Theologian of the Cross

The Logic of Faith and the Sovereignty of God

2007-08-02T14:28:00.000-05:00

I love the kind of logic that flows from great faith in the Omnipotent, Sovereign God. It’s a kind of logic that seems irrational and foolish by human standards; but, to those who know and trust in the power of God, it’s the only kind of rational thinking. It’s an amazing thing to behold, and we ought to marvel at it, meditate on it, and pray that our faith might become as great. And there is no better or more powerful example of this “logic of faith” in the Bible than the case of Abraham and his response to God’s promises to him. In particular, what I want to focus on here is Abraham’s trusting God’s promise to provide him an offspring through Sarah.

In Genesis (15:1–6; 17:16–19; and 18:10–15), God promises Abraham, who is then about 100 years old (and whose wife Sarah is 90) but is without a natural son, that he will give Abraham a natural son to be his heir—a son that “will come out of your own loins,” as the Hebrew literally says. And, despite the fact that this was naturally impossible, since “Abraham and Sarah were old, advanced in years,” and “the way of women had ceased to be with Sarah” (18:11), Abraham believes and trusts God, that He will indeed provide a Son for him through Sarah. And so, one year later, “the Lord visited Sarah as he had said, and the Lord did to Sarah as he had promised” (21:1), and Sarah thus gave birth to a son, whom they named Isaac.

But, although the event is recorded in Genesis, what I want to focus on here is what Paul says about Abraham and his great faith, in Romans 4:18–21. Paul says:

18 In hope he [Abraham] believed against hope, that he should become the father of many nations, as he had been told, “So shall your offspring be.” 19 He did not weaken in faith when he considered his own body, which was as good as dead (since he was about a hundred years old), or when he considered the barrenness of Sarah’s womb. 20 No distrust made him waver concerning the promise of God, but he grew strong in his faith as he gave glory to God, 21 fully convinced that God was able to do what he had promised. (ESV)

We see the logic of faith beginning in verse 19. Abraham “considered” his situation. But what was there to evaluate? Ninety-year-old women can’t have babies! They’re barren—infertile! Yet Abraham, although fully cognizant of this impossibility, remained “fully convinced that God was able to do what he had promised.” In fact, his faith actually grew stronger as the situation became more obviously impossible. In the reasoning of the natural (i.e., non-Christian) man, who does not know the character of God, conception for Sarah is an absolute impossibility. The logic of faith, however, always holds as an unshakeable and overriding premise the omnipotence and faithfulness of God, so that no amount of apparent evidence to the contrary matters. If God has promised something, he will never fail.

The object of Abraham’s faith, moreover, was God himself. Abraham believed the promise because he recognized the ability and the trustworthiness of the promisor. And, by trusting in God, Abraham was glorifying God (v. 20). This is not because Abraham was making God glorious or adding to God’s glory (blasphemy!), but because Abraham was showing God to be what he really is. He was acknowledging the reality of God’s character and the reality of the situation. Abraham acknowledged the truth that he himself was totally unable to produce a son and heir and that only God—“who gives life to the dead and calls into existence the things that do not exist” (v. 17)—was able to do it and would do it.

Oh, that we might live according to the logic of faith as Abraham did! May God grant us such a faith.

Being at Cambridge

2007-05-18T10:41:00.000-05:00

So, here I am, in Cambridge, England, at Corpus Christi College, sitting in the room of the Corpus junior organ scholar (who usually conducts the choir here [of which I am a member]). There's a choir rehearsal scheduled for 5:10 today. I unintentionally got here early, however, thinking (as I have done once before) that the rehearsal was at 4:30 (which is, in fact, the time of the choir's Wednesday and Sunday evening rehearsals).

The Cambridge academic year is now nearly over, it now being almost halfway through the third and final term (Easter Term). I will leave England to return to America on June 18.

I've learned a lot during my time studying at Cambridge—about myself, about history (my major), about theology and biblical studies, about philosophy.

On Being Punched in the Face

2007-04-20T08:25:00.000-05:00

Last Monday, I was randomly punched in the face by a passing stranger. Having gone to a nearby convenience store to buy some cheap soda, a friend and I were walking back to Homerton College when one of two young men who were walking toward us sucker punched me in the chin/jaw as he passed by me. It was totally unexpected and seemed completely random. I was talking to my friend when it happened, and so all I saw was a blur before the punch connected. I continued walking, looking over my shoulder every few seconds to see whether the guy had turned around. He had; and there was tension for several seconds as my friend also turned around and briefly exchanged words with the man. I did not turn but kept walking, hoping to avoid any further confrontation with the man. Although the blow was delivered with enough force that I would call it a punch, it did no visible damage to me save producing two small cuts on the inside of my lower lip and a mild ache in my jaw. The whole ordeal, including events leading up to it and my and my friend's reactions to it, was uncanny and thought-provoking. It presented me with an interesting ethical dilemma that I think will be valuable and useful to draw on in the future. It was the most literal case of "turning the other cheek" I have ever faced.

In retrospect, I think that my response to the man's punching me was, although not a positively bad response, not the best response. I did not attempt to respond to the man's hitting me. Rather, acting out of prudence, hoping to avoid any further confrontation, I continued walking. There was nothing at stake, I thought; and so, as long as the man did not attack or threaten me further, for me to respond by attacking him would have been senseless and dangerous. Basically, then, I responded with inaction.

Christ did not command us, however, simply to not hate our enemies. His command, of course, was to love our enemies (Matt 5:44ff). Consider Jesus' words concerning how we should treat our enemies (i.e., those who hate us and persecute us):

38 You have heard that it was said, 'An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth.' 39 But I say to you, Do not resist the one who is evil. But if anyone slaps you on the right cheek, turn to him the other also. . . . 43 You have heard that it was said, ‘You shall love your neighbor and hate your enemy.’ 44 But I say to you, Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, 45 so that you may be sons of your Father who is in heaven. For he makes his sun rise on the evil and on the good, and sends rain on the just and on the unjust. 46 For if you love those who love you, what reward do you have? Do not even the tax collectors do the same? 47 And if you greet only your brothers, what more are you doing than others? Do not even the Gentiles do the same? 48 You therefore must be perfect, as your heavenly Father is perfect. (Matt 5:38–39, 43–48)

Jesus is clear that we should actively love our enemies. But this raises a question in my mind regarding the situation in question: How should the particular motive(s) of the "persecutor" affect the Christian's response to persecution? In my situation, the man who punched me gave no indication as to his motive. A random stranger, he certainly didn't know my religious beliefs and so couldn't have been persecuting me for being a Christian. As far as I could tell, I was attacked neither "for righteousness' sake" nor "on account of [Jesus'] name" (Matt 5:10; John 15:21). How, then, (if at all) does this affect the situation?

The situation seems even clearer in light of Paul's words in Romans 12:

17 Repay no one evil for evil, but give thought to do what is honorable in the sight of all. 18 If possible, so far as it depends on you, live peaceably with all. 19 Beloved, never avenge yourselves, but leave it to the wrath of God, for it is written, "Vengeance is mine, I will repay, says the Lord." 20 To the contrary, "if your enemy is hungry, feed him; if he is thirsty, give him something to drink; for by so doing you will heap burning coals on his head." 21 Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good. (Rom 12:17–21)

Paul, too, would say that I did not go far enough in responding to the young man's actions. I acted, as I've said, out of prudence to avoid further confrontation. Does this satisfy Paul's command to believers, "If possible, as far as it depends on you, live peaceably with all"? It seems to—on the surface, at least. I certainly did not avenge myself (v. 19). In fact, I did not even experience a significant temptation to retaliate violently. Although I was not overcome by evil, I did not take positive action to "overcome evil with good" (v. 21). Perhaps there was little (effective) I could have done. Nevertheless, I can't help but think that I should have tried to talk to the man, and tell him that Jesus (and I) loves him.

Travel Journal: Edinburgh, Scotland

2007-03-29T17:03:00.000-05:00

After about five days in Ireland (Dublin, Kilkenny, and Limerick), I departed there earlier today for Edinburgh, Scotland, where I arrived at about 6:00 p.m. (GMT). Having been to Edinburgh once before, I feel like I've already become somewhat familiar with it (or made its acquaintance, at least), and I feel like this stay (which will probably last for tomorrow and part of the next day) will be very fun and profitable.

The highlight of my stay in Ireland was undoubtedly my visit to the Cliffs of Mohr, a magnificent stretch of coastline in Southeastern Scotland. Such indescribable natural beauty powerfully impressed upon me the glory of God, and such marvels are powerful testaments to Paul's arguement in Romans 1.

After Edinburgh, I plan to go to Glasgow. Then, I intend to go to Inverness, which will serve as a base from which to explore the magnificent Scottish Highlands.

The Power of Christ's Death

2007-03-24T09:05:00.000-05:00

Second term (Lent term) has now ended and a month-long break has begun before third term (Easter term) begins. Later today, I will be flying to Dublin, Ireland, to travel for a couple weeks with a friend. I leave you with words from J. I. Packer.

In Knowing God, J. I. Packer, reflecting on Romans 8:32, elucidates the verse's implications for the immediate, direct efficacy and sufficiency of Christ's death to produce salvation. That is, Christ's death (and resurrection, presumably) was and is directly and inherently salvific for the believer (i.e., everyone for whom Christ died).

Note . . . what Paul implies about the effectiveness of our redemption. 'God,' he says, 'gave him up for us all'—and this fact is itself the guarantee that 'all things' will be given us, because they all come to us as the direct fruit of Christ's death. We have . . . said that the greatness of God's giving on the cross makes his further giving (if the words may be allowed) natural and likely, but what we must note now is that the unity of God's saving purpose makes such further giving necessary, and therefore certain.

At this point the New Testament view of the cross involves more than is sometimes realized. That the apostolic writers present the death of Christ as the ground and warrant of God's offer of forgiveness, and that we enter into forgiveness through repentance and faith in Christ, will not be disputed. But does this mean that, as a loaded gun is only potentially explosive, and an act of pulling the trigger is needed to make it go off, so Christ's death achieved only a possibility of salvation, needing an exercise of faith on our part to trigger it off and make it actual?

If so, then it is not strictly Christ's death that saves us at all, any more than it is loading the gun that makes it fire: strictly speaking, we save ourselves by our faith, and for all we know, Christ's death might not have saved anyone, since it might have been the case that nobody believed the gospel. But that is not how the New Testament sees it. The New Testament view is that the death of Christ has actually saved 'us all'—all, that is to say, whom God foreknew, and has called and justified, and will in due course glorify. For our faith, which from the human point of view is the means of salvation, is from God's point of view part of salvation, and is as directly and completely God's gift to us as is the pardon and peace of which faith lays hold.

Psychologically, faith is our own act, but the theological truth about it is that it is God's work in us: our faith, and our new relationship with God as believers, and all the divine gifts that are enjoyed within this relationship, were all alike secured for us by Jesus' death on the cross. For the cross was not an isolated event; it was, rather, the focal point in God's eternal plan to save his elect, and it ensured and guaranteed first the calling (the bringing to faith, through the gospel in the mind and the Holy Spirit in the heart), and then the justification, and finally the glorification, of all for whom, specifically and personally, Christ died. (264–65)

How New Is the "New Perspective on Paul"?

2007-03-13T04:35:00.000-05:00

The advent of the "new perspective" on Paul (NPP) marked a major shift in the study of the apostle Paul and his theology. In general theologians and biblical scholars associated with the NPP hold that, contra Luther and the entire Reformation tradition, first-century Judaism was not a religion of legalistic works-righteousness, but one that called for obedient action—to borrow a phrase from Paul—"in view of God's mercies" (that is, in response to God's grace in making the Jews his chosen people and establishing a covenant with them). Consequently, the NPP contends (again, contra the Lutheran and Reformed views) that justification by faith is not the center of Paul's theology but only a pragmatic tactic to facilitate the Gentile mission. For, if Judaism is not a religion of works-righteousness, then Jews hardly need to hear the message of justification by faith, whereas that message makes perfect sense if it was directed solely to the Gentiles.

One of the most important corollary contentions of NPP advocates is their understanding of the general concept of the law and specifically Paul's crucial phrase "works of the law" (Gal 2:16; Rom 3:20, 28; etc.). "We know," Paul says in Galatians 2:16, "that a person is not justified by works of the law but through faith in Jesus Christ, so we also have believed in Christ Jesus, in order to be justified by faith in Christ and not by works of the law, because by works of the law no one will be justified" (ESV). Here, and in other places, NPP advocates have limited Paul’s usage of “works of the law” to only “ceremonial observance” or “works done in a legalistic spirit” or “Jewish identity markers.” Such limits would mean that Paul is not denying that justification comes through works done in obedience to the law, but only certain kinds of works or works done in the wrong spirit. But almost five centuries before the NPP, sixteenth-century reformer Martin Luther wrote against the same sort of view of the meaning of "works of the law" as the one held by modern NPP advocates. And, against those who hold such a view, Luther has strong and stinging words:

But they are in the habit of trying to get round Paul here, by making out that what he calls works of the law are the ceremonial works, which since the death of Christ are deadly. I reply that this is the ignorant error of Jerome, which in spite of Augustine’s strenuous resistance—God having withdrawn and let Satan prevail—has spread out into the world and persisted to the present day. It has consequently become impossible to understand Paul, and the knowledge of Christ has been inevitably obscured. Even if there had never been any other error in the Church, this one alone was pestilent and potent enough to make havoc of the gospel, and unless a special sort of grace has intervened, Jerome has merited hell rather than heaven for it—so little would I dare to canonize him or call him a saint. It is, then, not true that Paul is speaking only about ceremonial laws; otherwise, how can the argument be sustained by which he concludes that all men are wicked and in need of grace? For someone could say: Granted we are not justified by ceremonial works, yet a person might be justified by the moral works of the Decalogue, so you have not proved by your syllogism that grace is necessary for these. Besides, what is the use of a grace that liberates us only from ceremonial works, which are the easiest of all, and which can at the lowest be extorted from us by fear or self-love? It is, of course, also untrue that ceremonial works are deadly and unlawful since the death of Christ; Paul never said that, but he says they do not justify and are of no advantage to a man in the sight of God as regards setting him free from ungodliness. Once this is accepted, anyone may do them without doing anything unlawful—just as eating and drinking are works that do not justify or commend us to God [I Cor. 8:8], yet a man does nothing unlawful when he eats and drinks.

They are also wrong in that the ceremonial works were as much commanded and required in the old law as was the Decalogue, so that the latter was neither more nor less important than the former. And as Paul is speaking primarily to Jews, as he says in Romans 1[:16], no one need doubt that by works of the law he means all the works of the entire law. For it would be meaningless to call them works of the law if the law were abrogated and deadly, since an abrogated law is no longer a law, as Paul very well knew. He is therefore not speaking of an abrogated law when he speaks of the works of the law, but of the law that is valid and authoritative. Otherwise, how easy it would have been for him to say: 'The law itself is now abrogated!'—then we should have had a clear and unambiguous declaration.

But let us appeal to Paul himself as his own best interpreter, where he says in Galatians 3[:10]: 'All who rely on works of the law are under a curse; for it is written, "Cursed be everyone who does not abide by all things written in the Book of the Law, and do them."' You see here, where Paul is making the same point in the same words as in the epistle to the Romans, that every time he mentions the works of the law he is speaking of all the laws written in the Book of the Law. And what is more remarkable, he actually quotes Moses, who curses those who do not abide by the law [Deut. 27:26], although he himself preaches that those are accursed who rely on the works of the law. He thus makes two contrary statements, the one being negative, the other affirmative. He can do this, however, because the fact is that in the sight of God those who are most devoted to the works of the law are farthest from fulfilling the law, because they lack the Spirit that is the true fulfiller of the law, and while they may attempt it by their own powers, they achieve nothing. So both statements are true and both types are accursed—those who do not abide by the law, as Moses puts it, and those who rely on works of the law, as Paul puts it; for they each lack the Spirit, without whom the works of the law, no matter how much they are done, do not justify, as Paul says [Rom. 3:20], and therefore they do not abide in all the things that are written, as Moses says [Deut. 27:26].

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

It can be taken as settled, then, that by works of the law Paul means not simply ceremonial works, but all the works of the law in its entirety. With this it will also be settled that everything connected with the works of the law is condemned if it is without the Spirit.

This passage is striking in its addressing almost the same views now generally held by NPP advocates. Indeed, if I didn't already know that Martin Luther wrote it, I might think that it was written by some modern writer familiar with the work of E. P. Sanders or James Dunn. It's as if Luther had read Sanders and Dunn themselves.

Although Sanders may have gone further than anyone before him in analyzing and characterizing first-century Judaism, his—and, subsequently, James Dunn's and N. T. Wright's—subsequent conclusions about Paul's theology are neither unprecedented nor world-shaking. Indeed, it seems that the "new perspective" on Paul is not a fundamentally new platform but an elaboration on and adaptation of an old one.

Catholic Church: What's Going on, Here?

2007-03-07T09:31:00.000-06:00

Does the following text taken from the website of St. Patrick's Cathedral in New York city seem disturbing to anyone? Strange, but it reminds me of a certain other practice of the Catholic church, say, about 500 years ago . . .

Mass Enrollments

Mass Requests, Mass Enrollment Societies, Novenas and other Mass Intentions
The Mass has been celebrated in the Cathedral for over 125 years. Today at Saint Patrick’s Cathedral the Mass is celebrated at least seven times daily and eleven times on Holy Days. Because of the Mass’ infinite value – a memorial of the death and resurrection of the Lord, it is a time honored Catholic tradition to have Masses said in honor of a particular person and to provide a Mass Cards to comfort relatives, friends and loved ones. The Cathedral offers three options to have Masses offered for loved ones, or friends either living or deceased.

Mass Requests

Announced Masses:
You can request an announced Mass to be said for a living or deceased family member, friend or loved one by coming in person to the Parish House located at 14 East 51st Street and completing a request form. Suggested offering for these Masses is a minimum of $20 for each Mass.
Unannounced Masses:
You can also request an unannounced Mass to be said for a living or deceased family member, friend or loved one by coming in person to the Parish House located at 14 West 51st Street and completing a request form. Suggested offering for these Masses is a minimum of $10 for each Mass.
Mass Enrollment Societies
- Unannounced Masses Only
Cathedral Mass Enrollment Society:
The Cathedral offers Mass Cards to those who wish to pray for loved ones, living or deceased, by enrolling them in the Cathedral Mass Enrollment Society. You do not have to personally visit the Cathedral but rather these Mass Cards can be sent by mail to you in advance, for future use. Minimum offering per Mass enrollment is $10 per Mass or $30 for a set of three Mass Cards. Members of the Cathedral Mass Enrollment Society, both living and deceased, are remembered collectively in a monthly Mass celebrated the first Sunday of each month for one year. Names are not announced individually. You can request enrollment in the Cathedral Mass Enrollment Society by calling 212-355-2749 x 407. The Cathedral will send the set of three beautiful Mass Cards to you in advance, which you can mail directly to loved ones when you wish to have someone remembered through enrollment in the Mass Enrollment Society. You should forward the name of the person you are enrolling, using the instruction card included with the three Mass Cards mailed to you whenever you wish to enroll someone. Please indicate if the person enrolled is living or deceased.
Our Lady of Guadalupe Spiritual Enrollment:
Similar to the Cathedral Mass Enrollment Society, Our Lady of Guadalupe Spiritual Enrollment Society remembers your intentions by placing each intention received in a box before the image of Our Lady of Guadalupe in the Sacred Heart Altar. All such intentions will be entrusted to Our Lady of Guadalupe honoring her as Mary, the Patroness of the Americas. Suggested offering for these intentions is $10 per enrollment You can request enrollment in Our Lady of Guadalupe Spiritual Enrollment by calling 212-355-2749 x 407.
Lady Chapel Memorial Rosary Confraternity Enrollment:
His Holiness Pope John Paul II chose the recitation of the Rosary for his prayer service in the Cathedral of Saint Patrick on the Feast of the Rosary in October 1995. To carry forward this over a century old tradition of praying the Rosary, the Cathedral has established The Memorial Rosary Confraternity of the Lady Chapel. By enrolling our beloved deceased members, colleagues and friends in The Memorial Rosary Confraternity of the Lady Chapel, we entrust them to the mercy of God through the intersession of the Blessed Virgin Mary. All members are prayed for in every Rosary service held in the Lady Chapel. Everyone enrolled is also remembered in a special way at Masses on the liturgical feasts of the Blessed Virgin Mary, that all may attain the peace and joy of eternal life in heaven. Suggested offering for these intentions is $25 per enrollment You can request enrollment in the Lady Chapel Memorial Rosary Confraternity Enrollment by calling 212-355-2749 x 407.
Novenas:

Novenas at Christmas, Easter, Mother’s Day and Father’s Day:

The Cathedral offers enrollment for novenas to remember loved ones and friends at the above holidays. For more information regarding enrollment in these seasonal novenas, please visit or call the Parish House: 212-753-2261. Suggested offering for the nine day novenas is $10 per enrollment.

"You might say that some of his forays into philosophy are at best sophomoric, but that would be unfair to sophomores": Plantinga Dismantles Dawkins' "Delusion"

2007-03-05T09:59:00.001-06:00

Alvin Plantinga, one of the most important and influential (Christian) philosophers living today, has written a review of Richard Dawkins' most recent book, The God Delusion. In it, Plantinga easily and persuasively stingingly Dawkins' arguments in the book, but he also does something larger and more important: he argues against naturalism, the philosophical presupposition on which the very foundations of Dawkins' many atheists' rest.

Now despite the fact that this book is mainly philosophy, Dawkins is not a philosopher (he's a biologist). Even taking this into account, however, much of the philosophy he purveys is at best jejune. You might say that some of his forays into philosophy are at best sophomoric, but that would be unfair to sophomores; the fact is (grade inflation aside), many of his arguments would receive a failing grade in a sophomore philosophy class. This, combined with the arrogant, smarter-than-thou tone of the book, can be annoying. I shall put irritation aside, however and do my best to take Dawkins' main argument seriously.

After running circles around Dawkins' primary arguments indeed, as Plantinga asserted earlier, the word jejune characterizes aptly exposes the deeper and more fundamental flaw in Dawkins' worldview: his biased and question-begging naturalistic presuppositions. "The real problem here, obviously," says Plantinga, "is Dawkins' naturalism, his belief that there is no such person as God or anyone like God. That is because naturalism implies that evolution is unguided." The problem, here, is that this leads to a hopeless skepticism and a plunge into epistemological Sheol. More specifically, the naturalist/evolutionist has no good reason to think that his senses and cognitive faculties are capable of perceiving true reality or are able to provide him with true beliefs. For, because evolution is effected by means of (unguided) natural selection, a process which only fosters and perpetuates traits affecting survivability, but which has no reason to produce traits or faculties that produce true belief about reality. As Plantinga explains:

Toward the end of the book, Dawkins endorses a certain limited skepticism. Since we have been cobbled together by (unguided) evolution, it is unlikely, he thinks, that our view of the world is overall accurate; natural selection is interested in adaptive behavior, not in true belief. But Dawkins fails to plumb the real depths of the skeptical implications of the view that we have come to be by way of unguided evolution. We can see this as follows. Like most naturalists, Dawkins is a materialist about human beings: human persons are material objects; they are not immaterial selves or souls or substances joined to a body, and they don't contain any immaterial substance as a part. From this point of view, our beliefs would be dependent on neurophysiology, and (no doubt) a belief would just be a neurological structure of some complex kind. Now the neurophysiology on which our beliefs depend will doubtless be adaptive; but why think for a moment that the beliefs dependent on or caused by that neurophysiology will be mostly true? Why think our cognitive faculties are reliable?

From a theistic point of view, we'd expect that our cognitive faculties would be (for the most part, and given certain qualifications and caveats) reliable. God has created us in his image, and an important part of our image bearing is our resembling him in being able to form true beliefs and achieve knowledge. But from a naturalist point of view the thought that our cognitive faculties are reliable (produce a preponderance of true beliefs) would be at best a naïve hope. The naturalist can be reasonably sure that the neurophysiology underlying belief formation is adaptive, but nothing follows about the truth of the beliefs depending on that neurophysiology. In fact he'd have to hold that it is unlikely, given unguided evolution, that our cognitive faculties are reliable. It's as likely, given unguided evolution, that we live in a sort of dream world as that we actually know something about ourselves and our world.

"If this is so," says Plantinga,

the naturalist has a defeater for the natural assumption that his cognitive faculties are reliable—a reason for rejecting that belief, for no longer holding it. (Example of a defeater: suppose someone once told me that you were born in Michigan and I believed her; but now I ask you, and you tell me you were born in Brazil. That gives me a defeater for my belief that you were born in Michigan.) And if he has a defeater for that belief, he also has a defeater for any belief that is a product of his cognitive faculties. But of course that would be all of his beliefs—including naturalism itself. So the naturalist has a defeater for naturalism; natural- ism, therefore, is self-defeating and cannot be rationally believed.

So a broader conclusion is that one can't rationally accept both naturalism and evolution; naturalism, therefore, is in conflict with a premier doctrine of contemporary science. People like Dawkins hold that there is a conflict between science and religion because they think there is a conflict between evolution and theism; the truth of the matter, however, is that the conflict is between science and naturalism, not between science and belief in God.

Finally, Plantinga concludes: "The God Delusion is full of bluster and bombast, but it really doesn't give even the slightest reason for thinking belief in God mistaken, let alone a 'delusion.' " Ouch.

The Supremacy of God in the Life of the Mind

2007-02-12T09:17:00.001-06:00

In this address given at Northwestern College (here excerpted; full text here), John Piper exhorts the students and faculty of the college to make God and His glory the active and chief end of academics and the center and focus of all the pursuits of their minds.

I come to you today with a burden for the supremacy of God in the life of the mind. I speak to you as people who are called for a season of your life to engage in the work of the mind. I speak to students and faculty and administration concerning this tremendously crucial matter, because I believe it's your calling in this community to cultivate in each other the ability and the habit and the desire to read with understanding, and think with accuracy, and observe with discernment, and research with thoroughness, and evaluate with fairness, and memorize with discipline, and write with clarity, and speak with cogency, and perform with excellence, and hate what is evil, and love what is good, and feel with fitting passions all the beauty and goodness and truth of our great God and his amazing world.

I sense that in the humanities and the natural sciences and social sciences and the arts God and his Word are often taken for granted. If someone queries why concrete Biblical truth is not more explicitly wrestled with in relation to the tenets of literature or sociology or history or economics or psychology or speech or math or chemistry or physics or theater or physical education or political science—if someone queries why the Biblical vision of reality has such a low profile, the answer is too often, “We take that for granted. That’s our working assumption while we deal with the world of contemporary thought and practice. That’s the foundation on which we build.”

What I want to say this morning is that God does not like to be taken for granted. God does not want to be a silent assumption. Speaking of God as the foundation for the life of the mind is a wholly inadequate metaphor. That he is! O, yes, and a great and deep and unshakable foundation he is. But foundations are invisible, and are seldom thought about in the daily life of the house. They are taken for granted. They are silently assumed.

But God wills not only to be the massive, silent, unseen foundation beneath the walls of our academic lives; he also wills to be the visible cap stone adorning the top and the brightness of the glory that fills the house for all to see.

I want to plead with you this morning--students and faculty and administration—that you not imprison God in the silent basement of your busy academic houses by taking him for granted and calling him merely the Foundation for your labor.

There is a more radical, more pervasive way that God wills to be honored in your academic work. I call it the supremacy of God in the life of the mind.

[Piper considers the confrontation between Moses and Pharaoh in Exodus 8–10]

So we can see that God wills for his power to be known and marveled at not just in Israel and not just among the Egyptians, but in all the earth. God is jealous for his reputation in all the universe—that he be known and celebrated as central and supreme everywhere.

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

God wants the to world know not only his power, but also his Creator rights over all the earth—over every discipline in the academy and over every sphere of culture: he owns everything. This is not a doctrine he wants tucked away in a book, not a silent assumption, but a daily conscious sense that controls the way we handle all things and all truth.

God does not like to be taken for granted. God wills to be central and supreme and celebrated in all of life, including the life of the mind.

I think what I am pleading for here is very hard for people to grasp because our age is so utterly and thoroughly God-ignoring, which is probably worse than God-despising. We get all worked up when Hugh Downs puts people like James Dobson in the same category with Hitler and the Ku Klux Klan because they all claimed Christian sanction for their “family values” crusades. But we swallow hook line and sinker the utter absence of God as normal. Aggression against God offends us: but omission of God escapes us.

We get anesthetized to the unspeakable and appalling insult rendered to God day in and day out by his being ignored. It starts to feel normal—the way its normal not to think about air or a solid earth under our feet.

But I fear that we preachers are a great part of the problem. The absence of God’s supremacy is not unique to academia or the media. Albert Einstein gave a devastating indictment of preaching fifty years ago that may be more true today. Charles Misner, a scientific specialist in general relativity theory, was quoted like this:
[The design of the universe] is very magnificent and shouldn’t be taken for granted. In fact, I believe that is why Einstein had so little use for organized religion, although he strikes me as a basically very religious man. He must have looked at what the preachers said about God and felt that they were blaspheming. He had seen much more majesty than they had ever imagined, and they were just not talking about the real thing.
When God is taken for granted, and functions as a silent assumption, while we talk about other good things, his majesty is abased and his glory is obscured and his supremacy in the life of the mind vanishes. And people may well say, “I wonder if they have seen the real thing.”

May it not be said of any course at Northwestern College, that the students and the faculty in state universities have seen more mystery, or more wonder, or more majesty than we have seen—we who know the One from whom and through whom and for whom all things exist and hold together.

I am not pleading for anything superficial—just another prayer at the beginning of class, just another Bible verse quoted. I am pleading for the deep, earnest, thorough engagement with God and his Word and his Ways at every level of research and analysis and interpretation and reflection and creation. All things—every academic discipline—were made by God and for God. His fingerprints are everywhere. The main meaning of all things derives from their relation to God. Not to seek that meaning with all our heart and mind and soul is to be superficial, no matter what grades we make, no matter what articles we publish.

My closing prayer: may the supremacy of God in the life of the mind be the title over this academic chapter of your life.

Affirmative Action in the Church? Kind of.

2007-01-25T21:18:00.000-06:00

I have been surprised to learn from an online article today that Bethlehem Baptist Church, Minneapolis, Minnesota—John Piper's church—practices a kind of affirmative action when hiring ministerial staff. I was taken aback at first; however, reasoning behind this policy is interesting.

* Probing: We search for candidates for pastors and elders who are from various ethnicities. We pursue the web of relationships that we have. We make the positions known on the web and in other ways. We write articles like this one. Etc.

* Preferring: We intentionally take ethnicity into account when making choices about who we will call to the pastoral staff and eldership. This is the most controversial. It has been labeled “affirmative action” or “racial preferences.” Here is how it works at Bethlehem and why we make decisions this way.

One guiding principle is this: To the degree that one of the aims of an organization is to experience and display racial diversity, to that degree the intentional consideration of race in hiring is warranted. If, for example, the sole aim of an organization is productive efficiency, it would be unwarranted for the hiring guidelines to contain racial preferences. Whether all the employees are Black or Asian or White or Latino or Native is irrelevant. All that matters is maximum efficiency. So you don’t consider race in hiring. The only thing you consider is competencies that maximize efficiency.

But if one of the stated aims of an organization is to experience and display the beauty of ethnic harmony in diversity, then it would be reasonable and warranted to consider race as part of the qualifications in hiring. An obvious example would be hiring actors for a dramatic production that has Black, Asian, Latino, and White roles. One would consider race essential in the actors one hires for each role. One would not say: Competency in acting is the only thing that matters, and then use makeup to create the impression of race. Of course, acting competency matters. But so does race. That’s part of what the play is about. Hence, it is reasonable and warranted to take ethnicity into account when hiring actors.

Over ten years ago, we at Bethlehem set ourselves on a trajectory of intentional ethnic diversity. It coheres with the emphasis on “the joy of all peoples” in our mission statement: We exist to spread a passion for the supremacy of God in all things for the joy of all peoples through Jesus Christ. But we did not make it easy for ourselves. It would be easy if we said, “Diversity is the top priority that outweighs all others.” Or: “Diversity at any cost.” But there are things more important than ethnic diversity. For example, in hiring pastoral staff or choosing elders, there are theological and philosophical and personal commitments that are more important that ethnicity.

What are the biblical and theological grounds for such a practice? Piper explains:

We realize that this kind of intentionality in seeking staff is controversial. Some would say, “Never consider ethnicity in hiring. Always be color blind and focus only on competencies, doctrine, and faith.” Here is the problem we see with that. Most people look at the ethnic diversity in the New Testament church and admire what they see. “There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free, there is no male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus” (Galatians 3:28).

It is right to admire this diversity for many reasons:

1. It illustrates more clearly the truth that God created people of all races and ethnicities in his on image (Genesis 1:27).
2. It displays more visibly the truth that Jesus is not a tribal deity but is the Lord of all races, nations, and ethnicities.
3. It demonstrates more clearly the blood-bought destiny of the church to be “from every tribe and language and people and nation” (Revelation 5:9).
4. It exhibits more compellingly the aim and power of the cross of Christ to “reconcile us both to God in one body through the cross, thereby killing the hostility” (Ephesians 2:16).
5. It expresses more forcefully the work of the Spirit to unite us in Christ. “For in one Spirit we were all baptized into one body—Jews or Greeks, slaves or free—and all were made to drink of one Spirit” (1 Corinthians 12:13).

Richard Dawkins, Religious Atheist

2007-01-24T03:20:00.000-06:00

In a recent edition of The New York Review of Books, H. Allen Orr, an evolutionary biologist who is Professor of Biology at the University of Rochester, has written a review of Richard Dawkins' book The God Delusion. In it, Orr reveals Dawkins to be a "religious" athiest who, being convinced that religion is dangerous, is (ironically) out to proselytize his views and "convert" people to athiesm. Ultimately, Dawkins fails to take religion seriously enough to confront any serious religious arguments and so mostly just beats up on caricatures of religion, straw men of his own construction.

As you may have noticed, Dawkins when discussing religion is, in effect, a blunt instrument, one that has a hard time distinguishing Unitarians from abortion clinic bombers. What may be less obvious is that, on questions of God, Dawkins cannot abide much dissent, especially from fellow scientists (and especially from fellow evolutionary biologists). Indeed Dawkins is fond of imputing ulterior motives to those "Neville Chamberlain School" scientists not willing to go as far as he in his war on religion: he suggests that they're guilty of disingenuousness, playing politics, and lusting after the large prizes awarded by the Templeton Foundation to scientists sympathetic to religion.[2] The only motive Dawkins doesn't seem to take seriously is that some scientists genuinely disagree with him.

Despite my admiration for much of Dawkins's work, I'm afraid that I'm among those scientists who must part company with him here. Indeed, The God Delusion seems to me badly flawed. Though I once labeled Dawkins a professional atheist, I'm forced, after reading his new book, to conclude he's actually more an amateur. I don't pretend to know whether there's more to the world than meets the eye and, for all I know, Dawkins's general conclusion is right. But his book makes a far from convincing case. The most disappointing feature of The God Delusion is Dawkins's failure to engage religious thought in any serious way. This is, obviously, an odd thing to say about a book-length investigation into God. But the problem reflects Dawkins's cavalier attitude about the quality of religious thinking. Dawkins tends to dismiss simple expressions of belief as base superstition. Having no patience with the faith of fundamentalists, he also tends to dismiss more sophisticated expressions of belief as sophistry (he cannot, for instance, tolerate the meticulous reasoning of theologians). But if simple religion is barbaric (and thus unworthy of serious thought) and sophisticated religion is logic-chopping (and thus equally unworthy of serious thought), the ineluctable conclusion is that all religion is unworthy of serious thought.

The result is The God Delusion, a book that never squarely faces its opponents. You will find no serious examination of Christian or Jewish theology in Dawkins's book (does he know Augustine rejected biblical literalism in the early fifth century?), no attempt to follow philosophical debates about the nature of religious propositions (are they like ordinary claims about everyday matters?), no effort to appreciate the complex history of interaction between the Church and science (does he know the Church had an important part in the rise of non-Aristotelian science?), and no attempt to understand even the simplest of religious attitudes (does Dawkins really believe, as he says, that Christians should be thrilled to learn they're terminally ill?).

Instead, Dawkins has written a book that's distinctly, even defiantly, middlebrow. Dawkins's intellectual universe appears populated by the likes of Douglas Adams, the author of The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, and Carl Sagan, the science popularizer,[3] both of whom he cites repeatedly. This is a different group from thinkers like William James and Ludwig Wittgenstein—both of whom lived after Darwin, both of whom struggled with the question of belief, and both of whom had more to say about religion than Adams and Sagan. Dawkins spends much time on what can only be described as intellectual banalities: "Did Jesus have a human father, or was his mother a virgin at the time of his birth? Whether or not there is enough surviving evidence to decide it, this is still a strictly scientific question."

. . . . . . . . . .

One reason for the lack of extended argument in The God Delusion is clear: Dawkins doesn't seem very good at it. Indeed he suffers from several problems when attempting to reason philosophically. The most obvious is that he has a preordained set of conclusions at which he's determined to arrive. Consequently, Dawkins uses any argument, however feeble, that seems to get him there and the merit of various arguments appears judged largely by where they lead.

The Authority of Scripture

2007-01-20T07:08:00.000-06:00

In this excerpt (taken from here) from a sermon of his on Ephesians 6:14 ("Stand therefore having your loins girt about with truth"), Martyn Lloyd-Jones (1899–1981), a great English, Reformed preacher, indicts the church for having gotten away from the doctrine of the authority of the Bible. He challenges the church and individual Christians to return to this fundamentally-important doctrine.

There can be no doubt whatsoever that all the troubles in the Church to-day, and most of the troubles in the world, are due to a departure from the authority of the Bible. And, alas, it was the Church herself that led in the so-called Higher Criticism that came from Germany just over a hundred years ago. Human philosophy took the place of revelation, man's opinions were exalted and Church leaders talked about 'the advance of knowledge and science', and 'the assured results' of such knowledge. The Bible then became a book just like any other book, out-of-date in certain respects, wrong in other respects, and so on. It was no longer a book on which you could rely implicitly.

There is no question at all that the falling away, even in Church attendance, in this country is the direct consequence of the Higher Criticism. The man in the street says, 'What do these Christians know? It is only their opinion, they are just perpetrating something that the real thinkers and scientists have long since seen through and have stopped considering'. Such is the attitude of the man in the street! He does not listen any longer, he has lost all interest. The whole situation is one of drift; and very largely, I say, it is the direct and immediate outcome of the doubt that has been cast by the Church herself upon her only real authority. Men's opinions have taken the place of God's truth, and the people in their need are turning to the cults, and are listening to any false authority that offers itself to them.

We all therefore have to face this ultimate and final question: Do we accept the Bible as the Word of God, as the sole authority in all matters of faith and practice, or do we not? Is the whole of my thinking governed by Scripture, or do I come with my reason and pick and choose out of Scripture and sit in judgment upon it, putting myself and modern knowledge forward as the ultimate standard and authority? The issue is crystal clear. Do I accept Scripture as a revelation from God, or do I trust to speculation, human knowledge, human learning, human understanding and human reasons Or, putting it still more simply, Do I pin my faith to, and subject all my thinking to, what I read in the Bible? Or do I defer to modern knowledge, to modern learning, to what people think today, to what we know at this present time which was not known in the past? It is inevitable that we occupy one or the other of those two positions.

The Protestant position, as was the position of the early Church in the first centuries, is that the Bible is the Word of God. Not that it 'contains' it, but that it is the Word of God, uniquely inspired and inerrant. The Protestant Reformers believed not only that the Bible contained the revelation of God's truth to men, but that God safeguarded the truth by controlling the men who wrote it by the Holy Spirit, and that He kept them from error and from blemishes and from anything that was wrong. That is the traditional Protestant position, and the moment we abandon it we have already started on the road that leads back to one of the false authorities, and probably ultimately to Rome itself. In the last analysis it is the only alternative.

People will have authority; and they are right in so thinking. They need authority because they are bewildered; and if they do not find it in the right way they will take it in the wrong way. They can be persuaded even though they do not know the source of the authority; in their utter bewilderment they are ready to be persuaded by any authoritative statement. So that it comes to this, that we are back exactly where Christians were 400 years ago. The world talks about its advance in knowledge, its science, and so on, but actually we are going round in cycles, and we are back exactly where Christians were 400 years ago. We are having to fight once more the whole battle of the Protestant Reformation. It is either this Book, or else it is ultimately the authority of the Church of Rome and her 'tradition'! That was the great issue at the Protestant Reformation. It was because of what they found in the Bible that those men stood up against, and queried and questioned and finally condemned the Church of Rome. It was that alone that enabled Luther to stand, just one man, defying all those twelve centuries of tradition. 'I can do no other' he says, because of what he had found in the Bible. He could see that Rome was wrong. It did not matter that he was alone, and that all the big battalions were against him. He had the authority of the Word of God, and he judged the Church and her tradition and all else by this external authority.

We are back again in that exact position, and I am concerned about the matter, not only from the standpoint of the Church in general, but also from the standpoint of our own individual experiences. How can we fight the devil? How can we know how we are to live? How can we answer the things we hear, the things we read, and all the subtle suggestions of the devil? Where can I find this truth that I must gird on, as I put on all this armour of God? Where can I find it if I cannot find it in the Bible? Either my foundation is one of sand that gives way beneath my feet, and I do not know where I am, or else I stand on what W. E. Gladstone called 'The Impregnable Rock of Holy Scripture'.

J. I. Packer, in his essay Hermeneutics and Biblical Authority, emphasizes the (divine) authority of the Bible over the beliefs and practices of the individual believer.

Evangelicals hold that the obedience of both the Christian individually, and the Church corporately, consists precisely in conscious submission, both intellectual and ethical, to the teaching of Holy Scripture, as interpreted by itself and applied by the Spirit . . . . Subjection to the rule of Christ involves - indeed, from one standpoint, consists in subjection to the rule of Scripture. His authority is its, and its is His.

Similarly, he says,

It is hardly possible to deny that what God says is true, any more than it is possible to deny that what He commands is binding. Scripture is thus authoritative as a standard of belief no less than of behaviour, and its authority in both realms, that of fact as well as that of obligation, is divine. By virtue of its inspiration the authority of Scripture resolves into, not the historical, ethical, or religious expertise of its human authors, however great this may be thought to have been, but the truthfulness and the moral claim of the speaking, preaching, teaching God Himself.

The Believer’s Delight in the Beauty of Divine Things

2007-01-16T07:14:00.000-06:00

The joy, and spiritual delight and pleasure of the saints has its first foundation not in any consideration or conception of their interest in divine things; but it primarily consists in the sweet entertainment their minds have in the view of contemplation of the divine and holy beauty of these things, as they are in themselves.
And this is indeed the very main difference between the joy of the hypocrite, and the joy of the true saint. The former rejoices in himself; self is the first foundation of his joy: the latter rejoices in God. The hypocrite has his mind pleased and delighted, in the first place, with his own privilege, and the happiness which he supposes he has attained to, or shall attain to.
True saints have their minds, in the first place, inexpressibly pleased and delighted with the sweet ideas of the glorious and amiable nature of the things of God. And this is the spring of all their delights, and the cream of all their pleasures: it is the joy of their joy. This sweet and ravishing entertainment they have in the view of the beautiful and delightful nature of divine things, is the foundation of the joy that they have afterwards, in the consideration of their being theirs. But the dependence of the affections of hypocrites is in a contrary order: they first rejoice and are elevated with it, that they are made so much of by God; and then on that ground he seems, in a sort, lovely to them.

The first foundation of the delight a true saint has in God, is his own perfection; and the first foundation of the delight he has in Christ, is his own beauty; he appears in himself the chief among ten thousand, and altogether lovely. The way of salvation by Christ is a delightful way to him, for the sweet and admirable manifestations of the divine perfections in it: the holy doctrines of the gospel, by which God is exalted and man abased, holiness honored and promoted, and sin greatly disgraced and discouraged, and free and sovereign love manifested, are glorious doctrines in his eyes, and sweet to his taste, prior to any conception of his interest in these things.

Indeed the saints rejoice in their interest in God, and that Christ is theirs: and so they have great reason, but this is not the first spring of their joy. They first rejoice in God as glorious and excellent in himself, and then secondarily rejoice in it, that so glorious a God is theirs.—They first have their hearts filled with sweetness, from the view of Christ’s excellency, and the excellency of his grace and the beauty of the way of salvation by him, and then they have a secondary joy in that so excellent a Savior, and such excellent grace are theirs.

From Jonathan Edwards. Religious Affections. Edited by John E. Smith. Volume 2 Works (Yale, 1959), 249-50.

Back in Cambridge

2007-01-16T06:34:00.000-06:00

After more than a month of travelling throughout Europe, I am now back in Cambridge, where I shall resume my studies. Second term (named Lent Term) begins Thursday, Jan. 18. Until then, I'm preparing for term, reading, reviewing Greek grammar and vocabulary, slowly unpacking, and hanging out with my friends.

I am particularly excited about one of my supervisions this term: Paul's Letters.

Istanbul, Turkey

2007-01-09T08:06:00.000-06:00

I am now in Istanbul, Turkey. I arrived this morning at about 8:30, having taken an overnight train from Alexandropolis, Greece. Although I (with my three fellow travelling companions) have spent some time walking through the city, lost, I have been able to visit the Hagia Sophia.

Sunday, I visited Delphi, Greece, and saw the ruins of ancient Delphi, where the Temple of Apollo and the famous oracle of Delphi were located. Before that, I stayed in Athens for three nights, where I saw the Acropolis and the ancient agora. In addition, I took a daytrip from Athens to Mycenae, where I explored the capital of the ancient Mycenaean civilization (c. 1600-c. 1100 B.C.).

Tonight at 10:00 (GMT +8), I leave Istanbul and Turkey by train for Transylvania, Romania (a region, not a city).

Rome, Day 3

2006-12-31T03:50:00.000-06:00

On my first day in Rome, I visited the following sites: Pantheon, Palatine Hill, Colesseum, Trevi Fountain, and part of the Forum. Yesterday, I went to Vatican City, where I toured the Sistine Chapel, explored all the other Vatican museums, and toured and attended evening mass at St. Peter's. It has all been awesome. However, I shall have to describe it in detail later, for now, I must go. Today, I am planning to visit the Spanish Steps and some of the catacombs.

Europe, Round 2

2006-12-28T15:48:00.000-06:00

After spending a relaxing week at home in the States, I'm now back in Europe, through which I'll be travelling until Jan. 16. I'm now in Rome, where I will stay until Jan. 1. The current plan is to go to Greece after leaving Rome. I'm uber-excited about getting to visit the lands of the classical world (especially in light of my classical humanities minor)!

While home, I was able to finish reading Sproul's The Holiness of God and also began-and-nearly-finished reading J.I. Packer's Knowing God (I left it at home intentionally, since I only wanted to bring one extra-biblical book with me, and since I wanted to bring something that would last me the entire trip). And so, besides my Bible, I've brought with me an abridged version of Augustine's City of God, which I've been wanting to read for quite some time.

Knowing God was an amazing book, and I would wish that every Christian might read it. The book consists of a number of essays on various aspects of God's character, what it means to know God, and how Christianity and Biblical truths should manifest themselves in the personal piety of Christians.

European Travels: Krakow, Poland

2006-12-13T18:32:00.000-06:00

Taking a train from Prague, I arrived in Krakow, Poland this evening with my friend David Wiegert. We walked around the city center—which is absolutely beautiful—for awhile before we found our hostel, Mama's Hostel. It's highly recommended and is actually supposed to be the third best hostel in the world. In fact, though, it only costs $12.00 (US) per night. (Hostels are amazing.) Tomorrow looks to be an amazing day of exploration in Krakow.

My European travels began on Dec. 4, when I flew into Berlin from Stansted Airport, London. I flew with three of my friends (also Jewell students studying abroad in England). In Berlin, we met up with two fellow friends (also Jewell students studying abroad in England). We spent three days in Berlin. Next, we traveled to Wittenburg, Germany, the city where Martin Luther lived, taught, and from which he initiated the German Reformation. It was incredible and it has been my favorite place so far. In fact, in Wittenburg, we stayed in a hostel located in Wittenburg Castle—the very castle to which Luther nailed his famous Ninety-Five Theses! We also saw Luther's house, the City Church, and Philip Melanchthon's house. What a privilege it was to experience the world of those great men! Then, we traveled to Wartburg, Germany. In Wartburg, we toured Wartburg Castle, where Luther hid out for about a year in the early 1520s. There, he wrote many important works, including his translation of the Bible from Greek into German.

Next, we went to Dachau and toured the WWII Nazi concentration camp there. After that, we rode a train over night from Munich to Prague, Czech Republic. Prague has been my least favorite place, being dirty, ugly, and crowded. After a few days in prague, we rode the train to Krakow, where I am now and where I shall stay until I fly out of Krakow to London (and from there to Kansas City) on the evening of the 16th.

European Travels

2006-12-10T16:32:00.000-06:00

I'm now in Prague, Czech Republic. This city has big buildings, good food. Bye for now.

"Hell Is Just"

2006-12-02T16:29:00.001-06:00

"It is an infinite sin to prefer anything to the infinitely attractive God. Therefore, hell is just."
—John Piper

Free-Will-ism and the Canons of the Council of Orange

2006-11-17T05:40:00.000-06:00

Unless he be perpetually reminded of the free and unconditional nature of the gospel, and therein sustained and preserved by God, a person will, in accordance with a universal natural inclination of man, tend to regress and revert back toward a kind of works-righteousness, or Pelagianism (i.e., the idea that he must in some sense and to some degree earn or merit his salvation). Though natural, the error known as "Pelagianism" was clearly condemned by the the Second Council of Orange (529 AD). The medieval scholastic theologians (viz., those of the Via Moderna, against whose theology Luther specifically reacted) don't seem to have known about or had access to these cannons. For, theologians such as Gabriel Biel, while thinking themselves to have avoided the Pelagian error, had in fact become ensnared in it. The Reformers did utilize these canons, which was a powerful demonstration against the Catholic Church.

The content of the Council itself naturally grew out of the public dispute between Augustine and Pelagius. This critical dispute had to do with the extent to which the natural man is responsible for his own regeneration (the new birth)—i.e. whether the work of God in regeneration monergistic (God alone) or synergistic (a cooperation of man and God). The council supported Augustine's monergism, rejecting Pelagianism of any degree. Here are four of the most important canons:

CANON 4. If anyone maintains that God awaits our will to be cleansed from sin, but does not confess that even our will to be cleansed comes to us through the infusion and working of the Holy Spirit, he resists the Holy Spirit himself who says through Solomon, "The will is prepared by the Lord" (Prov. 8:35, LXX), and the salutary word of the Apostle, "For God is at work in you, both to will and to work for his good pleasure" (Phil. 2:13).

CANON 5. If anyone says that not only the increase of faith but also its beginning and the very desire for faith, by which we believe in Him who justifies the ungodly and comes to the regeneration of holy baptism -- if anyone says that this belongs to us by nature and not by a gift of grace, that is, by the inspiration of the Holy Spirit amending our will and turning it from unbelief to faith and from godlessness to godliness, it is proof that he is opposed to the teaching of the Apostles, for blessed Paul says, "And I am sure that he who began a good work in you will bring it to completion at the day of Jesus Christ" (Phil. 1:6). And again, "For by grace you have been saved through faith; and this is not your own doing, it is the gift of God" (Eph. 2:8). For those who state that the faith by which we believe in God is natural make all who are separated from the Church of Christ by definition in some measure believers.

CANON 6. If anyone says that God has mercy upon us when, apart from his grace, we believe, will, desire, strive, labor, pray, watch, study, seek, ask, or knock, but does not confess that it is by the infusion and inspiration of the Holy Spirit within us that we have the faith, the will, or the strength to do all these things as we ought; or if anyone makes the assistance of grace depend on the humility or obedience of man and does not agree that it is a gift of grace itself that we are obedient and humble, he contradicts the Apostle who says, "What have you that you did not receive?" (1 Cor. 4:7), and, "But by the grace of God I am what I am" (1 Cor. 15:10).

CANON 7. If anyone affirms that we can form any right opinion or make any right choice which relates to the salvation of eternal life, as is expedient for us, or that we can be saved, that is, assent to the preaching of the gospel through our natural powers without the illumination and inspiration of the Holy Spirit, who makes all men gladly assent to and believe in the truth, he is led astray by a heretical spirit, and does not understand the voice of God who says in the Gospel, "For apart from me you can do nothing" (John 15:5), and the word of the Apostle, "Not that we are competent of ourselves to claim anything as coming from us; our competence is from God" (2 Cor. 3:5).

But why ought Christians to concern themselves with such seemingly trivial and troublesome points of doctrine such as free will? Martin Luther has a blunt (and perhaps offensive) answer for us in his 1525 On the Bondage of the Will:

It is not irreverent, inquisitive, or superfluous, but essentially salutary and necessary for a Christian, to find out whether the will does anything or nothing in matters pertaining to eternal salvation . . . , to inquire what free choice can do, what it has done to it, and what is its relation to the grace of God. If we do not know these things, we shall know nothing at all of things Christian, and shall be worse than any heathen. . . . For if I am ignorant of what, how far, and how much I can and may do in relation to God, it will be equally uncertain and unknown to me, what, how far, and how much God can and may do in me . . . . But when the works and power of God are unknown, I cannot worship, praise, thank, and serve God, since I do not know how much I ought to attribute to myself and how much to God. It therefore behooves us to be very certain about the distinction between God's power and our own, God's work and our own, if we want to live a godly life. (117)

"Jedi Knights They Are"

2006-11-16T12:14:00.000-06:00

Wow: If I knew nothing else about humanity, the existence of a Jedi religion alone would seem to establish beyond all doubt the total depravity of man. Apparently, it exists—and is the fourth largest religious group in Britain, if the article below is to be believed. The article is copied from here.

Two self-styled Jedi Knights are stepping up an intergalactic campaign for formal recognition.

Umada and Yunyun, also known as John Wilkinson and Charlotte Law, want the United Nations to feel “The Force” is worthy of being called a religion.

The couple claim to be part of the UK’s fourth largest religious group, after 400,000 people recorded their faith as “Jedi” in the 2001 Census.

They say that as a religion, they deserve tolerance and respect. November the 16th is the annual International Day for Tolerance.

And as part of a global battle worthy of Luke Skywalker’s efforts against the Empire, the band of self-styled Jedis want the UN to re-name the day as Interstellar Day of Tolerance.

More people claim their religion to be Jedi in England and Wales than those who follow Sikhism, Judaism and Buddhism. And the cause has global support.

There are also 70,000 Jedi knights in Australia, 53,000 in New Zealand, and 20,000 in Canada.

This is Umada and Yunyun’s letter to the UN Association:

To whom it may concern,

For the last ten years the United Nations has marked today as the International Day of Tolerance. While we support this important work, we feel the UN needs to move with the times.
In the 2001 UK census, 390,000 people identified themselves as Jedi Knights, making us the fourth largest religion in the country. We have a proud heritage dating back 195,000 years to our first Jedi, the blue haired, blue eyed Kaja Sinis, who was born on Coruscant.
Like the United Nations, the Jedi Knights are peacekeepers, and we feel we have the basic right to express our religion through wearing our robes, and to be recognised by the national and international community.
We therefore call upon you to change the 16th November to the United Nations Interstellar Day of Tolerance, to reflect the religious make-up of our twenty-first century civilization.
Tolerance is about respecting difference where ever it lies, including other galaxies. Please don’t exclude us from your important work.

May the Force be with you.

"Just and the Justifier", Part 2

2006-11-15T22:20:00.000-06:00

Yeah, so my first "Just and the Justifier" post never actually discussed "just and the justifier." And so, consider this:

God's judicial righteousness is demonstrated in the gospel. Under the Mosaic sacrificial system, forgiveness was offered through (but not on the basis of) animal sacrifice. As the New Testament recognizes (Heb 9:11–15; 10:1–4), such sacrifices cannot substitute for the sins of humans. The real significance of the Old Testament sacrifices lay in the way they pointed forward to Christ, through whom God would deal with human sin in an appropriate and final way. In view of what He would later do, God could righteously pass over "former sins" (v. 25). The work of Christ reveals both the justice of God (He does punish sin in the person of His own Son, 8:32) and the righteousness of God's way of salvation by "faith in Jesus" (v. 26). In dealing with Christ as sin-bearer and the human person as sinner, God does not compromise His own holiness or the necessity of sin's bieng atoned for. Yet He graciously provides a salvation that mankind was incapable of obtaining. In this respect, Paul sees the Cross as the manifestation of the glorious wisdom of God (1 Cor. 1:23, 24).

A New Post

2006-11-14T06:39:00.000-06:00

Hey, this is a new post. I've been terribly busy recently. Normally, I have two essays due each week (1x 1500 word, 1x 3000 word). Last week, however, I had three essays due (2x 1500 words, 1x 3000 word). This week, I have the normal two essays due (one of which I finished today).

I'm playing lots of table tennis here at Cambridge. I joined the CU Table Tennis Club (though I'm not nearly good enough to play on the CU team), and I'm on the Homerton College table tennis team (which I am good enough to play on). The Homerton team is in a league with the other 30 individual Cambridge colleges. The Homerton College team has played twice so far this term: first against St. Catherine's College, and then against Robinson College. We won both competitions: 5-4 against St. Catherine's and 6-3 against Robinson. Against St. Catherine's, I personally went 2-1, and then I went 1-2 against Robinson. There are three players per team, and each player plays each of the other team's players once (so there are 9 matches per competition). Each match is best of five games—although, if both teams wish to shorten the competition, they may agree to only play best of three games (this was the case at our second competition). On the CU Table Tennis Club, I am, however, on the club "ladder" (although I happen to be last, since I was the last person to join the ladder. You can even see my name on the CUTTC website here. Visit the main page for the Cambridge University Table Tennis Club website. You can see the rules and everything. (I can only think of one or two people who would be interested in all this.)

I must now go to a theology supervision ("The Shaping of Modern Theologians"), but I'll be back with another post soon.

"Just and the Justifier"

2006-10-28T07:12:00.000-05:00

The most precious book ever written is the Bible. The most precious book in the Bible is Romans. The most precious chapter in Romans is chapter 3. The most precious verses in Romans 3 are verses 23–26. And the most precious four words in Romans 3:23–26 are "just and the justifier" (v. 26). So, then, the phrase "just and the justifier" are the most precious words and constitute the most precious phrase ever written in the entire history of the universe. And so, to understand the meaning of this phrase is (insofar as it means that a person understands the gospel) the most important single thing a person could ever do: more important than money, fame, family, happiness, friends, sex, education—indeed, than life itself. Let us now look at the phrase in its context.

23 for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, 24 and are justified by his grace as a gift, through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus, 25 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. 26 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. (Rom 3:23–26 ESV)

Taken in context, this phrase is an absolutely huge and sweeping claim about God, redemptive history, Jesus Christ, and salvation. Leading up to it, Paul asserts that "all," i.e., both Jews and gentiles, are inadequate before God in that they "fall short of the glory of God" (see 1:23; Jn 12:32). But nevertheless, says Paul in v. 24 and the first half of v. 25, God justifies such sinful and inadequate people "through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus." Redemption was effected through Christ's propitiatory death (i.e., Christ was "put forward" by God as a sin-offering), which may be appropriated by means of faith.

"The times of ignorance God overlooked, but now he commands all people everywhere to repent" (Acts 17:30). See also Luke 18:14 and Galatians 3:11-13.

The Death of Lazarus and the Glory of God

2006-10-27T10:13:00.000-05:00

Whenever some tragedy or great affliction occurs, or someone experiences suffering or the death of a loved one, I often hear Christians say of it, "God did not cause this, but He can still use it for good." However, such an attitude, while probably well-meaning, is unbiblical, and it actually undermines the very hope which it wants to create.

It is clear in Scripture that God causes suffering in order to display his glory. Consider, for example, Jesus' actions after learning that Lazarus was ill.

1 Now a certain man was ill, Lazarus of Bethany, the village of Mary and her sister Martha. 2 It was Mary who anointed the Lord with ointment and wiped his feet with her hair, whose brother Lazarus was ill. 3 So the sisters sent to him, saying, "Lord, he whom you love is ill." 4 But when Jesus heard it he said, "This illness does not lead to death. It is for the glory of God, so that the Son of God may be glorified through it." 5 Now Jesus loved Martha and her sister and Lazarus. 6 So, when he heard that Lazarus was ill, he stayed two days longer in the place where he was. (John 11:1–6 ESV)

John Piper brings to light three amazing things about this passage:

1. Jesus chose to let Lazarus die. Verse 6: “So when he heard that Lazarus was ill, he stayed two days longer in the place where he was.” There was no hurry. His intention was not to spare the family grief, but to raise Lazarus from the dead. This is true even if Lazarus was already dead when the messengers reached Jesus. Jesus either let him die or remained longer to make plain that He was in no hurry to immediately relieve the grief. Something more was driving Him.
2. He was motivated by a passion for the glory of God displayed in His own glorious power. In verse 4 He says, “This illness does not lead to death. It is for the glory of God, so that the Son of God may be glorified through it.”
3. Nevertheless both the decision to let Lazarus die and the motivation to magnify God were expressions of love for Mary and Martha and Lazarus. John shows this by the way he connected verses 5 and 6: “Now Jesus loved Martha and her sister and Lazarus. So [not “yet,” which the NIV wrongly inserts]…he stayed two days longer in the place where he was.”

Piper further says in response to the passage:

Oh, how many people today—even Christians—would murmur at Jesus for callously letting Lazarus die and putting him and Mary and Martha and others through the pain and misery of those days. And if people today saw that this was motivated by Jesus’ desire to magnify the glory of God, how many would call this harsh or unloving! What this shows is how far above the glory of God most people value pain-free lives. For most people, love is whatever puts human value and human well-being at the center. So Jesus’ behavior is unintelligible to them.

But let us not tell Jesus what love is. Let us not instruct Him how He should love us and make us central. Let us learn from Jesus what love is and what our true well-being is. Love is doing whatever you need to do to help people see and savor the glory of God in Christ forever and ever. Love keeps God central. Because the soul was made for God.

The ultimate purpose of creation is not human happiness or flourishing; indeed, since mankind is itself a part of the creation, such a notion is absurd. Rather, the universe was created by God to display His glory. And, indeed,

1 The heavens declare the glory of God, and the sky above proclaims his handiwork. 2 Day to day pours out speech, and night to night reveals knowledge. 3 There is no speech, nor are there words, whose voice is not heard. 4 Their measuring line goes out through all the earth, and their words to the end of the world. In them he has set a tent for the sun, 5 which comes out like a bridegroom leaving his chamber, and, like a strong man, runs its course with joy. 6 Its rising is from the end of the heavens, and its circuit to the end of them, and there is nothing hidden from its heat. (Psalm 19)

Therefore, the Christian who suffers should (with Job) say things like, "Naked I came from my mother’s womb, and naked shall I return. The Lord gave, and the Lord has taken away; blessed be the name of the Lord" (Job 1:21) and "Shall we receive good from God, and shall we not receive evil?" (Job 2:10).

"No one is good except God alone"

2006-10-26T15:58:00.000-05:00

I’ve been thinking about the logic of Jesus’ exchange with the rich young ruler (Luke 18, Matt 19, and Mk 10).

And a ruler 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.” (Luke 18:18–19)

Now, upon a superficial reading, Jesus might seem here to be implicitly denying his divinity. However, Jesus is doing exactly the opposite: in a very much Socratic fashion, Jesus is implicitly—and quite cleverly—affirming his divinity. When Jesus asks the ruler, “Why do you call me good?” he could be implying one of two things, which would have been easily conveyed in Jesus’ voice inflection and body language. Either Jesus was implying that the ruler was incorrect in his observation that Jesus was good, or he was implying that the ruler was correct.

A superficial and faulty reading might proceed thus:

1) Jesus says that only God is good.
2) Jesus does not think he is God (and/or is not God).
3) Therefore, Jesus is saying that he is not good.
4) Therefore, Jesus is implicitly saying that he is not God.

The problem with this reading is (2). Jesus does not say that he is not God, and to say such would be an unnecessary assumption foreign to the text. A better and more natural reading proceeds as follows:

5) Jesus says that only God is good.
6) Jesus does not deny that he is good, as the ruler says.
7) Therefore, Jesus is saying, in a clear but indirect and Socratic way, that he is God.

This would seem to basically amount to the following modus ponens argument:

8) Only God is good.
9) Jesus is good.
10) Therefore, Jesus is God.

In fact, Jesus is speaking in this way to try to make the ruler stop and consider what it might have meant to call Jesus good. Reading between the lines, we can hear Jesus saying to the ruler, “Truly, you speak more than you know.”

Although I shall not discuss it now, it might be worth considering the parallel accounts of this episode in Matt 19:16ff and Mark 10:17ff (Matthew’s account is worded slightly differently than the others'). Also, what exactly might “good” mean?

Pascal and Prayer

2006-10-26T11:04:00.000-05:00

"Prayer is God's bestowing on humanity the dignity of causality."

God's love for Himself and for Sinners

2006-10-22T11:38:00.000-05:00

Here is an excerpt from chapter one of John Piper's book Pierced by the Word: Thirty-One Meditations for Your Soul.

For many years I have sought to understand how the God-centeredness of God relates to His love for sinners like us. Most people do not immediately see God’s passion for the glory of God as an act of love. One reason for this is that we have absorbed the world’s definition of love. It says: You are loved when you are made much of.
The main problem with this definition of love is that when you try to apply it to God’s love for us, it distorts reality. God’s love for us is not mainly His making much of us, but His giving us the ability to enjoy making much of Him forever. In other words, God’s love for us keeps God at the center. God’s love for us exalts His value and our satisfaction in it. If God’s love made us central and focused on our value, it would distract us from what is most precious; namely, Himself. Love labors and suffers to enthrall us with what is infinitely and eternally satisfying: God. Therefore God’s love labors and suffers to break our bondage to the idol of self and focus our affections on the treasure of God.

A couple months ago, I got into an intense discussion with someone. I said that God is supremely concerned with glorifying His own name; he said that God was more concerned with loving us. In the above paragraphs, Piper argues—and I think he's right—that God's supreme act of love toward us is "giving us the ability to enjoy making much of Him forever." God and His glory are the most valuable things in all existence, and what a privilege to be allowed to worship and praise it for all eternity!

Read more from this and other John Piper books here.

The Jesus Seminar

2006-10-15T08:48:00.000-05:00

Remember the Jesus Seminar? Ever heard of it? Occurring in the early 1990s, it was a highly-publicized collaboration and project by a group of uber-liberal Bible scholars and theologians to determine "what Jesus really said from what the gospel writers reported." The fruit of the Seminar was a book, The Five Gospels: The Search for the Authentic Words of Jesus. Below is an excerpt from a review of the book by Richard B. Hays, a first-rate New Testament scholar and theologian teaching at Duke Divinity School. Read the entire review here.

Indeed, a new book called The Five Gospels-the fruit of the labors of the much-publicized "Jesus Seminar"-claims to provide definitive new answers to the question, "What did Jesus really say?" A panel of New Testament scholars, meeting over a period of several years, has given us a new red-letter edition of the four canonical gospels plus the Gospel of Thomas, with the words adjudged by a poll of these scholars actually to have been spoken by Jesus printed in red type. Other colors reflect their shadings of judgment about the historical reliability of the other sayings attributed to Jesus: pink for possibly authentic, gray for probably inauthentic, and black for certainly inauthentic. The introduction to the book suggests breezily that an "unofficial but helpful interpretation of the colors" would be as follows:

Red: That's Jesus! Pink: Sure sounds like Jesus. Gray: Well, maybe. Black: There's been some mistake.

The results are offered up in a fresh translation-dubbed the "Scholars Version"-that seeks to "produce in the American reader an experience comparable to that of the first readers" by approximating "the common street language of the original."

My upcoming weekend: Schleiermacher

2006-10-13T14:49:00.000-05:00

My weekend will be spent becoming intimate with Friedrich Schleiermacher, a dead German theologian. I have a 3000-word essay on Schleiermacher due Sunday night (for a supervision Monday). Goodbye, then, for now.

Wow

2006-10-08T13:59:00.000-05:00

Wow. Check out this news article and video about a 1922 anti-Mormon movie.

My First Day of School!

2006-10-05T18:52:00.000-05:00

The first day of the academic term proper at Cambridge University was a good day. I attended one lecture, for my course The Letters of Paul. It was quite good, for the lecturer was Prof. G. N. Stanton, the head of the Cambridge Faculty of Divinity. Today's lecture, titled "Paul: Hero or Villain," was an introduction to Paul and some ways Paul has been viewed throughout church history.

After the lecture, which lasted from noon to 1:00, I met with a professor of the Faculty of Classics to discuss the Greek reading class I will be taking. The first class is tomorrow at 9:00 a.m. GMT.

In the evening was the annual formal matriculation dinner at Homerton in the Great Hall (which appears similar to the dining hall of Hogwarts in Harry Potter). It was good food and fun, and I met some swell new friends.

Pope to End Doctrine of Limbo

2006-10-04T12:55:00.000-05:00

The Pope will end the Catholic doctrine of Limbo this week. Check out the article here.

Sunday at St. Andrews the Great

2006-10-04T06:35:00.000-05:00

I attended an amazing church last Sunday: St. Andrews the Great, an Anglican church. But wow—it was very good. Every part of the service was Christ-centered. The worship music included only contemporary songs (and this was, I think, my only criticism of the church). We sang several worship songs, including a few that were new to me (which I appreciated). The sermon was on Philippians 1, the first in a series on Philippians. It was not spectacular (no understatement intended), but it was very good, a solid, Christ-centered exposition of the text, along with an introduction to the book of Philippians as a whole.

After the service, there was a lunch for students (free the first time, 2.50 each subsequent time). The room was set up so that there were dozens of small tables at each of which were seated c. 8 people. The main course was a tasy dish of chicken and noodles with some kind of sauce. After the main course, the speaker, a young man, gave a short talk—a sort of "sermonette"—on idolatry. After his main talk, each table discussed three Scripture passages on idolatry. Although it was not one of the preset passages, I read Ezekiel 16 to my table. After a short time, the discussion time ended, and the speaker took questions from the audience. In answering a question about how "God gave them up" in Rom 1:24, 26, 28 is compatible with human free will, the speaker responded by saying that humans do not have free will and that all things are predetermined by God. I'd never heard a statement like that in a church. And, unless he meant by it some sort of hyper-calvinism (which I didn't take him to mean), the statement was amazing. It made my week.

Another Retroactive Post (Written Sept. 27th)

2006-10-01T15:22:00.000-05:00

12:37 p.m. GMT

I woke up at 8:00 this morning, and since then I've been reading Scripture and translating Greek (excerpts from Aristophanes' Clouds). Today (Wednesday), like yesterday, is a free day. And so, the group has planned to, at 1:30, take a tour of Cambridge guided by a young woman whom we met yesterday and who had been friends with the Jewell students who studied at Homerton last year.

Last night, we all went to a pub in Cambridge City Center, right on the river Cam. I had good cod and chips (but no alcohol). When we returned to the dorm, I went down to the student union room with some of the other Jewell students. However, while they played E.R.S., I ended up playing table tennis with two English students. Not having played for a long time and having a bad paddle, I lost all three games I played.

My Journey to Cambridge (A Retroactive Post)

2006-10-01T15:19:00.000-05:00

(I typed this post on Sept. 24th/25th, during my travel to England. Now that I have internet access in my room, I'm finally able to post it. Hooray!)

2:23 a.m. CDT

As I write this, the time is 2:23 a.m. CDT, and I'm sitting on a large Air Canada airplane flying eastward over the Atlantic Ocean, bound for London, England. I'm in seat 17k, a window seat, sitting next to my friend and peer David Wiegert. We go to study at Homerton College, Cambridge University for the entire 2006–2007 academic year (minus, of course, Christmas break, which is Dec. 2 to Jan. 16). The flight is scheduled to arrive at London at 11:05 a.m.

I flew out of MCI (Kansas City International) at 6:00 p.m. (yesterday, technically) Sunday, September 24th. Small and uncomfortable, the plane arrived at Toronto, Canada, at about 10:00 p.m. (EST). After going through customs and inquiring three times whether we needed to reclaim our bags before boarding the connecting flight to London, it was about 10:30. Our connecting flight leaving at 10:50, we had to hurry/hasten to a bus that took us to our terminal. Running, we got off the bus and hurried hastened to our gate, where we finally arrived at 10:50, just in time to catch the plane.

While I was waiting in the customs line at the Toronto airport, a young woman named Megan Lilley introduced herself to me. Twenty-two years old and from Branson, MO, Megan was on her way to London to study at a Bible mission (or Bible school, or something) there. She wanted to introduce herself to me, she explained, because she had overheard David and I talking about the Bible. We talked for several more minutes, until we had made it through customs. An interesting, encouraging, and cool experience.

12:36 p.m. GMT

I'm presently on a bus (or coach) destined for Cambridge. Having landed at Heathrow International Airport, London, at c. 11:10 a.m. GMT (which is six hours ahead of CST), David and I, after passing through customs and collecting our luggage, proceeded to the Central Bus Station at about 11:45. We bought a one-way ticket for two to Cambridge, the bus leaving at 12:10 p.m and being scheduled to arrive at Cambridge c. 3:00.

7:34 p.m. GMT

I finally arrived at Homerton c. 4:00. David and I went to the porter's lodge to get our room keys and other check-in information. We went to our dorm, Queen's Wing, and, after some confusion, we found our rooms. All the WJC students—there are nine in all at Homerton—were all on the same hall. (An interesting group.) Each of us has a single room, and the men and women are not separated but mixed throughout the hall.

Other News

I went to the William Jewell College Perspectives on the Common Good pluralism in US democracy lecture. I asked the black lady there, "Isn't it more important to pursue the truth than to pursue the good?".

I went to the Bethel Baptist Association's annual meeting, so that I could fulfill the requirement for my ministry internship.

I went to Northland Reformed Church Sunday, the 24th. Pastor Syms' made a thoughtful and kind announcement acknowledging and thanking me for my internship and announcing my imminent journey abroad. We stayed for a bit and had interesting conversations with some of the churchfolk. I think my mom is beginning to warm up to the Reformed church and its style and members.

I Have Internet!

2006-10-01T15:05:00.000-05:00

I have internet! In my room! Yay! Way to go Homerton College!

I'm at Cambridge

2006-09-26T08:53:00.001-05:00

Having left Kansas City last Sunday, the 24th, I travelled to Cambridge, England to study abroad at Homerton College, Cambridge University, for the entire academic year. I made journal/blog entries as I travelled, but, because I won't have internet in my room until Monday, I haven't been able to post the entries and won't have a chance to post them until then. And so, this post is a sort of make-shift post until I get internet access in my room.

Messianic Prophecies in the Pentateuch

2006-09-22T10:00:00.000-05:00

There are six direct Messianic prophecies in the Pentateuch:

The Edenic prediction (Genesis 3:15)
The Noahic prediction (Genesis 9:25–27)
The Abrahamic prediction (Genesis 12:1–3, et. al)
The Judaic prediction (Genesis 49:8–12)
The Balaamic prediction (Numbers 24:15–19)
The Mosaic prediction (Deuteronomy 18:15, 18)

I will discuss two of these, the Edenic and the Noahic, at length soon, but first I will provide the text of each of the six prophecies.

The Edenic prediction occurs in Gen 3:15, after the Fall, within God's pronunciation of judgement on Adam and Eve.
14 The Lord God said to the serpent,
"Because you have done this,
cursed are you above all livestock
and above all beasts of the field;
on your belly you shall go,
and dust you shall eat
all the days of your life.
15 I will put enmity between you and the woman,
and between your offspring and her offspring;
he shall bruise your head,
and you shall bruise his heel." (ESV)
The Noahic prediction occurs in Gen 9:25–27 because of Ham's seeing Noah's nakedness. As a result, Noah 1) triple-curses Ham's son, Canaan, and 2) double-blesses Ham's brother, Shem.
25 he [Noah] said,

"Cursed be Canaan;
a servant of servants shall he be to his brothers."

26 He also said,

"Blessed be the Lord, the God of Shem;
and let Canaan be his servant.
27 May God enlarge Japheth,
and let him [i.e., God] dwell in the tents of Shem,
and let Canaan be his servant."
The Abrahamic prediction is found in at least six places in Genesis, including 12:1–3, 7; 18:17–19; and 22:15–18. The prediction is found in these places among a number of unconditional promises that God makes to Abraham.
1 Now the Lord said to Abram, "Go from your country and your kindred and your father’s house to the land that I will show you. 2 And I will make of you a great nation, and I will bless you and make your name great, so that you will be a blessing. 3 I will bless those who bless you, and him who dishonors you I will curse, and in you all the families of the earth shall be blessed." 7 Then the Lord appeared to Abram and said, "To your offspring I will give this land." So he built there an altar to the Lord, who had appeared to him.(12:1–3, 7)

17 The Lord said, "Shall I hide from Abraham what I am about to do, 18 seeing that Abraham shall surely become a great and mighty nation, and all the nations of the earth shall be blessed in him? 19 For I have chosen him, that he may command his children and his household after him to keep the way of the Lord by doing righteousness and justice, so that the Lord may bring to Abraham what he has promised him." (18:17–19)

15 And the angel of the Lord called to Abraham a second time from heaven 16 and said, "By myself I have sworn, declares the Lord, because you have done this and have not withheld your son, your only son, 17 I will surely bless you, and I will surely multiply your offspring as the stars of heaven and as the sand that is on the seashore. And your offspring shall possess the gate of his enemies, 18 and in your offspring shall all the nations of the earth be blessed, because you have obeyed my voice." (22:15–18)
The Judaic prediction occurs in Genesis 49:8–12, in Jacob's designating Judah, his fourth son, as the heir of the same promises made to Abraham and Isaac.
8 "Judah, your brothers shall praise you; your hand shall be on the neck of your enemies; your father’s sons shall bow down before you. 9 Judah is a lion’s cub; from the prey, my son, you have gone up. He stooped down; he crouched as a lion and as a lioness; who dares rouse him? 10 The scepter shall not depart from Judah, nor the ruler’s staff from between his feet, until tribute comes to him; and to him shall be the obedience of the peoples. 11 Binding his foal to the vine and his donkey’s colt to the choice vine, he has washed his garments in wine and his vesture in the blood of grapes. 12 His eyes are darker than wine, and his teeth whiter than milk."
The Balaamic prediction is found in Numbers 24:15–19.
15 And he took up his discourse and said, "The oracle of Balaam the son of Beor, the oracle of the man whose eye is opened, 16 the oracle of him who hears the words of God, and knows the knowledge of the Most High, who sees the vision of the Almighty, falling down with his eyes uncovered: 17 I see him, but not now; I behold him, but not near: a star shall come out of Jacob, and a scepter shall rise out of Israel; it shall crush the forehead of Moab and break down all the sons of Sheth. 18 Edom shall be dispossessed; Seir also, his enemies, shall be dispossessed. Israel is doing valiantly. 19 And one from Jacob shall exercise dominion and destroy the survivors of cities!"
The Mosaic prediction is found in Deuteronomy 18:15, 18.
15 “The Lord your God will raise up for you a prophet like me from among you, from your brothers—it is to him you shall listen…18 I will raise up for them a prophet like you from among their brothers. And I will put my words in his mouth, and he shall speak to them all that I command him.

Evangelism Report

2006-09-17T13:59:00.001-05:00

I evangelized at Westport again on Friday night, from 8:30 to about 1:00 p.m. It was for me the most amazing night of Evangelism all summer. For, I paired with a man named Chris, a current student at Midwestern Baptist Theological Seminary, who was the most effective evangelist I've ever witnessed. He leading, we conversed with more people than I had ever talked to on any single night. Actually, we probably talked to more people than I had all summer. Chris used "ticket to heaven" tracts. He began conversations thus: "Could you help me out? I'm doing a project/survey and I'd like to ask you a question: What do you think happens to you when you die?"

Again this week I had no tracts to bring. Although I ordered tracts last week from Good News Tracts, they had not yet arrived; and so, Jim was again nice enough to give me a few of the tracts that he had bought for himself. Surprisingly, I ended up with some good tracts to use for the night. Also, I saw several tracts published by and learned about the tract company Living Waters. (Most of the tracts that Living Waters publishes are gimmicky. One involves a "magic" trick, for example.)

We talked to so many people that I remember almost none of their names. In the future I shall take a small notebook with me and write down the name of and information about whoever I talk to.

Pierce (the jazz man)
White Muslim young man
African Muslim man
Two young men (white) who were "apostate" Christians
The "philosophy major"
The Latino young man
Two young black men
The angry Mexican whose brother had been killed in Iraq.
The BP gas station clerk.

Two of the more notable conversations were the ones with the two Muslims. In both cases, something happened that speaks much to the nature of Islam: they nearly began crying in response to the gospel. Now, first, let us remember that, as Luther said, all religions may be divided into two kinds: religions of law and religions of gospel. Religions of law decree moral laws and promise rewards for those who obey the laws. Religions of gospel (there is only one) also decree moral laws and promise rewards for those who obey the laws, but also, knowing that the human condition (viz., depravity) makes the necessary obedience impossible for humans, provide a way for humans to "get" the perfect righteousness necessary to exist in the presence of a just, righteous, holy, perfect God. Christianity—the only religion to provide such a "way"—is therefore the only religion of gospel.

Because of the human condition, and resulting inability of humans to perfectly keep the law, religions of law never work. For, the perfect law can only cause despair for imperfect man. It humbles him and brings him to their knees. The law is a mirror by which we see and are constantly reminded of God's perfect righteousness and moral perfection, and how we fall infinitely short of attaining that perfection.

Not only was I able to evangelize Friday, but today, also, while getting a haircut, another evangelism opportunity fell right into my lap. For, conversing with the young woman cutting my hair, I told her that I was to sing a solo at my church Sunday. Eventually, I asked her whether she attended a church. No, she said. Her mother used to make her go to church. However, the church she had attended had been an extremely charismatic church, one in which there was wild/extreme speaking in tongues, running around, dancing, and other charismatic idiosyncracies. Plus, they were abrasive and disrespectful in the way they presented their beliefs. These were major turn-offs for her, and, as soon as she was able, she stopped attending church. And so, I presented the gospel to her.

The Stormtrooper Effect and Redshirt Characters

2006-09-15T14:14:00.000-05:00

Two hilariously witty articles: the Stormtrooper Effect and Redshirt characters.

So, You Think You Know the Bible Well, eh?

2006-09-14T21:35:00.000-05:00

Think you know the Bible well? Take one of these Bible Content Tests. I took the 2000 test and scored a 75%. Almost all of the questions I missed concerned the OT. (No surprise: few Christians know much about the OT.)

If you take a test, post your score as a comment to this post. That would be interesting and fun, wouldn't it?

Reformed Rap

2006-09-14T16:16:00.000-05:00

Check out this sweet Reformed Rap.

Star Trek: Where No Man Could Ever Go

2006-09-13T17:51:00.000-05:00

I enjoy watching Star Trek. Not the original series (which is too cheesy for me), but The Next Generation and Deep Space Nine. However, being a Christian and striving to have a biblical worldview, it is (sometimes painfully) obvious that the worldview presented on Star Trek is most definitely not a biblical one. Rather, The Star Trek worldview is founded on secular, humanistic, man-exalting philosophies, including materialism, empiricism, and relativism. Star Trek is, in fact, a paragon of such ideals. Two questions:

What happened to God in the 24th century? It is clear that the Star Trek worldview includes nothing less than rejection of and rebellion against the God of all creation and the very universe which it is Starfleet's mission to explore. However, while, on the one hand, humanity in the Star Trek universe has abandoned all religion, on the other hand, the show, in many episodes, has encounters with deities or supernatural forces in other civilizations and worlds. And, whenever any such encounters with the seeming supernatural occur, it is shown to be either some advanced, highly-evolved form of life or the result of some initially-unknown kind of uber-advanced technology. And, there is never any though or mention of what might have created space and time themselves.
What happened to truth in the 24th century? The Star Trek universe is one in which thousands of civilizations and species exist throughout the galaxy. The show uses interactions among morally-diverse societies and civilizations to deny and condemn the existence of any absolute truth. In a universe with no omnipotent god, neither is there truth.

Furthermore, consider Picard's own vision of humanity in the TNG episode "Hide and Q" in this exchange between the god-like entity "Q" and him:

     "Q" (MARSHAL)
    (lifts book)
   Shall I quote from Hamlet?

     PICARD
   No. I know Hamlet. And what
   he said with irony I prefer to
   say with conviction.
    (quoting)
   "What a piece of work is man!
   How noble in reason! How infinite
   in faculty. In form, in moving,
   how express and admirable. In
   action, how like an angel. In
   apprehension, how like a god... "

     "Q" (MARSHAL)
    (upset; interrupting)
   You don't really see your species
   like that?!

     PICARD
   I see us one day becoming that,
   "Q". Is that what concerns you?

 "Q" comes angrily to his feet, SLAMMING the volume down
 and DISAPPEARING in a FLASH. A startled and puzzled
 Picard watches him go, then turns to ponder the meaning
 of "Q"'s anger.

Ironically, the philosophy of Star Trek, in exalting man, actually degrades him. For example, in the episode "The Measure of a Man," Captain Picard formally defends Lt. Cmdr. Data, an android, against charges that Data, being a machine, is the property of Starfleet and therefore may be subjected to being disassembled and experimented on by Starfleet. One of Picard's arguments is that, like Data, humans, too, are machines:

            PICARD
    (making his opening
     statement)
   Commander Riker has dramatically
   demonstrated to this court that
   Lieutenant Commander Data is a
   machine. Do we deny that? No.
   But how is this relevant? We too
   are machines, just machines of
   a different type. Commander Riker
   has continually reminded us that
   Data was built by a human. We
   do not deny that fact. But again
   how is it relevant? Does
   construction imply ownership?
   Children are created from the
   building blocks of their parents'
   DNA. Are they property? We have
   a chance in this hearing to
   severely limit the boundaries
   of freedom. And I think we
   better be pretty damn careful
   before we take so arrogant a step.

What a sad and pathetic view of man modern secular science has propogated to the world! Regarding humans as basically bags of chemicals, it makes man merely another species in the animal kingdom. What a travesty!
For more, see the interesting article, Science Fiction: A Biblical Perspective and this blog post.

Drive-In Church

2006-09-12T19:52:00.000-05:00

Wow. TIME: At the Drive-In Church Photo Essay

Wow.

2006-09-11T13:18:00.000-05:00

Wow. Jesus Camp

Friday Evangelsim

2006-09-10T16:14:00.000-05:00

Once again, I evangelized last Friday at Westport. I--with Amy, my girlfriend--evangelized from about 8:30 to 9:45. To our surprise, Westport was hosting a large art fair that night. The streets were closed off to traffic and instead lined with small tents displaying various kinds of art. This was a blessing, for Westport was filled with many more people than usual. I got to present the "full" gospel to only one person, a nice older man who said he would go to heaven because he had lived a good life.

At 9:45, Amy and I stopped evangelizing and went into "date mode," perusing the art and enjoying drinks at a nearby Starbucks.

The Wonderful Fruits of Studying Romans

2006-09-09T15:25:00.000-05:00

What a joy, and how edifying, it is to study the book of Romans! For, as John Calvin said, "It can never be sufficiently appreciated that when anyone gains a knowledge of this Epistle, he has an entrance opened to him to all the most hidden treasures of Scripture." Studying Romans, which is the most theologically systematic of Paul's surviving letters, has provided me with a framework by which to understand all of Scripture and through which to live my life. It has shaped my worldview and given me a better understanding of God and of reality.

Oh, that more Christians would have a biblical worldview!

The Messiah in the Old Testament

2006-09-08T17:52:00.000-05:00

Ignorance concerning Old Testament prophecy, it seems, is a hallmark of modern Christendom (especially evangelicalism). I've often heard certain misguided uber-literalists claim, for example, that there are several hundred direct, specific prophecies about Jesus Christ in the OT, and then go on to argue that, given the odds--which usually involves some great number, such as 10^17 (which makes you wonder how they might calculate such a thing)--against a single man fulfilling all the messianic prophecies, and given that Jesus did fulfill all the prophecies, Jesus must, mathematically, be God. Such claims are misleading. And so, I have been reading The Messiah in the Old Testament by Walter Kaiser, Jr.

Kaiser makes two general points about prophecy that I think are especially important. First, he says that prophecies must be understood primarily and first in light of their original, natural meaning. Prophecies do not have "dual senses," so that they are partly fulfilled at one time and then partly fulfilled at a later time. Second, Kaiser emphasizes that the Bible is to be read with an appreciation for its amazing, perfect unity and wholeness. For one, Christians are to understand and appreciate the coherence in the unfolding of redemption-history. For example, God's plan to redeem his people through Christ is clearly foreshadowed in Gen 3:15, when God pronounces, "I will put enmity between you [the serpent (Satan)] and the woman, and between your offspring and her offspring; he shall bruise your head, and you shall bruise his heel."

However, Kaiser observes, "Modernity has placed far too much weight on the particularity and the details of the text and has devoted hardly any time to the unity of the Bible" (26). Kaiser then quotes James Orr at length on the Bible's unity especially when compared to other religions' holy books:

The Koran, for instance, is a miscellany of disjointed pieces, out of which it is impossible to extract any order, progress, or arrangement. The 114 Suras or chapters of which it is composed are arranged chiefly according to length--the longer in general preceding the shorter. It is not otherwise with the Zoroastrian and Buddhist Scriptures. These are equally destitute of beginning, middle or end. They are, for the most part, collections of heterogeneous materials, loosely placed together. How different everyone must acknowledge it to be with the Bible! From Genesis to Revelation we feel that this book is in a real sense a unity. It is not a collection of fragments, but has, as we say, an organic character. It has one connected story to tell from beginning to end; we see something growing before our eyes: there is plan, purpose, progress; the end folds back on the beginning, and, when the whole is finished, we feel that here again, as in primal creation, God has finished all his works, and behold, they are very good. (26)

Over the next few days, I intend to examine and reflect on some of the individual messianic prophecies. Today, however, I will only discuss prophecy in general terms.

Old Testament prophecy quotations in the NT are of three general kinds:

Direct prophecies
Typical prophecies
Applications

Direct Prophecies are those which look directly to the messianic age and which the original readers of the prophecy would have understood to be about the Messiah. Micah 5:2, for example, declared that the Messiah would be Born in Bethlehem (and was cited by Matthew [2:6]). Similarly, Zechariah 9:9 foresaw that Zion's king would enter the city riding on a donkey.

Typical prophecies are not direct predictions of future events but "persons, institutions, or events that were divinely designated in the OT text to be models, previews, or pictures of something that was to come in the days of Messiah" (Kaiser 34). In other words, they are OT persons, institutions, or events that constituted the ways in which God reaveled himself to his covenant people Israel. Or, one could say that a typology was any OT, God-instituted thing for which there was/is analogy in some aspect of Christ's person or work. Examples of typical prophecies include the parts, services, and attendants of the tabernacle. Consider Exodus 25:8-9, 40:

And let them make me a sanctuary, that I may dwell in their midst. Exactly as I show you concerning the pattern of the tabernacle, and of all its furniture, so you shall make it. . . . And see that you make them after the pattern for them, which is being shown you on the mountain.

The tabernacle is a "pattern." What is a pattern? Something that represents an original--a copy of the real. "Thus," Kaiser explains, "God suggests that the copy will be replaced as soon as the actual shows up in space and time" (34).

The third type of prophecies quoted in the NT are applications. These are prophecies in which no specific prediction was intended by the OT or claimed by the NT writer.

"J. I. Packer puts his pants on one leg at a time, just like you and me," part II

2006-09-05T11:01:00.000-05:00

In our discussion two weeks ago, Rev. Syms and I discussed personal spiritual disciplines--both Rev. Syms' spiritual disciplines and spiritual disciplines in general.

We also discussed how it is possible for a somewhat impressionable young theologian, such as me, to put one or two certain theologians on a pedestal and then elevate them so high that he might sometimes accept some or all of what they say simply on their authority, rather than judging them by the Bible. This is something to which I may be prone if I'm not careful. If I were to fall into this danger, it would be John Piper and J. I. Packer whom I would elevate. For, I have been listening extensively and almost exclusively to John Piper's sermons on Romans, and also reading J. I. Packer's books (or books he endorses; most recently, Evangelism & the Sovereignty of God). I recently read a comment to a hilarious blog post that said jokingly,

I’ve often wondered how J.I. Packer has the time to read all the books that he endorces or writes the foreword to. And how much does he get paid for each one? Even if it is $10 each, he is a millionaire!
I’m thankful. How would we know which books are Reformed/Biblical without him?

This is funny, because I own at least six books that are either authored or endorsed by Packer. And, I do get excited and want to buy a book when I see his name on it. I need to take care to ensure that, within those theologians whom I have judged faithful to Scripture and edifying, I read a greater number and a greater variety of theologians. As Rev. Syms reminded me, "J. I. Packer puts his pants on one leg at a time, just like you and me."

I also showed Rev. Syms some of the tracts that I had been handing out when evangelizing. And, when he expressed concern about the message or theology of some of them, I was embarrassed; I realized that I had never bothered to read through any of the tracts that I had been using in evangelism. He pointed out--and after I read through them I agreed--that two of the tracts in particular were questionable. The first was the "Four Spiritual Laws" tract by Bill Bright. Bright is a free-will-ist to the core, and this prompted the concern. And, most of my tracts were "Four Spiritual Laws" tracts (I get all my tracts from my fellow evangelists). The second questionable tract was the million-dollar bill tract. I have never liked these tracts (and have seldom used them). One side of this tract is designed like an imaginary $1 million bill. The other side has a bare-bones gospel message written around the border. It says:

"The million dollar question: Will you go to Heaven? Here's a quick test. Have you ever told a lie, stolen anything, or used God's name in vain? Jesus said, "Whoever looks upon a woman to lust after her has committed adultery already with her in his heart." Have you looked with lust? Will you be guilty on Judgment Day? If you have done those things God sees you as a lying, thieving, blasphemous, adulterer at heart. The Bible warns that if you are guilty you will end up in Hell. That's not God's will. He sent His Son to suffer and die on the cross for you. Jesus took your punishment upon Himself -- 'For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have everlasting life.' Then He rose from the dead and defeated death. Please, repent (turn from sin) today and trust in Jesus, and God will grant you everlasting life. Then read your Bible daily and obey it."

What really makes me uneasy is how I've seen other people use these tracts. At least one of my fellow evangelists in particular uses them in a way that is ineffective and even seems to result in deception and trickery. He'll leave the "bills" lying around in various (public) places, such as in the coin slots of newspaper vending machines, on the large tree pots that line the streets, and even in the middle of a street crosswalk, so that, appearing to be real money, it will be picked up by someone. When I've watched people pick such-placed "bills" up, it has always looked like trickery to me. This, I believe, only hurts the spread of the gospel. From now on, I will be more careful about the tracts I use, and I myself will acquire tracts.

Huh: it appears that the secret service has confiscated a large number of these misguided tracts. Wow.

A God-Glorifying Friday

2006-09-02T22:28:00.000-05:00

An amazing Friday evening it was. I evangelized with several others (especially the beautiful Amy Shoemyer, my girlfriend), and God was glorified. Amy and I engaged in two lengthy discussions. Each discussion was with a middle-aged, black homeless man, and each discussion involved us buying a slice of pizza for the homeless man. Our first lengthy conversation was with a man named Jeremy. Claiming to be homeless, Jeremy asked for money. Of course, I don't give out money, and so I proposed that I buy him a slice of pizza from Joe's Pizza. He accepted, and so, having gone there and bought the pizza, Amy and I sat with him while he ate and presented the gospel. In the end, Jeremy said he wasn't ready to give up living for himself and throw himself before Jesus, although he had listened and was impressively amiable. I prayed with Jeremy before we parted ways.

The second lengthy conversation was with a man named Lou. Actually, I'd met and talked to Lou previously, several months before. Like Jeremy, Lou also agreed to let me buy him pizza. Having done this and brought it to him, I presented the gospel to him while he ate. He had heard the gospel many times before in similar situations. In the end, Lou said that, although he had already accepted Jesus, he had not been living the way he ought. He said that he had been experiencing much hardship recently. Before Lou and we departed, I prayed with him, for him.

As I'm typing this post, I'm very tired. And so, I'm going to bed now, but I may elaborate on this bare-bones post tomorrow or Monday. Good night.

"J. I. Packer puts his pants on one leg at a time, just like you and me," part I

2006-08-31T17:27:00.000-05:00

I've neglected posting for a week, and so here I am with a new post.

I went evangelizing last Friday. It was raining--pretty heavily at first, although it let up later on--and I stayed for about two hours. I handed out many tracts, but I had no really good conversations, as I had last week. I did, however, converse for about ten minutes with a man who, standing just outside a door to a restaurant, was leaning against the wall and smoking. In fact, he was the executive chef for the restaraunt, in charge of all the other chefs. Talking to him with a fellow evangelist (a professor from Midwest Baptist Theological Seminary), I challenged him to consider what the overall purpose of his life was. I asked him what he thought would happen were he to die. In responding, he merely shrugged off my questions. However, he took a tract and said he would show the tract to the other chefs.

Rev. Syms and I met last week and discussed his spiritual disciplines.

I haven't really done anything major this week but only miscellany:

I have been continuing my (almost two-month) study of Romans. I have now reached Romans 9-11, which I am actually kind of studying as a whole. Most of my study has consisted in (besides reading, re-reading, and meditating on the Scripture text) listening to John Piper's sermons in his series on Romans. These are excellent, and I recommend that anyone who enjoys hearing the Word of God exposited faithfully, skillfully, and passionately should download some of them (see links under "Audio Resources").
I've been continuing to memorize Scripture (though not everyday, as I should). My score on InVerse is now 69 (which means nothing to you unless you have the program--which you can download free at the InVerse website). Currently, I'm in the process of memorizing Acts 4:12, 27-28; Romans 8:28-30; 1 Corinthians 6:18-20; and Jeremiah 17:9-10.
Wednesday, I attended a discussion panel/debate on capital punishment at William Jewell. The panel consisted of six people, of whom three represented each side of the issue. Within each of these two groups, each of the three people represented a different aspect of the debate: one the legal aspect, one the moral aspect, and one the "personal" aspect. Each of the panelists in turn made a c.20-minute presentation. Although the event as a whole was stimulating, four of the six panelists were at least mildly inept.

Having taken the Greek final exam, I have now completed my third semester of ancient Greek and my study of the fundamental elements of Greek grammar. I'm now eager to begin reading ancient Greek at Cambridge. But which author should I read? From what I've heard, Plato, Euripides, and Xenophon are among the friendliest authors to read in Greek.

A Busy Thursday

2006-08-24T10:31:00.000-05:00

This morning I had a dentist appointment, receiving my semiannual general checkup. Today I must study much for tomorrow's Greek final exam. I am currently focusing on memorizing Romans 8. Today, I'm memorizing Romans 8:28-30:

And we know that for those who love God all things work together for good, for those who are called according to his purpose. For those whom he foreknew he also predestined to be conformed to the image of his Son, in order that he might be the firstborn among many brothers. And those whom he predestined he also called, and those whom he called he also justified, and those whom he justified he also glorified.

"The Cross Alone Is Our Theology"

2006-08-23T14:40:00.000-05:00

In April 1518, Martin Luther, having been asked to present his theological thinking to his fellow Augustinians, presented these theses at the General Chapter (meeting) of the Augustinian Order of Germany at Heidelberg, Germany. The theses were very important to the Protestant Reformation--even more so (probably) than Luther's more famous Ninety-Five Theses. For, the theses (and their corresponding proofs [see http://www.catchpenny.org/heidel.html]) show clearly Luther's developing theology, which in 1515 began developing toward Luther's mature theology of the early 1520s. These theses contain the first statements of Luther's glorious "theology of the cross," one of the most powerful statements of theology I have ever heard.

1. The law of God, the most salutary doctrine of life, cannot advance man on his way to righteousness, but rather hinders him.
2. Much less can human works, which are done over and over again with the aid of natural precepts, so to speak, lead to that end.
3. Although the works of man always seem attractive and good, they are nevertheless likely to be mortal sins.
4. Although the works of God always seem unattractive and appear evil, they are nevertheless really eternal merits.
5. The works of men are thus not mortal sins (we speak of works which are apparently good), as though they were crimes.
6. The works of God (we speak of those which he does through man) are thus not merits, as though they were sinless.
7. The works of the righteous would be mortal sins if they would not be feared as mortal sins by the righteous themselves out of pious fear of God.
8. By so much more are the works of man mortal sins when they are done without fear and in unadulterated, evil self-security.
9. To say that works without Christ are dead, but not mortal, appears to constitute a perilous surrender of the fear of God.
10. Indeed, it is very difficult to see how a work can be dead and at the same time not a harmful and mortal sin.
11. Arrogance cannot be avoided or true hope be present unless the judgment of condemnation is feared in every work.
12. In the sight of God sins are then truly venial when they are feared by men to be mortal.
13. Free will, after the fall, exists in name only, and as long as it does what it is able to do, it commits a mortal sin.
14. Free will, after the fall, has power to do good only in a passive capacity, but it can always do evil in an active capacity.
15. Nor could free will endure in a state of innocence, much less do good, in an active capacity, but only in its passive capacity.
16. The person who believes that he can obtain grace by doing what is in him adds sin to sin so that he becomes doubly guilty.
17. Nor does speaking in this manner give cause for despair, but for arousing the desire to humble oneself and seek the grace of Christ.
18. It is certain that man must utterly despair of his own ability before he is prepared to receive the grace of Christ.
19. That person does not deserve to be called a theologian who looks upon the invisible things of God as though they were clearly perceptible in those things which have actually happened [Rom. 1:20].
(a better translation: The man who looks upon the invisible things of God as they are perceived in created things does not deserve to be called a theologian.)
20. He deserves to be called a theologian, however, who comprehends the visible and manifest things of God seen through suffering and the cross.
(a better translation: The man who perceives the visible rearward parts of God as seen in suffering and the cross does, however, deserve to be called a theologian.)
21. A theologian of glory calls evil good and good evil. A theologian of the cross calls the thing what it actually is.
22. That wisdom which sees the invisible things of God in works as perceived by man is completely puffed up, blinded, and hardened.
23. The law brings the wrath of God, kills, reviles, accuses, judges, and condemns everything that is not in Christ [Rom. 4:15].
24. Yet that wisdom is not of itself evil, nor is the law to be evaded; but without the theology of the cross man misuses the best in the worst manner.
25. He is not righteous who does much, but he who, without work, believes much in Christ.
26. The law says, “do this,” and it is never done. Grace says, “believe in this,” and everything is already done.
27. Actually one should call the work of Christ an acting work and our work an accomplished work, and thus an accomplished work pleasing to God by the grace of the acting work.
28. The love of God does not find, but creates, that which is pleasing to it. The love of man comes into being through that which is pleasing to it.

In an introduction to the Theses in the anthology Martin Luther's Basic Theological Writings, Timothy Lull (its editor) provides this concise description of the historical-theological context and significance of the Theses:

Luther had come to think that the trouble with the whole tradition that had developed from Thomas Aquinas was that it tended to be dominated by its opening theological moves. Since the existence of God could be shown rationally or philosophically a style of theology developed that moved too smoothly from what could be known and comprehended clearly in creation to the grace of God in Jesus Christ. Though Thomas himself was clear that the saving mysteries could not be known by reason, much of the energy of subsequent theology went into these foundational questions.
This could obscure what St. Paul had taught so forcefully: the cross of Christ is not a concept compatible with human wisdom and philosophy, but only with deep folly and offense. The cross is not inspiring but a scandal. Therefore the true theologian is not the one who argues from visible and evident things (following Aristotle), but rather the one who has learned from the cross that the ways of God are hidden (deus absconditus), even in the revelation of Jesus Christ.
Here Luther provides not only theological and philosophical theses, but also elaborations of each one, showing the connection of many of the issues which he is discussing with the views of Scripture and various theologians.
What emerges in this document is Luther’s radically grace-centered theology that sets the righteousness of God not only against the claims of philosophy for wisdom, but also against all the best moral achievement of humanity. It is an appeal to rediscover the sharp voice of Augustine (especially in his controversy with Pelagius), which apparently had become muted even in the Augustinian order.

The idea of Christ as a "hidden revelation" of God brings to mind several passages in Scripture, each of which makes a very powerful statement:

Matthew 16:13-20. When Peter confesses Jesus as "the Christ, the Son of the living God" (v. 16 ESV), Jesus replies amazingly, "Blessed are you, Simon Bar-Jonah! For flesh and blood has not revealed this to you, but my Father who is in heaven" (v. 17).
Luke 7:18-23. When John sends messengers to Jesus asking him, "Are you the one who is to come, or shall we look for another?" Jesus replies, "Go and tell John what you have seen and heard: the blind receive their sight, the lame walk, lepers are cleansed, and the deaf hear, the dead are raised up, the poor have good news preached to them. And blessed is the one who is not offended by me" (vv. 22-23).
1 Corinthians 1:18-2:16. Paul powerfully proclaims that Christ is the wisdom and power of God--although, to the world, Christ and the cross appear weak and foolish.
For the word of the cross is folly to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God. For it is written, 'I will destroy the wisdom of the wise, and the discernment of the discerning I will thwart.' Where is the one who is wise? Where is the scribe? Where is the debater of this age? Has not God made foolish the wisdom of the world? For since, in the wisdom of God, the world did not know God through wisdom, it pleased God through the folly of what we preach to save those who believe. For Jews demand signs and Greeks seek wisdom, but we preach Christ crucified, a stumbling block to Jews and folly to Gentiles, but to those who are called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God. For the foolishness of God is wiser than men, and the weakness of God is stronger than men. For consider your calling, brothers: not many of you were wise according to worldly standards, not many were powerful, not many were of noble birth. But God chose what is foolish in the world to shame the wise; God chose what is weak in the world to shame the strong; God chose what is low and despised in the world, even things that are not, to bring to nothing things that are, so that no human being might boast in the presence of God. He is the source of your life in Christ Jesus, whom God made our wisdom and our righteousness and sanctification and redemption. Therefore, as it is written, 'Let the one who boasts, boast in the Lord' (1:18-31).

An Anthropocentric Universe?

2006-08-22T15:16:00.001-05:00

. . . The IAU said Pluto meets its proposed new definition of a planet: any round object larger than 800 kilometers (nearly 500 miles) in diameter that orbits the sun and has a mass roughly one-12,000th that of Earth. Moons and asteroids will make the grade if they meet those basic tests.

Roundness is key, experts said, because it indicates an object has enough self-gravity to pull itself into a spherical shape. Yet Earth's moon wouldn't qualify because the two bodies' common center of gravity lies below the surface of the Earth.
"People were probably wondering: If they take away Pluto, is Rhode Island next?" Binzel quipped. "There are as many opinions about Pluto as there are astronomers. But Pluto has gravity on its side. By the physics of our proposed definition, Pluto makes it by a long shot."
IAU President Ronald D. Ekers said the draft definition, two years in the making, was an attempt to reach a cosmic consensus and end decades of quarreling. "We don't want an American version, a European version and a Japanese version" of what constitutes a planet, he said.
Neil deGrasse Tyson, director of the Hayden Planetarium at New York's American Museum of Natural History — miscast as a "Pluto-hater," he contends, merely because Pluto was excluded from a solar system exhibit — said the new guidelines would clear up the fuzzier aspects of the Milky Way.
"For the first time since ancient Greece, we have an unambiguous definition," he said. "Now, when an object is debated as a possible planet, the answer can be swift and clear."

Source: Plan would add planets to solar system

Reading this article on the proposed addition of planets to this solar system, I was saddened and frustrated and angered at secular science (and secular academia in general), realizing how ultimately futile and useless ("Vanity of vanities!") and misguided any endeavor for knowledge or worldview is without having "the fear of the Lord" (Prov 1:7) as its starting point. On one hand, how dare we humans presume to classify and categorize the creation of the Almighty God! What an offence and what folly that we presume to be able to package it into some neat little system! And yet, we've been told to do just that, in being given dominion and stewardship over God's creation (Gen 1:26, 28-29).

Indeed, the universe and its billions of galaxies were created for the good purposes and enjoyment of God, and to display his glory, which is indefinable. John Piper is at his best and most passionate when talking about the purpose of creation. I recently read one of his online messages on the purpose of creation. He presents a striking quote from Charles Misner on Albert Einstein's view of preaching back in the '40s and '50s:

I do see the design of the universe as essentially a religious question. That is, one should have some kind of respect and awe for the whole business. . . . It's very magnificent and shouldn't be taken for granted. In fact, I believe that is why Einstein had so little use for organized religion, although he strikes me as a basically very religious man. He must have looked at what the preachers said about God and felt that they were blaspheming. He had seen much more majesty than they had ever imagined, and they were just not talking about the real thing. My guess is that he simply felt that religions he'd run across did not have proper respect . . . for the author of the universe.

This sort of attitude that Einstein recognized is still prevalent--more prevalent, in fact--today.

Monday, August 21, 2006

2006-08-21T19:26:00.000-05:00

This post was written Friday night, but, because my internet connection has been down from last Thursday night until today, I was only able to post today.

Truly, God was magnified tonight among the poor and the lost. Going to Westport (a district near downtown Kansas City), I did street evangelism for the second consecutive Friday. I dispensed tracts to whomever would take them and preached the gospel--and, to that end, engaged in apologetics--to whomever would listen. Tonight, God had ordained for me two major opportunities to evangelize and apologize. The first occurred just after I arrived at Westport. A man appearing to be about 50 years old, seeing me walking past him, asked me for money. Charles told me that he and his wife (to whom he later said he had been married for something like 35 years) had ten children, but that they had had nothing to eat for the past two or three days. Of course, an important rule when ministering to the poor is that they should never--regardless of how desperate their situation--be given money; and so, I told Charles that, although I wouldn't give him money, I would talk to my fellow evangelists (namely, Darin Smith) so that I could see what we could do to help him. Before our first encounter concluded, however, I told him the gospel. Charles thought he would go to heaven because he was basically a good person--the typical response of a non-Christians and cultural Christians (and American Christians).

And so, while Charles walked about a block and sat on a street corner bench, I talked to Darin. Eventually, after consulting Dan Grubbs (one of two "adults," and a Pleasant Valley Baptist Church member, who regularly evangelizes with Darin and from the beginning has supported the street ministry begun by the small group of Jewell students), we decided to buy him some food. So, Darin and I went to a nearby supermarket and bought two packages of chopped ham, one package containing 72 slices of cheese, two loaves of bread, and a gallon of two-percent milk (spending about 12 dollars). And so, we took the groceries to Charles. But what was his reaction? The first thing he did was look in the bag and tell us that his kids (who, remember, hadn't eaten for two or three days) couldn't eat the kind of cheese we had bought because it made their skin break out (or something). This was irksome, but only momentarily.

My other major evangelism and apologetics opportunity tonight was a discussion with two young men. One of the guys claimed to be a Christian and seemed to know enough about Christianity that I suspect he grew up going to church (Sunday school, at least). He was slightly but noticeably drunk. The other guy, who seemed almost perfectly sober, was a deist (deism: "a movement or system of thought advocating natural religion, emphasizing morality, and in the 18th century denying the interference of the Creator with the laws of the universe" (Merriam-Webster); basically, belief in a god who is impersonal--i.e., he does not interfere in the world [and thus deists deny the possibility of miracles]). However, while he seemed to know basically what deism was, I would conjecture that he was not a "devout" deist (i.e., that he didn't really know the history of deism, how it came out of the Enlightenment, etc.). The nominal Christian said that, while he thought that my message was good, he didn't see how I had a right to tell people that they are sinful. Honestly, they both asked so many good and important questions (though often in an accusatory tone) that they would often both ask very good questions or raise very good objections at the same time, which prevented me from addressing as many of their objections or being as clear as I could have. I conversed with these two guys for about 35 minutes. After the two guys left, I handed out tracts for about 15 more minutes, until it began raining. Then, I left Westport and headed home, driving through heavy rain.

I have finished all my Greek grammar lessons and have only the final exam remaining (which I've scheduled for this Friday at noon). I have learned a great deal more by studying Greek in an independent study than I ever did in either of the two Greek classes I've taken--and in less time, too (10 weeks this summer vs. a 16-week semester). I intend to master ancient Greek, so that I might be able to read ancient Greek as easily as I read English. Oh, that I could read the New Testament in Greek! (I also look forward to being able to read classical Greek literature.)

I am currently reading Not What My Hands Have Done, a book containing two classic works on the Christian doctrine of justification: Horatius Bonar's "The Everlasting Righteousness" and Charles Hodge's "Justification by Faith Alone." The title of the book comes from a poem of the same name by Bonar (1808-1889):

Not what My hands have done can save my guilty soul.
Not what my toiling flesh has borne can make my spirit whole.
Not what I feel or do can give me peace with God.
Not all my prayers and sighs and tears can bear my awful load.

Thy work alone, O Christ, can ease this weight of sin.
Thy blood alone, O Lamb of God, can give me peace within.
Thy love to me, O God, not mine, O Lord, to Thee
Can rid me of this dark unrest and set my spirit free.

Thy grace alone, O God, to me can pardon speak.
Thy power alone, O Son of God, can this sore bondage break.
No other work, save thine, no other blood will do.
No strength save that which is divine can bear me safely through.

I bless the Christ of God; I rest on love divine.
And with unfaltering lip and heart, I call this Savior mine.
His cross dispels each doubt; I bury in his tomb
Each thought of unbelief and fear, each lingering shade of gloom.

I praise the God of grace; I trust his truth and might.
He calls me his; I call him mine, My God, my joy, my light.
'Tis he who saveth me, and freely pardon gives;
I love because he loveth me; I live because he lives.

-- Horatius Bonar (1808-1889)

The Trinity Foundation is having an essay contest, for which the essay topic is simply this book. First prize is $3,000.

Tuesday, August 15, 2006

2006-08-15T09:25:00.000-05:00

I've been trying to memorize Scripture daily. To do this, I'm making use of two free and insanely useful programs, InVerse (http://www.bibleinverse.org/) and Scripture Memory System (http://www.memoryverses.org). I highly recommend both programs to everyone desiring to memorize Scripture. And, I also would encourage every Christian to memorize Scripture, so that they might be able to say with the Psalmist,

How can a young man keep his way pure? By guarding it according to your word. With my whole heart I seek you; let me not wander from your commandments! I have stored up your word in my heart, that I might not sin against you. Blessed are you, O Lord; teach me your statutes! With my lips I declare all the rules of your mouth. In the way of your testimonies I delight as much as in all riches. I will meditate on your precepts and fix my eyes on your ways. I will delight in your statutes; I will not forget your word. (Ps 119:9-16 ESV)

On another note, I am currently reading J. I. Packer's Evangelism and the Sovereignty of God and John Murray's Redemption Accomplished and Applied.

A Good Friday

2006-08-13T13:39:00.000-05:00

Evangelism was good, and God was glorified. At Westport last Friday night, from about 8:30 p.m. to 1:00 a.m., I handed out tracts and struck up a few good conversations. I also had a turn speaking on the small, portable amplifier/speaker that Darin always brings. Check out Darin's Summer Evangelism Journal blog for more details on how the night went. I've been engaged recently in a study of Romans 6, reading it, meditating on it, and listening to John Piper sermons on it (which I downloaded from Preaching the Bible.com). I've also been working through Romans Nine. Moreover, I did a careful reading of Philippians yesterday, which was amazing. Soon, I intend to post some reflections on these (and more) here. Right now, though, I must finish my work on this week's Greek assignment. In Christ, Colby Painter

Friday, August 11, 2006

2006-08-11T12:43:00.000-05:00

Yesterday I was blessed to be able to go with Amy (my girlfriend) to serve at Forest Avenue Family Shelter, a women's homeless shelter in inner-city Kansas City, MO. Amy and I hung out with Bryan Peters, a recent Jewell graduate, current summer intern at the shelter, and future student at Palmer Theological Semenary. After a brief time of worship in song, Bryan did a message on Isaiah 65 and Revelation 21 and the "new heaven and new earth" that will be created at the end of this world. The message particularly resonated with these ladies, who are poor and homeless. After the message, Amy and I served dinner to the women having come to the shelter for the night. Tuna casserole, green beans, fruit cocktail, and doughnuts: a good meal. After the meal, the ladies did their mandatory chores. Amy and I sat in the shelter office with Bryan, who did the intake for the ladies who were new at the shelter. What a glorious thing it was seeing the gospel being lived at Forest Avenue and in the work of the shelter's staff and seeing it confronting and comforting the poor, the opressed, the downtrodden, the meek, and the lowly! Praise God through the Lord Jesus Christ that by his perfectly obedient life, substitutionary atoning death, and life-giving resurrection I and all Christians should--by grace alone, through faith alone, in Christ along--be freely given a perfect imputed righteousness; so that, having all things in Christ, we may, then, because of our great gratitude, be all things to all people in serving others in love. Truly, Christ is being magnified in the ministry of Forest Avenue Baptist Church, and I thank God that Amy and I were able to participate. Indeed, the experience was encouraging, and it reminded me that such a life of serving Christ and glorifying and magnifying and proclaiming his name should be the kind of life of all Christians. No matter by what means, every Christian's primary and ultimate goal in life should be that he glorify God. Tonight is the first friday of the official beginning of my ministry internship and the first time to go evangelizing as part of the internship. I will meet with Darin and whoever else comes in the Pleasant Valley Baptist Church east parking lot at 8:00 before we head out to Westport. I've invited all of Northland Reformed Church; however, this being the first week, in reality I expect that no one will show up from the church. I plan to have the pastor make an announcement again tomorrow (Sunday) during the worship services, and I will be there this week to talk to people after church about it. In addition, I may see if the church would allow Darin Smith to address the congregation tomorrow during the service at Northland, that he might exhort and encourage them to come evangelizing. Last Tuesday, I met with my "mentor" for my internship, Rev. George Syms, to discuss both baptism and conversion in general and his conversion and baptism. Just before the meeting, I listened to a John Piper sermon on Romans 4:11 ff. titled "How Do Circumcision and Baptism Correspond?" In the sermon, Piper examined Romans 4:11, a text that has been called the "lynchpin" in the argument for infant baptism. Piper was not persuaded by the arguments for infant baptism, and in the sermon he argued that, because of certain fundamental differences between God's people in the Old Testament--Israel--under the Old Covenant, and God's people in the New Testament--the Church--under the New Covenant, it is not appropriate to baptize infants as a ritual directly connected to the Old Testament ritual of circumcision. I agree with Piper (and Paul): from what I see in the New Testament, baptism was from the beginning something done by adults as a public proclamation of their conversion and as a dramatic reenactment of their death and resurrection with and in Christ. Unfortunately, the Reformed tradition, along with the Catholic church and the reformers themselves, blew it on this issue. My favorite theologians--John Calvin, Martin Luther, Theodore Beza, and many others--were wrong on this issue. I intend to do some research soon on the movements during the 16th century Reformation that did advocate adult baptism, the Anabaptist movements, and why the practice of adult and believers' baptism was so controversial, such that the Anabaptists were opposed not only by the Catholic church but also by all of the magisterial reformers (i.e., Luther, Calvin, Zwingli, et. al.). I also talked to Rev. Syms about his own conversion and baptism. Rev. Syms was baptized as an infant, being in a (theologically liberal) PC-USA church. At 18 years old, his Christian life truly began after he (with his family) moved to Florida (Miami, I think) and he began going to an excellent church having an excellent pastor. At the church, he was greatly influenced and encouraged by his Sunday school teacher who took Rev. Syms under his wing. But even more influential and decisive was his job at a Christian radio station in Miami. Working there, Rev. Syms was greatly encouraged by the radio station's staff of committed Christians, and he was convicted by God that he might commit to and follow Christ. He did. With his resonant bass speaking voice, Rev. Syms actually spent a summer as a missionary in Liberia working as a DJ for a Christian radio station there. In other news, I am nearly finished with my third semester of (Classical) Greek, which I've been taking as an independent study this semester. I have two more weeks of work to finish and one more quiz before I take the final exam the final week of August. I'm actually excited about this week's work, for I get to translate (among many other things) a passage adapted from the Gospel of John: John 11:1, 3-5, 17, 19-27, and 38-44 (in my textbook, the verses omitted in Greek are given in English). What a cool assignment! Studying at Homerton College, Cambridge, UK, next year, I will be taking a fourth semester (acutually, a trimester) of Greek, whence I will begin reading real Greek from (one of) the Ancient Greek writers--Plato, Herodotus, Aeschylus, Euripides, Hesiod, etc. That will be interesting and challenging, and I eagerly anticipate it.

The Jonathan Edwards Center at Yale University

2006-08-01T12:20:00.000-05:00

The Jonathan Edwards Center at Yale University

Darin's Summer Evangelism Journal

2006-07-30T23:25:00.000-05:00

Darin's Summer Evangelism Journal

The Foolishness and Hiddenness of God

2006-02-25T19:42:00.000-06:00

In his 1518 Heidelberg Disputation, Martin Luther presented his theology of the cross. Theses 19 and 20 are especially important:

19. The man who looks upon the invisible things of God as they are perceived in created things does not deserve to be called a theologian.

20. The man who perceives the visible rearward parts of God as seen in suffering and the cross does, however, deserve to be called a theologian.

For Luther, “the sole authentic locus of man’s knowledge of God is the cross of Christ” (McGrath 149). It is there alone—in Christ’s suffering and death—that God has revealed himself to the world. But this revelation is not obvious: it is hidden. But how is this possible—a “hidden revelation”? While God is revealed in the Cross, he is revealed in a way that stands in diametrical opposition to human standards of wisdom. “In the very things which human wisdom regards as the antithesis of deity—such as weakness, foolishness and humility—God stands revealed in the ‘humility and shame of the cross’” (McGrath 149).

This concept may be elucidated by recognizing in Luther’s thesis 20 an allusion to Exodus 33:

18 Moses said, "Please show me your glory." 19 And he said, "I will make all my goodness pass before you and will proclaim before you my name 'The Lord.' And I will be gracious to whom I will be gracious, and will show mercy on whom I will show mercy. 20 But," he said, "you cannot see my face, for man shall not see me and live." 21 And the Lord said, "Behold, there is a place by me where you shall stand on the rock, 22 and while my glory passes by I will put you in a cleft of the rock, and I will cover you with my hand until I have passed by. 23 Then I will take away my hand, and you shall see my back, but my face shall not be seen.” (Ex. 33:18-23)

Man cannot see the most holy God directly, only indirectly. When God relates to man, God must limit himself to a form manageable to man (something that won’t kill man). That form is Christ, our God who became man. In Christ is God but it is only the “back” of God. Christ came not in power or majesty or glory but in weakness and suffering and humility. Does not Isaiah foretell this, the lowliness of the Messiah? saying:

2 For he grew up before him like a young plant, and like a root out of dry ground; he had no form or majesty that we should look at him, and no beauty that we should desire him. 3 He was despised and rejected by men; a man of sorrows, and acquainted with grief… He was despised, and we esteemed him not. 4 Surely he has borne our griefs and carried our sorrows; yet we esteemed him stricken, smitten by God, and afflicted. 5 But he was wounded for our transgressions; he was crushed for our iniquities; upon him was the chastisement that brought us peace, and with his stripes we are healed. 6 All we like sheep have gone astray; we have turned every one to his own way; and the Lord has laid on him the iniquity of us all. (53:2-6)

In this sense, Christ and the cross are “the foolishness of God” of which Paul speaks in 1 Corinthians 1. So, Paul in 1 Corinthians 1 says that Christ and the cross are "a stumbling block to the Jews and folly to the Gentiles" (v. 23). The Jews expected the Messiah to come with strength and might and power, conquering and ruling by the sword. In general, the problem isn't necessarily that the world isn't looking; rather, the problem is that it's looking for the wrong thing. For the agreed on human concepts of wisdom, righteousness, and power are quite opposite to those of God. Yet, in weakness and foolishness God has been revealed, and as a result, the world is blind to the power and wisdom of God's revelation in Christ, who came in meekness and suffering. As Luther says,

It is not sufficient for anyone, and it does him no good to recognize God in his glory and majesty, unless he recognizes him in the humility and shame of the cross. Thus God destroys the wisdom of the wise, as Isa. [45:15] says, “Truly, thou art a God who hidest thyself.” (HD)

The hidden revelation of God in Christ can only be discerned by "the eye of faith.” Through faith, which is never earned by man but given to him by the grace of God in the Spirit, man is able to discern God hidden in the revelation of the cross of Christ. Those who seek God apart from Christ are like Philip, who said to Jesus, “Lord, show us the father” (Jn. 14:8). Listen to Jesus’ response: “Have I been with you so long, and you still do not know me, Philip? Whoever has seen me has seen the Father. How can you say, ‘Show us the Father’?” (Jn. 14:9). In Matthew, Jesus also speaks of similar matters:

25 At that time Jesus declared, "I thank you, Father, Lord of heaven and earth, that you have hidden these things from the wise and understanding and revealed them to little children; 26 yes, Father, for such was your gracious will. 27 All things have been handed over to me by my Father, and no one knows the Son except the Father, and no one knows the Father except the Son and anyone to whom the Son chooses to reveal him. (Matt 11:25-27)

It is in light of these things that we should not only interpret 1 Corinthians 1 but also think about Christ and the cross. For “the cross alone is our theology” (Luther).

Quote of the day

2006-02-20T23:26:00.000-06:00

"You need to come to terms with your poop." -- Amy Shoemyer

Valentine's Day prompts reflection on biblical womanhood

2006-02-12T18:37:00.000-06:00

Wanting to impart some substance to the Valentine's Day card I bought for my girlfriend (the literature in Valentine's Day cards is meaningless and awful--sometimes embarrassing, even, to send. I would much prefer the insides left blank and a simple "I love you" on the front.), I had in mind to include some Scripture. So, I searched the Bible for descriptions of a virtuous woman/wife. I found several, but the one I chose was from Proverbs 31:10-13, 25-30:

An excellent wife who can find? She is far more precious than jewels. The heart of her husband trusts in her, and he will have no lack of gain. She does him good, and not harm, all the days of her life. She seeks wool and flax, and works with willing hands. Strength and dignity are her clothing, and she laughs at the time to come. She opens her mouth with wisdom, and the teaching of kindness is on her tongue. She looks well to the ways of her household and does not eat the bread of idleness. Her children rise up and call her blessed; her husband also, and he praises her: “Many women have done excellently, but you surpass them all." Charm is deceitful, and beauty is vain, but a woman who fears the LORD is to be praised. Give her of the fruit of her hands, and let her works praise her in the gates. (my emphasis)

Thus, the woman who is virtuous (that is, a good example of her kind) should be trustworthy, hard-working, strong in character and spirit, wise, kind, and well-reputed. But more fundamentally--and this manifests itself in the aforementioned qualities--a virtuous woman should fear the Lord.

Reading this brought me joy, for my own has just such qualities.