are the implications for our preaching? What are the implications for seeking to grow as Christians?

They come from these two videos:

On the videos, one of my most profound reflections is that David Zahl looks scarily like my Uncle Stuart. I also wondered whether Doug Sweeney really got what Jared Wilson was saying.

Job's good comforters

2011-09-14T23:17:00.004+01:00

We often focus on Job's miserable comforters, but right at the end of the book we see some exemplary comforters:

"Then came to him all his brothers and sisters and all who had known him before, and ate bread with him in his house. And they showed him sympathy and comforted him for all the evil that the Lord had brought upon him. And each of them gave him a piece of money and a ring of gold." (Job 42:11)

Job's relatives do the following:

They are physically present. Notably this is in the important act of eating together with him.
They show him sympathy (better translation from my limited knowledge: "they mourn expressively")
They comfort him, presumably particularly with words
They help him practically with money.

A few random thoughts on Job

2011-09-14T22:50:00.002+01:00

Job was "blameless and upright". Time and again, I hear evangelicals say, "we know Job can't be perfect, but nevertheless he was a faithful person". Seems a bit like lowering-the-bar theology to me. Why can't we say that he really was blameless and upright because Christ's blamelessness and uprightness was credited to him?
Job is so conscientious that he is concerned that his sons have "cursed God in their hearts". Satan's objective is to get Job to curse God to his face (1:11; 2:5). Job's wife encourages him to do just that (2:9). Recalls the Fall, although Job doesn't sin. Also speaking truly about God seems to be a major theme, as God picks that up in 42:7-8.
Job does not suffer despite being righteous, but because he is righteous.
Job's faith in the early chapters of the book is often held up as a model. Should it be? He does fear God, and doesn't grasp onto false rights to good things from God, but there is no indication that he has hope or trust in God as his Father. Rather than lauding the initial reactions of Job, I think we should see Job's faith as only partial in the famous "the Lord gives and the Lord takes away". He concludes his final speech by saying, "I had heard of you by the hearing of the ear, but now my eye sees you; therefore I despise myself, and repent in dust and ashes." Before he knew something of God, but through his suffering and God's revelation he is brought to a much deeper and richer knowledge of God as the one who is in control but also has good purposes. The vision of God Job has at the end is the vision we should focus on.
In the early chapters Satan is portrayed as the one bringing the suffering upon Job, with God only as the one permitting it. However both Job and the narrator attribute the suffering to God and never to Satan. Although that must bring certain problems for the believer, it is tremendously important. If suffering is purely by chance, fate or a wholly malevolent being then we can't ask for it to stop. If it is our Father who disciplines us because he loves us we can ask him to stop when the discipline is too much and have a certain hope he will answer.

My top 10 songs

2011-09-11T00:50:00.005+01:00

For what it's worth, here are my top 10 (in no particular order):

My Song is Love Unknown (Crossman)
Before the Throne Above (Bancroft, tune by Cook)
In Christ Alone (Townend/Getty)
How Deep the Father's Love (Townend)
And can it be that I should gain (Wesley)
When I Survey the Wondrous Cross (Watts)
I cannot tell why He whom angels worship (Fullerton)
When I was lost you came and rescued me (Simmonds)
The Look (Newton, adapted by Kauflin)
It is Finished (Wesley, Praise version I think)

What are your favourites?

The Bible's love story

2011-09-03T22:47:00.005+01:00

The Bible is an unusual love story.

The Father chooses Israel to be a bride for his Son. His Son marries Israel at Sinai but she never loved him and never does. Time and again the Son tries to win the heart of his wife only to see her run after other men.

Sometimes he leaves her to it, hoping she will see through the false promises of those who seduce her. Sometimes he disciplines her to try and drive home the horror of what she is doing, but he doesn't kill her because he really loves her (compared with the cultural norm a great mercy). Sometimes he declares his love of her and sometimes he simply tells her to love him. Often he just showers her with gifts to try and win her, even though it makes him look like a cuckold to the nations.

However, as perhaps many of us know from experiences of unrequited love, you cannot persuade someone to love you. You can try all sorts but love isn't something that you can create in another person's heart just as you can't create it in your own. It is called 'falling in love' because it is not something that happens in a planned way.

The husband knows the punishment for adultery is death. Jesus sees his wife commit adultery again and again and knows that the patience of God cannot continue forever. But God the Father, Son and Holy Spirit love Jesus' wife so much that they plan a way to save the woman. The Son will identify with her so completely as one flesh that he will take her place and die for her sins. In fact the wife who has for years acted like she wanted her husband dead, does the murder.

That would be a tragic love story if it ended there, but praise God it doesn't.

The Father raises the Son, but the widow is an unchanged woman. She needs to be born again - to be given a heart transplant where her old heart is killed and she is given a new one. There is only one person who has made that journey from death to life before and in the same way as he identified with her to the uttermost in dying her death, she is indentified with him by dying with him and so being raised with him. In baptism recieved from God by faith this happens - she is made anew with a heart which beats for him and she waits eagerly for the future day when she will marry him to live with him for eternity.

With thanks to Tim Salaska

Progressive revelation in Hebrews

2011-09-02T07:40:00.003+01:00

Long ago, at many times and in many ways, God spoke to our fathers by the prophets, but in these last days he has spoken to us by his Son

Hebrews begins with one of the clearest statements of progressive revelation in the Bible. But by 1:6 the author is quoting from the Song of Moses where the God who saved Israel out of Egypt is identified with the Son (cf. Jude 1:5).

By 2:2-3 the author is arguing, from the lesser to the greater, that if under the old covenant the punishment was severe how much more careful should we be to enter the rest. But then in 4:2 he says that "good news came to us just as to them", so they already had the good news and were looking forward to just the rest that we are promised.

Lots to think about.

Where's Christ in the OT?

2011-09-01T21:27:00.004+01:00

In a similar vein to my last post, do you ever read a passage and wonder where Christ is in the passage?

One thing I've found helpful is to remember that all the Bible is about communication/action from God to humans. Therefore there are three elements to it:

The speaker/actor: God
The message/the means of action
The hearer/the acted upon (both good and bad guys)

Because Christ is God, the message of the Bible, and the representative man/Israel etc then you can find Christ in each of these elements.

For example in Wisdom you can find Jesus as:

The ultimate wise man we should listen to
The content of wisdom we should learn
The person who obediently listens to his wise Father and receives all the blessings that come from wisdom and/or the person who receives all the curses of being a fool (in our place)

Or, for another example, in the story of Noah he is:

The God who rescues his chosen people from the coming wrath
The ark in whom we are saved from death
The person who is brought through the flood (death) to become the firstborn of a new people and/or the person who is drowned in the wrath of God's judgment against sin (in our place)

Or in prophecy he is:

The person who appeared to the prophets and gave them the words to say
The content of the prophecy
the people who will receive the promise (land, life etc) and/or the people who will be rejected and destroyed (in our place)

Bible study block

2011-09-01T21:23:00.002+01:00

Do you ever get a block when preparing a Bible study, or trying to hear God in your personal Bible reading?

I do.

One thing I've found helpful to kick start constructive reflection (other than prayer!) is to ask three questions (nicked from someone else):

What does this passage say about God?
What does this passage say about humans?
What comes out of this? (in terms of God's response/our response)

Motivation for mission

2011-08-29T11:59:00.004+01:00

'we also speak, knowing that he who raised the Lord Jesus will raise us also with Jesus and bring us with you into his presence. For it is all for your sake, so that as grace extends to more and more people it may increase thanksgiving, to the glory of God.' (2 Cor 4:13-15)

Mission is founded on personal hope in the Gospel (v.14) and for the sake of

the salvation of the lost, so that
thanksgiving may increase, so that
God is glorified.

So it is not simply an expression of personal joy, or simply to save people from hell, or even simply for God's glory. It is all of those, but in a certain relationship.

(cf. Romans 15)

Incidentally, every time I read Paul these days I see the importance of thanksgiving for him (46 occurrences in ESV). Perhaps I should read David Pao's book.

Moses and his veil

2011-08-29T11:30:00.003+01:00

Listening to: Sufjan Stevens: The Age of Adz

Moses did not wear his veil when he was speaking to YHWH or when he was speaking to Israel the words of YHWH (Exodus 34). When he was acting as mediator he was unveiled, when he wasn't he was veiled.

The veil is like the curtain of the temple separating God from humanity, hiding his glory because of our sinfulness. Like the Tabernacle this hiding of God was both a judgement and a grace. It was judgement because it was a barrier between the God of life and us, but it was a grace because the glory of God is lethal to people on whom guilt still rests. That is why the people were afraid when they saw the glory (v.30), just as they were afraid when the law was given at Sinai (20:18).

Following Christ's death God has torn the curtain and the veil is no longer put in place by God because the glory of God is unveiled in the face of Christ. However, Satan veils this glory (2 Cor 4), and for people whose minds are hardened the veil lies not over the face of Christ but over their hearts (2 Cor 3:14).

Why should we not be afraid now that God is unveiled to us? Why can we be confident (v. 4) and bold (v.12) in approaching God? The reason is that (just as for Paul and his ministry), our sufficiency comes from God (v.5). We are made sufficient, by the Spirit (vv. 6, 17, 18) who Christ pours out on us following his death, resurrection and ascension.

It was not that we didn't see God in the law. There was glory there (v.9), but the glory in the face of Christ is superior because it permanently brings the Spirit, life and righteousness (vv.6, 9), rather than temporarily bringing the letter, death and condemnation.

Because Christ is now the mediator, not human beings like Moses or Paul, we don't proclaim ourselves but Jesus Christ as Lord (4:5).

With thanks to Bill Dumbrell and John Piper, who may not agree with all this. I still don't understand 2 Cor 3:13 though. Help gratefully received.

Don Carson on domains of discourse

2011-08-27T21:48:00.005+01:00

For clarity of thought and expression, it is important to distinguish between two domains of discourse, viz. exegesis and theology. Of course, for those who want the “norming norm” of their theology to be Scripture, the links between the two disciplines must be much more than casual. Nevertheless, not only their respective methods, but even their respective vocabularies, can be very different.

Carson then discusses the different ways in which the Bible and Systematic/Historical Theology uses the words sanctification and reconciliation. He believes that the Bible teaches that sanctification is progressive, and God is reconciled to humanity, even if it never uses the terms sanctification and reconciliation to describe it.

He concludes, applying it to the doctrine of imputation, although its application is broader:

The bearing of these reﬂections is obvious. Even if we agree that there is no Pauline passage that explicitly says, in so many words, that the righteousness of Christ is imputed to his people, is there biblical evidence to substantiate the view that the substance of this thought is conveyed? And if such a case can be made, should the exegete be encouraged to look at the matter through a wider aperture than that provided by philology and formulae? And should we ask the theologian to be a tad more careful with texts called up to support the doctrine?

('The Vindication of Imputation: On Fields of Discourse and Semantic Fields')

John Webster on discipleship

2011-08-27T21:05:00.003+01:00

The command is to follow at a distance: 'Follow after me', Jesus commands Simon and Andrew.

In the movement required of the disciples that is there can be no question of them being companions of Jesus in the way in the sense of fellow travellers of equal ability and dignity. No, between the one who follows and the one who follows there is always an unbridgeable distance.

Like the cloud and pillar of fire in the wilderness, Jesus goes ahead of his followers. He is present with them, yes, but he is present always as the transcendent Lord.

Nor can there be any hope for the eventual closing of the gap between Jesus and those who follow. The distance between him and them is not such that we can expect that it will gradually narrow and finally close entirely as the disciples grow in knowledge or skill or virtue. No, they are permanently, by nature and not merely temporarily, those who come after him.
The summons to follow doesn't look ahead to growing proximity but to a condition in which the disciples walk in the wake of Jesus, in which they pulled along by his movement. Set in motion by him, but always unlike him and so behind him.
In this connection, of course, much might be made of the distinctiveness of following Jesus, over and against the relations between Rabbi and pupil or between moral model and the one who imitates such an example.

The pupil eventually becomes a Rabbi, the imitator grows like the model. But the disciple never moves beyond the condition of following. There is no assimilation to be awaited. Even at the end of the disciples' journey with Jesus in Mark, after the resurrection, Jesus continues to go before his disciples, anticipating them as they hasten in his direction.

[...]

The substance of Jesus' call is, further: 'follow me'. It is irreducibly personal, notice: a call to enter into a movement which is a relation to Jesus himself.

Everything hangs on this. Jesus speaks in his own name, with his own authority. He doesn't refer the one called to some other, not even to God himself. Discipleship is a matter of of following Jesus as personal absolute, that is as the absolute in person. Following Jesus isn't a command to take upon oneself a commitment to some cause or principle or truth beyond or behind Jesus - as if Jesus were the symbol or highest instance of something other than himself.

The name of Jesus cannot be eliminated without losing everything.

As Bonhoeffer puts it: in the matter of discipleship Jesus is the only content.

(about the 40min mark, MP3 lecture, John Webster, Discipleship and calling, Scottish Evangelical Theology Conference 2005)

Unreached Village

2011-08-25T14:38:00.007+01:00

Christ became a servant to the circumcised to show God's truthfulness, in order to confirm the promises given to the patriarchs, and in order that the Gentiles might glorify God for his mercy. As it is written,

“Therefore I will praise you among the Gentiles,
and sing to your name.”

And again it is said,

“Rejoice, O Gentiles, with his people.”

And again,

“Praise the Lord, all you Gentiles,
and let all the peoples extol him.”

...I make it my ambition to preach the gospel, not where Christ has already been named, lest I build on someone else's foundation, but as it is written,

“Those who have never been told of him will see,
and those who have never heard will understand.”

(Romans 15)

Paul's ambition is for the whole earth to be full of the praise of God for his mercy in Jesus Christ.

A couple of my friends work for Gospel for Asia, a wonderful mission agency deeply committed to seeing this happen. They believe that the best way to do this is by means of missionaries born and brought up in those very areas, and seek to encourage funds to flow from the West to the East to fuel that.

They've just made a new website called the Unreached Village to raise awareness and to ask some awkward questions.

Imagine the world as a village of 100 people (where one of the North Americans looks suspiciously like me)...

I'm thankful for John Piper who for years has been a prophetic voice on the primacy in missions of reaching the unreached. Like Paul he taught me that mission primarily exists because worship doesn't. Check out his important article here.

Three caricatures to kill

2011-08-25T13:52:00.003+01:00

Gustaf Aulén, in his preface to the paperback edition of Christus Victor explains that in connection with the image of God his book has as its aim the exposure of three caricatures of God:

the God of fatalism, where even the evil proceeds from God; the God of moralism, where the spontaneity of the Love of God is being killed; and finally the shallow view of God's Love, where Love is considered self-evident, and where, therefore, every sense of the Love's hard work has been lost. Concerning gods of these types a 'god-is-dead-theology' could do us a service - especially if its death sentences were efficacious. Then it would be a work in the service of the living God of the Gospel.

The Epic Gospel Story

2011-08-25T12:50:00.002+01:00

Gustaf Aulén says of the subjective/moral influence view of the atonement that it sets "forth a 'purified,' 'simple' conception of God, whose characteristic is an unchanging Love. But the simplicity is won at the cost of the obscuring of the hostility of the Divine Love to evil; the conception of the Divine Love has become humanised, and at the same time rather obvious and stereotyped" (p. 154, Christus Victor).

I haven't read Love Wins, so don't know if this is fair, but I did recently come across one persons view of it. He felt it was

an exceptionally bland story. There is no drama. No deep conflict requiring resolution. No compelling need for a satisfying denouement. Where is the insurmountable problem that must be overcome? Where’s the cliff we might fall off? Where’s the foreshadowed death that can be avoided only by intervention from the outside? Nothing is ever really at stake in Bell’s tale of limitless happy endings. It has even less suspense than a child’s bedtime story.

(pp. 145-206, Mike Wittmer, Christ Alone)

The real story of the Bible is never bland or obvious, but full of colour and surprises.

Last night in our home group we read the whole of Ephesians. It struck me afresh that the Gospel story is an epic. It is cosmic in scope, evil really is dark, the battle is violent, and there is a great hero.

Un-systematic ramblings on systematisation

2011-08-25T11:53:00.007+01:00

Gustaf Aulén believes the 'classic' view of the atonement is only 'an idea, a motif, a theme' and not a 'theory'. 'It has been fully definite and unambiguous' in its expression, but 'it has never been shaped into a rational theory' (p. 157, Christus Victor).

The classic type is characterised by a whole series of contrasts of opposites, which defy rational systematisation, while the other two find rational solutions of the antinomies along theological or psychological lines.

...the oppositions of the classic type...are present wherever the classic type appears. God is at once the all-ruler, and engaged in conflict with the powers of evil. These powers are evil powers, and at the same time executants of God's judgment on sin. God is at the same time the Reconciler and the Reconciled. His is the Love and His the Wrath. The Love prevails over the Wrath, and yet Love's condemnation of sin is absolute. The Love is infinite and unfathomable, acting contra rationem et legem [contrary to reason and law], justifying men without any satisfaction of the Divine justice or any consideration of human merit; yet at the same time God's claim on men is sharpened to the uttermost.

Every attempt to force this conception into a purely rational scheme is bound to fail; it could only succeed by robbing it of its religious depth. For theology lives and has its being in these combinations of seemingly incompatible opposites.

(p. 155, Christus Victor)

In this respect he is a typical Lutheran. Frustrating to a rationalist like me and yet full of life and colour.

He calls on Luther to aid him in his cause, and even though I think Luther was less opposed to substitutionary atonement than Aulén believes, it is difficult to argue that Luther was ever systematic. He wrote scores of volumes of work and yet almost nothing that could be described as systematic.

More recently I have encountered much of this anti-systematic Lutheranism in Gerhard Forde and Oswald Bayer. Steven Paulson, a student of Forde, recalls another theologian quip about Forde that he had "lost interest in doing systematic theology".

Another student of Forde, Mark Mattes's has recently written a book analysing the theology of Jungel, Pannenberg, Moltmann, Jenson and Bayer. He argues:

Theology should not be about providing an overall system, but instead should deconstruct systems. Undoubtedly, it is desirable for the church's catechesis to seek rhetorically a structured presentation of the faith ...[but not] a "God's eye view" of all reality...The most important task in theology is not construction but discernment. All construction needs to subordinate itself to this discernment, and not vice versa.

(pp. 181-182, The Role of Justification in Contemporary Theology)

Against this background it is only really Bayer that he finds limiting theology appropriately:

For Bayer, theology is not done to integrate all knowledge, either theoretical or practical, into an abstract unity, but to limit reason to its proper fields. It is the art of discerning what God is saying to us, not peering into the divine

(p. 149)

In biblical theology I have found Seifrid also upholding this lack of systematisation.

PS In case you wondered, I feel the Lutherans have something useful to say here, but I am not totally with them.

Christus Victor

2011-08-25T11:29:00.005+01:00

In Christus Victor, Gustaf Aulén summarises his strange but seminal account of the three atonement 'theories' as follows:

structure - Classic: continuity of divine action and discontinuity in the legal order; Latin: discontinuity of divine action and continuity in the legal order; Subjective: man as active party.
The idea of Sin - Classic: sin is an objective power and also deeply personalised; Latin: materialized view of sin; Subjective: weak view of sin.
Salvation - Classic: comprehensive in scope; Latin: 'series of acts standing in relatively loose connection'; Subjective: psychological change.
Christ and the incarnation - Classic: God himself had to do work so incarnation is necessary; Latin: less clearly necessary as God is not direct agent in atonement; Subjective: Jesus is only the 'Pattern Man' and divinity of Jesus is downplayed.
The conception of God - Classic: 'idea of God involves a double opposition' as he is manifested in conflict with evil, yet at the same time as the 'all-ruler' so dualism is 'not to be ultimate'; Latin: has less violent form of opposition that is compromised in a rational way; Subjective: no opposition.

He has come under much criticism for the accuracy of his historical theology. I am also thoroughly confused by what he was trying to say in some parts (e.g. on incarnation) and think he is almost wilfully blind to what a proponent of the Latin view would say in response to some of his points.

Interesting reading though, particularly because exponents of Christus Victor don't seem to see its strengths to be the same as those Aulén gets most excited about.

The three forms of the word of God

2011-08-24T00:02:00.003+01:00

I have heard there are three forms of the word of God and Glen recently mentioned it may originate with Barth/Luther. Barth certainly popularized the classification. There is a hierarchy, but they are all bound together. The three forms are:

the Personal/Eternal Word of God - Jesus Christ;
the Spoken word - the present proclamation in preached words and sacramental words;
the Written word - the Bible.

They are linked as:

The Father speaks the Personal Word

the Personal Word speaks the Spoken word (either directly or by his Spirit indwelt ambassadors)

the Spoken word is recorded in the Written word
the Written word serves the Spoken word by ensuring it continues to be heard

the Spoken word serves the Personal Word by ensuring he continues to be heard

the Personal Word serves the Father by ensuring he is heard

On the way from the Father each form of the word is Spirit-breathed by means of the previous, and on the way back to the Father serves the glorification of the latter by the Spirit.

Was Paul a 'together' person?

2011-08-23T11:08:00.003+01:00

Paul was an anxious guy (Philippians 2:28; 2 Corinthians 11:28), but he knew that when he was anxious he had to pass everything to God in prayer (Philippians 4:6).

When he was persecuted he "despaired of life itself", but looking back he saw that was to rely not on himself but on God who raises the dead (2 Corinthians 1:8-9).

Moses doubts

2011-08-23T10:20:00.009+01:00

Listening to: Bob Dylan: Blonde on Blonde

Moses said to the LORD, “Oh, my Lord, I am not eloquent, either in the past or since you have spoken to your servant, but I am slow of speech and of tongue.”

Then the LORD said to him, “Who has made man's mouth? Who makes him mute, or deaf, or seeing, or blind? Is it not I, the LORD? Now therefore go, and I will be with your mouth and teach you what you shall speak.”

But he said, “Oh, my Lord, please send someone else.”

Then the anger of the Lord was kindled against Moses

(Exodus 4:10-13)

Moses turned to the Lord and said, “O Lord, why have you done evil to this people? Why did you ever send me? For since I came to Pharaoh to speak in your name, he has done evil to this people, and you have not delivered your people at all.”

But the LORD said to Moses, “Now you shall see what I will do to Pharaoh; for with a strong hand he will send them out, and with a strong hand he will drive them out of his land.”

God spoke to Moses and said to him, “I am the LORD. I appeared to Abraham, to Isaac, and to Jacob, as God Almighty [El Shaddai], but by my name the LORD I did not make myself known to them. I also established my covenant with them to give them the land of Canaan, the land in which they lived as sojourners. Moreover, I have heard the groaning of the people of Israel whom the Egyptians hold as slaves, and I have remembered my covenant. Say therefore to the people of Israel, ‘I am the LORD, and I will bring you out from under the burdens of the Egyptians, and I will deliver you from slavery to them, and I will redeem you with an outstretched arm and with great acts of judgment. I will take you to be my people, and I will be your God, and you shall know that I am the LORD your God, who has brought you out from under the burdens of the Egyptians. I will bring you into the land that I swore to give to Abraham, to Isaac, and to Jacob. I will give it to you for a possession. I am the LORD.’”

(Exodus 5:22-6:8)

In the both passages Moses doubts.

In the first passage Moses doubts God's power and God is angry.

In the second passage Moses doubts God's good purposes and God promises he will save and then Moses will stop doubting.

Leithart says of Barth:

What does Barth make of the “Name” theology of the OT? It shows that Israel must know God a “second time,” not only as hidden God but as revealed God. To know the name is to know God as partner in covenant (317-18).

The hidden God is the God of power only. His purposes are uncertain.

The revealed God is the God of both power and good purposes.

With thanks to Jim H

Pastoral discernment

2011-08-21T23:17:00.007+01:00

I heard Mark Mattes say in a talk not long ago that the art of distinguishing law and Gospel is not a matter of syntax but of pastoral discernment.

I experienced that powerfully this week when I shared with a friend Philippians 1:6: "I am sure of this, that he who began a good work in you will bring it to completion at the day of Jesus Christ".

It was a verse that had really encouraged me and I hoped would encourage them. They appreciated it, although felt that in my words there was a hint of condemnation for the negative feelings they were experiencing. Fair or not, I knew that they needed to hear the Gospel, but I delivered the wrong goods.

On the other hand sometimes I can fail to realise what goods need to be delivered at all. I can think that someone needs to hear a command when they need to hear a promise. On other occasions I can think someone needs to hear a promise when they need to hear a command.

It is a hard skill, as Oswald Bayer comments:

Luther refers to the discovery of how to make the distinction as a breakthrough...But such freeing does not have the character of an experience that one, as such, can leave behind and that one can keep at the ready and used at will. It remains an art and a skill, a blessing that is experienced when one can distinguish properly in a very tough situation.

(p. 67, Martin Luther's Theology)

There has been a lot of blog discussion recently about the role of the law in sanctification and I have found Dane Ortlund's reflections very, very wise and perceptive. Among them he observes that "ministry context plays a part in how we parse out the gospel [Also] personality--specific, unique, wiring; our own personal bent--plays a role [as] does personal history and background".

Books and blogs loose this pastoral element which is one reason why I am slow to recommend a book that has helped me to a person unless I feel I know them fairly well. One Christian may love a book and another hate it, and that can have nothing to do with its worth.

So I appreciated that when Dave Bish experienced Joe Thorn's book as "more like law" he didn't generalise that to saying that the book was law. To some other people I am sure they will experience it as Gospel.

This is not to say that everything is relative because I do not think words can mean whatever you want them to mean. But if both law and Gospel are personal address then the person being addressed is important as well as the words used. Tone, context and the character of the person speaking are also massively significant.

The Righteousness of God revealed

2011-08-21T22:17:00.005+01:00

Mark Seifrid writes that:

It is clear from these contexts that when Paul speaks of the ‘righteousness of God’ he does not refer to an abstract divine attribute, but to the event of God’s justification over against fallen humanity, which paradoxically is also the justification of the fallen human being.

He sees 'the Righteousness of God' as something that cuts two ways for us sinful human beings. On the one hand it is God's retributive justice in which his wrath is rightfully poured out, but on the other hand it is also his salvific justice in which he saves his people as he promised.

If the book of Romans has as a theme the Righteousness of God being revealed (1:17), then it is noteworthy that the next verse says God's "wrath is revealed", and that "because of your hard and impenitent heart you are storing up wrath for yourself on the day of wrath when God's righteous judgment will be revealed" (2:5). These are all retributive meanings of the Righteousness of God.

But then the turning point comes in the great "but now" of Romans 3:21, where the wrath meets the salvific faithfulness to his promises:

"But now the righteousness of God has been manifested apart from the law, although the Law and the Prophets bear witness to it — the righteousness of God through faith in Jesus Christ for all who believe. For there is no distinction: for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, 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." (3:21-26)

Now, in Christ, the Righteousness of God can have a salvific meaning for us.

I think Seifrid gets the meaning of the Righteousness of God better than any other, and I think that is because he is unwilling to give it an exact definition but is an unusual kind of theologian who can accept the paradox and point to Christ instead of a form of words:

Paul’s language obviously includes the idea of retribution…Any interpretation of God’s righteousness or justification in purely salvific terms is forced into the untenable position of ignoring a significant element of Paul’s language and argument as it appears in Romans…For Paul, God’s righteousness is revealed in the event of Christ’s cross and resurrection. Here the contention between the Creator and the fallen creature is decided in God’s favor and yet savingly resolved…There is no definition of ‘righteousness,’ not even in narrative terms, which adequately accounts for the simultaneity of righteous wrath and the gift of righteousness of which Paul speaks (Rom. 3:4-5; 3:21-26). The Christ-event itself supplies the final definition of the language.

Exactly right!

Quotes taken from here, which is from a great collection of big quotations on the meaning of the phrase provided by various theologians.

Luther's Reformation Discovery

2011-08-21T22:02:00.002+01:00

Bayer writes of Luther:

His "Reformation discovery" happened in the wake of a deeply profound reflection on the sacrament of penance, which had been required of him by the monstrosity of indulgences. At first, Luther understood the priestly word of absolution: "I absolve you of your sins!" as an activity of declaration, which states something already present. The priest sees the remorse, takes it as a sign of the divine justification - the divine absolution occurring already in the one being absolved but unknown to him - and lets this appear as such. He states it or the assurance of the one being absolved. By this means the word of absolution is understood as a judgment in the sense of a statement.

The result of Luther's Reformation discovery was that language is no longer to be viewed solely as a system of signs "that refer to objects or situations or of signs that express an emotion. In either case the sign is - as a statement or as an expression - not the reality itself. In other words, the linguistic sign is itself the reality; that it represents not an absent but a present reality was Luther's great hermeneutical discover, his 'Reformation Discovery' in the strict sense." It can be classified as a speech act that is an "effective active word that establishes community and therein frees and makes certain. It does what it says. It says what it does."

(p. 152, Mark C. Mattes, The Role of Justification in Contemporary Theology)

Freedom

2011-08-21T21:48:00.004+01:00

In the gospel, we are free from the wrath of God [and] we are free for sheer enjoyment of God, the world, and our very lives, which, as created, are interwined with others. Acknowledging God to be God allows us to be free from ambitio divinitatis [ambition to be divine], allows us to accept our humanity, including those aspects of ourselves that apart from God's affirmation of us in our entirety we would find unacceptable. In such trust that God is for us, and from the assurance of God's present commitment to us, the future is promised as a space for the flourishing of life, not only personally but also socially and cosmically. In God's provision, there will be enough for us. We need not be driven by the anxiety that results in greed. Furthermore, the past is not something from which we must flee in shame or guilt, but instead can become an integral part of our histories and identities. We are free from the compulsion of establishin g our own worth and security, because these are in the hands of a trustworthy God. As free, we can be free for others - genuinely open to their needs and concerns as well as the needs of the earth.

(emphasis original, p.184, Mark C. Mattes, The Role of Justification in Contemporary Theology)

Incidentally, someone pointed out to me recently that the first three words of God to humanity in the account of Genesis 2 are "You are free...".

The contemporary non-Christian legalist

2011-08-21T21:40:00.004+01:00

Contemporary men and women are every bit as much "works driven" as their ancestors were, even if they fail to have the proper fear of God as judge. Indeed, they are even more burdened than people in the past for the very reason that they see themselves as their own judges. They carry the weight of establishing worth within themselves.

(p.187, Mark C. Mattes, The Role of Justification in Contemporary Theology)

The task of the church

2011-08-21T21:34:00.005+01:00

The church today is trying to do so many tasks because it has forgotten the task for which it exists: delivering the good news...
The task of the church is not, paternalistically and patronizingly, to do the world's work for the world, as if the world were incompetent to do it, or as if God had abandoned the world.

(p.184-186, Mark C. Mattes, The Role of Justification in Contemporary Theology)

NB that as a Lutheran Mattes is not suggesting that Christians don't do the world's work in their roles as parents, children, employees, citizens, etc (cf. Mark 7:10-13), just that the gathering that is the 'church' doesn't.

Bonnie Zahl on 'Grace and the self'

2011-08-20T11:12:00.004+01:00

Listening to: Jonsi: Go

Bonnie Zahl’s talk on ‘Grace and the self’ is a demanding but rich talk (not surprising for someone educated at Harvard and Cambridge).

These are my notes on what she says, although I add in some of my own interpretation. You can listen to it here. There is also a Powerpoint.

She explains that we all have ‘self-schemas’ through which we interpret our experience. They are: “cognitive generalizations about the self, derived from past experience, that organize and guide the processing of self-related information contained in the individual’s social experiences” (Markus, 1977, p. 64)‏.

So to be “To be schematic (as opposed to aschematic) for a particular trait is for a person to consider themselves on either extremes of that trait, and to consider that trait as personally important.”

For example, to be schematic for weight is to be quick to evaluate food on its health benefits, quick to remember times when your weight was different, to evaluate comments about yourself as to do with your weight (e.g. ‘you’re looking well’), but to be resistant to information which challenges how you feel about your weight (e.g. NHS charts say you’re underweight, but you disagree).

We all have three different selves:

Actual self – Who I actually am‏
Ought self - Who I ought to be (Ought-Own) / Who I think other people think I ought to be (Ought-Other)‏‏
Ideal self – Who I would ideally like to be (Ideal-Own)/ Who I think other people would like for me ideally to be (Ideal-Other)‏

When our ought and ideal selves do not match our actual selves then serious problems result. We despair of ourselves.

Psychology offers three possible solutions to the problem of discrepancies between our actual and ought/ideal selves:

Self-awareness - Helps us to understand the cause of our problems, important but doesn’t fully deal with the problem.
Minimising the difference between our actual and ought/ideal selves - This would solve the problem, but is very difficult. As we are ‘slaves’ with bound wills we struggle to change who we actually are. Lowering the standards is equally difficult. Many ought/ideal selves are written into what it means to be human so we can’t deceive ourselves that they are different. Some ought/ideal selves are social constructs, but it is hard to block out what our society is telling us.
Increasing self-complexity - This means seeing ourselves in different ways (e.g. as intelligent as well as thin). This means that when there is a discrepancy within one schema (‘I feel I ought to be thin but I’m fat’), then others can hold me up (‘but at least I’m intelligent’).

What difference does Christianity make?

1. The law (in Moses, Christ or elsewhere) show us how humans ought and ideally should be. As such it strengthens and heightens many of our ought/ideal selves making the discrepancies between selves more extreme. However, it does devalue many of our ought/ideal selves – e.g. looking beautiful is not as important as our society says.

The law (in the history of Israel’s failure, direct statements of our guilt, e.g. Rom 3, experience etc) shows us how we actually are. As such it further depresses our opinion of our actual selves making the discrepancies between selves more extreme.

The law therefore helps us with point 1 more than secular psychology: self-awareness. The Bible encourages confession. However, it is not enough because it has also made the problem worse (sin is made sinful beyond measure, Rom 7:13).

2. In the atonement of Jesus Christ where we are given a new actual self which matches the ought/ideal self of the law. There is no condemnation for those of us in Christ Jesus because we are who we ought to be and who God’s would like us to be. By the Holy Spirit this new reality is breaking into our lives as the old actual self wastes away and the new actual self grows (2 Cor 4:16).

3. The Gospel also gives us a host of different schemas by which we can relevatise other schemas. I may not be thin, but I am a child of God. I may not have a successful career, but I am human being with dignity made in the image of God. I may not have a functional biological family, but I have the family of the church. Etc.

Lewis on his book The Problem of Pain

2011-08-14T23:08:00.002+01:00

the only purpose of the book is to solve the intellectual problem raised by suffering; for the far higher task of teaching fortitude and patience I was never fool enough to suppose myself qualified, nor have I anything to offer my readers except my conviction that

when pain is to be borne,

a little courage helps more than much knowledge,

a little human sympathy more than much courage,

and the least tincture of the love of God more than all.

(formatting mine, from the Preface of The Problem of Pain, p.xii)

A vast and gracious tide

2011-08-02T23:41:00.006+01:00

I heard a wonderful sermon by one of our elders this Sunday on Jesus' words from the cross, "I thirst" (John 19:28). Linking Jesus' cry to Ezekiel (!) he took us to the Valley of Dry Bones in chapter 37, but then to the New Temple in chapter 47:1-12:

Then he brought me back to the door of the temple, and behold, water was issuing from below the threshold of the temple toward the east (for the temple faced east). The water was flowing down from below the south end of the threshold of the temple, south of the altar. Then he brought me out by way of the north gate and led me around on the outside to the outer gate that faces toward the east; and behold, the water was trickling out on the south side.

Going on eastward with a measuring line in his hand, the man measured a thousand cubits, and then led me through the water, and it was ankle-deep. Again he measured a thousand, and led me through the water, and it was knee-deep. Again he measured a thousand, and led me through the water, and it was waist-deep. Again he measured a thousand, and it was a river that I could not pass through, for the water had risen. It was deep enough to swim in, a river that could not be passed through. And he said to me, “Son of man, have you seen this?”

Then he led me back to the bank of the river. As I went back, I saw on the bank of the river very many trees on the one side and on the other. And he said to me, “This water flows toward the eastern region and goes down into the Arabah, and enters the [Dead] sea; when the water flows into the sea, the water will become fresh. And wherever the river goes, every living creature that swarms will live, and there will be very many fish. For this water goes there, that the waters of the sea may become fresh; so everything will live where the river goes. Fishermen will stand beside the sea. From Engedi to Eneglaim it will be a place for the spreading of nets. Its fish will be of very many kinds, like the fish of the Great Sea. But its swamps and marshes will not become fresh; they are to be left for salt. And on the banks, on both sides of the river, there will grow all kinds of trees for food. Their leaves will not wither, nor their fruit fail, but they will bear fresh fruit every month, because the water for them flows from the sanctuary. Their fruit will be for food, and their leaves for healing.”

Where before there was death, dryness and undrinkable salt water, now there is life, floods and fresh water. But this came at the cost of Jesus going thirsty (John 19:28), drinking sour wine (vv. 29-30), and dying in the place we should have been. From his side "blood and water" spilled out for us to drink and live (John 4:14; 6:54).

Here is love, vast as the ocean,
Lovingkindness as the flood,
When the Prince of Life, our Ransom,
Shed for us His precious blood.
Who His love will not remember?
Who can cease to sing His praise?
He can never be forgotten,
Throughout Heav’n’s eternal days.

On the mount of crucifixion,
Fountains opened deep and wide;
Through the floodgates of God’s mercy
Flowed a vast and gracious tide.
Grace and love, like mighty rivers,
Poured incessant from above,
And Heav’n’s peace and perfect justice
Kissed a guilty world in love.

I'm away for a couple of weeks at a camp, so no blogging here for a while.

With many thanks to Mr Hulse.

Why forgive?

2011-08-02T00:19:00.006+01:00

Why should we forgive those that have wronged us?

Here are a few quick thoughts:

1. Because healing only comes through accepting the harm

If someone has inflicted harm on you, you can war against them either in your heart alone or externally. But even as you try and undo the harm or redress the balance the splinter only slips deeper and deeper into your soul. It is commonly commented that the bitterness or anger will kill you slowly unless you accept the harm done to you (painful as that may be initially), forgive and move on (cf. pp. 188ff, Tim Keller, The Reason for God).

This is deeply true, and is a good reason to forgive, although as clever Kim Fabricius notes

"Counsellors tell us to forgive people lest we become embittered and twisted. Thus forgiveness itself becomes a fashionable therapy, all about me."

2. Because we have been forgiven much

Like the servant in Matthew 18:23-35 we have been forgiven an enormous debt that dwarfs anything we may be owed. We have been forgiven the enormous sin of rejecting our creator and redeemer and instead of an eternity of punishment we have an eternity of glory in Christ Jesus. In that light, how can we not forgive others their minor offences against us? Anything that has been taken from us by a person is only a drop in the ocean of riches we have in Christ. It is not a loss worth dwelling on.

3. Because they have already been offered forgiveness by the judge of all the earth

I am loving reading Romans 1-2-1 with a friend at the moment. Reaching chapter 14 it is surprising that the reason we should not judge or despise our brother (okay, a little different to forgiving) is because God does not judge or despise them. There is no condemnation for them now in God's eyes (8:1) so how can we mere humans condemn them? In fact we should "welcome" those who God welcomes (14:1, 3). Any sin we have suffered is also a sin against God (Ps 51:4) and God has already offered forgiveness to that person. Therefore, we echo God's word of forgiveness to those who have wronged us.

Luther's Christmas sermon on Isaiah 9:6

2011-07-31T23:18:00.005+01:00

to us a child is born,
to us a son is given;
and the government shall be upon his shoulder

Luther preached a sermon on Christmas day, 1531, on Isaiah 9:6.

It is a good example of two great aspects of Luther's teaching: the proper application of the pronoun, and the free nature of the gift.

to us a child is born:

For whom was he conceived and born? For whom did he suffer and die? For us, for us, for us! Always add us! That is why the fathers rightly put the word [in the creed]: “And in Jesus Christ, our Lord.” We should relate this word to every sentence: conceived for us and born for us, suffered for us and raised for us, ascended for us and sitting at the right [hand of God] for us. For [it is no accident that] the words, “I believe in God, [the Father Almighty, maker of heaven and earth],” [are followed by,] “And in Jesus [Christ his only Son] our Lord.” In the same way, this word “our Lord” must be included with all [the following] sentences so they don’t just stand there naked. They are all about us. Christ didn’t need these works. He would have remained a lord quite well without them. Rather, his conception and birth, his suffering and death, his ascension and sitting at the right hand are all for our benefit. They belong to us. Note that well!

to us a Son is given:

it is not enough that he is “born” to us; he is also “given” to us. What does “given” mean? He is a [pure] gift, a present. There is nothing I have to give or pay in return.

He then has some wonderful things to say about the government resting on Christ's shoulders.

even the good authorities are carried on the shoulders of their subjects. But the rule of that Son who was born to us works the other way around: he carries us! We rest on his shoulders; he is our bearer...This is wonderful. Christ’s kingdom is not under his feet...it is on his shoulder...He must pay for us; he must make satisfaction and suffer. He must carry us, not we him. He does not want to be served, but to serve and to carry us. [He says,] “I will give you everything; all your guilt will be on my shoulder.”

Martin Luther on the Word of God

2011-07-31T23:01:00.003+01:00

David Lotz, in his brilliant essay "The Proclamation of the Word in Luther’s Thought", makes 13 points about Luther's understanding of the Word of God and its proclamation (all points are quotations and italics are original):

For Luther the “Word of God” is first and foremost God himself, since God is Deus loquens, the God who speaks.
Holy Scripture shows that God’s Word also takes the form of concrete historical acts of redemption and revelation, since according to the Hebrew idiom a word (dabar) is also a deed.
All God’s words and works find their ultimate purpose and meaning in the incarnate Word. Yet even God’s speaking and acting in Christ would remain meaningless and ineffectual without the oral witness to the Word made flesh, namely, the apostolic preaching or publishing of Christ to the world, the gospel or “good news” of Christ as “God for us.”
The Word of God as gospel is found throughout the Old Testament, chiefly in the form of promises of the coming Christ, but no less in God’s gracious dealings with his covenant people for the sake of the coming Christ.
The Old Testament Scriptures are precious because they are “the swaddling cloths and the manger in which Christ lies” (LW 35.236). Thus the gospel is at once contained and concealed in the Old Testament, and this “manger” remains shrouded in darkness unless illumined by the “star of Bethlehem,” namely, “the new light, preaching and the gospel, oral and public preaching,” whereby the living voice “produce[s] in speech and hearing what prior to this lay hidden in the letter and in secret vision” (LW 52.205).
The Holy Scriptures are, for Luther, rightly understood when they are seen as the record of past proclamation, and are rightly used when the preaching there recorded is continuously transposed into the modality of present proclamation.
The Holy Scriptures are justly called Word of God, the written Word, because they have God the Holy Spirit as their ultimate author: the prophets and apostles all spoke and wrote under the inspiration of the Spirit. Yet the Scriptures are Word of God in a secondary or derivative sense because they always point beyond themselves to Jesus Christ
The preceding considerations clearly show that for Luther the Word of God as gospel, the oral proclamation of Christ and his benefits, is the basic form of the Word.
The preached Word as gospel is the basic form of the Word of God and the creator of the church because it is nothing less than the real presence of the exalted Christ. The gospel is “of Christ” not only because true evangelical preaching has Christ as its object, but above all because the risen Christ himself is the acting subject of this proclamation.
To say that the gospel is the real presence of the exalted Christ is to say that salvation is a present event of preaching, and is thus a “Word event.”
Central to [the "Word event"] is the assertion that faith in the gospel effects a personal union between Christ and the Christian, and that this union is the sole ground of the believer’s acceptance before God.
The preached Word that is the occasion of salvation is the Word of law and gospel... the gospel must be preached together with the law.
The church is the daughter of the Word and the creation of the gospel.

With Ben and Jerry's and Alcoholics Anonymous in the school of evangelism

2011-07-28T02:53:00.006+01:00

In 1978 two friends named Ben and Jerry started selling ice-cream.

In 1935 an alcoholic named Bob met a recovering alcoholic named Bill and gave up alchohol.

We know these facts because both Ben and Jerry's ice cream and Alcoholics Anonymous have some passionate and effective evangelists.

Why?

Circumcision

2011-07-26T23:09:00.002+01:00

Circumcision was a sign of the promise, and that promise was made to Abraham and his Seed. More than that it was promise about the Seed that was to come.

Therefore it makes sense to have such a weird sign. Not to be too crass, but the seed would come through reproduction of Abraham and his descendants.

Therefore, the offence to God in continuing to be circumcised after Jesus had come (and faith in him, Gal 3:25) is in denying that Jesus was the promised Seed. It says you are still waiting for the promise to be fulfilled and looking for another descendant of Abraham.

Can a unitarian god answer prayer?

2011-07-26T11:21:00.003+01:00

How can we influence through prayer a god who from eternity has already decreed what should happen from the beginning to the end of time?

Andrew Murray believed it could only happen by us entering into the eternal counsel of God, and that is only possible if God is Trinitarian.

If God was only one Person, shut up within Himself, there could be no thought of nearness to Him or influence on Him. But in God there are three Persons. In God we have Father and Son, who have in the Holy Spirit their living bond of unity and fellowship. When eternal Love begat the Son, and the Father gave the Son as the Second Person a place next Himself as His Equal and His Counsellor, there was a way opened for prayer and its influence in the very inmost life of Deity itself. Just as on earth, so in heaven the whole relation between Father and Son is that of giving and taking.

("Harmony with the Being of God" in With Christ in the School of Prayer)

As Fred Sanders comments on Murray:

the fact God eternally exists as Father and Son (in the unity of the Holy Spirit) means that there is an opening, a space prepared, for the structure of asking-and-granting that is prayer

Just as the Sonship of Jesus on earth may not be separated from His Sonship in heaven, even so with His prayer on earth, it is the continuation and the counterpart of His asking in heaven. The prayer of the man Christ Jesus is the link between the eternal asking of the onlybegotten Son in the bosom of the Father and the prayer of men upon earth. Prayer has its rise and its deepest source in the very Being of God. In the bosom of Deity nothing is ever done without prayer—the asking of the Son and the giving of the Father.

Crucial for Murray was to resist the urge to think of some will of God that is antecedent to the Son and the Father, or some decision that was made behind the back of the Tirinity, in the oneness of God that is not already triune. There is no such God, so there is no such divine will. The divine will is Trinitarian and is worked out according to the asking-and-granting structure revealed in the Son:

This may help us somewhat to understand how the prayer of man, coming through the Son, can have effect upon God. The decrees of God are not decisions made by Him without reference to the Son, or His petition, or the petition to be sent up through Him. By no means. The Lord Jesus is the first-begotten, the Head and Heir of all things: all things were created through Him anduntoHim, and all things consist in Him. In the counsels of the Father, the Son, as Eepresentative of all creation, had always a voice ; in the decrees of the eternal purpose there was always room left for the liberty of the Son as Mediator and Intercessor, and so for the petitions of all who draw nigh to the Father in the Son.

(pp. 222-223, Embracing the Trinity)

Incidentally, I once heard James Torrance despair of the lack of books on prayer that were strong on the intercession of Christ. Andrew Murray's book was one of the few he thought was good.

Honour in 1 Timothy

2011-07-24T23:22:00.003+01:00

"Honour widows who are truly widows" - 1 Tim 5:3-16 deals with how you honour widows by providing for them financially.
"Let the elders who rule well be considered worthy of double honour" - 1 Tim 5:17-24 deals with how you honour elders by financial provision and respect.
"slaves regard their own masters as worthy of all honour" - 1 Tim 6:1-2 deals with how slaves honour their masters by serving them.

All are in the context of the two verses of the letter that end "Amen", 1:17 and 6:16, which make clear that ultimately it is the Lord Jesus Christ who deserves and receives all the honour.

(with thanks to MT)

John Donne sonnets

2011-07-24T23:00:00.004+01:00

Holy Sonnet 10

Death, be not proud, though some have called thee
Mighty and dreadful, for thou art not so;
For those whom thou think'st thou dost overthrow,
Die not, poor Death, nor yet canst thou kill me.

From rest and sleep, which but thy pictures be,
Much pleasure; then from thee much more must flow,
And soonest our best men with thee do go,
Rest of their bones, and soul's delivery.

Thou art slave to fate, chance, kings, and desperate men,
And dost with poison, war, and sickness dwell;
And poppy or charms can make us sleep as well
And better than thy stroke; why swell'st thou then?

One short sleep past, we wake eternally,
And death shall be no more; Death, thou shalt die.

(HT Colin Gunton)

Holy Sonnet 14

Batter my heart, three-person'd God ; for you
As yet but knock ; breathe, 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 usurp'd town, to another due,
Labour to admit you, but O, 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 betroth'd 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.

(HT Rosemary Grier)

Colin Gunton on God's omnipotence

2011-07-24T22:22:00.006+01:00

It is easy to formulate [God's omnipotence] in terms of an abstract contrast between awareness of our finite power and a supposedly infinitely powerful deity who can, according to a famous definition, will everything except a contradiction. This approach, however, will not do, because if God is simply power magnified to an infinite degree, then God is little distinguishable from a tyrant or the devil. It is better that we remember two things, only apparently in tension with one another. The first is that Paul centres his notion of divine power on the salvation achieved by Christ on the cross and the power of the proclamation of the gospel to reconcile lost sinners to their loving creator. To call Christ 'the power of God and the wisdom of God' (1 Cor. 1.24) privileges a certain way of exercising power. This must not, however, be sentimentalized, as it often is in an era which has become too conscious of excesses committed in the name of divine power. There is much talk of non-coercive love and power, and indeed, the cross is a sign that in one respect God indeed does not coerce. But that is not the whole story, for the resurrection of Jesus from the dead is an act of power of another kind and, although in no way to be divorced from the divine action on the cross, is coercive of reality in a strong sense. As John Donne's great sonnet celebrates, death the coercer is coerced. These two central insights together entail that in some way or other we must hold together the power that is made real in the suffering of Jesus and that manifested, on the one hand, in his 'works of power' and, on the other, in his being raised from the dead.

(p. 16, Colin Gunton, The Christian Faith)

I think that massive quotation is massively helpful. Our doctrine of God's omnipotence needs to come out of the exercise of God's power in both Christ's cross and his resurrection.

William Temple on self-centredness

2011-07-24T22:00:00.006+01:00

When we open our eyes as babies we see the world stretching out around us; we are in the middle of it; all we see is determined by relation of all objects to ourselves. This will be true as long as we live. I am the center of the world I see; where the horizon is depends on where I stand. The same is true of our mental and spiritual vision. Some things hurt us; we hope they will not happen again; we call them bad. Some things please us; we hope they will happen again; we call them good. Our standard of value is the way things affect ourselves. So each of us takes his place in the center of his own world. But I am not the center of the world, nor do I determine what is good or bad. I am not the center; God is. In other words, from the beginning I have put myself in God's place. This is my original sin.

(pp. 37-38, William Temple, Christianity and Social Order, 1942, HT C. Fitzsimons Alison)

That picture that when I move the horizon moves with me, struck me very powerfully when I heard it today.

It is all too easy to see how such self-centredness leads to conflict with one another, and ultimately with our God who will not be moved into our orbit by the force of our will.

... and yet he did move into our orbit according to his own will!

Christ submitted to the judgment of humanity "who call evil good and good evil" (Isaiah 5:20) and was executed as a sinner. After three days the Father could stand the injustice no longer justified his Son by his Spirit who raised him from the dead (1 Tim 3:16).

For a while God let us rule, and the sun stopped shining and earth became unstable... but then Christ was made Lord and Christ and the world is being put right (Acts 2). But because he took that route, rather than the route of shear power, there is room for us in the world put right.

Transforming love and hope

2011-07-23T22:34:00.005+01:00

Commenting on Romans 8 Luther recalls the famous saying of Augustine that "The soul is more where it loves than where it lives".

Steven Paulson explains that if the person you love is on the other side of the country your thoughts, money, time is spent there as much as possible. Inevitably, unless the love ends, the lover and the beloved will move together and the identity of each will be found in the other. As Luther says, "love transforms the lover into the beloved", or as Jesus said "two shall become one flesh".

Paulson, sees Luther then explaining this movement as part of the more significant movement of hope. I'm not sure if that is right, but Luther certainly sees hope as important and performing the same movement.

Luther criticises the philosophers for seeking to understand things by focusing on the present and metaphysics. He sees Paul focusing his attention not on creation itself but on what it is waiting for. Paulson comments:

In the forest a birdwatcher learns to listen for birds more than watch for them. A therapist learns to ignore patient projections and to listen for the true source of pain. A theologian must... learn to hear the creature waiting.

If we want to understand people, and all creation, we need to know what they are hoping for as well as what they love. Because, "hope changes the one who hopes into what is hoped for".

I've met those people who ask you off the bat "what would love to do on your ideal day?" or "what do you love most about your church?" I've also been in interviews where you are asked "where do you hope to be in 5 years?" Those are questions that probe right to the heart who you are so they are questions worth asking people you want to know.

Soon I will be moving jobs and cities. Already relationship dynamics are changing, money is being spent on things I can only benefit from after the move, thoughts are in the place where I will end up. I am becoming what I hope for.

[Tim Keller has a sermon series on the transforming power of the Christian hope]

The Bible in a sentence

2011-07-23T21:51:00.005+01:00

Colin Gunton had a conversation with John Webster "about whether one can say that there is a single leading idea in scripture" and concluded that if there is then "life" has a claim to it (p.x, Colin Gunton, The Christian Faith).

On the flip-side to this, death could also make a claim. In our recent book discussion of Harry Potter we asked whether the real enemy of the series was Voldemort or Death. I thought it was Death! The prominence of life and death in fiction reflects its pervasive presence in reality, which is just what the Bible deals with.

The Bible certainly sees death as the "last enemy to be destroyed" (1 Cor 15:26), and it is there as a threat and then presence from Genesis 2:17 to Revelation 21:8. A novel begins a story in the midst of countless other stories, and ends when that story is over even though the overlapping stories continue. Similarly, other than a bit of scene setting the Bible starts with the appearance of death, and ends when death's story ends. This is despite the eternity of incredible stories on either end. But not only does it frame the narrative of the Bible it stands at the central turning point when the Son of God died our death to bring us life.

Neither death nor life are static realities, but life is creative and death brings things to an end. Both are rich in meaning if understood Biblicaly as deeply relational, in the first instance toward the Trinity (John 6:63; 17:3) but also the whole of Creation.

The Bible has a two-beat rhythm that is initially of life-to-death, but the increasingly dominant rhythm is of death-to-life.

Therefore, if I had to sum up the Bible in a sentence, as one glittering group of people were asked, I would be tempted by JI Packer's "adoption through propitiation" or James Hamilton's "salvation through judgment", but think I'd plump for life through death.

What do you think?

Unity and plurality

2011-07-23T12:20:00.003+01:00

Colin Gunton notes that:

"Much recent thought has turned into a contest between exponents of the essential unity of things and those advocating a fundamental, even chaotic, plurality." (. 13, The Christian Faith)

In contrast to this war between the camps that emphasise unity (particularly Modernists) and those that emphasise plurality (particularly Postmodernists), Christianity sees no conflict. Gunton argues that the Bible has a doctrine of creation that emphasises both the "free and sovereign action", but also a pattern of mediation which gives "space" to creation to be itself.

Interestingly he then ties unity particularly to the work of the Son, and plurality to the work of the Spirit, both of whom the Father uses to create both old and new creations:

"while reference to Christ shows how we may hold the world together in unity, the Spiirit is the principle of reality's variety and multiplicity" (p. 14, ibid)

This makes sense to me particularly as I think of Paul and his teaching on the church. He appeals to the unity we as a body in Christ (cf. Col 1:17 which sees union in Christ in creation), but often sees the Spirit gives a diversity of gifts. Christ's saving work is seen supremely in his one action of incarnation, crucifixion, resurrection and ascension; but the Spirit works in countless individuals in a variety of times and places and ways. Of course each indwell the other, to the glory of the Father in Jesus Christ, so that there is harmony in the Trinity's work.

Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows book discussion questions

2011-07-19T22:45:00.007+01:00

On Thursday I am leading a semi-evangelistic book discussion on Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows.

I am not a die-hard fan, but I do like the books and believe it provides a deeply real way into discussing the Gospel. I am not intending to draw direct links to Christianity myself (except perhaps at the close), but hope to enlarge imaginations so that the Gospel can be comprehended better once it is heard. The many Christians who will be there will no doubt make the significant links for me and hopefully also see the superiority of the Gospel.

I will probably improve it after some sleep, but here is a link to the questions, plus loads and loads of quotations on the three themes I hope to discuss:

trust
death; and
love

I would like to have done remorse as well but there won't be time. Feedback welcome. I will probably edit this post after the event.

Good News For People With Big Problems

2011-07-13T23:13:00.003+01:00

Recently I've really benefited from listening to these MP3s by David Zahl of Mockingbird Ministries. They are unlike anything I've ever listened to and at heart that is because, as he repeatedly says, the motivation behind the series is to look at reality, not just Christian reality.

That works itself out in two striking things about the series:

Christian jargon is avoided and it is dominated by clips and stories from 'secular' culture. 10min clips from films, songs, poems, celebrity biography are all brought in, but not as a mere springboard but as something to really look at. David Zahl really believes that the Gospel has something to say to all of life.
Five out of the six talks are on the some of the darkest parts of our lives: self-involvement, judgment, depression, addiction, and death. It is a course which focuses on the diagnosis rather than the cure, and in some sense that is a weakness. But the strength is that David Zahl believes that the good news comes through the bad news. Unlike most of society and the church, he believes that it is through facing up to reality that resurrection life can be found.

Have a listen and see what you think.

Sorrow in heaven

2011-07-11T14:18:00.004+01:00

There once lived a people who had a profound understanding of the divine; this people thought that no man could see the God and live. -- Who grasps this contradiction of sorrow: not to reveal oneself is the death of love, to reveal oneself is the death of the beloved!"

(Søren Kierkegaard, Philosophical Fragments)

How happy must God have been to tear the curtain of the temple and stop hiding himself from humanity? Yet at the same time he must have been so sorrowful that it was at the cost of hiding himself from his beloved Son dying on the cross.

The tragic lily

2011-07-11T14:10:00.003+01:00

"God takes pleasure in arraying the lily in a garb more glorious than that of Solomon; but if there could be any thought of an understanding here, would it not be a sorry delusion of the lily’s, if when it looked upon its fine raiment it thought that it was on account of the raiment that the God loved it? Instead of standing dauntless in the field, sporting with the wind, carefree as the gust that blows, would it not under the influence of such a thought languish and droop, not daring to lift up its head? It was the God’s solicitude to prevent this, for the lily’s shoot is tender and easily broken."

(Søren Kierkegaard, Philosophical Fragments)

What a tragedy for us to delude ourselves like the lily and think that God loves us because of our loveliness when in reality we are lovely because God loves us.

Sadly though it is a delusion we find everywhere except the Gospel:

"Only in the gospel does love precede loveliness. Everywhere else loveliness precedes love." (Tullian Tchividjian)

A little fairy tale by Kierkegaard

2011-07-11T13:56:00.005+01:00

Why doesn’t God make himself clearer?

In Philosophical Fragments Kierkegaard tells a parable which helps to answer the question. He admits it is not valid analogy (and the more I think about it the more I see its flaws), but he hopes that it will enlarge our imaginations so that we can begin to understand.

"Suppose there was a king who loved a humble maiden" he says. The trouble is that love cannot abide inequality between lovers ("love is exultant when it unites equals, but it is triumphant when it makes that which was unequal equal in love").

The king has three options in his pursuit of his beloved:

He can bring her up to his level. He can shower her with gifts and give her a title. But he will then be concerned that the love will be spoiled by the inevitable doubt in the maiden’s mind “do I really love him or just love him because of his gifts?” Therefore the king will not do this because he wants his love to be happy.
He can keep the inequality in their relationship. He can dazzle her with his glory and beauty while she remains in poverty. She will love him truly and be perfectly happy to be married to such a great king, but the king will not be happy because he wants to express his love and not just receive her love. He wants to glorify her and make her beautiful.
He can come down to her level. He can give up all his wealth and power, not just in a charade but truly. She will then be happy in her love for him, and he can express his love to her by giving her all that he has… even if now all he has to give is himself.

It is because of nature of the God that we have and the nature of relationship that he wants with us that he didn’t just pull us out of current situation, or display himself to his poor bride “in all the pomp of his power, causing the sun of his presence to rise over her cottage, shedding a glory over the scene”. If he revealed himself in a ‘clearer’ way, then it would be a different God and seeking a different relationship than the one who came as a servant.

“But the servant-form is no mere outer garment, and therefore the God must suffer all things, endure all things, make experience of all things. He must suffer hunger in the desert, he must thirst in the time of his agony, he must be forsaken in death, absolutely like the humblest -- behold the man His suffering is not that of his death, but this entire life is a story of suffering; and it is love that suffers, the love which gives all is itself in want. What wonderful self-denial!”

I may not have expounded the parable correctly, so you are welcome to read the chapter online yourself. It was hard going, even having heard a lecturer summarise it, but it is worth marvelling over. There are lots of jewels in the details.

Random reflections from a wedding day

2011-07-10T22:00:00.007+01:00

I was privileged to be at a wedding today. There was a very good sermon, from someone known by some of my readers, with three main points (if I remember rightly):

Marriage will be shaped by the God you worship. Because God is Trinity, God is a God of personal loving relationships, and because we are made in his image, it is other-centredness rather than self-centredness to our lives.
Marriage should be shaped by Christ's love for the church. Firstly, we are forgiven all the ways in which we will sin against our spouse. Secondly, Christ is our model as he self-sacrificially laid down his life for his bride.
Marriage should be a signpost to Christ. Marriage images Christ's love for the church, a wedding the Bride and Groom would like their friends and family to be present at even more than they like their friends and family being present now.

Frankly, I would struggle to imagine a better outline for a sermon on marriage.

I had an conversation with some of the bride's family members afterwards. They explained that they believed that God was impersonal love, but they didn't see the necessity of all the baggage of Christianity. Drawing on the first point of the sermon I tried explaining that to for God to be love he needed to have multi-personal. They disagreed. I was less coherent from there on.

Later on in the day I read the first few chapters of 1 Corinthians where Paul explains that he preached "the message of the cross", and knew nothing amongst them "except Jesus Christ and him crucified". It reminded me of something Tim Keller often asks: "Did your god die for you?"

Did your career die for you? Did your desire for acceptance die for you? Actually, we all know those gods are pretty poor gods in comparison to Christ crucified. "The Son of Man came not to be served but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many", but every other god comes to serve and take our life away from us.

One thing I wished I had also said to this couple, and perhaps even said first, was "did your God of love, love you so much he died for you?"

It genuinely is true that that is where we see most clearly what love really is (1 John 3:16), and who are God really is (1 Cor).

Accountability v. confession

2011-07-08T23:43:00.005+01:00

We are accountable to people so that they can judge us when we sin. We seek judgment because we believe that threats will change us.

We confess to people so that they can forgive us when we sin. We seek forgiveness because we believe that promises will change us.

With thanks to PD.

Better to be sorry than safe

2011-07-08T23:41:00.002+01:00

[The] Gospel provides the assurance that actually produces repentance, forging the pathway to the place where we find forgiveness and redemption. We can finally grasp hold of the truth that it is always better to be sorry than to be safe. The pastoral implications for marriage alone are staggering." (David Zahl)

Seeing in 2D

2011-07-08T15:54:00.005+01:00

Dave Bish mentioned that Tim Keller says that we need to console as well as confront our culture. It reminds me of David Powlison’s observation in his excellent seminars on Biblical Counseling at Bethlehem Baptist Church that a failing of the early Biblical Counseling movement was an emphasis on counselees as sinners to the exclusion of their experience as sufferers.

It helps me a lot to remember both these two dimensions:

We are:

Actors	AND	acted upon
Sinners	AND	sinned against
Under the penalty of our sin	AND	under the power of Sin
Sinners	AND	sufferers
People with misdirected desires	AND	with unfulfilled good desires

We need:

Confrontation and forgiveness	AND	consolation
Mercy	AND	justice
Penal substitution	AND	Christus Victor

Augustus Toplady knew both dimensions when he wrote:

Rock of Ages, cleft for me,
Let me hide myself in thee;
Let the water and the blood,
From Thy riven side which flowed,
Be of sin the double cure,
Cleanse me from its guilt and power.

Any more terms to add?

Dressed for the occasion

2011-07-08T13:00:00.002+01:00

Earlier this year I was involved in the organisation of a close friends wedding. It was a wonderful day celebrating the marriage of two lovely people. Almost everyone in our church was there.

On the morning someone told me that one church member wanted to come but felt he couldn’t because everyone there would be smartly dressed, but he didn’t have a suit. It was too late to find a suit for him, but I knew my friends would like him to have share their day. Amidst a whole lot of other chaos I called him and tried everything I could to persuade him to come.

I explained that it would be a great service which he would be sad to miss. I explained that no-one would judge him for dressing casually, and he could sit in the balcony if he was really that concerned. I pulled out all the stops to try and communicate how the occasion was worth being part of and how he would also be very welcome. Admittedly I also told him to stop being such an overly sensitive fool!

Unfortunately he didn’t come..

The wedding was great and the sermon was one of the best sermons I’ve heard this year. Unusually for a wedding it was on the Parable of the Prodigal Son(s) with a particular emphasis on the celebration and the invitation to it. They went out to “God delights in You” by Sovereign Grace.

Why have I told you this story? I tell you it because my friend didn’t come because he didn’t want to come, or because he didn’t think that they welcomed people, but because he didn’t feel he belonged with the clothes. He would happily have come if someone would have provided a suit so he would look the part.

We often present the Gospel in the same way as I encouraged my friend to come to the wedding. But the Gospel is even better. The wedding we are invited to is great, but like the younger son in the parable we are provided with a robe by our Father so that we genuinely belong.

The structure of sharing the Gospel

2011-07-07T19:31:00.007+01:00

This is an attempt to explain some of the convictions I've gained about the structure of our attempts to share the Gospel with people. Because it is mainly about structure it only skims over the actual content which is the exciting part. It also misses the power which is all found in asking God the Father to act through his Word and Spirit. It also misses the context which should be a loving community of sinners with changed lives! It is also quite hastily written, so please forgive the errors, but feel free to pull it apart in a constructive way.

1. Prologomena - death

As we are both actors and those acted upon the law shows us both that we are sinners and sufferers. So we should connect with unfulfilled desires and with painful experiences as well as with guilt.

There are three ways in which this bad 'news' can be part of preaching:

Direct communication

For example you can say, "you are a dirty rotten sinner" or "don't you feel really empty and purposeless without God?" This may be useful sometimes, but generally it is counter-productive. I think too much direct communication is what has given law-Gospel preaching a bad name.

Indirect communication

To get past people's defences tell stories, make cultural references and make people so think that they end up telling themselves the bad news:

Nathan told David a fable so that he convicted himself (2 Sam 12).
Bizarrely God gave people a law which said "do this and live" for the purpose of increasing and convicting people of sin! The law may well be "indirect communication" par excellence.
Tim Keller paints this beautiful picture of what friendship should be and his hearers are broken because as they apply it to their own lives they realise that it is something they have only tasted and barely experienced.

Kierkegaard in The Point of View for My Work as an Author explains that you cannot communicate directly to one who is suffering under a delusion because "direct communication presupposes that the receiver's ability to receive is undisturbed". Instead you have to "deceive [!] a person into the truth", which means "one does not begin directly with the matter one wants to communicate, but begins by accepting the other man's illusion as good money". To natural legalists the law does just that, but it heightens our illusion to such an extent that is snaps.

Present beforehand

Simeon Zahl comments that "the ‘Law’ is being preached by the Spirit as ‘negative’ experience long before the hearer enters the pew". People carry with them guilt and suffering that weighs them down before they hear anything explicitly Christian.
GK Chesterton said that "original sin... is the only part of Christian theology which can really be proved". It is not essential for the 'bad news' to be declared because it is already known and experienced (Romans 1). As Rob Bell has commented, many people already know an awful lot about hell from their experience

Although I believe in death before life, and bad news before good, I hope this shows that we should not simplistically or insensitively 'lay down the law' at the beginning of any sermon. Instead indirect communication and God's prior alien work can take precedence.

2. The Gospel - The source of Life

The bad news is our point of connection, but in contrast, while there are echoes and similarities of the Gospel in our experience, there is nothing that matches the "love unknown" of the Gospel. Because of this it must be declared and carry the life it promises with it.

The Gospel has three dimensions:

God the Father, God the Son and God the Holy Spirit...

The identity of God is the Gospel. God gave us not just to eternal life, but eternal life with him, which is good news only because he is so lovely.

...acted in salvation in Jesus Christ who was "born of the Virgin Mary...crucified [but] On the third day he rose again [and] ascended into heaven"...

The act of salvation is the Gospel. God did not just symphathise with us in our plight, but did something about it.

...for us.

That God and his acts are all directed in love towards us, and not someone else, is the Gospel.

People often seem to emphasise only one of the three and so risk losing the whole Gospel in the process. It is an useful thought experiment to think through which movements/teachers are strong on which point, and which we are weak on.

3. Our goal in preaching - The living of life

Again, in preaching we can aim for just one of the following and fail to have a holistic view of salvation.

New hearts

Christianity is an affective faith. We love our God and desire to be with him.

New heads

Christianity requires us to think differently about ourselves, our world and our God. We think through what it means that Jesus is Lord over every square inch of this world.

New hands

We go out in words and deed as part of Christ's Gospel mission and in neighbourly love.

Again, it is an useful thought experiment to think through which movements/teachers are strong on which point, and which we are weak on.