The Lord, the giver of life

In the Bible the Holy Spirit is tied closely to lots of concepts, off the top of my head:

• peace
• power
• wind/breath
• love

But he is particularly strongly bound to the idea of life. As the Nicene Creed confesses, he is "the Lord, the giver of life"...

"the Lord God formed the man of dust from the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and the man became a living creature." (Gen 2:7)

"Thus says the Lord God: Come from the four winds, O breath, and breathe on these slain, that they may live...I will put my Spirit within you, and you shall live" (Ezek 37:9-14)

"That which is born of the flesh is flesh, and that which is born of the Spirit is spirit" (John 3:6)

"It is the Spirit who gives life" (John 6:63)

"'Peace be with you. As the Father has sent me, even so I am sending you.' And when he had said this, he breathed on them and said to them, “Receive the Holy Spirit." (John 20:21-22)

"was declared to be the Son of God in power according to the Spirit of holiness by his resurrection from the dead" (Romans 1:4)

"the law of the Spirit of life has set you free...to set the mind on the Spirit is life and peace...the Spirit is life...If the Spirit of him who raised Jesus from the dead dwells in you, he who raised Christ Jesus from the dead will also give life to your mortal bodies through his Spirit who dwells in you." (Romans 8:2-11)

Incidentally, I think that if you read flesh/spirit contrasts with connotations more of death/life than corporal/noncorporal, or even a bad/good, then you are being much more Biblical.

What is man that you are mindful of him?

Dawkins asks:

"Why should a divine being with creation and eternity on his mind, care a fig for petty human malefactions?" (p. 238, The God Delusion)

Maybe he'd be surprised that David asked a similar question:

"When I look at your heavens, the work of your fingers, the moon and the stars, which you have set in place, what is man that you are mindful of him, and the son of man that you care for him?" (Psalm 8:3-4)

The differences between the two include:

• Dawkins has an attitude of contempt, but David has an attitude of wonder.
• Dawkins presumes that if he can't answer the question then it is probably unanswerable, David doesn't.
• Dawkins asks the question of his readers, David comes to God with his question and looks to him for his answer.

If there is no God, why by good?

Richard Dawkins responds to the quesion that, "if there is no God, why by good?"

Posed like that, the question sounds positively ignoble. When a religious person puts it to me in this way (and many of them do), my immediate temptation is to issue the following challenge: 'Do you really mean to tell me the only reason you try to be good is to gain God's approval and reward, or to avoid his disapproval and punishment? That's not morality, that's just sucking up, apple-polishing, looking over your shoulder at the great surveillance camera in the sky, or the still small wiretap inside your head, monitoring your every move, even your every base thought.' As Einstein said, 'If people are good only because they fear punishment, and hope for reward, then we are a sorry lot indeed.'

(p.259, The God Delusion)

It is a fair point, but Lewis explains why Christians motivations to be moral are not necessarily like Dawkins describes:

We must not be troubled by unbelievers when they say that this promise of reward makes Christian life a mercenary affair. There are different kinds of rewards. There is the reward which has no natural connection with the things you do to earn it and is quite foreign to the desires that ought to accompany those things. Money is not the natural reward of love; that is why we call a man mercenary if he marries a woman for the sake of her money. But marriage is the proper reward for a real lover, and he is not mercenary for desiring it. [...] The proper rewards are not simply tacked on to the activity for which they are given, but are the activity itself in consummation.

(The Weight of Glory)

I think there will be varying degrees of reward in the New Creation, but it will be the reward of the joy in the fruit of the works we have done. E.g. if I encourage a brother or sister, or I see someone come to faith in some small way due to God's work through me then I will rejoice in the New Creation in their joy and happiness. The more such works, the more causes of joy I have.

After all. Jesus laid down his life for the reward of "the joy set before him" (Hebrews 12:2), and that joy was that he would have a bride. Paul laboured to plant churches for the reward of his joy in the joy of the churches who would know Christ as a result (1 Thessalonians 2:19).

There is nothing mercenary about that.

The blind men and the elephant

It is such a famous story to illustrate religious pluralism that it has its own wikipedia page.

I've heard two problems with the story which people have pointed out to me:

1. It is told from the perspective of the one man who can see

"In the famous story of the blind men and the elephant… the real point of the story is constantly overlooked. The story is told from the point of view of the king and his courtiers, who are not blind but can see that the blind men are unable to grasp the full reality of the elephant and are only able to get hold of part of it. The story is constantly told in order to neutralize the affirmations of the great religions, to suggest that they learn humility and recognize that none of them can have more than one aspect of the truth. But, of course, the real point of the story is exactly the opposite. If the king were also blind, there would be no story. What this means then is that there is an appearance of humility and a protestation that the truth is much greater than anyone of us can grasp. But if this is used to invalidate all claims to discern the truth, it is in fact an arrogant claim with the kind of knowledge which is superior that you have just said, no religion has." (p. 9, Lesslie Newbigin, The Gospel in a Pluralist Society)

2. The elephant is passive

It presumes that we are on a quest to find a 'God' who is doing nothing to make himself known. Gloriously the truth is that God speaks while the elephant remains silent, pursues us rather than waiting to be found and opens our eyes to see him.

with thanks to my housemate

The Trinity in Proverbs - correct me if I'm wrong!

I've blogged before that I see Proverbs being fulfilled in the NT like this:

• The Author(s) => King => Father => God the Father
• The Recipient => Heir => Son => God the Son => the church in Christ
• Lady Wisdom => Inheritance => Gift of Father to Son => God the Holy Spirit

However, I know I'm swimming against the tide in not identifying Christ as the fulfilment of wisdom (as 1 Cor 1:30 seems to).

There are number of reasons I think that the Holy Spirit, given by the Father and found in Christ (Col 2:2-3), is our wisdom. Partly this is from within Proverbs itself and partly from my understanding of the Spirit's work in believers. 1 Corinthians 2:13 and Ephesians 1:17 would be two NT proof-texts I may quote.

But, I'm probably going to say this in church next Sunday, so please tell me if you think I'm wrong!

Taking flight

Someone once said to me that faith and obedience are two wings of a bird - you need both to be saved.*

Not a good analogy.

I think it would be better to think of faith as the engine of a plane and the good works as the banner flowing behind which show the world that the plane is flying.

...perhaps you could do better though

*an interesting variation of John Stott's analogy for social action and evangelism.

A Brief Instruction on What to Look For and Expect in the Gospels

The chief article and foundation of the gospel is that before you take Christ as an example, you accept and recognize him as a gift, as a present that God has given you and that is your own. This means that when you see or hear of Christ doing or suffering something, you do not doubt that Christ himself, with his deeds and suffering, belongs to you....

If you pause here and let him do you good, that is, if you believe that he benefits and helps you, then you really have it. Then Christ is yours, presented to you as a gift.

After that it is necessary that you turn this into an example and deal with your neighbor in the very same way, be given also to him as a gift and an example.

I recently was asked to suggest a starting place for getting into Martin Luther. The Freedom of the Christian is brilliant, but the same thing is said more concisely and as beautifully in his "A Brief Instruction on What to Look For and Expect in the Gospels". It only takes 5min to read, but if you take it in and absorb it then it could change your life.

• Part 1;
• Part 2.

Keeping ourselves in the love of God

"beloved, building yourselves up in your most holy faith and praying in the Holy Spirit, keep yourselves in the love of God, waiting for the mercy of our Lord Jesus Christ that leads to eternal life." (Jude 1:20-21)

What a wonderful description of the Christian life! Verses to live by...

• We are "beloved". We don't have to earn the "love of God", but it is already ours.
• How do we "keep" ourselves in this love? The answer is remarkably simple, and marked by relationship with God and each other:
• We are built up by listening to God through other people, and speaking to others on his behalf.
• We speak to God in prayer*
• We wait with eager expectation, because the fullness is future.
• The Christian life is marked by Trinitarian involvement:
• The love of God the Father initiates and underpins it all,
• The Holy Spirit is with us in the present,
• The end point is Jesus Christ and the life he mercifully brings.
• Finally, this keeping of ourselves in God's love is not something we can, or should do on our own. Not only is it done by the radical dependence of simple listening and speaking to God (no complex programs, or methods), but even that is a gift of God - as Jude recognises when he concludes with the gorgeous doxology:

"Now to him who is able to keep you from stumbling and to present you blameless before the presence of his glory with great joy, to the only God, our Saviour, through Jesus Christ our Lord, be glory, majesty, dominion, and authority, before all time and now and forever. Amen." (1:24-25)

Glory to God, Father Son and Holy Spirit!

* often we can be simplistic in our prescriptions for Christian life. How many times have we heard "Bible reading and prayer"? It is no more complicated than that, but in Jude the listening/speaking is done in community.

Gerhard Forde on Sanctification

This article from Gerhard Forde on sanctification is typically radical, frustrating and astonishing. In it he argues that sanctification is "simply the art of getting used to justification".

Then he asks "how then can we talk about the progress... from sin to righteousness, old to new?" He explains that there are "two aspects of this transition":

[1] The first is that since we always are confronted and given grace as a totality, we find ourselves always starting fresh. As Luther put it, "To progress is always to begin again." In this life, we never quite get over grace, we never entirely grasp it, we never really learn it. It always takes us by surprise. Again and again we have to be conquered and captivated by its totality....the transition is therefore not a continuous or steady progress of the sort we could recognize. It is rather more like an oscillation between beginning and end in which both are always equally near. The end, the total gift, is constantly and steadily given. But to grasp that we have constantly to begin "again" we never can get over it! It is like lovers who just can't get over the miracle of the gift of love and so are constantly saying it over and over again as though it were completely new and previously unheard of! And so it constantly begins again...

[2] The second aspect of the transition of the Christian from old to death to life, is that all our ordinary views of progress and growth are turned upside down. It is not that we are somehow moving toward the goal, but rather that the goal is moving closer and closer to us. This corresponds to the eschatological nature of the New Testament message. It is the coming of the kingdom upon us, not our coming closer to or building up the kingdom.... Being freed from sin by the unconditional promise means that the totality of it begins to overwhelm and destroy our fundamental scepticism and incredulity, our unbelief. Lord, "I do believe; help me overcome my unbelief?" becomes our prayer (Mk 9:24). We can see light at the end of the tunnel. We begin to trust God rather than ourselves. When Martin Luther talked about these things, he began to talk more about our actual affections than lists of pious things to do.

Under the pressure of the total gift, we might actually begin to love God as God, our God, and to hate sin. Think of it: We might actually begin to dislike sin and to hope for its eventual removal. Ordinarily we feel guilty about our sins and fear their consequences, but we are far from hating them. I expect we do them, in spite of all fears and anxieties, because we like them. Sanctification under the invasion of the new, however, holds out the possibility of actually coming to hate sin, and to love God and his creation, or at least to make that little beginning. It is not that sin is taken away from us, but rather that we are to be taken away from "sin" heart, soul and mind, as Luther put it.

He then explains that to the observer sanctification will look like "spontaneity, taking care, vocation and attaining a certain elusive kind of truthfulness and lucidity about oneself":

[1. Spontaneity] free, uncalculating, genuine, spontaneous. It would be like a mother who runs to pick up her child when it is hurt. There is no calculation, no wondering about progress, morality or virtue. There is just the doing of it, and then it is completely forgotten. The right hand doesn't know what the left is doing. Good works in God‟s eyes are quite likely to be all those things we have forgotten!

[2. Taking care] If we are turned around to get back down to earth by grace, then it would seem that true sanctification would show itself in taking care of our neighbor and God's creation, not exploiting and destroying either for our own ends, religious or otherwise.

[3. Vocation] carrying out one's vocation as a Christian in the tasks and occupations of daily life. We always get nervous about what we are to do, it seems. The magnificent hot-air balloon syndrome seduces us into thinking our sanctification consists in following lists of pious dos and don'ts. That always seems more holy. But it is in the nitty-gritty of daily life and its tasks that our sanctification is hammered out.

[4. Truthfulness and Lucidity] we are not to think of ourselves more highly than we ought (Romans 12:3)...

The talk of progress and growth we usually indulge in leads us all too often to do just that. But if we are saved and sanctified only by the unconditional grace of God, we ought to be able to become more truthful and lucid about the way things really are with us....The grace of God should lead us to see the truth about ourselves, and to gain a certain lucidity, a certain sense of humor, a certain down-to-earthliness.

Random stuff on evolution

I've been listening and reading to lots of Christian views on evolution recently. There are two things that frustrate me about most of them.

Firstly, that they seem to focus on whether generic theism is compatible with evolution. Unfortunately that is comparitively easy compared to the question about whether evolution is compatible with the teaching of the Bible. In my opinion, Alvin Plantinga in this excellent series of articles from 1991 asks the best questions and comes up with the best answers.

I have a soft spot for Alvin, after reading just a few pages of his writing helped me a massive amount when I was doubting the reality of God more than any point in my Christian life. He has helped me a lot again, not least in arguing that there is nothing wrong with being an agnostic on the question:

"Hasker apparently believes that if I reject [The Theory of Common Ancestery] as improbable, then (if I am proceeding properly) I must be prepared to suggest and endorse some other view of the same specificity or same logical strength as TCA. Now at first glance, anyway, that seems wrong. I think Cardinal X will be the next Pope; you think that is unlikely, but don't have a candidate of your own; there is no one such that you think it is more likely than not that he will be the next pope. Is there something wrong with your procedure? I think not."

My favourite quotation from all my reading so far has been from him too:

"accepting the view that evolution is certain is itself adaptive for life in graduate school and academia generally."

Nice.

The second thing that frustrates me is how often Christians retreat to something very similar to the non-overlapping Magesteria Dawkins criticises in The God Delusion. Many Christian responses to evolution seem to fit right into the nature/grace dualism, Schaeffer, and before him, Bavinck criticised (HT Leithart):

“The sharpness of this contrast between natural and supernatural runs the grave risk of dualistically separating (supernatural) revelation from creation and nature. Special revelation should never be separated from its organic connection to history, the world, and humanity. Stated theologically, the religious antithesis should be between grace and sin and not between grace and nature.” On nature/grace premises, “What is distinctively Christian is . . . identified with and restricted to the ecclesiastical; for the world to be influenced in a Christian direction it needs to submit to the domination of the church. The nature/grace dualism also fuels the opposite of world dominaton. . . . Special revelation is not seen as entering into the fabric of the world and humanity but as floating outside and above it....

The Reformation revolted against this worldview. . . . The reality of the incarnation militates against any nature/grace dualism; the gospel is not hostile to the world as creation but to the world under the dominion of sin, the alien element that has insinuated itself into the world. Revelation and creation are not opposed to each other, for creation itself is a revelation. . . . The Reformation sought a Christianity that was hostile, not to nature but only to sin, and had a reforming and sanctifying effect upon natural life as a whole, including the world of culture, society, and politics. In the Reformation the adage came into its own: nature commends grace; grace emends nature.”

When Christ died, you were widowed!

"a married woman is bound by law to her husband while he lives, but if her husband dies she is released from the law of marriage. Accordingly, she will be called an adulteress if she lives with another man while her husband is alive. But if her husband dies, she is free from that law, and if she marries another man she is not an adulteress.

Likewise, my brothers, you also have died to the law through the body of Christ, so that you may belong to another, to him who has been raised from the dead, in order that we may bear fruit for God." (Romans 7:2-4)

Cast of characters:

Woman = Paul's brothers, Israel (and the Gentile church grafted on) [thanks Chris]

First husband = The first Adam, the old humanity, Jesus Christ "in the likeness of sinful flesh" (Rom 8:3)

Second husband = The last Adam, the new humanity, Jesus Christ in his "spiritual body" (1 Cor 15:44)

Law = marriage covenant between Israel and the first Adam, the bond that unites

Spirit = marriage covenant between the church and the last Adam (Rom 7:6), the bond that unites

-----------------

The law was the equivalent of a marriage certificate binding us to Adam. "All that was his, is yours" it declares. All his death and all his sin.

But Adam died on the cross, and if we believe that then we can get remarried without breaking the law. If we don't believe that then we'll keep living in the house of death instead of moving in with our new husband into the house of life which is ours by faith.

The Spirit promises us that we are united to the risen Christ in marriage. "All that was his, is yours" it declares. All his life and all his righteousness.

Notes on Romans 7

"we are not under law but under grace" (6:15)

"slaves... of sin...or of obedience" (6:16)

"you who were once slaves of sin have become... slaves of righteousness" (6:17-18)

"you were slaves of sin...But now...have become slaves of God" (6:20-21)

"we serve in the new way of the Spirit and not in the old way of the written code" (7:6)

"I delight in the law of God, in my inner being, but I see in my members another law... making me captive to the law of sin that dwells in my members." (7:22-23)

"I myself serve the law of God with my mind, but with my flesh I serve the law of sin." (7:25)

"be transformed by the renewal of your mind" (12:2)

"you are a letter from Christ delivered by us, written not with ink but with the Spirit of the living God, not on tablets of stone but on tablets of human hearts." (2 Cor 3:3)

"Though our outer self [lit 'man'] is wasting away, our inner self is being renewed day by day." (2 Cor 4:16)

"if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation. The old has passed away; behold, the new has come." (2 Cor 5:17)

"I bow my knees before the Father... that according to the riches of his glory he may grant you to be strengthened with power through his Spirit in your inner being, so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith" (Eph 3:14-17)

"put off your old self [lit 'man'], which belongs to your former manner of life and is corrupt through deceitful desires, and to be renewed in the spirit of your minds, and to put on the new self [lit 'man'], created after the likeness of God in true righteousness and holiness" (Eph 4:22-24)

"seeing that you have put off the old self [lit 'man'] with its practices and have put on the new self, which is being renewed in knowledge after the image of its creator." (Col 3:9-10)

If the "mind" in Romans 7 does not equal the "new self"/"new creation"/"inner self"/"inner being" of the Christian, then I know nothing about reading the Bible. The man in Romans 7 must be a Christian, but a Christian caught in the already/not-yet... That doesn't mean I don't still have questions!

The power of speech

With a prayer you fed the hungry
With a word You calmed the sea;
Yet how silently You suffered
That the guilty may go free

God does everything through his Word. By his Word he creates out of nothing and reduces evil powers to the nothing from which they came.

Jesus exercised his power over creation and evil through various miracles simply by speaking. At his words demons obey, waves obey and the human body obeys (even when dead).

But for us he stopped speaking... and the waves crashed over him as a result.

But...

"With a shout you rose victorious"

("You're the Word of God the Father" by Stuart Townend and Keith Getty)

The treasure of baptism

Listening to: Andrew Bird: Noble Beast

Do you realise the value of the gift you have been given in baptism?

Do you even realise it is a gift?

Do you make use of your gift, coming back to it again and again to draw from its depths?

Baptism... is not our work but God’s... God’s works, however, are salutary and necessary for salvation, and they do not exclude but rather demand faith, for without faith they could not be grasped. Just by allowing the water to be poured over you, you do not receive Baptism in such a manner that it does you any good. But it becomes beneficial to you if you accept it as God’s command and ordinance, so that, baptized in the name of God, you may receive in the water the promised salvation. This the hand cannot do, nor the body, but the heart must believe it.

Thus you see plainly that Baptism is not a work which we do but is a treasure which God gives us and faith grasps, just as the Lord Christ upon the cross is not a work but a treasure comprehended and offered to us in the Word and received by faith. Therefore they are unfair when they cry out against us as though we preach against faith. Actually, we insist on faith alone as so necessary that without it nothing can be received or enjoyed...

To appreciate and use Baptism aright, we must draw strength and comfort from it when our sins or conscience oppress us, and we must retort, “But I am baptized! And if I am baptized, I have the promise that I shall be saved and have eternal life, both in soul and body.”

(pp.460-461, Martin Luther, “The Large Catechism,” in The Book of Concord, ed. Robert Kolb and Timothy Wengert (Minneapolis: Fortress, Press, 2000)

Why I am an infant baptist

1. Who is active in baptism? Baptism is primarily an act done to the baptised by God through the minister, not an act done by the baptised. In your baptism you are primarily a receiver and not a giver.
2. What is the act? It is the visible, physical and verbal promise declared to the baptised that Jesus Christ died and rose for the forgiveness of their sins so they now have a new identity in Christ.
3. When should someone be baptised? The promise in baptism must be received by faith to be of any benefit but that faith may come later. Faith is always preceded and created by the declared promise, so it is natural for infants to be baptised even if they do not yet believe. Because the declared promise is the cause of faith, it actually is more logical for baptism to precede first faith.

Q: How does baptism relate to preaching? A: Both are declarations of the word of promise, but baptism has a unique role as the distinctly personalised and embodied promise. We need the concreteness that baptism and the Lord's Supper provide and preaching doesn't.

Q: Why do adults have faith before being baptised? A: Faith may be present in the baptised beforehand, but only because they received the promise in a purely verbal form earlier (e.g. through preaching). Faith is not a prerequisite of baptism so as soon as someone is willing to be baptised then baptise them straight away without question. No need to test their fruits, because the promise is how those fruits are created.

I think, adult-only baptism is a symptom of getting the who? and what? questions wrong. I'm sorry for the lack of proof texts, but a quick look through the NT texts on baptism should make the first two answers clear, and the third then just follows from that.

Entering the region of judgement

There is a penalty and curse for sin; and Christ consented to enter that region. Christ entered voluntarily into the pain and horror which is sin’s penalty from God. Christ, by the deep intimacy of His sympathy with men, entered deeply into the blight and judgment which was entailed by man’s sin, and which must be entailed by man’s sin if God is a holy and therefore a judging God... To say that Christ was punished by God who was always well pleased with Him is an outrageous thing. Calvin himself repudiates the idea. But we may say that Christ did, at the depth of that great act of self–identification with us when He became man, He did enter the sphere of sin’s penalty and the horror of sin’s curse

(PT Forsyth, The Work of Christ)

This is a famous quotation from Forsyth. I think it is a little too neat, but I think the concept of Christ entering the region or sphere of God's judgement is a helpful one. In the first place that region is Israel, in the second place humanity, and in the third place all of fallen creation.

Written for us AND to us

Listening to: Bach: Well-tempered Clavier

"The Bible is written for us, not to us"

Is that right?

I understand that it is usually meant to encourage us to take understanding the cultural and redemptive-historical context of a passage seriously, and that is a good aim. But is it a good phrase on its own?

Union with Christ through baptism and by faith means that all that happened to Christ happened to us too. We are not to be equated with Christ, but we are "in Christ", which means that we died with him and were raised with him (although both are to be consummated, esp the life).

All that was said to Christ is said to us. When God justified Christ (1 Timothy 3:16) then he justified us (Romans 4:25). When he was declared by God to be his Son (Romans 1:4), the one in whom he delights, we were also at the same time called his sons.

Similarly all of Israel is in him, but he is also in Israel (it is mutual indwelling - ala John 15:4, or think of how in the OT Israel is God's "inheritance" and vice versa). For him that meant he entered into the region of judgement that was Israel and the church (which will be judged first - Romans 2:9; 1 Peter 4:17). So for him to dwell in us cost him dearly.

But this means that the Gentile church is also "in Israel", as Paul says in Romans 11. Therefore Israel's history is our history, and what was said to them is said to us. We are now called "his people"! This is an amazing privilege because it means we join in Israel's story, which although it is a story of disciplining, persecution and sin, is the one true story with a happy ending. Or should I say, a happy new beginning?

Israel heard the word of God and so experienced all they did for us, as Jesus suffered for us. But their experience is also our experience and all that was said to them is said to us as well. Because there is both unity and distinction within the "unions" of the Bible with Christ and his people, the Bible is written both to them and to us and not just one or the other.

This means when we read passages like Zephaniah 3:17 we should read them as promises to us (and to Christ). Similarly, when Israel is rebuked for their idolatry, we should not just talk about the mistakes they made as if we have somehow advanced beyond them. Of course we should explain that they are our promises, and our rebukes only because of our baptism and Christ's death. But we shouldn't reduce the OT to mere examples for us to learn from. It really is God's word to us.

Evolution and the Bible - preliminary thoughts

Listening to: Sufjan Stevens: Illonois

I'm involved in a continuing discussion with a colleague who is also studying a Biology degree. I am bit at sea in our discussions, and as such probably confirming all her worst suspicions about Christians - although she is a very nice person, so maybe she's being more charitable to me than I deserve. Among other things it has forced me to think over what I actually believe about the Creation Narrative and Evolution - a question I've put on the back burner for years.

I would greatly appreciate criticisms on this marking post for my thinking at the moment, and pointers for other directions to consider. Please don't give it any weight in your own thinking on this matter.

With thanks in anticipation, here are my thoughts so far:

1. Richard Dawkins is right to criticise Christians who close their eyes to the world and do not see the beauty and challenges that science reveals.
2. Richard Dawkins is right to criticise the concept of Non-overlapping magisteria. There is overlap because God is the Creator and still creating. However, there there is not complete overlap between Biblical knowledge and Scientific knowledge. It is best to speak of partially overlapping magisteria which inform one another over their whole range of knowledge. Christianity is rooted in God's historical acts, but science proceeds on the basis of Christian presuppositions (leaning on Polanyi, Newbigin, Torrance, Gunton, Lewis and Plantinga).
3. Quantum theory and postmodernism teach that the answers you get are determined by the questions you ask. There is truth, although only partial truth in this. The theory of Evolution is the answer to the question "how could life have developed in a world where God is uninvolved?" Having said that, it is difficult to know how science could answer the simpler question: "how has life developed?".
4. The philosophy put forward by popularisers of science seems unable to deal with 'the one and the many'. Often it seems to drift to 'the one' and put forward some kind of pantheism where there is no distinction between humans and animals, and our purpose is derived entirely from the whole. Less palatabley it emphasises 'the many' and suggests we are all out for ourselves, each trying to enjoy life while it lasts with no purpose outside of our own existence. Trinitarian Christian theology is much better at doing justice to both the one and the many and relating them together (no doubt Colin Gunton would say something better).
5. Evolution explains how life develops but doesn't explain how life began.
6. The distinction between macro and micro evolution is not in the Bible and not in science.
7. The biggest problem I can see with an old earth from a Biblical point of view is that the Bible seems to teach as foundational that the universe was not always marked by death and decay.
8. I just don't understand how Intelligent Design is any different from the God of the Gaps.
9. John Walton is a gifted speaker. I think he is right that Genesis is more concerned with the creating of function than creating of material, but it would be wrong to say that it is only concerned with the creating of function. Which then leaves the question of what Genesis is saying about the creating of material (not 'how much it is saying about the creating of material').
10. Naturalistic evolution is self-refuting (as Lewis and Plantinga have argued).
11. What does it mean to "know nothing except Christ crucified" in this discussion?

A meal

Listening to: Sufjan Stevens: The Age of Adz (HT Chris)

This is not a great interview with Sufjan Stevens, but I do love his freshness and creativity. At one point he really brings out the weirdness but also the wonder of our faith:

What’s the basis of Christianity? It’s really a meal, it’s communion right? It’s the Eucharist. That’s it, it’s the sharing a meal with your neighbours and what is that meal? It’s the body and blood of Christ. Basically God offering himself up to you as nutrition. Haha, that’s pretty weird. It’s pretty weird if you think about that, that’s the basis of your faith.

[...The cross is] a really morbid symbol you know. It is very grotesque when you start thinking about it. But it’s also beautiful you know, it’s the ultimate sacrifice. And I think it relates to the meal as well because it’s Christ giving up his blood and flesh as food and that then itself is the giving up of his body for eternal life, therefore salvation.

Blogs of quotations

I follow two blogs which just quote books they're reading. They're both excellent.

Here is the latest from Tolle Lege:

“The Word that is preached, taught, sung, and prayed, along with baptism and the Eucharist, not only prepare us for mission; it is itself the missionary event, as visitors are able to hear and see the gospel that it communicates and the communion that it generates.”

(Michael Horton, The Christian Faith: A Systematic Theology for Pilgrims On the Way ,Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2011, 902)

And from Ed Shaw:

'Sometimes the most effective thing you can do to combat temptation is to leave your accountability group for a while and sense a foretaste of the New Jerusalem with your local congregation, singing hymns and songs, eating bread and drinking wine, and hearing the voice of Jesus through the preached Word. As you do so, remember you're part of a transnational, transgenerational, trans-ethnic body of the redeemed. Those singing with you in heaven right now have already been through your struggles. The cloud of witnesses gathers round you, spurring you on in hope. Those round you are likewise groaning for the same redemption for which you long. And before all of you stands Jesus - who was tempted, tested, tortured, and yet is, finally, triumphant. As you perceive his invisible glory, you begin to see what seemed incredible in the wilderness. You will find you'll be able to say, as did writer Flannery O'Connor: "I believe love to be efficacious in the loooong run."'

(Russell D Moore, Tempted and Tried, p.189)

Mike Reeves audio

As it is buried in a post from 2009 I thought I'd let you know that I've done a big update of my ever-expanding list of Mike Reeves MP3s. There is hours and hours of great stuff there for you to get your teeth into and I think it is complete, but let me know if you see some omissions.

Also, to those of you who are already familiar with Mike Reeves, I'd be interested in a little poll of which MP3s you'd most highly recommend, as I promised some people who heard and enjoyed his seminars at New Word Alive that I'd dig up some MP3s for them to listen to!

Means and ends

Recently I posted on how the church is both a gathered and a scattered people. Another way of saying that is that the church is both a means and an end, as Lesslie Newbigin does brilliantly:

The Church is both a means and an end, because it is a foretaste. It is the community of the Holy Spirit who is the earnest of our inheritance. The Church can only witness to that inheritance because her life is a real foretaste of it, a real participation in the life of God Himself. Thus worship and fellowship, offering up praise and adoration to God, receiving His grace, rejoicing in Him, sharing one with another the fruits of the Spirit, and building up one another in love all essential to the life of the Church. Precisely because the Church is here and now a real foretaste of heaven, she can be the witness and instrument of the kingdom of heaven. It is precisely because she is not merely instrumental that she can be instrumental. This is not a merely theoretical matter, but one of real practical importance. There is a kind of missionary zeal which is forever seeking to win more proselytes but which does not spring from and lead back into a quality of life which seems intrinsically worth having in itself. If we answer the question, ‘Why should I become a Christian? simply by saying ‘In order ‘to make others Christians,’ we are involved in an infinite regress.

(The Household of God)

This chimes with what PT Forsyth says about prayer:

"Prayer is often represented as the great means of the Christian life. But it is no mere means, it is the great end of that life."

"A chief object of all prayer is to bring us to God. But we may attain His presence and come closer to Him by the way we ask Him for other things, concrete things or things of the Kingdom, than by direct prayer for union with Him."

(p. 16, The Soul of Prayer)

An old myth: the Pharisees' problem was they were law-keepers

I'm a bit fed up of writing on the Lutheran doctrine of 'the law' at the moment, because you're not supposed to end with the law, only start there. It's getting me down, because the end of the law is Christ, not reflection on the law. I think this may be the last for a while.

Years ago I was struck by someone saying that Jesus never criticised the Pharisees for keeping the law, but actually he often criticised them for failing to keep it. To self-righteous people who thought they were good he held up the mirror of the law and showed them their true selves, in the hope they would give up trying to impress people and God with their obedience, and instead trust in him for forgiveness.

For example:

"Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you tithe mint and dill and cumin, and have neglected the weightier matters of the law: justice and mercy and faithfulness. These you ought to have done, without neglecting the others. You blind guides, straining out a gnat and swallowing a camel!...Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you are like whitewashed tombs, which outwardly appear beautiful, but within are full of dead people's bones and all uncleanness. So you also outwardly appear righteous to others, but within you are full of hypocrisy and lawlessness." (Matthew 23:23-28)

"And as he was setting out on his journey, a man ran up and knelt before him and asked him, “Good Teacher, what must I do to inherit eternal life?” And Jesus said to him, “Why do you call me good? No one is good except God alone. You know the commandments: ‘Do not murder, Do not commit adultery, Do not steal, Do not bear false witness, Do not defraud, Honour your father and mother.’” And he said to him, “Teacher, all these I have kept from my youth.” And Jesus, looking at him, loved him, and said to him, “You lack one thing: go, sell all that you have and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven; and come, follow me.” Disheartened by the saying, he went away sorrowful, for he had great possessions." (Mark 10:17-22)

"Why do your disciples break the tradition of the elders? For they do not wash their hands when they eat.” He answered them, “And why do you break the commandment of God for the sake of your tradition? For God commanded, ‘Honour your father and your mother,’ and, ‘Whoever reviles father or mother must surely die.’ But you say, ‘If anyone tells his father or his mother, “What you would have gained from me is given to God,” he need not honour his father.’ So for the sake of your tradition you have made void the word of God." (Matthew 15:2-6; cf. Matthew 12:2-6)

However, the far greater criticism he has for the Pharisees, and which purveys all the NT Gospels is that they reject him. He is the Mosaic law personified. He is good and lovely, but with a burning intensity that outshines even the law written by the hand of God. As such, people either tried to kill him or ran to him attracted by his goodness and hungry for mercy.

To those already broken by their sin and helplessness who flocked to him in droves, he showed that other aspect of the Mosaic law - mercy and exodus from slavery - when he took upon his shoulders the curse of death we deserve for not living the life he lived.

He fulfilled the law in two senses: he embodied it in his life, and he ended it in his death.

Responding to flaws in your church

• Don't complain - because there is so much you have to be thankful for, and flaws should come as no surprise.
• Consider whether you may be wrong - don't tell me you've never been wrong about something before.
• If you think it really is a flaw then confess - because the church is not 'it' or 'them', but 'us', and because you probably only noticed the flaw because you're so proud of how you've everything right anyway.
• Only then, constructively criticise - because it matters that the Gospel is heard, that we live holy lives, that we respond to great need and that God is glorified.
• But finally, chill out - because it's Christ's church and he will build it, it is God's mission and he will achieve it and the Father will certainly glorify his Son.

[PS bizarrely this post actually came from reflecting on how great my church is, so don't read anything into it :-)]

The King's English

My last post is about as good as I get at blogging, so read that and then give up on this blog and check out the consistently brilliant and Christ-exalting The King's English by Glen.