Christian History.net, a sub-section of Christianity Today, has posted 10 questions testing your knowledge of Calvin. Some of the questions are fairly elementary, but some might just catch you off guard (like his wife's name).
I can say I got 80% correct.
Take the test and let us know what you scored. How well do you know Calvin?
http://www.christianitytoday.com/ch/quiz?id=PHDGH
James Grant passes on a good idea from Tommy Brister:
The reader can be found here. Most of the selections are linked as free pdf's. ...Continue Reading>>>One of the things I learned to do while in seminary is create “readers” for myself on research topics. Basically, a “reader” is a compilation of shorter works (articles, essays, sermons) that is put together in a Table of Contents and bound together. Over the past couple of weeks, I’ve been working on a Reader on the subject of “Gospel-Centered.” I thought I’d share the contents with you. If there are others out there that I could add, please let me know!
I've been looking for some illustrations on textual criticism for a Sunday school class I'll be teaching at my church on Sunday and I came across this wonderful video:
My favorite part is the cheering.
J. C. Ryle comments on Mk. 6:14-29 (John the Baptist's beheading), saying,
Let it never surprise us when we hear of faithful ministers of the Gospel being spoken against, hated and reviled. Let us rather remember that they are ordained to bear witness against sin, the world and the devil, and that if they are faithful they cannot help giving offense. It is no disgrace to a minister's character to be disliked by the wicked and ungodly. It is no real honor to a minister to be thought well of by everybody. Those words of our Lord are not considered enough - "Woe to you when all men speak well of you" (Luke 6:26).
If you read CiC in a reader or through email subscription (or if you come to the site but are somewhat lacking in powers of perception...), you may not have noticed that we put up a new poll on the right side of the blog asking for your input about what kind of content you would like to see more of here.
Do us a favor and vote, would ya? It really will help us know how best to serve you, dear reader. For that matter, do feel free to email any of us if you have any other suggestions. You can click on any of our names on the top left corner of the blog and get our email addresses there.
Many thanks for your support and involvement with Christians in Context. We sure appreciate it, and we hope you do too.
I'm sure many of you have noticed this in the past few years; "Spiritual Formation" seems to be a buzz-word many evangelicals have taken hold of. In one sense, it seems to be, at least partly, an effort on part of evangelicals to draw more deeply on our Christian heritage when it comes to questions of sanctification and spiritual growth. In my opinion, that's a great development. In another way, (speaking in generalized terms) one might consider the trend representative of the fact that many evangelical Christians are now realizing that the approaches to sanctification and spiritual growth taken by many mainstream evangelical churches are primarily programmatic, and quite frankly, are anemic at best. Also, a difficult but positive realization for the church.
The problem in all this for me has not been the mere fact of the matter (I think its a good thing!), but more the fact that many evangelicals have taken hold of this word without really having a clear consensus on what it essentially means. This is evidenced by the fact that so many churches are associating their various ministries with the notion of Spiritual Formation, but they all seem to be quite different in look, feel, and content. My saying this does not mean that I'm opposed to creative and personalized contextual applications of the same concept, but it seems that it might be fair to question whether or not there is always a clear understanding on part of those who employ the concept of Spiritual Formation in the ministry setting of what it actually entails.
If anything, if my assessment of the situation has any validity, it suggests to me that more work needs to be done to develop consensus, ultimately, to avoid evangelicalism eventually employing the term so broadly that its watered-down into oblivion. With this in mind, I've asked my long-time friend and fellow Talbot Seminarian Kyle Strobel to speak to this issue; Kyle has become a leader in this arena of ministry, and now, along with several other leaders in the movement, has begun a ministry intiative that's aimed at employing the major work that's being done in this area. Essentially, the goal of ministry here is to come beside individuals and churches who seek to deepen God's work of sanctification in their lives and communities.
All that said, I've asked Kyle to begin by simply offering an essential definition of the term "Spiritual Formation", and to tell our readers a bit more about the ministry that he is specifically engaged in within this arena. Before I turn things over to Kyle, I should mention two sites I would encourage you to visit; first, Metamorpha.com , which has a variety of resources on the subject, along with a seies of great user-engaging discussion forums on various topics. Secondly, you should also visit Metamorphablog.com , which features articles on a variety of topics related to Spiritual Formation, written by a number of well-trained leaders in this area. Here is what Kyle had to say when asked about what Spiritual Formation essentially entails,
Spiritual formation, at its simplest level, is God's work in the life of a believer, through His Spirit, to form the believer into the image of his Son.
The Spiritual formation conversation seeks to talk about this in a biblical/theological way, so that the Christian life is set within the context of how God redeems. This has been classically understood in theology as the doctrine of sanctification, with a couple of differences. Instead of merely describing the realities of how God makes the believer holy (whatever that is defined as), spiritual formation will build on that to talk about the experience of the Christian life.
Therefore, the spiritual formation conversation will seek to answer questions like: Should I necessarily experience something when God is working in me? Why don't I experience the same excitement as I used to? Should I feel something in prayer? Should I practice spiritual disciplines? If so, why? Does God use certain means or "patterns" of growth in people's life? Does He always use these or only sometimes?
Metamorpha.com and MetamorphaBlog.com sets out to engage this conversation thoughtfully, biblically and theologically, for the purpose of curbing the already watered down, theologically deficient and biblically anemic discussions currently being had. Metamorpha wants to push against the temptation to see spiritual formation merely as a set of practices or disciplines, but to learn to live along the contours of God's movement of redemption among his people. This kind of discussion, because of its breadth, will cut across all areas of the Christian life, dealing with our psychological brokenness, spiritual temptations, sinful tendencies, self-deception, and our guilt and shame. This conversation will do so within the sphere of God's mercy and grace as those who are at peace with God through Jesus' atoning work on the cross and who are justified by faith alone. Spiritual formation therefore, lives and breathes at the foot of the cross.
Norm, here is a link to an article that Steve Porter did for us which might prove beneficial: Here
I'll admit it: when I saw Christian Mission in the Modern World on the "Future Books" section of IVP's website awhile back, I thought Dr. Stott had come out with something new. Apparently I failed to notice that it was being released in the "IVP Classics" series, which would have been a remarkable prediction for a new book, to say the least.
Soon I discovered that CMitMW was originally released in 1978 at the tail end of a worldwide flurry of ecumenical councils on the subject of, well, Christian mission in the modern world. Included in these was the truly evangelical Lausanne Covenant (whose third council, now headed by Christopher J. H. Wright, will be meeting in 2010 in Cape Town). Many of our readers will already know that Dr. Stott chaired that document's drafting committee when it was released in 1974.
So CMitMW was written in the wake of all of this with the express purpose of biblically defining five key missions-related terms:
If any of these definitions seem either unbalanced or unbiblical, it is likely from poor summarizing rather than poor defining from Stott. Indeed, Stott's biblical rigor is the greatest strength of CMitMW, and likely the reason that it has achieved "classic" status.
While Stott moves through biblical texts with typical ease, almost equally impressive in this book is his remarkable knowledge of seemingly every contemporary conversation about Christian mission in existence. The sheer number of documents from world councils and books on mission that Stott cites is incredible. Stott is a master of both biblical content and contemporary opinion, thus qualifying him as a true expert on the subject.
This is not to say the work has no weaknesses. For one, while Stott rightly argues that salvation is not psychosocial health, one wonders exactly how psychosocial health in fact does relate to Christian salvation. Perhaps having a father who is especially interested in this subject makes me acutely aware of this, but Stott seems less clear than usual on this important subject.
Second, while what Stott says about "dialogue" is actually quite helpful, I wonder if by now, the battle for the term has been lost. Stott quotes Bishop Stephen Neill, who suggests that anyone who reads Plato knows that dialogue vigorously pursues truth as its only goal. Perhaps a few philosophers can still use the term that way, but where tolerance is the heart of religio-cultural orthodoxy, we may as well give up. In the context of religious discussion, dialogue is what happens when multiple people with differing views put on sweaters, drink cappuccinos, and amiably tell each other how great it is that none of them believe in anything worth arguing for. Again, note well that Stott means nothing of the sort when he commends dialogue. But "dialogue" simply has too much baggage to go on using the term so long as we actually care to change anybody else's opinions, let alone their hearts.
Which leads to my final thought: while "dialogue" may no longer be a salvageable term, most of Christian Mission in the Modern World is remarkably relevant for current discussion, despite now being over thirty years old. I picked up this book specifically to try to sort out the biblical relationship between evangelism and social action and I was not disappointed. So I wonder, for example, how the Emergent discussion would have changed if more people would read this book. For those who are still committed to the Bible as God's Word, my guess is that they would find, like I did, that Stott's definition of "mission" is nearly incontrovertible.
Because here is this bottom line: if you are interested in sorting out the foundational theological issues in Christian missions, you will be hard-pressed to come up with a better starting point (especially since the 2008 "IVP Classics" release is available for less than 7 bucks from IVP) than Christian Mission in the Modern World. For this reason, I pray that this book remains truly classic.
To no one's surprise I have a quote from R. C. Sproul's A Blueprint for Thinking teaching series which has stuck with me over the years. I came across it last night while surfing the everlasting web at The Reformed Pilgrim. No doubt some might disagree with Sproul, but anyone who is even moderately Reformed in their theology can appreciate this...
At the heart of Reformed Theology, at the heart of Luther and Calvin’s struggle, and in Knox and Jonathan Edwards, were men who were awakened to the greatness, to the majesty, to the holiness, and the sovereignty of God. By contemplating the holiness and sovereignty of God, they were driven to develop their doctrines of the grace of God. Because until you meet a God who is holy and is sovereign, you don’t know what grace means. I don’t think we are ever going to see a healthy evangelical church until the evangelical church is solidly Reformed, where it takes biblical Christianity seriously with a right concept of a sovereign God....Continue Reading>>>
That’s because unreformed Christianity has failed in our culture. It has been pervasively antinomian (no law, no Lordship), and has been pervasively liberal in it’s trends and tenancies away from Scripture, because there’s been no real basis in the sovereignty of God.
Today’s evangelicals are never amazed by grace, because they don’t understand sovereignty. They don’t understand God. The evangelical church today is sick, more sick than it ever has been. We need a style and a variety of Christianity that is not a religion, but is a life and a worldview, where at the heart and foundational structure of it is a sound and deep biblical concept of the character of God.
I was fully prepared to enjoy this book, having already enjoyed one by J.P. Moreland earlier this summer called Love Your God With All Your Mind. So if he can write such an excellent book on the role of the mind in the life of the Christian, why not on the role of the spiritual disciplines in the life of the Christian? After all, that is how The Lost Virtue of Happiness by Moreland and Issler was billed.
"Discovering the disciplines of the good life"
"A fresh look at the spiritual disciplines"
Alas, I was disappointed on two fronts. Unfortunately, the earlier book I'd read by J.P. Moreland was a factor in this book being a let-down. In at least two rather extended portions (that I noticed), J.P. borrowed heavily and even quoted word for word sections from Love Your God With All Your Mind. This is not a grave offense, I've noticed other authors do it before. However, in this instance it felt forced and a little out of place because the sections did not seem to fit the expressed intent of the book.
Which brings me to my second critique. For a book supposedly dealing with spiritual disciplines, they were not the disciplines I was expecting. Instead of chapters devoted to prayer, fasting, and the study of the Scriptures, there were chapters like "Embracing the Hiddenness of God" and "Defeating Two Hardships of Life: Anxiety and Depression".
After I got over the initial disappointment of being misled by the packaging, I found the book somewhat insightful in finding happiness in the Christian life (I would recommend this book to any Christian dealing with depression).
I know that often the publishers have the final say on what is on the front and back cover. Unfortunately, if that was the case with this book, it made some truly engaging and helpful material feel like a "miss" for me.
How's this for a good idea for a youth group prayer event: an interactive walk and prayer session through the Lord's Prayer.
My good friend Trey Allen is a youth pastor in Texas. Trey set up seven different rooms at church, each one themed around one line from the Lord's Prayer. The students spent about ten minutes in each room praying and thinking in accordance with the prayer. So, for example, there was a room totally covered in white sheets from floor to ceiling (thus the picture on this post) for the room based on "And Forgive Us Our Sins." That room also had a musical version of Psalm 51 playing (I'm assuming Jon Foreman's excellent song, but the post doesn't say) and verses from Eph. 1 and Ps. 51 scattered in the room. Sounds pretty awesome.
Go read the full explanation here and consider doing something similar with your church.
For it will be like a man going on a journey, who called his servants and entrusted to them his property. To one he gave five talents, to another two, to another one, to each according to his ability. Then he went away. He who had received the five talents went at once and traded with them, and he made five talents more. So also he who had the two talents made two talents more. But he who had received the one talent went and dug in the ground and hid his master's money.
Now after a long time the master of those servants came and settled accounts with them. And he who had received the five talents came forward, bringing five talents more, saying, "Master, you delivered to me five talents; here I have made five talents more."
His master said to him, "Well done, good and faithful servant.You have been faithful over a little; I will set you over much. Enter into the joy of your master."
And he also who had the two talents came forward, saying, "Master, you delivered to me two talents; here I have made two talents more."
His master said to him, "Well done, good and faithful servant. You have been faithful over a little; I will set you over much. Enter into the joy of your master."
He also who had received the one talent came forward, saying, "Master, I knew you to be a hard man, reaping where you did not sow, and gathering where you scattered no seed, so I was afraid, and I went and hid your talent in the ground. Here you have what is yours."
But his master answered him, "You wicked and slothful servant! You knew that I reap where I have not sown and gather where I scattered no seed? Then you ought to have invested my money with the bankers, and at my coming I should have received what was my own with interest. So take the talent from him and give it to him who has the ten talents. For to everyone who has will more be given, and he will have an abundance. But from the one who has not, even what he has will be taken away. And cast the worthless servant into the outer darkness. In that place there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth." - Matthew 25:14-30
We forgot to make this more explicit in the interview posts from today and yesterday, so I wanted to correct the mistake: our dear friend Carrie Allen blogs at "The Greatest of These is Love." Do go drop by and thank her for the interview with Mike Erre if you enjoyed it!
...Continue Reading>>>
As promised here is the second installment of Carrie Allen's interview with pastor and author Mike Erre regarding his recent book, Death by Church.
"CA: Chapter 14 of your book, “Flesh and Blood: The incarnational nature of the church” was probably the most profound chapter for me. You reiterate a point that I believe we need to remind our readers—that the church is not itself the Kingdom, it is only witness to the Kingdom. You talk about being a missional community and about how being missional is not only being overseas, but about replacing personal or Christian activities with time spent being with people in the surrounding culture. As a former church worker, I found myself spending all my time with Christians, and no time with nonbelievers.
ME: No, and you'll die, you'll wither.
CA: How do you think pastors and church workers should balance this in their own lives? What could they do for their own lives to keep that balance and what is the first step that they could do to encourage their church to live more missionally?
ME: I would never tell another pastor how they should do it. We're still learning, that's the beautiful thing.
First, we have to learn what we mean by incarnational: That the Word became flesh, that God dwelled among us, not just in the form of Jesus but in a culturally conditioned human person; totally immersed in Jewish lore, oral tradition. God doesn't come as a timeless platonic ideal, but as a flesh and blood Galilean peasant. The missionaries that God chose—Peter to the Jews and Paul to the Gentiles; you would think it would have been the reverse perhaps. You see it even in the Old Testament, of course; the ridiculous characters that God uses. But because we are in the image of the triune God, we're relational to the core. Relationship to God being centermost, but when you need to see truth embodied, one of the implications of Trinitarian theology on the image of God in us means is that we were made to see that fleshed out. That's why in Gen12 when God decides to redeem what he's made, he picks a person and he builds a community. When Jesus shows up, he builds a community. It's no shock that he left a community to build more communities; that's just fundamental to the way the gospel unfolds, and to what it is to be human. That's what we mean by incarnation.
What we mean by missionality as it pertains to incarnation is that the church has in my experience been a “come to us” culture. Come see what we do and we'll try to be really good at it—try to be entertaining, relevant, hip. But by naming us a sending people (John 20), as the father sent me so I send you, we're a "go to them" people. That's what Paul was genius at, we'll show up in Ephesus or Corinth and I'll preach and we'll build a little community there. And it was meeting people, practice and going to the Jews first in the synagogues until he was no longer welcome, and then going to the marketplace and preaching. This is revolutionary stuff, and our churches have just become isolated silos of what we think is relevant.
So there is a huge theological understanding to incarnation and missionality that I think is missing in our churches.
CA: Which you do talk about more in your book, it's great.
ME: There's a growing, healthy healing at our church, where we're really trying to understand what building missional community outside of the church building might look like. My wife and I, it's very silly, but we take notes on our neighbors' names and kids and birthdays and troubles. We pray for them; we try to be out and present, we put our trampoline in the front yard, and our pool's in the front yard, to be inviting… In a strange way, that's getting easier to do, the more immoral and materialistic our society becomes, simply to try to be a nice neighbor in Southern California where neighborhood is not a concept.
CA: What are three things that you would like to see your church do in the next five years to become more of a missional church?
ME: We would love to see our church broken down into small, properly ambitious subversive and missional communities that are present and engaged in the real lives of real people around them. I would love to see the weekends deemphasized as being the place where church happens to be the equipping where we are the church in the world.
I would love to see my heart continue to break for my neighbors and my neighborhood, and I hope five years from now I can name everybody that lives in my neighborhood.
I hope that we see lots and lots of people come to know Jesus. I am so tired of recycling Christians and trying to keep Christians happy. I hope that we do more baptisms like we did on Easter: we did an open baptism call, we preached the gospel on Easter Sunday and invited people to get baptized. Our best guess is maybe 150 people accepted Christ and got baptized that day. That's glorious, one of the coolest things ever.
I hope to deconstruct what it means to be a paid religious professional, and begin living again in the reality of what God's doing in us, what he's doing outside the walls of the church. I hope the church decreases in importance so that we keep calling people who don't go to church “unchurched” and make that a category, because that isn't a category in the Bible. We have those who are being saved and those who are perishing, and that's it. Those are the only categories.
I hope, on the other hand, that we grow to love our churches as they are to be properly understood—the bride of Christ, the temple of the Spirit, a subversive worshiping community that demonstrates what life will be like when God rules everything.
CA: Are there any other books in the workings?
ME: I'm working on a book about the Bible right now, and how understanding the Bible as one unified story, and unless you see it as that you misunderstand the individual parts. I'm excited about that.
CA: I feel like everything you write about is stuff that I'm really passionate about!
ME: Then I will keep consulting with you on book ideas!
CA: Can the next one be about women in ministry?
ME: YES! And how we need more of them, which is such a cool issue…
CA: So that's your next book! Thank you so much for meeting with me, Mike.
ME: Great to meet you, Carrie, I'm honored. Thank you for your encouragement!"
Thanks for reading; as always, we covet your thoughts and opinions. And once again, don't forget to check out that podcast and free digital download of Erre's book at Conversant LIVE.
Finally, great work Carrie!
Allow me to introduce one of our good friends and a long time reader of the Christians in Context blog; she's a fellow Biola alum, and a long time blogger as well, Carrie Allen. Carrie approached me a few months ago to ask about the possibility of offering a guest blog post featuring an interview with pastor and author Mike Erre, and I must say we're thrilled to have her contribution to our ongoing conversation. Erre himself serves as the pastor of Rock Harbor Church here in Southern California. In Erre's latest book, Death By Church, he deals rather candidly and provocatively with modern church culture, mission, and the kingdom.
As a side note, you may also want to check out the link at the end of the first part of this interview, which will take you to a podcast interview between J.P. Moreland and Mike Erre on the Conversant Life website. You will also find there a link for a free digital download of Mike Erre's new book- enjoy!
Carrie, your on!
"It was love at first read, as I anxiously tore through the pages of Mike Erre’s new book, “Death by Church.” I was on my way out… of the church, that is. It hadn’t even been a year since I began my work, and I felt defeated. The mundane days of planning Sunday mornings, and other church events had gotten in the way of what I loved most – discipleship and evangelism. But I am not one to sit around and do nothing, so I quit, and went back to work in the secular field. After all of this, I couldn’t help but wonder why this seems to happen to so many people who go into full-time “ministry” within the church.
“Death by Church” hits on this issue in every way that it needs to be hit. I was so influenced by what Erre had to say in this book, that I began to pursue him for an interview. He graciously accepted, and Christians in Context agreed to publish it (thank you). Erre was also gracious enough to invite me to his home in Costa Mesa, California, to meet his wife, Justina, and three beautiful children. As we sat outside with his newborn son, Seth, and waved to all the neighbors surrounding us as they walked by, these were some of the things Erre had to say.
Question #1 - In your introduction, you talk about declining attendance in Christian church’s, sexual immorality among church leaders, and an overall publishing arena that seems to say that church’s are failing. Yet, you are still optimistic in saying that people are hungry for something more. Why is this happening today? Do you think the key to filling that hunger would be understanding, and living the Christian life with the view of “Kingdom Living” in mind? If not, what is it?
ME: Well, I think that's part of it for sure. The supposition of the book, at least one of them, is that we've really missed the point of the church because we don't understand the Kingdom, and that's prevalent in our gospel. It's never, "Repent for the Kingdom's at hand," it's always, "Believe and you'll go to heaven when you die." So yes, that's part of it.
George Barna had a really interesting study published around the year 2000, and in it he asked teenagers, who have been leaving the church in droves, why they left. And the number one response was they didn't experience God there. Part of what we'll get into in a little bit, but a little bit of what the problem is now, is that we've reduced "church" now to the institution. Church is the building, church is the activities of the building and the organization. Discipleship to Jesus is now equated to attendance in church programs. We even talk about the un-churched as if that were the point.
Yet the whole point of God's work has been the reestablishing of his kingship over everything. That doesn't mean, as some accuse the book of saying, that everyone's being saved. But it does mean there's a creational element in the restoration that's being totally ignored. So, when you look at the church, there's so much bad news, of course. I just read of two more prominent pastors who had moral failures this week. We see this hypocrisy in the church between what we say we believe and how we really live, and that there's no discernible difference in attitude or action AT ALL! You have clergy falling left and right, you have churches that don't display any Christlike difference in the world. And then you see increasing irrelevance and they're just leaving in droves.
CA: You say that much of the church has ceased giving life, light, and hope. How did you come to realize this?
ME: Me being part of the problem. You know, it's easy to write a book about the Church with a capital C out there in the Midwest or in the South or the Northeast or something, but this was all stuff I saw in me. I saw it in my very traditional campus ministry experience; I worked as a youth pastor, I went to seminary, I did all the things and I just came to realize, “Wow, there really is something missing”—in me and in our churches.
That speaks a bit to the reductionism that we're trying to fight against in the book. So much energy and time and effort is spent on the hour and fifteen minutes that we gather, and as a result the equipping, the discipling, the mission of the church really suffers. I saw it in me—I try to tell everyone, I'm part of the problem. I just finished a book called Losing My Religion, which was written by a religion reporter at the L.A. Times who I hear used to come to Rock Harbor, who lost his faith because of the hypocrisy in the church covering the Catholic Church's sex scandals. It's a gut-wrenching account because if that's what you're choosing to focus on, there's ample reason [to criticize]. So I saw it in me, I saw it in our churches, I just recognized that nobody grabs the book of Acts, reads it, and then says, “Oh, that's just like us.” Francis Chan has this great line; he says, “You know, the church in Acts was unstoppable. The church in America is very stoppable.” We change the worship leader, change the service time, change the chairs. I just think there's a hunger in so many of us to taste the real thing.
We don't want to idealize the first century church—the church in Corinth, for instance, was just messed up—so we can overglamorize the first-century church, but at the same time, there was something about it that those of us who take the scriptures seriously, who love the bride of Jesus, we hunger for it.
CA: In the book, you do a great job bringing together amazing Kingdom theologians and condensing down hundreds of pages in books into a concise and understandable explanation of what Kingdom theology is. It's really good. George Ladd has literally changed my life.
ME: Ohhh, me too. Me too.
CA: You say that Kingdom theology is not taught enough in churches today, which I think is true. But I think that a lot of pastors don't [teach it] because they don't agree that we're living in an inaugurated Kingdom today. You explain that we're already living in the end, not just waiting. How did you come to learn about Kingdom theology and what would you say to pastors today who are more strictly dispensational?
ME: I was raised in a Christian environment where we read Jesus through the eyes of Paul. Paul was what was emphasized: Romans, the “Romans Road.” And of course that's inspired scripture, there's no question, but I think to really understand Jesus you have to read everything else through him. The Old Testament through him, and certainly Paul's epistles through him. When you do that, you recognize there aren't two different gospels being preached. Paul is explaining Kingdom theology into all sorts of Hellenistic categories. So he used justification three times in three different letters. In contexts where Judaizers were threatening the community, he uses the forensic category. Other times he uses reconciliation, which is language from relationships. He uses redemption, which is from the slave markets. He uses adoption, which was a hugely common practice in Roman culture and had pretty significant implications for what being adopted into sonship or daughtership with God would mean. In every case, Paul is preaching the lordship of Jesus, but he just had to find new ways of doing that.
When you look at it that way, you recognize it really is just one gospel we're looking at. When Jesus announced the Kingdom is at hand, he's speaking to Jews. He never defined it, he just illustrated it. He would point to examples of it, he would use metaphor, allegory, story. He didn't have to define it systematically, because the Jews had made this a very common phrase. I think that it's very easy to take Paul's translation of Kingdom things into Hellenistic categories and think that somehow we captured the fullness of what Jesus was meaning by the Kingdom, and I don't think that's true. I think there's so much more. You have to start with the synoptic gospels, and what you see in the synoptic gospels it that Jesus does this really weird thing—and this is where I don't understand how people read Jesus differently, because he very clearly is saying that it's at hand. What he means is, it's spatially at hand--it's not temporally at hand, it's spatially at hand, it's right here! “If I cast out demons by the Spirit of God,” he says in Luke 17, “the Kingdom is among you,” present tense. And he talks about, in some of his parables, the Kingdom of heaven is life. He's constantly talking about it in present tense, pointing to things and saying, “This is what it's like, right here.” Then of course in the same breath he's talking about, "At that time, the Kingdom will be like...," or he'll pray and teach his disciples, “Your Kingdom come, your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven,” as if it isn't fully here.
When you go back and reread the Old Testament prophecies concerning Messiah, and there were really two strands of them, to the point where guys like N.T. Wright argue that some Jews thought there were going to be two Messiahs. You have the suffering servant of course, and then you have the conquering king. That's well known, but what isn't well known is that in Jewish thinking, there were only two ways to think about time: you had this age, and then you had the age to come. Paul uses this language all over his epistles, of “this present age.” What Jesus ends up doing is suffering, and that is declared glory and victory and so on. He does that in the middle of the present age; then he rises from the dead, which is a sure sign that the age to come is now present; the Spirit is poured out, which is another sure sign; a new covenant, which is another sure sign. And yet Rome still was in power, the devil was still roaming the earth, sin was still present in God's people, Israel was still oppressed. So the New Testament theologians had to figure out, how do we make sense of this? A) Jesus preached it as here and coming, and B) there were unmistakable signs that the age to come had leapt up right in the middle of history, and yet there's still all this other junk going on.
So guys like Ladd and others before him, referred to this as the “already-but-not-yet” presence of the Kingdom. And to my dispensational friends, one of the really encouraging things has been a movement called progressive dispensationalism, which as a graduate of Talbot is really embraced by some of the professors there, Bob Saucy among them. There are some blurred lines between classic covenantalism and more progressive dispensationalism. But where the lines still are drawn pretty clearly between the two is the relation between Israel and the Church of course, and also, the last days. I myself think there's no question that we've been living in the last days since Jesus arrived, was crucified, rose again and ascended into the heavens. The coming of the Spirit, Peter's use of that Joel prophecy is so significant—and we've been living in the last days ever since.
CA: So what would you consider yourself?
ME: I don't know! I'm still not convinced you have to be just one or the other. I mean, I've learned so much from dispensational thinkers; where I would disagree is over the timing of the events, of the eschaton, and whether or not it's going to come down the way they suggest, and that the kingdom isn't fully future. There are two mistakes in theology: You have fully kingdom now, it's called realized eschatology. You see it, in 1 and 2 Corinthians, of the Corinthians; you see it in some circles. There are huge abuses of it. But you also see a kind of delayed eschatology, where for instance, some have argued the Sermon on the Mount isn't applicable for today, but it's for the Millennium. I think that does great violence to the teachings of Jesus about the Kingdom. It was just this central thought that undergirded everything else, so to not take him at his word about both its presence and its coming, I think is a mistake."
Thanks for reading; we covet your thoughts. And don't forget to check out that podcast and free digital download of Erre's book at Conversant LIVE.
Don't forget to check out the conclusion of this interview tomorrow!
John 15:1 says, "I am the true vine, and my Father is the vinedresser." God planted Israel as a vine, but that vine had failed to yield fruit (Isa. 5; Jer. 2:23; Ps. 80). Our Lord here proclaims that he stands in Israel's place as the true vine- the vine that does not fail to give life, tended by the Father Himself (cf. 15:2, which I've written about here).
John 15:4-5 says,
By chance I came across a Wall Street Journal article titled "Gay Marriage and the Constitution" the other day in a museum exhibit discussing freedom. It is an op/ed piece by David Boies. Boies is one the chairman of Boies, Schiller and Flexner, LLP, an apparently major law firm that has been involved with, among other cases, United States v. Microsoft and Bush v. Gore.
The article turns out to be remarkably relevant for the discussion here over the last couple days about the gay marriage progression argument. The heart of that discussion, as I have labored to constantly restate, has been the issue of legal precedent. You could ask the question this way: why should or shouldn't we allow homosexuals to marry? My reading of the pro-gay-marriage camp is that, above all else, if consenting adults are in committed, love relationships, then why should they not be allowed to marry?
And as I have argued in the past, I understand that point of view from a state perspective. What reasons do state or federal lawmakers have, if any, to not allow people to marry? Until recently, the reason has been that we have defined marriage as being between one man and one woman only. Why do we do it that way? Well, because we always have.
So here is my challenge to those involved in this discussion: as you read the article, can you find any argument used by this high-powered lawyer in a universally respected newspaper that could not be applied by polygamists and polyamorists to their own cases?
I'll say from the beginning that there is one, and it is in this quote: "But, in fact, the sexual orientation of gays and lesbians is as much a God-given characteristic as the color of their skin or the sexual orientation of their straight brothers and sisters." This is a remarkably bold claim based on remarkably scant evidence. But even if you agree with Boies on this claim, I hope you will see that this is not really the heart of the legal argument so much as a way to fend off one objection.
The central claim, rather, is in the opening sentence of the third paragraph: "The Supreme Court has repeatedly held that the right to marry the person you love is so fundamental that states cannot abridge it." If I was a lawyer for the poly cause, I would heartily agree and add, "So why not the people you love? What's so different and wrong about that?"
As older, more traditional generations continue to pass and younger, more progressive ones rise up, does anyone really think that our culture would find much reason to disagree?
Unfortunately, there are some things in life that you just can't liveblog. CiC team members weddings fall into that category. So in lieu of that, let me offer my hearty congratulations to Ian Clausen and his new wife, Lauren. I pray that their marriage would model Christ's relationship to the Church in a way that will convict Christians and call non-Christians to our Lord.
The two head to their honeymoon this week, then go back to Scotland where Ian will continue on with his doctoral studies under Oliver O'Donovan and Lauren will begin a Master's in theological ethics (also with Dr. O'Donovan, I think). But we all know that Ian's greatest joy will be in no longer being the only unmarried CiC team member!
Below is a picture of me, my wife, Ian, and Lauren. And yes, Ian and I think the same thing you are: how did guys like that end up with ladies like that? God's grace is the only possible answer...
From my wife's blog:
You heard it here first: Justin "Master of the Theo-Blogosphere" Taylor has admitted that he is technologically illiterate. Remarkable considering how successful his blog is! While in Wheaton, IL visiting my wife's family, I had the privilege of having lunch with Justin and heard it straight from the horse's mouth. Who knew?
More seriously, I was reminded by a few of his wise comments that those of us who blog need to be careful to think through our intentions as we write. Are we self-important? Are we writing out of anger? Do we constantly pursue more readers and better links? There is legitimacy to seeking readers, but edification should always be our goal.
So James 1 says,
19 My dear brothers, take note of this: Everyone should be quick to listen, slow to speak and slow to become angry, 20 for man’s anger does not bring about the righteous life that God desires. 21 Therefore, get rid of all moral filth and the evil that is so prevalent and humbly accept the word planted in you, which can save you.The blogosphere is a place where these words are steadfastly ignored, despite that they apply here as much as anywhere else. Justin reminded me of this passage, and I pass it on to you, dear readers and bloggers, to consider as well. ...Continue Reading>>>
After my polyamory post mishap the other day, a reader named Jude raised some good questions asking me to tease out the reasons why I think that the legalization of gay marriage would lead to the legalization of other forms of marriage, especially polyamorous or polygamous marriage. I'll summarize the questions and try to answer each one, because they're worth exploring. If you want Jude's full questions, follow the link above and read them in the comments.
1. Why is it that allowing marriage to be inclusive of same-sex unions will lead to a concept of marriage that is divorced from monogamy? Don't most advocates of same-sex unions still hold to a concept of love and marriage that contains some concept of fidelity as monogamy?
Because it's not so much a "why" question as a "why not" question.
Strictly speaking, there is certainly no logical connection between homosexuality and polyamory. But what gay marriage advocates often want to do is say, "Why is marriage between one man and one woman? Where did we get that from and who says it still has to be that way? Why not let it be between one man and one man, or one woman and one woman?"
If we allow that legal foundation to change, then it seems obvious to me that a polyamory advocate or a polygamous FLDS family say, "Why is marriage between only two people? Where'd we get that from and who says it still has to be that way? Why not let it be between more than two?"
So you start messing with basic principles, and you get statements like this (from this article) from a practicing poly, "Any people who wish to form a marriage with all the rights and duties of a marriage should have the legal right to. The spurious arguments of marriage being for procreation of children is (sic) ridiculous." It's a total why not question.
More thoughtful people might frame it another way, but the pro-gay-marriage cultural voice says, "Equality for all!" or "Down with Prop H8!" or whatever else. Why not? Why not equality for polys too? What foundational principles, what precedents will there be left that define 'marriage' as between two people instead of more? Or for that matter, why is, to quote the question, "monogamy" the only way to express "fidelity"? That's how they'll frame it.
2. While polyamorous "triads" may be clamoring for cultural acceptance, why should we think that they would gain it, even if gay marriage does? Numerous "non-traditional" forms of sexual union and marriage have tried for cultural acceptance and been laughed off (or shouted off) of the public stage, such as the man-boy love folks and beastiality folks?
Simple: because the one precedent that will surface as the basis for marriage will be consenting adults. Both of the examples given here and any other such laughable ones break that principle.
The American view of freedom is, "I should be allowed to do and say whatever I want with whomever I want as long as I/we are adults not harming others." So polys will say, "We're consenting adults. Why stop us from marrying if you want to?"
3. Why should we think that there would be an easy transition in legal precedent in the legalization of polyamory even if there were cultural pressure for its acceptance? In the case of gay marriage, it seems that the same legal precedents set for dealing with matters such as divorce, inheritance, etc., for heterosexual couples could be readily appropriated. But it is not so clear that this would be the case for polyamorous couples because of the addition of another partner. It seems that new forms of legal messiness would arise. For example, what sort of legal precedent would need to be set if one part of the triad wanted to divorce one spouse, but not the other?
One word: laywers.
It's not that it will be easy- I never said it would be. But polys and their lawyers will see this problem and address it. Perhaps a legally required pre-nup with extreme attention to detail would solve a lot of the asset issues. And since polys see themselves as one unit (not a series of units) one person's exit would mean the break of the whole unit. Perhaps you could simply have a, "One person's exit means that the whole marriage needs to start over." I'm not sure- I'll leave it to polys and their lawyers to figure out, but it doesn't strike me as an especially tough obstacle.
4. What standards other than just "being in love" are included in traditional heterosexual marriages that exclude homosexual (or other) unions?
Here is the heart of the issue. Why does the government define marriage as it does?
Well, we've always done it that way. When our laws were drawn up there could have been no consideration of the possibility that people would one day fight for gay marriage. So why were they drawn up that way?
I'm no expert, but I'd guess it has something to do with some widely held religious principles! That doesn't mean we must still define it that way, and you'll note that I've not said anywhere here that I'm against the government doing any of this stuff. Frankly, I'm still undecided. I lean towards wanting the state to grant nothing more than civil unions and allowing churches and other private institutions handle "marriage."
In any case, perhaps we should put this all the other way: why wouldn't the legalization of gay marriage lead to the legalization of poly marriage? What principles would stand in the way of that if you are one who thinks this idea is so crazy?
Because here's the thing: I hear this argument called extremist and unfair all the time, but the heart of most of that thinking is, "Well, because marriage is between two people regardless of gender." Or sometimes there isn't even that much.
Either way, it's not enough. Not all that long ago the idea that we would redefine marriage to include same-sex partners would have been as unthinkable and unpredictable as the idea that we would redefine marriage to include more than two people. I just don't get why some think that another redefinition is so crazy.
I wanted to share these two books with you all, not only because I left a lot of highligher ink in them both, but because I've found myself thinking about When Helping Hurts and Notes from the Tild-A-Whirl weeks after reading them. While I would recommend both of these books to everyone, I would put an added endorsement for When Helping Hurts to anyone involved in or even giving to missions and poverty alleviation.
In the span of one paragraph, N.D. Wilson made me break out in goosebumps then made me laugh and cry at the same time. His writing in Notes from the Tilt-A-Whirl from Thomas Nelson Publishers evokes emotion like the best fiction, scratches the brain like the best philosophy, and stirs a love for Creator and creation like the best theology.
His bursts of thought are not always clear-cut and linear, rather they seem to be confusing and unrelated at times. As his ideas shape the chapters, however, and the chapters form the book, a step back reveals a beautiful piece of work.
And this, I think, was no accident. Wilson's premise is that the universe we live in is a work of art and the masterpiece of The Artist. It is a drama, a play, and God is the Author. And so, just as his writing style reflects, there are surprises, twists, and turns. It doesn't progress in an uneventful, gradual incline.
The best dramas have real tragedies, the best paintings have both shadow and light. Thus it makes sense that the best of all possible worlds made by an Artist/Author will have real tragedies, both shadow and light.
N.D. Wilson writes like Donald Miller on uppers and caffeine. He writes like someone with ADD who has sat through too many college-level courses on philosophy and art appreciation. He writes like I imagine Chuck Palahniuk (author of Fight Club) would if he found Jesus and switched to non-fiction.
My favorite book of the year, hands down.
You can read the entire thing online for free at Google Books. However, that's kind of like choosing to look at a Rembrandt on the Internet rather than having one to hang on your wall. Yes, I thought that highly of this book, but that's just me. You have fun with your pixels.
When Helping Hurts came at a very opportune time as my pastor and I am currently discussing the missions giving of our small church. Steve Corbett and Brian Fikkert's offering seemed more biblical and practical and less depressing and disheartening than other books I've read recently on poverty alleviation and social justice. Anyone struggling with the idea of social justice and how a Christian best addresses such issues would do well to read this book.
My review has been brief because Kevin DeYoung has already written a very in-depth and helpful summary of When Helping Hurts in three parts following the three parts of the book (I've had to reference these a couple times now as I have loaned my copy out): part 1 : part 2 : part 3
Again, I cannot say enough good things about these two books, and if you read them and want to disagree with me, I'd be happy to throw down.
My brother loves Jesus.
He also loves film.
He also loves therapy.
The result? A new blog called "Film and Therapy". Go check it out. Chris is a licensed therapist working with students at a school in downtown Los Angeles. He loves film and has been writing reviews in facebook notes that many have enjoyed for awhile, so I'm glad he's decided to take it the next step.
Add it to your reader and enjoy.
Last week Dr. Mohler posted this piece decrying the disappearance of home cooking in America (ironically alongside the rise of the Food Network on cable t.v.). My recently discovered enjoyment of cooking is probably why the post grabbed my interest, and as a bit of social perception, it's worth a read.
But towards the end Mohler offered his Christian appraisal of the cultural trend, saying:
I thought it through a little more and looked it over and am a little embarrassed. Not so much at the content (though I admit some hasty reading...) as my tone. Take this as my apology!
...Continue Reading>>>
As you know, there has been some recent discussion here at Christians in Context regarding the Origins Debate. A number of positions have been identified, including Young Earth Creationism, Old Earth Creationism, Intelligent Design, Theistic Evolution, and Naturalistic Evolution. A number of you were kind enough to weigh in with your opinions on some of the central issues in this debate; there has been some great discussion up to this point.
There is one point in particular that has been bouncing around in my mind for quite some time; one that seems to manifest itself in somewhat different ways on a number of theological issues. In this case, with the origins debate and the creation account in the Bible, is the way in which the origins debate itself seems to be used as the litmus test for Christian orthodoxy, or the lack thereof. Allow me to explain; as I said in a previous post, discussions surrounding the origins debate can often be rather unproductive. The extreme positions on both sides tend to dominate the trajectory of these dicussions, which, in my opinion, make it very challenging to even ask the difficult questions, if only for the sake intellectual honesty. One might ask why this is the case? Why is it such a charged issue? I would say that the issue is ultimately so sensitive because the course of the whole debate itself, in Christian circles anyway, is really only a derivative of the discussion surrounding the status of the text; i.e. inerrancy, infalliability, etc, etc..All of this amounts, in my opinion, to particular hermenutical approaches being used, wholesale, as gauges to measure one's orthodoxy or conservatism. One side might like to cast the issue in this way; you either read the creation account literally, or your calling the truth of the Bible and Christianity into question. It's a slippery slope that calls the historicity and substance of the Bible into question. One the other side, the inclination might be to disregard the former position as that of the hard-headed and uneducated fundamentalist, who allegedly does not realize that literary and theological analysis makes the task of interpretation much more complex.
Perhaps, in at least some cases, there is a bit of truth in the assertions that come from both sides. But the question remains as to whether or not this is how one should view this issue, in its most fundamental sense. It seems to me that there is a realization on all sides of the intra-Chrisitian aspect of this debate, that while the implications of this issue have great importance, the topic itself is not central to the gospel and the kingdom of God. Now, obviously the issue becomes much more central, as a sort of prolegomena to any discussion, when your talking about the debate between any Christian and an Atheist, but among Christians there is always a bit of common ground despite great differences on particular issues.
Now we can and probably should continue to pose the difficult questions for one another on both sides of the Christian spectrum, but the main questions here include; should we extend a bit more trust to those Christians who may differ from us on certain issues for the sake of productive discussion? Why or why not? What are the non-negotiables? Is the Origins Debate truly a watershed issue? Why or why not? What is the deeper issue at work here; For those who think that the veracity of the Christian accounts are at stake, why is that the case? For those who do not see the same risks inherent in alternative readings, why is that the case?
Perhaps we need to think of this issue in historical terms; not so much in terms of the text itself, but a consideration of how some of the key questions regarding the text come to the fore in this debate, and how their polarizing nature is more of a retrospectve indicator of the key influences that have led to the development of modern fundamentalist, evangelical Christianity as we know it. In other words, this debate might be so touchy because it potentially strikes at the heart of the evangelical Christian identity more than it does at the heart of Christian faith itself.
I was challenged recently that the idea of original sin and Adam's fall as our Representative Head was an unfair and antiquated idea. Nobody still believes that today, do they?
The push-back was not on universal sin, a cursory read of the Bible (or the newspaper for that matter) will settle that one. We're all sinners, no son of Adam (save one) has ever lived a sinless life. "But this idea that we are sinners because Adam sinned, that's so archaic!"
As I considered an answer, I was reminded of a similar complaint. Why did God make humans so we could sin at all?! Why not create us so that we would always choose to love and worship God? The answer is that this sort of love and worship would not be real, would not be genuine. In order for our love and worship to be real, it must be free.
So God created the first two humans with genuine moral freedom (a freedom we don't possess or fully understand). God made them this way not because he wanted humans who would sin, but because it must be so in order to have free God-worshippers.
The nature of God-worshipping freedom requires it.
And I think this may illuminate our question of the imputation (or the passing down) of sin. Just as the nature of freedom played a role in the sort of humanity God made, I think the nature of worship played a role in the sort of humanity God made.
Remember, sin is not just disobeying God, it is the love and worship of something other than God. The devotion, allegiance, obedience, and affection that should be God's is turned to something (or someone) else. So while God did not make us sinners (nor did he create sin), sin happens when we put anything else in God's place. We remove God from the throne in our hearts and place ourselves there.
So perhaps God did not make us linked to Adam in our sinfulness just because he wanted it that way. Maybe, in order for the imputed righteousness of Christ to be a possibility, mankind must be of the nature that the imputed sin of Adam was a reality. And this, then, is one reason people don't like the idea of the imputed righteousness of Christ. It presupposes the imputed sinfulness of Adam.
Perhaps God made us this way because it must be so in order to have the sort of worshippers he desired. The nature of freedom required the potential for a fall, and the nature of worship required the potential for slavery to sin. Perhaps the nature of our relationship to sin is the way it is because that's the way God desired our relationship with him to be. At least that's my theory right now.
John Stott, in his Christian Mission in the Modern World, 174-5:
A. H. Strong in his Systematic Theology, as quoted in Fred Sanders' short biographical sketch:
Provocative stuff. If correctly understanding God's love is of any interest to you (and I suggest that it should be...), go get Carson's short but potent The Difficult Doctrine of the Love of God. It is an amazingly good book. ...Continue Reading>>>That God is only love has been called ‘the doctrine of the papahood of God.’ God is ‘a summer ocean of kindliness, never agitated by storms.’… But Jesus gives us the best idea of God, and in him we find, not only pity, but at times moral indignation. John 17:11, ‘Holy Father = more than love. Love can be exercised by God only when it is right love. Holiness is the track on which the engine of love must run. The track cannot be the engine. If either includes the other, then it is holiness that includes love, since holiness is the maintenance of God’s perfection, and perfection includes love.
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