I haven't written in a while, what can I say, church planting is a busy job. And today I will not be continuing our systematic blog, but by way of re-entering the blog I desire to share with you a recent event in my life.
A man I know was sharing with me the other day how he was going to stop working with a particular campus ministry because the new campus pastor was a calvinist, which he went out of his way on multiple occasions to say he was staunchly opposed to. He continued, "You know, calvinism comes into the church in waves from time to time..." He's a NOBTS (New Orleans Baptist Theological Seminary) graduate. I wonder, do they teach this line at that school? This was not the first time I heard a variation of this statement. The last time I heard it, it was another NOBTS grad and went like this, "Calvinism is a PLAGUE that comes upon the Church every 20 years or so, then we rediscover true Christianity." UNBELIEVABLE!
Both of these gentlemen are right about one thing though there are swings in the church, or at least in the baptist church between Calvinism and Arminianism, but these swings correspond with the teaching and preaching of the Word of God, Church History, and Theology. When the Church, Baptist or any other, forsakes exegetical preaching and teaching of the Word of God, deep teaching of Systematic Theology, and completely ignores Church History, the sin nature takes over and the church turns to secular humanism, and pride, thus a wave of Arminianism sweeps into the church, away from the gospel of Jesus Christ. When the church rediscovers the BIBLE, CHURCH HISTORY AND THEOLOGY, we recognize the grandness of our God, and fallen-ness of man, and beauty of the gospel of Jesus Christ i.e. what you call Calvinism, what others call the doctrines of grace, and what I call the GOOD NEWS!
It is as C.H. Spurgeon said, "Calvinism IS the gospel." or like one of my favorites, Tommy Nelson, said recently, "Words like: chosen, elect, predestinated...yeah, there in there (the bible)...sorry. (being very sarcastic about this last word. If you know Tommy Nelson, you know the tone).
The bible teaches the doctrines of Grace, Calvinism if you must call it that. You cannot get around it, but I'm finding more and more that the problem isn't with a misunderstanding of the gospel, though that is the result. The problem is these people have a small view of God. They don't understand the nature of deity. AND they have been taught so poorly that they just don't know how to think any differently.
It's sad.
But just to share some hope, the "plague guy" from above, after I sat down with him and showed him what the Bible teaches, a couple weeks later said, He's definitely a Calvinist. Some days a five pointer others a four...there's still a struggle there.
Thank the Lord that men and women, pastors and laymen are rediscover the Awesome Sovereignty of God and Wonderful Gospel of Jesus Christ.
Tuesday, October 27, 2009
Monday, June 22, 2009
Rant and Rave: The Soul in the Seed in the Soil
Below I will be posting an article/journal entry copied from a good friend mine's blog. Jacob Zachary is a talented writer, poet, lyricist, musician, thinker and beard-grower. I hope you all enjoy this article as much as I did. The article made me laugh and cry, made me daydream and evaluate. It deals with the need to recapture aesthetics in the modern church while also recognizing the need to recapture the intellectual side of Christianity. Sadly most churches have neither of these. Read more from Jacob at his blog http://myholycrap.blogspot.com/ and listen to his music at http://web.mac.com/jacob_zachary/Site/____H_O_M_E.html
Here's the article:
THE SOUL IN THE SEED IN THE SOIL
1. "When I was a child, I spoke like a child; I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I gave up childish ways." - 1 Cor. 13:11
2. "At the same time came the disciples unto Jesus, saying, who is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven? And Jesus called a little child unto him, and set him in the midst of them, and said, Verily I say unto you, except ye be converted, and become as little children, ye shall not enter into the kingdom of heaven." – Matt. 18:3
There were at least three lessons that I would take away with me in my memory of grammar school. I learned lessons one and two on my very first day. It should be worth noting that when I was born, I was immediately attached to my mother's hip, and that I’m the proudest mamma's boy you should ever wish to meet. Needless to say, that first day of grammar school was heartbreaking for both of us. I remember screeching like a bird being nudged out of the nest before his first flight when I left her precious arms. The initial five feet or so is a hard plummet, but by the end of the day I was flying high and ecstatic because I had a whole new box of stories to share with mom. And so, the first of two lessons I would learn on this defining day is that the least familiar road on any great adventure will almost always be the most exciting.
The second lesson I learned came at the end of my first day, and at the end of every day in my first year of school. It was Barbasol! It was the only activity in a day full of activities that I looked forward to the most. The teacher would stroll by each of our tables and in front of us she would spray out a nice heaping glob of Barbasol shaving cream. All of us would wait in bouncy anticipation until she gave the word, and at once we would plunge! We smeared shaving cream all over our tables until it literally disappeared. From that year on and throughout grade school, I wondered if there would ever be another year of Barbasol. Even now, with a face full of whiskers, I will sometimes play with shaving cream just to remind me of the second lesson I learned in only the first day of grammar school, and that is that sometimes the form of a thing is more enjoyable than its function.
The third lesson I learned is supplemented by the first and second, and it puts me on track to the point I'm aiming at. Before going any further, however, I should tell you that it would be quite hard for me to adequately convey the feelings of my smaller former self now that I'm all grown up, and seeing as I am more than likely only speaking with fellow adults here, I expect that even if I could there would really be no way for me to convince you of anything beyond what you will expect to be the obvious result of my story. All that to say, it may not be the best illustration I can offer, and I'm sorry that you're stuck with it! The real purpose of all that I will say from this point on falls on you, and even me, to see the difference between two forms of knowledge: intellectual and empirical, and how I believe both are of equal importance to your life, particularly as it pertains to the Christian worldview.
And now to continue with my story...
During the last week or so of our first year lessons, I found myself in the final stages of our term project. Our assignment, which is, or at least was a very common one in those days, was to prepare, nurture, and report the development of a flowering seed sown into the soil of a tiny paper cup ecosystem. Now, despite our teachers wonderful effort to conduct an introductory course in biology, I and several of my classmates knew that what we were doing was something more adventurous and mysterious than simply gathering information from observations.
I remember the day when we first starting seeing signs of life brimming from the dirt in our little paper cups. Every morning until this day, the first thing we would do is run to the cup with our name on it and try to see if we could spot the slightest head of green poking through the surface. On this particular day, almost all of the flowers had sprouted at once. Some of the flower sprouts were bigger than others, while some of the flowers, sadly, hadn't sprouted at all. Needless to say, it was a dismal day for some students. But for others, there was an overwhelming feeling of joy, fascination, and curiosity. To think that something so beautiful could make its way out of such an ugly lifeless little thing as the seed we had planted, it was a purely magical thought for a child, and that was enough. The only thing that was appropriate for us as children to know about a flower sprouting was the knowledge that came by way of the sensation we had when we saw it happening for the first time. This, in its purest form, is called sensationalism. As a philosophy, sensationalism is the doctrine that all ideas are derived from and are essentially reducible to sensations. It is a wholly aesthetic way of thinking. It didn't require that I have all the variables to understand it. All that I needed was a childlike faith, a healthy imagination, and the physical ability to feel something in one way or another. For most of us, the lesson had already been communicated by an intensely sensational revelation of truth. We didn't need to know anything else. Or did we?
As I said, there were some of us in the class who didn't get to experience what others experienced. Some of the flowers were not growing, and in several instances this was a direct result of a few children failing to obey instructions. Some of the cups were not properly irrigated, while others were stolen away to dark corners and not kept in the sunlight where they should have been. I remember one of my classmates actually drinking the water he was given to take care of his flower just because he was thirsty. I suppose it would do some good for you at this point to be reminded of our setting. This was a classroom full of inattentive, very impatient, sometimes bad behaving children, and to my mother's dismay, I was often one of them. It seemed that there would always be a need for us to learn a little more about discipline, and discipline cannot be formed by what you feel. Sensationalism is obviously a limited knowledge in that it lacks a proper consideration for reason. To follow sensationalism to its end, a child would grow only to respond to those sensations that pleased him, regardless of how reasonable or unreasonable they were, and he would be consumed by every kind of lustful passion that would lead him into developing a wholly carnal or hedonistic worldview.
As our teacher entered the room on that day, when we were all huddled in a corner over our little cups, It was precisely this voice of reason calling us to our seats. What happened next is something I can only describe as heartbreaking disenchantment. The magical fortress of my imagination, established by no other wisdom than that which comes by way of the mysterious nature of the commonplace, was suddenly being stormed by the veracious armies of reason. I sat there confused with teary wide-eyed disbelief as the teacher began to unload minimizing biological truths about my once bright wide open world. Intellectualism was brought to bear on me that day, and before it had even bloomed, the flower in my cup had been reasoned away. However much I wished to fight it, reason flung wide the doors of my mind that all my senses had welded shut, and as soon as I expected some deep and dark monster to emerge and devour me forever, instead the soft voice of what seemed like a friend came calling, "you are free." Though my senses remained intact, I was released from them into a new truth, or rather BY a new truth. My bright wide open world only became brighter and wider as I now had the grace of knowledge to eventually learn how to quantify the intensity of its brightness and survey the dimensions of its wideness, and this was no less of a good than simply knowing just how beautiful it was. Intellectualism is the doctrine that knowledge is wholly or chiefly derived from pure reason. It is the belief that reason is the final principle of reality. The blemish on an exclusively intellectual worldview, practically speaking, is that there will always be a lack of proper consideration for things that necessarily have real aesthetic or emotional value, and this may result in an extreme form of pragmatism.
Finally, I am at the end of a very long illustration. and I hope I have not bored you completely, but what I have tried to make obvious is that though there are benefits to both empirical and scientific knowledge, you cannot single out either one or the other as a primary doctrine to formulate a Christian worldview and not expect to continually foster ignorance. Obviously, there must be a healthy balance, and this is the third and final lesson I would learn, and will continue to learn for as long as I live.
Let's now go to the key verses I listed at the beginning. If you remember in 1 Cor. 13:11 Paul is explaining his maturity from childhood to adulthood:
"When I was a child, I spoke like a child; I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I gave up childish ways." - 1Cr 13:11
This is a practical message. What he is saying, very simply and perhaps with a much greater degree of sensitivity, is, "grow up! Put away your habits of undisciplined, thoughtless behavior and manage yourselves like adults." At first, the application of this verse to our conversation seems just a bit of a stretch because he isn't saying very much specifically about knowledge. It has more to do with self-discipline. As I said before, however, discipline comes by way of reason, so the intellectual angle is considered here. It is also important to note that he is instructing a Christian audience, so it can be said that his instruction is a basis for establishing a Christian worldview. Now, let's look at this verse in light of the second key text I listed.
"At the same time came the disciples unto Jesus, saying, who is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven? And Jesus called a little child unto him, and set him in the midst of them, and said, Verily I say unto you, except ye be converted, and become as little children, ye shall not enter into the kingdom of heaven." - Matt. 18:3
Despite what may already seem to be a contradiction, remember that what we are looking for here is balance. When inconsistencies seem to arise in scripture, particularly in the Gospels or the Epistles, it usually comes from the trouble in identifying applications for what might or might not be spiritual instruction and what might or might not be practical instruction. The disciples come to Jesus and ask him a really "bright" question that probably started as an argument amongst themselves before they approached him. Jesus responds, as He always does, with the best possible answer.
"…except ye be converted, and become as little children…"
When Christ says, "and become as little children" it should be obvious that this "becoming" will be preceded by its true application, and the words that precede it are, "except ye be converted." So, this "becoming as little children" is synonymous with a conversion experience. It means to imply a second birth whereby our spiritual nature is quickened. So, Christ is giving a spiritual answer to a pracctical question. It's funny, but It seems that Christ often gave answers to questions he WISHED they would have asked rather than the ones they ACTUALLY asked. With his answer, Christ immediately turns this into a spiritual conversation, whereas the disciples were arguing like mere human beings over who would have the highest pedestal in a physical kingdom. He goes on to say, and this must have really deflated His disciples, that if you are not converted and you do not become as little children, you won't even get to enter my kingdom. I've tried to picture the setting of this passage many times, and at the risk of infringing upon a story that may have already been invented by Max Lucado , I think what I've imagined might be an appropriate "what if" scenario. I imagine that Jesus was busy doing something before the disciples came to him. Maybe he was taking a break to sit down, loosen his sandals, and give his weary feet a good rub down. Perhaps not far off from where he sat, a child was perched on the door of his house mimicking Christ's actions and smiling. Every time Jesus would sigh in relief, the child sitting away from him would do the same. Maybe Jesus suddenly noticed, and playfully gave the child other movements to reproduce. Perhaps at one moment Christ bent his shoulders back and stretched his hands high in the air and bellowed out a deep heavy yawn. When I imagine the child doing the same thing, I see Christ smiling and laughing with great delight. The next few minutes or so would be followed by a series of funny faces and silly gestures, and then here would come the bumbling disciples tripping over each other as they race to ask Jesus another ignorant question. I would picture that the child he sat before them that day was the very child who had just been imitating Christ.
Paul doesn't contradict what Christ says by saying, "I gave up childish ways", because the thing he means is intellectual. When Christ says "become as little children", again, he is speaking spiritually of the second birth into the spiritual realm, and in this realm, we do not grow up as quickly as we do in the physical. In the physical realm, we have no say over the matter. Whether we become wiser or increasingly more ignorant, we just keep getting older. In the spiritual realm we spend a great number of days as children learning to live by faith, and this should be an encouraging thought. We get to find delight in our savior by imitating his actions with childlike faith. As I illustrated before, to live as children is to live with great fascination and wonder with no more thought of the world than of that which comes by faith through the knowledge of our senses. 1 Peter 2:2.3 says:
“Like newborn babies, crave pure spiritual milk, so that by it you may grow up in your salvation, now that you have tasted that the Lord is good.”
I love the expression here, to taste that the Lord is good, as if you could literally partake of the fruit of that vine called Jesus and gain sensory knowledge of His goodness! It is no mistake that we have figures of speech like this from those who would be the first true imitators of Christ. What they knew of him was a healthy balance of intellectual and empirical knowledge. Think about how often Christ would start out in parables with a "picture this", or how he would compare the Kingdom of God to something as tangible as a mustard seed. His flesh was bread, His blood, wine. Hypocrisy was a beam of wood darting out of someone's eye, and a rich man was a cumbersome camel trying to squeeze his way through the needle's eye. This is riveting stuff! "He who has ears to hear, let him hear", He says. His parables and analogies were tantalizing, but his intellectual wisdom was even more potent. Just when the Pharisees thought him a loon, they would find themselves embarrassed by questions they couldn't answer, or answers they couldn't question. Christ exercised the most appropriate balance of empirical and intelligent knowledge. So, how do we live in this balance?
"And out of the ground the Lord God made to grow every tree that is pleasant to the sight and good for food." Genesis 2:9
"pleasant to the sight…"
It may, or it may not, stand to reason that if God has designed a thing to be pleasant to the sight, that he would also design beings who have eyes to see and therefore know that it is indeed pleasing. If "pleasure of the sight" can be translated to mean "beautiful", and I think it can, then what this verse implies is that beauty is in the framework of creation. Now if the framework is true, and I believe that it is, then beauty is also true. This leads me to believe that if you qualify something as "beautiful", and if that thing you mean is a natural agent of God's creation and not an agent of idolatry or lust, then you are proclaiming a truth that is only as disagreeable as the proclamation, "the sky is blue". So, if beauty is a truth and we were created to know that it is, then by default we should have a set of criteria for understanding and storing this knowledge.
Recently I was talking with my friends Jenny and Darrin about the beauty of nature and how our love for such a gift should in some ways propel us to become better stewards of preservation. Eventually we spun the globes of our worldview on this subject at a spiritual angle, and it came up, from them, that there are some people who believe that trees and all other living things literally have a soul or a spirit nature about them, and it worried me a bit at how much they actually liked the idea. Though I admitted it was not my conviction, I did allow a shorter distance between "me" and "them", at least in our conversation, to say a few things about how beautiful the thought really is. It is true that God instilled in nature examples for spiritual growth and maturation. Christ used these examples often. "Consider the lilies", he said. "I am the vine you are the branches, abide in me." In Psalms, David shouts to all creation "sing and make praises to your God!" and perhaps the most beautiful of them all comes from Job:
"Ask the animals, and they will teach you, or the birds of the air, and they will tell you; or speak to the earth, and it will teach you, or let the fish of the sea inform you. Which of these does not know that the hand of the Lord has done this? In his hand is the life of every creature and the breath of all mankind."- Job 12:7-10
I did not wish for my friends to go on believing in “spirit trees” if indeed they were hinting that this was their honest conviction, and I knew that, in love, I could have tried to “correct their path”, but I didn’t. Instead, all I could think about was the story I told you earlier. All I could see was the beautiful mystery of things that grow, even from paper cups, and instead of trying to tell them “no, wrong! Look! Reason!” I worshiped our Creator in their company and thanked him for the beautiful reminders of the grace and love demonstrated in all created things and for sending us His Son in whom ALL of the fullness of God was pleased to dwell, and through whom ALL things have been reconciled unto Himself whether on earth or in heaven making peace by the blood of His cross (Col. 1:19, 20), and I was glad that I had not tried to be reasonable! I was glad that I didn't behave as that kid in my grammar school class did and drink the water that was given for the flower because it provided the logical means to quench my own thirst. You see, I believe that Intellectualism must not be allowed to throw the balance away from empirical knowledge when the souls of real people may be weighed simply by how well we Christians have applied ourselves to the truth of beauty.
I always try to remind myself to take the time to exercise and balance my mind, and realize that I have always had the freedom to believe that there is still something mysterious and enchanting about this world. It may even be good practice to repeat the exercise. Maybe I could plant a flower in a cup. Nurture it, and just for the sake of a healthy imagination, try to believe that somewhere in the seed, in the soil, there's a soul. Maybe I'll talk to it, as the passage in Job says. See if there's something it can teach me.
"...good for food"
At last, I would like to recover intellectualism from the mud of my obviously empirical bias and wipe it clean for us to look at. Most of us who have been fortunate enough to grow up in the school systems have very little trouble being, or at least acting, like good intellectuals. That is the point of school really. We take the classes, the teachers teach, we learn, we apply, we teach, someone else learns and the beautiful cycle repeats itself over and over again. I can't remember who said it, but put very simply, if we're not learning we're not moving, if we're not moving we're not living, and if we're not living, well then we are dead. The values of intellectual knowledge preserve and sustain the values of life. Being able to reason intellectually opens doors that lead us into making the kinds of decisions that drastically change our lives, and the lives of other people, for the better. As Christians, the freedom that comes from intellectual knowledge gives us clarity to discover our identity in Christ. As the trials of life unfold us and transform us from one degree of glory to the next, we become wiser and more capable human beings. Intellectualism is also the foundation for apologetics, which is basically a discourse for the defense of Christianity. This is a crucial tool for us as believers in a world where ignorance is bliss, truth is relative, and tolerance is, somehow, tolerable. Just as we look at the fruit of a tree and know that it is good for food, we must intellectually identify that which is good doctrine, and that which is bad. Having an intellectual basis for how and why you stand for what is right is of far greater worth than being a static figure in the crowd content with imitating and entertaining the desires of your piers rather than fulfilling the desires of an Almighty God. As Christian intellectuals, we must be very careful to maintain our balance with beauty. If you lose your balance and have to fall off the wagon on one side of the road or the other, make sure it's on the side of beauty. What I mean to say is that if you have to spend more time thinking one way or the other, then I would say it is better to be caught up in beauty than to be caught up in intellectualism. I know from experience, that losing your balance into intellectualism makes you a bitter cynic, and it's hard to get hope back, much less have compassion over the needs of others, after you've fallen off to that side of the road. Balance my friends, balance!
What started as a simple journal entry seems to have developed into an essay, and for that I am extremely sorry, though extremely grateful. Sorry, because I know you'll think that much of what you just read was one, or two, or all of the following: boring, predictable, scattered, obtrusive, overblown, LOOOOONG, arrogant, misinformed, and virtually unreadable. I am grateful, however, because for me it was good healthy fun. I love the chance to write, especially when I know I'll always have another one! God has blessed me this week while writing and thinking of all these things, and I hope it somehow manages to bless you. I'll leave you with a fantastic quote from G.K. Chesterton's Orthodoxy that I think is very appropriate. Have a great week!
"…The thing that I mean can be seen, for instance, in children when they find some game or joke that they specially enjoy. A child kicks his legs rhythmically through excess, not absence of life. Because children have abounding vitality, because they are in spirit fierce and free, therefore they want things repeated and unchanged. They always say, "Do it again" and the grown-up person does it again until he is nearly dead. For grown-up people are not strong enough to exult in monotony. But perhaps God is strong enough to exult in monotony. It is possible that God says every morning, "Do it again" to the sun; and every evening, "Do it again" to the moon. It may not be automatic necessity that makes all daisies alike; it may be that God makes every daisy separately, but has never got tired of making them. It may be that he has the eternal appetite of infancy; for we have sinned and grown old, and our Father is younger than we." - G.K. Chesterton, Orthodoxy
Here's the article:
THE SOUL IN THE SEED IN THE SOIL
1. "When I was a child, I spoke like a child; I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I gave up childish ways." - 1 Cor. 13:11
2. "At the same time came the disciples unto Jesus, saying, who is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven? And Jesus called a little child unto him, and set him in the midst of them, and said, Verily I say unto you, except ye be converted, and become as little children, ye shall not enter into the kingdom of heaven." – Matt. 18:3
There were at least three lessons that I would take away with me in my memory of grammar school. I learned lessons one and two on my very first day. It should be worth noting that when I was born, I was immediately attached to my mother's hip, and that I’m the proudest mamma's boy you should ever wish to meet. Needless to say, that first day of grammar school was heartbreaking for both of us. I remember screeching like a bird being nudged out of the nest before his first flight when I left her precious arms. The initial five feet or so is a hard plummet, but by the end of the day I was flying high and ecstatic because I had a whole new box of stories to share with mom. And so, the first of two lessons I would learn on this defining day is that the least familiar road on any great adventure will almost always be the most exciting.
The second lesson I learned came at the end of my first day, and at the end of every day in my first year of school. It was Barbasol! It was the only activity in a day full of activities that I looked forward to the most. The teacher would stroll by each of our tables and in front of us she would spray out a nice heaping glob of Barbasol shaving cream. All of us would wait in bouncy anticipation until she gave the word, and at once we would plunge! We smeared shaving cream all over our tables until it literally disappeared. From that year on and throughout grade school, I wondered if there would ever be another year of Barbasol. Even now, with a face full of whiskers, I will sometimes play with shaving cream just to remind me of the second lesson I learned in only the first day of grammar school, and that is that sometimes the form of a thing is more enjoyable than its function.
The third lesson I learned is supplemented by the first and second, and it puts me on track to the point I'm aiming at. Before going any further, however, I should tell you that it would be quite hard for me to adequately convey the feelings of my smaller former self now that I'm all grown up, and seeing as I am more than likely only speaking with fellow adults here, I expect that even if I could there would really be no way for me to convince you of anything beyond what you will expect to be the obvious result of my story. All that to say, it may not be the best illustration I can offer, and I'm sorry that you're stuck with it! The real purpose of all that I will say from this point on falls on you, and even me, to see the difference between two forms of knowledge: intellectual and empirical, and how I believe both are of equal importance to your life, particularly as it pertains to the Christian worldview.
And now to continue with my story...
During the last week or so of our first year lessons, I found myself in the final stages of our term project. Our assignment, which is, or at least was a very common one in those days, was to prepare, nurture, and report the development of a flowering seed sown into the soil of a tiny paper cup ecosystem. Now, despite our teachers wonderful effort to conduct an introductory course in biology, I and several of my classmates knew that what we were doing was something more adventurous and mysterious than simply gathering information from observations.
I remember the day when we first starting seeing signs of life brimming from the dirt in our little paper cups. Every morning until this day, the first thing we would do is run to the cup with our name on it and try to see if we could spot the slightest head of green poking through the surface. On this particular day, almost all of the flowers had sprouted at once. Some of the flower sprouts were bigger than others, while some of the flowers, sadly, hadn't sprouted at all. Needless to say, it was a dismal day for some students. But for others, there was an overwhelming feeling of joy, fascination, and curiosity. To think that something so beautiful could make its way out of such an ugly lifeless little thing as the seed we had planted, it was a purely magical thought for a child, and that was enough. The only thing that was appropriate for us as children to know about a flower sprouting was the knowledge that came by way of the sensation we had when we saw it happening for the first time. This, in its purest form, is called sensationalism. As a philosophy, sensationalism is the doctrine that all ideas are derived from and are essentially reducible to sensations. It is a wholly aesthetic way of thinking. It didn't require that I have all the variables to understand it. All that I needed was a childlike faith, a healthy imagination, and the physical ability to feel something in one way or another. For most of us, the lesson had already been communicated by an intensely sensational revelation of truth. We didn't need to know anything else. Or did we?
As I said, there were some of us in the class who didn't get to experience what others experienced. Some of the flowers were not growing, and in several instances this was a direct result of a few children failing to obey instructions. Some of the cups were not properly irrigated, while others were stolen away to dark corners and not kept in the sunlight where they should have been. I remember one of my classmates actually drinking the water he was given to take care of his flower just because he was thirsty. I suppose it would do some good for you at this point to be reminded of our setting. This was a classroom full of inattentive, very impatient, sometimes bad behaving children, and to my mother's dismay, I was often one of them. It seemed that there would always be a need for us to learn a little more about discipline, and discipline cannot be formed by what you feel. Sensationalism is obviously a limited knowledge in that it lacks a proper consideration for reason. To follow sensationalism to its end, a child would grow only to respond to those sensations that pleased him, regardless of how reasonable or unreasonable they were, and he would be consumed by every kind of lustful passion that would lead him into developing a wholly carnal or hedonistic worldview.
As our teacher entered the room on that day, when we were all huddled in a corner over our little cups, It was precisely this voice of reason calling us to our seats. What happened next is something I can only describe as heartbreaking disenchantment. The magical fortress of my imagination, established by no other wisdom than that which comes by way of the mysterious nature of the commonplace, was suddenly being stormed by the veracious armies of reason. I sat there confused with teary wide-eyed disbelief as the teacher began to unload minimizing biological truths about my once bright wide open world. Intellectualism was brought to bear on me that day, and before it had even bloomed, the flower in my cup had been reasoned away. However much I wished to fight it, reason flung wide the doors of my mind that all my senses had welded shut, and as soon as I expected some deep and dark monster to emerge and devour me forever, instead the soft voice of what seemed like a friend came calling, "you are free." Though my senses remained intact, I was released from them into a new truth, or rather BY a new truth. My bright wide open world only became brighter and wider as I now had the grace of knowledge to eventually learn how to quantify the intensity of its brightness and survey the dimensions of its wideness, and this was no less of a good than simply knowing just how beautiful it was. Intellectualism is the doctrine that knowledge is wholly or chiefly derived from pure reason. It is the belief that reason is the final principle of reality. The blemish on an exclusively intellectual worldview, practically speaking, is that there will always be a lack of proper consideration for things that necessarily have real aesthetic or emotional value, and this may result in an extreme form of pragmatism.
Finally, I am at the end of a very long illustration. and I hope I have not bored you completely, but what I have tried to make obvious is that though there are benefits to both empirical and scientific knowledge, you cannot single out either one or the other as a primary doctrine to formulate a Christian worldview and not expect to continually foster ignorance. Obviously, there must be a healthy balance, and this is the third and final lesson I would learn, and will continue to learn for as long as I live.
Let's now go to the key verses I listed at the beginning. If you remember in 1 Cor. 13:11 Paul is explaining his maturity from childhood to adulthood:
"When I was a child, I spoke like a child; I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I gave up childish ways." - 1Cr 13:11
This is a practical message. What he is saying, very simply and perhaps with a much greater degree of sensitivity, is, "grow up! Put away your habits of undisciplined, thoughtless behavior and manage yourselves like adults." At first, the application of this verse to our conversation seems just a bit of a stretch because he isn't saying very much specifically about knowledge. It has more to do with self-discipline. As I said before, however, discipline comes by way of reason, so the intellectual angle is considered here. It is also important to note that he is instructing a Christian audience, so it can be said that his instruction is a basis for establishing a Christian worldview. Now, let's look at this verse in light of the second key text I listed.
"At the same time came the disciples unto Jesus, saying, who is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven? And Jesus called a little child unto him, and set him in the midst of them, and said, Verily I say unto you, except ye be converted, and become as little children, ye shall not enter into the kingdom of heaven." - Matt. 18:3
Despite what may already seem to be a contradiction, remember that what we are looking for here is balance. When inconsistencies seem to arise in scripture, particularly in the Gospels or the Epistles, it usually comes from the trouble in identifying applications for what might or might not be spiritual instruction and what might or might not be practical instruction. The disciples come to Jesus and ask him a really "bright" question that probably started as an argument amongst themselves before they approached him. Jesus responds, as He always does, with the best possible answer.
"…except ye be converted, and become as little children…"
When Christ says, "and become as little children" it should be obvious that this "becoming" will be preceded by its true application, and the words that precede it are, "except ye be converted." So, this "becoming as little children" is synonymous with a conversion experience. It means to imply a second birth whereby our spiritual nature is quickened. So, Christ is giving a spiritual answer to a pracctical question. It's funny, but It seems that Christ often gave answers to questions he WISHED they would have asked rather than the ones they ACTUALLY asked. With his answer, Christ immediately turns this into a spiritual conversation, whereas the disciples were arguing like mere human beings over who would have the highest pedestal in a physical kingdom. He goes on to say, and this must have really deflated His disciples, that if you are not converted and you do not become as little children, you won't even get to enter my kingdom. I've tried to picture the setting of this passage many times, and at the risk of infringing upon a story that may have already been invented by Max Lucado , I think what I've imagined might be an appropriate "what if" scenario. I imagine that Jesus was busy doing something before the disciples came to him. Maybe he was taking a break to sit down, loosen his sandals, and give his weary feet a good rub down. Perhaps not far off from where he sat, a child was perched on the door of his house mimicking Christ's actions and smiling. Every time Jesus would sigh in relief, the child sitting away from him would do the same. Maybe Jesus suddenly noticed, and playfully gave the child other movements to reproduce. Perhaps at one moment Christ bent his shoulders back and stretched his hands high in the air and bellowed out a deep heavy yawn. When I imagine the child doing the same thing, I see Christ smiling and laughing with great delight. The next few minutes or so would be followed by a series of funny faces and silly gestures, and then here would come the bumbling disciples tripping over each other as they race to ask Jesus another ignorant question. I would picture that the child he sat before them that day was the very child who had just been imitating Christ.
Paul doesn't contradict what Christ says by saying, "I gave up childish ways", because the thing he means is intellectual. When Christ says "become as little children", again, he is speaking spiritually of the second birth into the spiritual realm, and in this realm, we do not grow up as quickly as we do in the physical. In the physical realm, we have no say over the matter. Whether we become wiser or increasingly more ignorant, we just keep getting older. In the spiritual realm we spend a great number of days as children learning to live by faith, and this should be an encouraging thought. We get to find delight in our savior by imitating his actions with childlike faith. As I illustrated before, to live as children is to live with great fascination and wonder with no more thought of the world than of that which comes by faith through the knowledge of our senses. 1 Peter 2:2.3 says:
“Like newborn babies, crave pure spiritual milk, so that by it you may grow up in your salvation, now that you have tasted that the Lord is good.”
I love the expression here, to taste that the Lord is good, as if you could literally partake of the fruit of that vine called Jesus and gain sensory knowledge of His goodness! It is no mistake that we have figures of speech like this from those who would be the first true imitators of Christ. What they knew of him was a healthy balance of intellectual and empirical knowledge. Think about how often Christ would start out in parables with a "picture this", or how he would compare the Kingdom of God to something as tangible as a mustard seed. His flesh was bread, His blood, wine. Hypocrisy was a beam of wood darting out of someone's eye, and a rich man was a cumbersome camel trying to squeeze his way through the needle's eye. This is riveting stuff! "He who has ears to hear, let him hear", He says. His parables and analogies were tantalizing, but his intellectual wisdom was even more potent. Just when the Pharisees thought him a loon, they would find themselves embarrassed by questions they couldn't answer, or answers they couldn't question. Christ exercised the most appropriate balance of empirical and intelligent knowledge. So, how do we live in this balance?
"And out of the ground the Lord God made to grow every tree that is pleasant to the sight and good for food." Genesis 2:9
"pleasant to the sight…"
It may, or it may not, stand to reason that if God has designed a thing to be pleasant to the sight, that he would also design beings who have eyes to see and therefore know that it is indeed pleasing. If "pleasure of the sight" can be translated to mean "beautiful", and I think it can, then what this verse implies is that beauty is in the framework of creation. Now if the framework is true, and I believe that it is, then beauty is also true. This leads me to believe that if you qualify something as "beautiful", and if that thing you mean is a natural agent of God's creation and not an agent of idolatry or lust, then you are proclaiming a truth that is only as disagreeable as the proclamation, "the sky is blue". So, if beauty is a truth and we were created to know that it is, then by default we should have a set of criteria for understanding and storing this knowledge.
Recently I was talking with my friends Jenny and Darrin about the beauty of nature and how our love for such a gift should in some ways propel us to become better stewards of preservation. Eventually we spun the globes of our worldview on this subject at a spiritual angle, and it came up, from them, that there are some people who believe that trees and all other living things literally have a soul or a spirit nature about them, and it worried me a bit at how much they actually liked the idea. Though I admitted it was not my conviction, I did allow a shorter distance between "me" and "them", at least in our conversation, to say a few things about how beautiful the thought really is. It is true that God instilled in nature examples for spiritual growth and maturation. Christ used these examples often. "Consider the lilies", he said. "I am the vine you are the branches, abide in me." In Psalms, David shouts to all creation "sing and make praises to your God!" and perhaps the most beautiful of them all comes from Job:
"Ask the animals, and they will teach you, or the birds of the air, and they will tell you; or speak to the earth, and it will teach you, or let the fish of the sea inform you. Which of these does not know that the hand of the Lord has done this? In his hand is the life of every creature and the breath of all mankind."- Job 12:7-10
I did not wish for my friends to go on believing in “spirit trees” if indeed they were hinting that this was their honest conviction, and I knew that, in love, I could have tried to “correct their path”, but I didn’t. Instead, all I could think about was the story I told you earlier. All I could see was the beautiful mystery of things that grow, even from paper cups, and instead of trying to tell them “no, wrong! Look! Reason!” I worshiped our Creator in their company and thanked him for the beautiful reminders of the grace and love demonstrated in all created things and for sending us His Son in whom ALL of the fullness of God was pleased to dwell, and through whom ALL things have been reconciled unto Himself whether on earth or in heaven making peace by the blood of His cross (Col. 1:19, 20), and I was glad that I had not tried to be reasonable! I was glad that I didn't behave as that kid in my grammar school class did and drink the water that was given for the flower because it provided the logical means to quench my own thirst. You see, I believe that Intellectualism must not be allowed to throw the balance away from empirical knowledge when the souls of real people may be weighed simply by how well we Christians have applied ourselves to the truth of beauty.
I always try to remind myself to take the time to exercise and balance my mind, and realize that I have always had the freedom to believe that there is still something mysterious and enchanting about this world. It may even be good practice to repeat the exercise. Maybe I could plant a flower in a cup. Nurture it, and just for the sake of a healthy imagination, try to believe that somewhere in the seed, in the soil, there's a soul. Maybe I'll talk to it, as the passage in Job says. See if there's something it can teach me.
"...good for food"
At last, I would like to recover intellectualism from the mud of my obviously empirical bias and wipe it clean for us to look at. Most of us who have been fortunate enough to grow up in the school systems have very little trouble being, or at least acting, like good intellectuals. That is the point of school really. We take the classes, the teachers teach, we learn, we apply, we teach, someone else learns and the beautiful cycle repeats itself over and over again. I can't remember who said it, but put very simply, if we're not learning we're not moving, if we're not moving we're not living, and if we're not living, well then we are dead. The values of intellectual knowledge preserve and sustain the values of life. Being able to reason intellectually opens doors that lead us into making the kinds of decisions that drastically change our lives, and the lives of other people, for the better. As Christians, the freedom that comes from intellectual knowledge gives us clarity to discover our identity in Christ. As the trials of life unfold us and transform us from one degree of glory to the next, we become wiser and more capable human beings. Intellectualism is also the foundation for apologetics, which is basically a discourse for the defense of Christianity. This is a crucial tool for us as believers in a world where ignorance is bliss, truth is relative, and tolerance is, somehow, tolerable. Just as we look at the fruit of a tree and know that it is good for food, we must intellectually identify that which is good doctrine, and that which is bad. Having an intellectual basis for how and why you stand for what is right is of far greater worth than being a static figure in the crowd content with imitating and entertaining the desires of your piers rather than fulfilling the desires of an Almighty God. As Christian intellectuals, we must be very careful to maintain our balance with beauty. If you lose your balance and have to fall off the wagon on one side of the road or the other, make sure it's on the side of beauty. What I mean to say is that if you have to spend more time thinking one way or the other, then I would say it is better to be caught up in beauty than to be caught up in intellectualism. I know from experience, that losing your balance into intellectualism makes you a bitter cynic, and it's hard to get hope back, much less have compassion over the needs of others, after you've fallen off to that side of the road. Balance my friends, balance!
What started as a simple journal entry seems to have developed into an essay, and for that I am extremely sorry, though extremely grateful. Sorry, because I know you'll think that much of what you just read was one, or two, or all of the following: boring, predictable, scattered, obtrusive, overblown, LOOOOONG, arrogant, misinformed, and virtually unreadable. I am grateful, however, because for me it was good healthy fun. I love the chance to write, especially when I know I'll always have another one! God has blessed me this week while writing and thinking of all these things, and I hope it somehow manages to bless you. I'll leave you with a fantastic quote from G.K. Chesterton's Orthodoxy that I think is very appropriate. Have a great week!
"…The thing that I mean can be seen, for instance, in children when they find some game or joke that they specially enjoy. A child kicks his legs rhythmically through excess, not absence of life. Because children have abounding vitality, because they are in spirit fierce and free, therefore they want things repeated and unchanged. They always say, "Do it again" and the grown-up person does it again until he is nearly dead. For grown-up people are not strong enough to exult in monotony. But perhaps God is strong enough to exult in monotony. It is possible that God says every morning, "Do it again" to the sun; and every evening, "Do it again" to the moon. It may not be automatic necessity that makes all daisies alike; it may be that God makes every daisy separately, but has never got tired of making them. It may be that he has the eternal appetite of infancy; for we have sinned and grown old, and our Father is younger than we." - G.K. Chesterton, Orthodoxy
Thursday, June 18, 2009
Finding Objectivity (part 3.3): The Covenant Hermeneutic
And so, the covenant position, taking these things in mind found that the Unifying theme of Scripture could be expressed in three ideas, which could be summarized in the statement of one of the three. The three ideas are called the three covenants of Covenantalism and they are:
1. Covenant of Redemption: the eternal agreement within the Godhead in which the Father appointed the Son, Jesus Christ by the power of the Holy Spirit to redeem the elect from the guilt and power of sin. God appointed Christ to live a life of perfect obedience to the law and to die a penal, substitutionary, sacrificial death as the covenantal representative for all who trust in him.
--Scriptural Support for Covenant of Redemption – Psalm 110
2. Covenant of Works: the covenant made in the Garden of Eden between God and Adam who represented all mankind as a federal head. It promised life for obedience and death for disobedience. Adam, and all mankind in Adam, broke the covenant, thus, they stand condemned. The covenant of works continues to function after the fall as the moral law.
--Scriptural Support for Covenant of Works – Hosea 6:7; Jeremiah 33:20-23 (covenant with creation)
3. Covenant of Grace: The covenant of grace promises eternal blessing for all people who trust in the successive promises of God. Christ is the ultimate fulfillment of these promises. He is the substitutionary covenantal representative fulfilling the covenant of works on their behalf, in both the positive requirements of righteousness and its negative penal consequences (commonly described as his active and passive obedience). It is the historical expression of the eternal covenant of redemption. It finds expression in all the covenant of the Scriptures (Noah, Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Moses, David, New Covenant/Jeremiah 31).
--Scriptural Support for Covenant of Grace – Genesis 3:15
These three covenants can then be summarized under the one covenant, the Covenant of Grace.
The covenant position found that the unifying theme of Scripture is the Salvation of Man, or rather, more accurately, the Salvation of Israel – of which we, the church, are a part.
And since we are the repentant remnant of Israel and Old Testament doesn’t lie, we must be in the kingdom now, because it was prophesied that the New Covenant would be the Kingdom Covenant and that the kingdom would begin when the remnant of Israel repented, and that Christ would be the King of the Kingdom. (to be continued)
1. Covenant of Redemption: the eternal agreement within the Godhead in which the Father appointed the Son, Jesus Christ by the power of the Holy Spirit to redeem the elect from the guilt and power of sin. God appointed Christ to live a life of perfect obedience to the law and to die a penal, substitutionary, sacrificial death as the covenantal representative for all who trust in him.
--Scriptural Support for Covenant of Redemption – Psalm 110
2. Covenant of Works: the covenant made in the Garden of Eden between God and Adam who represented all mankind as a federal head. It promised life for obedience and death for disobedience. Adam, and all mankind in Adam, broke the covenant, thus, they stand condemned. The covenant of works continues to function after the fall as the moral law.
--Scriptural Support for Covenant of Works – Hosea 6:7; Jeremiah 33:20-23 (covenant with creation)
3. Covenant of Grace: The covenant of grace promises eternal blessing for all people who trust in the successive promises of God. Christ is the ultimate fulfillment of these promises. He is the substitutionary covenantal representative fulfilling the covenant of works on their behalf, in both the positive requirements of righteousness and its negative penal consequences (commonly described as his active and passive obedience). It is the historical expression of the eternal covenant of redemption. It finds expression in all the covenant of the Scriptures (Noah, Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Moses, David, New Covenant/Jeremiah 31).
--Scriptural Support for Covenant of Grace – Genesis 3:15
These three covenants can then be summarized under the one covenant, the Covenant of Grace.
The covenant position found that the unifying theme of Scripture is the Salvation of Man, or rather, more accurately, the Salvation of Israel – of which we, the church, are a part.
And since we are the repentant remnant of Israel and Old Testament doesn’t lie, we must be in the kingdom now, because it was prophesied that the New Covenant would be the Kingdom Covenant and that the kingdom would begin when the remnant of Israel repented, and that Christ would be the King of the Kingdom. (to be continued)
Friday, May 29, 2009
Finding Objectivity (part 3.2): The Covenant Hermeneutic
Logic of the Position
And so, from what we can derive from the plans of God, He begins in Abraham and chooses a man, a family, a line. This line of people we come to know as the nation of Israel. Throughout the Old Testament, from the choosing of Abraham through the book of Malachi, we watch as the promise and the seed and the nation of Israel prospers and falls, is victorious and is in fear of annihilation. We watch as the covenant people of God are delivered time and time again. But through this story we come to know, especially through prophetic literature that there will be a Messiah, a Savior. This savior would come to be known as the ideal Israel. He would embody all that Israel was meant to be (Isaiah 49:1-6), He would fulfill the legal stipulations of the Law (Matthew 5:17; Romans 10:4; Galatians 4:4-5), He would fulfill all the positional duties of Israel, namely that of prophet, priest and king, He would be obedient where the nation failed (Phillipians 2:8; Romans 5:19; Hebrews 5:8), and He would be the perfect sacrifice and sacrificer (Hebrews 4:15; Isaiah 53).
Not only this, but prophetic literature promised a future remnant of Israel. If Christ is the Ideal Israel, and those who are being saved now are “in Christ” (Romans 7:4; 8:1; 12:5; etc) then they are “in Israel,” they must be “Israel.” To further validate this claim that we are the Israelite remnant of prophecy, the Hebrew Scriptures say that this remnant, upon their return will be given the New Covenant. The New Testament makes it abundantly clear that we are sharing in the New Covenant now (Hebrews 8/Jeremiah 31:31-37; Luke 22:20; 1 Corinthians 11:25; 2 Corinthians 3:6; Hebrews 9:15; Hebrews 12:24). Being the recipients of the New Covenant, which was promised to Israel, being "in Christ," who is the ideal Israel, and being a repentant remnant, all seem to suggest that we, the Church, are the Israel of prophecy. The Church is, therefore, the Israel of the New Testament; a continuation of what God was doing in the Old Testament, or rather a replacement of the nation of Israel (God's chosen people of the Old Testament). [to be continued]
And so, from what we can derive from the plans of God, He begins in Abraham and chooses a man, a family, a line. This line of people we come to know as the nation of Israel. Throughout the Old Testament, from the choosing of Abraham through the book of Malachi, we watch as the promise and the seed and the nation of Israel prospers and falls, is victorious and is in fear of annihilation. We watch as the covenant people of God are delivered time and time again. But through this story we come to know, especially through prophetic literature that there will be a Messiah, a Savior. This savior would come to be known as the ideal Israel. He would embody all that Israel was meant to be (Isaiah 49:1-6), He would fulfill the legal stipulations of the Law (Matthew 5:17; Romans 10:4; Galatians 4:4-5), He would fulfill all the positional duties of Israel, namely that of prophet, priest and king, He would be obedient where the nation failed (Phillipians 2:8; Romans 5:19; Hebrews 5:8), and He would be the perfect sacrifice and sacrificer (Hebrews 4:15; Isaiah 53).
Not only this, but prophetic literature promised a future remnant of Israel. If Christ is the Ideal Israel, and those who are being saved now are “in Christ” (Romans 7:4; 8:1; 12:5; etc) then they are “in Israel,” they must be “Israel.” To further validate this claim that we are the Israelite remnant of prophecy, the Hebrew Scriptures say that this remnant, upon their return will be given the New Covenant. The New Testament makes it abundantly clear that we are sharing in the New Covenant now (Hebrews 8/Jeremiah 31:31-37; Luke 22:20; 1 Corinthians 11:25; 2 Corinthians 3:6; Hebrews 9:15; Hebrews 12:24). Being the recipients of the New Covenant, which was promised to Israel, being "in Christ," who is the ideal Israel, and being a repentant remnant, all seem to suggest that we, the Church, are the Israel of prophecy. The Church is, therefore, the Israel of the New Testament; a continuation of what God was doing in the Old Testament, or rather a replacement of the nation of Israel (God's chosen people of the Old Testament). [to be continued]
Wednesday, May 27, 2009
Finding Objectivity (part 3.1): The Covenant Hermeneutic
The Protestant Church knew they were facing a huge problem. As the Roman Catholics warned, giving the laity, the common people of the church, their own copy of the Word of God would almost certainly lead to heresies and destructive theologies, unless they could be limited by finding a means to objectivity. Universally, it was agreed that this means of objectivity would be found by accurately determining what it is that unifies all of Scripture. If the main purpose, the unifying theme of Scripture could be determined, then all events found within the Biblical texts could be weighed against this unifying theme and thus have a reference point by which objectivity could be found. Previously, this reference point, this hermeneutical principle, this means of objectivity, was Church Tradition, namely, the Roman Catholic Church. It was the Romans who determined the proper understanding of the texts, but this lead to abuse and a religion which had very little to do with actual Scripture.
These post reformation leaders, sought to find the unifying theme by first identifying that which they knew to be true concerning the purposes and plans of God. They are as followed:
1. Salvation of all of God’s people comes through Jesus
-Acts 4:12 - And there is salvation in no one else; for there is no other name under heaven that has been given among men by which we must be saved.
-Revelation 5:9 - And they sang a new song, saying, "Worthy are You to take the book and to break its seals; for You were slain, and purchased for God with Your blood [men] from every tribe and tongue and people and nation.”
2. Jesus’ death, burial, & resurrection (atonement) is an eternal plan of redemption
-2 Timothy 1:9 - 9 who has saved us and called us with a holy calling, not according to our works, but according to His own purpose and grace which was granted us in Christ Jesus from all eternity,
-1 Peter 1:20-21 - For He was foreknown before the foundation of the world, but has appeared in these last times for the sake of you who through Him are believers in God, who raised Him from the dead and gave Him glory, so that your faith and hope are in God.
3. Jesus’ atonement is only necessary because of the Fall
-Genesis 3 –The Fall of man through the sin of Adam.
-Romans 5:12-14 - Therefore, just as through one man sin entered into the world, and death through sin, and so death spread to all men, because all sinned--for until the Law sin was in the world, but sin is not imputed when there is no law. Nevertheless death reigned from Adam until Moses, even over those who had not sinned in the likeness of the offense of Adam, who is a type of Him who was to come.
4. God’s plans and purposes seem to revolve around the redemption of a people to Himself
-Scripture provides the story of Redemption
-From beginning to end the “story” of Scripture tells how God has chosen a people to Himself
These post reformation leaders, sought to find the unifying theme by first identifying that which they knew to be true concerning the purposes and plans of God. They are as followed:
1. Salvation of all of God’s people comes through Jesus
-Acts 4:12 - And there is salvation in no one else; for there is no other name under heaven that has been given among men by which we must be saved.
-Revelation 5:9 - And they sang a new song, saying, "Worthy are You to take the book and to break its seals; for You were slain, and purchased for God with Your blood [men] from every tribe and tongue and people and nation.”
2. Jesus’ death, burial, & resurrection (atonement) is an eternal plan of redemption
-2 Timothy 1:9 - 9 who has saved us and called us with a holy calling, not according to our works, but according to His own purpose and grace which was granted us in Christ Jesus from all eternity,
-1 Peter 1:20-21 - For He was foreknown before the foundation of the world, but has appeared in these last times for the sake of you who through Him are believers in God, who raised Him from the dead and gave Him glory, so that your faith and hope are in God.
3. Jesus’ atonement is only necessary because of the Fall
-Genesis 3 –The Fall of man through the sin of Adam.
-Romans 5:12-14 - Therefore, just as through one man sin entered into the world, and death through sin, and so death spread to all men, because all sinned--for until the Law sin was in the world, but sin is not imputed when there is no law. Nevertheless death reigned from Adam until Moses, even over those who had not sinned in the likeness of the offense of Adam, who is a type of Him who was to come.
4. God’s plans and purposes seem to revolve around the redemption of a people to Himself
-Scripture provides the story of Redemption
-From beginning to end the “story” of Scripture tells how God has chosen a people to Himself
Thursday, April 9, 2009
Finding Objectivity (part 2)
At this point I would like to draw the reader of Word & Truth’s attention to the fact that what will be said over the next couple of posts will be the basis of a distinction between myself and most that consider themselves “Reformed.” I am speaking here of the differences in our hermeneutical stance. Specifically, the Presbyterian Church and many others who consider themselves “Reformed,” hold to a type of Hermeneutic (the science of interpretation) known as Covenant Theology. In fact, in many circles, especially the Presbyterian Church, the terms Reformed and Covenant Theology have become synonymous. This is both inaccurate and possibly destructive to the Reformed view of salvation (Don’t worry, we will further define Reformed, and Covenantalism, as well as Dispensationalism as we proceed.), because it unfairly boxes in the believer of God’s sovereignty in salvation into a method of interpretation, understanding of the church (ecclesiology) and a stance on the end times (eschatology). Of course all theology is related and connected, but to necessitate one in the declaration of the other, when it is unnecessary to do so is academically unfair. And the cause of much confusion and division in the church.
I hold to a hermeneutic called Dispensationalism. Yes, I am reformed in my view of soteriology. No, I do not hold to a Covenant Hermeneutic. Some at this point can’t believe that this is even possible. Most people who have even heard of these two terms show an uneducated hatred of one or the other.
Not only is it possible to hold to both a Reformed Soteriology and a Dispensational Hermeneutic, but I know many who do the same. John Macarthur is more of a public figure who outwardly holds such a view, but also great pastors such as Chuck Swindoll, David Jeremiah, Tony Evans, Tommy Nelson, etc. (I hope they don’t mind me dropping their names. I merely want to point out the fact that the Dispensational Reformed position is not an oddity).
It is my hope to show, over the following posts, the history of both the Covenant and the Dispensational hermeneutic in order to show their development, their distinctions, and their resulting theological stances. It is my hope to present both sides fairly, recognizing the intent of those who developed both branches of this Christian way of interpreting Scripture, while trying to present the positions from the mindset of those who drafted these views. Also, I desire to evaluate both in order to see, and to show which, if either, best helped Reformed Christianity find an objective means of interpreting Scripture.
This will take several posts, so I beg for your patience as we push forward in our study of theology. Also, if you feel I have misrepresented or unfairly presented either side. Please post a comment or email me and I will edit as necessary. Thanks.
I hold to a hermeneutic called Dispensationalism. Yes, I am reformed in my view of soteriology. No, I do not hold to a Covenant Hermeneutic. Some at this point can’t believe that this is even possible. Most people who have even heard of these two terms show an uneducated hatred of one or the other.
Not only is it possible to hold to both a Reformed Soteriology and a Dispensational Hermeneutic, but I know many who do the same. John Macarthur is more of a public figure who outwardly holds such a view, but also great pastors such as Chuck Swindoll, David Jeremiah, Tony Evans, Tommy Nelson, etc. (I hope they don’t mind me dropping their names. I merely want to point out the fact that the Dispensational Reformed position is not an oddity).
It is my hope to show, over the following posts, the history of both the Covenant and the Dispensational hermeneutic in order to show their development, their distinctions, and their resulting theological stances. It is my hope to present both sides fairly, recognizing the intent of those who developed both branches of this Christian way of interpreting Scripture, while trying to present the positions from the mindset of those who drafted these views. Also, I desire to evaluate both in order to see, and to show which, if either, best helped Reformed Christianity find an objective means of interpreting Scripture.
This will take several posts, so I beg for your patience as we push forward in our study of theology. Also, if you feel I have misrepresented or unfairly presented either side. Please post a comment or email me and I will edit as necessary. Thanks.
Monday, April 6, 2009
Finding Objectivity (part 1)
Having established the fact of an Objective Truth and knowing that that Truth is found in God, and thus is communicated to us through God’s Word, we can rest assured that the Word of God is Truth. “The sum of Your word is truth, And every one of Your righteous ordinances is everlasting” (Psalm 119:160). “Sanctify them in the truth; Your word is truth” (John 17:17).
Now we look 1500 years into Church History, to the Protestant Reformation. Various generations dealt with various issues in Theology. For instance, the end of the fourth century concerned itself with the recognition of the canon of Scripture, the early fourth century established orthodox Trinitarian Theology, etc. In the same way, the years following the protestant reformation brought about developments in Hermeneutics, the science of interpretation.
In 1519 a German Augustinian monk by the name of Martin Luther set out to reform the Western/Roman Church. His hammering of 95 theses to the doors of the church in Wittenberg to declare a need for public debate and discussions of those things which Luther thought were discrepancies between the Faith of Scripture and the Church in Rome began a revolution in Christianity. A Reformation of Christianity. A return to the Christianity of Christ, of Paul, of the apostles, and of the Bible.
One cry of the Protestant reformation was to place the Scripture in every man’s hands, and a struggle in every man’s heart. At the time all Scripture was in Latin and only the priests, bishops, cardinal, and popes were trained in Latin, thus making the Word of God to men, only available to the theologically trained. This was a mockery of the intent of Scripture and so, Luther desperately wanted to translate from the originals a text in the common language of the people, in his case German.
His opponents, i.e. the Roman Church (who Calvin would call papists) warned Luther, “if everyone has the Scripture, people will go their own way inventing Sects, Cults, and Heresies.” And though Luther heeded this warning, his end response would be “Yes, but it is worth it!” (Praise God!)
Having abandoned the Church/Tradition as the governing authority for the translating of Scripture, which ensured unity in interpretation, Protestants needed to find another means of finding an OBJECTIVE INTERPRETATION, an objective hermeneutic.
Now we look 1500 years into Church History, to the Protestant Reformation. Various generations dealt with various issues in Theology. For instance, the end of the fourth century concerned itself with the recognition of the canon of Scripture, the early fourth century established orthodox Trinitarian Theology, etc. In the same way, the years following the protestant reformation brought about developments in Hermeneutics, the science of interpretation.
In 1519 a German Augustinian monk by the name of Martin Luther set out to reform the Western/Roman Church. His hammering of 95 theses to the doors of the church in Wittenberg to declare a need for public debate and discussions of those things which Luther thought were discrepancies between the Faith of Scripture and the Church in Rome began a revolution in Christianity. A Reformation of Christianity. A return to the Christianity of Christ, of Paul, of the apostles, and of the Bible.
One cry of the Protestant reformation was to place the Scripture in every man’s hands, and a struggle in every man’s heart. At the time all Scripture was in Latin and only the priests, bishops, cardinal, and popes were trained in Latin, thus making the Word of God to men, only available to the theologically trained. This was a mockery of the intent of Scripture and so, Luther desperately wanted to translate from the originals a text in the common language of the people, in his case German.
His opponents, i.e. the Roman Church (who Calvin would call papists) warned Luther, “if everyone has the Scripture, people will go their own way inventing Sects, Cults, and Heresies.” And though Luther heeded this warning, his end response would be “Yes, but it is worth it!” (Praise God!)
Having abandoned the Church/Tradition as the governing authority for the translating of Scripture, which ensured unity in interpretation, Protestants needed to find another means of finding an OBJECTIVE INTERPRETATION, an objective hermeneutic.
Monday, February 16, 2009
A Christian View of Truth
Allow me to pick up where I left off, or at least, spend a bit more time in a particular area of our study. Objectivity. Objectivity is key. But what do we mean when we say we need objectivity. Objectivity is a particular view that Truth does in fact exist outside of your and my opinions. Truth is not subjective (individual opinions) or relative (the opinions of a particular group). As Christians, we believe in a particular view of Objective Truth. It is a view called a “correspondent view of truth.” In modernism a correspondent view of Truth says that “truth exists in as much as it corresponds to the reality of nature.” The Christian version is very similar, yet absolutely distinct. Christians believe that “Truth exists in as much as it corresponds to a reality found in God.” Nature can be deceiving, especially since it is tainted by the fall of man (a subject to be dealt with at a later date). But God is unchanging. He is Truth. His Word is Truth.
God is Truth so we know that there is objectivity. I know that I am being repetitive, but it is both vital and necessary that we keep this in mind especially as we enter into a discussion on the interpretation of Scripture.
From here in a typical systematic theology we would discuss how God being the source of Truth communicates Truth to us through His Word. And so we would need to discuss What is Scripture?, Which books should be included in the Bible?, What is the apocrypha?, What about the pseudo-gospels or the Gnostic gospels?, What is the canon?. All these questions are worthy pursuits, but smarter men have written extensively on these subjects. And my discussing them would only be a poor imitation. I would recommend reading Wayne Grudem’s Systematic Theology to learn about these issues.
We will assume that we are on the same page, that the protestant canon is the canon, that Scripture is both inspired and inerrant. It may be necessary to revisit these ideas in the future, but for now, I would like to jump to a different subject, the next logical subject in building a systematic and that is the topic of Hermeneutics, the interpretation of God’s Word.
These next couple of blogs will be the pivotal point of this whole blogging experiment. One’s hermeneutics, interpretive principles, will lead necessarily to one’s Anthropology (doctrine of man), Harmartiology (doctrine of sin), Trinitarianism (doctrine of God), Soteriology (doctrine of salvation), Ecclesiology (doctrine of the church), and especially Eschatology (doctrine of the end times). So over the coming blogs I will tread softly and try my hardest to be both fair and accurate in dealing with varying views.
Once again…Objectivity is key, because Truth is objective. If Truth is subjective or relative, if it means everything, then it means nothing. There would be no Truth and this whole blog would be pointless. It would just be another meaningless voice, expressing a meaningless opinion on a meaningless subject.
God is Truth so we know that there is objectivity. I know that I am being repetitive, but it is both vital and necessary that we keep this in mind especially as we enter into a discussion on the interpretation of Scripture.
From here in a typical systematic theology we would discuss how God being the source of Truth communicates Truth to us through His Word. And so we would need to discuss What is Scripture?, Which books should be included in the Bible?, What is the apocrypha?, What about the pseudo-gospels or the Gnostic gospels?, What is the canon?. All these questions are worthy pursuits, but smarter men have written extensively on these subjects. And my discussing them would only be a poor imitation. I would recommend reading Wayne Grudem’s Systematic Theology to learn about these issues.
We will assume that we are on the same page, that the protestant canon is the canon, that Scripture is both inspired and inerrant. It may be necessary to revisit these ideas in the future, but for now, I would like to jump to a different subject, the next logical subject in building a systematic and that is the topic of Hermeneutics, the interpretation of God’s Word.
These next couple of blogs will be the pivotal point of this whole blogging experiment. One’s hermeneutics, interpretive principles, will lead necessarily to one’s Anthropology (doctrine of man), Harmartiology (doctrine of sin), Trinitarianism (doctrine of God), Soteriology (doctrine of salvation), Ecclesiology (doctrine of the church), and especially Eschatology (doctrine of the end times). So over the coming blogs I will tread softly and try my hardest to be both fair and accurate in dealing with varying views.
Once again…Objectivity is key, because Truth is objective. If Truth is subjective or relative, if it means everything, then it means nothing. There would be no Truth and this whole blog would be pointless. It would just be another meaningless voice, expressing a meaningless opinion on a meaningless subject.
Friday, January 23, 2009
Is there Truth?
This week I saw something that I haven’t seen in many years. Eight strangers picked to live in a house…MTV’s The Real World. …Taking eight strangers and forcing them to live in a mansion with one computer, one car, no cell phones, four bedrooms and one communal bathroom is anything but the real world, but that’s a different story, for a different day. Here’s a quick synopsis of the episode…There was an army veteran, a post-operation trans-gendered woman(?), an extremely metro-sexual Mormon, a muscle-man who’s life consisted of eating and working out, a dancer, a tattooed, artsy girl who looked freakishly like Julia Styles only with black hair, a black woman who didn’t seem to be in any of the scenes and a Cuban, gay, animal trainer. Everyone one of them had some version of this as their herald: “You need to be open-minded. You need to not be judgmental.” But at the same time they said that mono-theism, the belief in only one God, totally kills the party and ruins a society (sounds a little close-minded and judgmental to me).
Basically what they were saying is that what is right for you, and what is right for me, are totally different and we need to be accepting of your beliefs and my beliefs, that is, unless your beliefs are that my beliefs are wrong, then we don’t need to accept your beliefs, we need to condemn them for being intolerant and close-minded and judgmental. We need tolerance!
In a sense, The Real World producers were right; this is a picture of American society, at least in terms of people’s views of Truth, people’s understanding of epistemology—the branch of philosophy that deals with one’s understanding of Truth & Knowledge, does it exist, how can one come to know it? This can be seen even more clearly in an event that made history on January 20, 2009. The Inauguration of America’s first African-American President, President Barack Obama. Of course, this is not a political blog, and it is not my intent to comment on my, or any other’s political views. My one desire is to point out that Inauguration Day was highlighted by the word “tolerant.” This is to be the administration of tolerance! The modern American is to be characterized by an epistemological stance of relativity, subjectivity, individuality, plurality, TOLERANCE! We are to accept other’s beliefs as equally true and equally valid as our own in spite of the reality of the world, the fact that there is a single Truth.
A Christian begins a study of Theology with one belief. We believe there is Truth. And this Truth comes from the only source of Truth, God, the creator of all things (including Truth). If there is one solitary idea of Truth, then everyone’s views of what that Truth is, when they contradict each other, cannot be equally true, nor equally valid. For a Christian epistemology, the law of non-contradiction applies, which means that if what you believe to be true directly contradicts what I believe to be true, then either you are wrong, I am wrong, or we both are wrong and there still remains a Truth which is based on God and which can be learned.
There is Truth. God is the source of that Truth and because he is a God who communicates to his people, that Truth can be known. And we can achieve objectivity in our understanding of Truth. Truth isn’t what I feel might be true, nor what my culture tells me to believe as truth, nor is Truth determined by my circumstances. There is Truth, and it is not only a possibility to find said Truth, but it is the Christian’s responsibility to come to know Truth and to replace lies for Truth and in such, come to know the giver and standard of Truth, who is God.
Basically what they were saying is that what is right for you, and what is right for me, are totally different and we need to be accepting of your beliefs and my beliefs, that is, unless your beliefs are that my beliefs are wrong, then we don’t need to accept your beliefs, we need to condemn them for being intolerant and close-minded and judgmental. We need tolerance!
In a sense, The Real World producers were right; this is a picture of American society, at least in terms of people’s views of Truth, people’s understanding of epistemology—the branch of philosophy that deals with one’s understanding of Truth & Knowledge, does it exist, how can one come to know it? This can be seen even more clearly in an event that made history on January 20, 2009. The Inauguration of America’s first African-American President, President Barack Obama. Of course, this is not a political blog, and it is not my intent to comment on my, or any other’s political views. My one desire is to point out that Inauguration Day was highlighted by the word “tolerant.” This is to be the administration of tolerance! The modern American is to be characterized by an epistemological stance of relativity, subjectivity, individuality, plurality, TOLERANCE! We are to accept other’s beliefs as equally true and equally valid as our own in spite of the reality of the world, the fact that there is a single Truth.
A Christian begins a study of Theology with one belief. We believe there is Truth. And this Truth comes from the only source of Truth, God, the creator of all things (including Truth). If there is one solitary idea of Truth, then everyone’s views of what that Truth is, when they contradict each other, cannot be equally true, nor equally valid. For a Christian epistemology, the law of non-contradiction applies, which means that if what you believe to be true directly contradicts what I believe to be true, then either you are wrong, I am wrong, or we both are wrong and there still remains a Truth which is based on God and which can be learned.
There is Truth. God is the source of that Truth and because he is a God who communicates to his people, that Truth can be known. And we can achieve objectivity in our understanding of Truth. Truth isn’t what I feel might be true, nor what my culture tells me to believe as truth, nor is Truth determined by my circumstances. There is Truth, and it is not only a possibility to find said Truth, but it is the Christian’s responsibility to come to know Truth and to replace lies for Truth and in such, come to know the giver and standard of Truth, who is God.
Wednesday, January 14, 2009
RANT & RAVE: WHO IS THE ISRAEL OF GOD?
This morning I heard a radio program on the last passage of the book of Galatians. As some of you may know, Galatians 6:16 is a cornerstone verse for Covenant Theology. It is the flour and milk of their bread and butter. Galatians 6:16 states: “And those who will walk by this rule, peace and mercy [be] upon them, and upon the Israel of God.”
From this passage they build a theology known as Replacement Theology. Even though the term “Replacement Theology” has in some Covenant circles taken on a negative context, for all practical purposes the Covenant position believes in Replacement Theology.
This pastor’s argument was two fold:
1. The Israel of God as used in this passage is appositional, meaning, it is another name for the same persons or group of people talked about in the first part of the verse. The Israel of God as seen here would be another name for “those who will walk by this rule, peace and mercy be upon them…”
2. The peace pronounced to this group “those who will walk by this rule” is the promise of peace found in Psalm 125; therefore, the Church is the recipient of this Psalm, a Psalm written to Israel. And so, the Church must be Israel.
Now let us think about this…
Argument #1 - The Israel of God is appositional
Did you know that Israel is used 65 times in the New Testament? Care to guess how many times “Israel,” as used in the New Testament, is another name for the community of Christian faith, known as the Church?...Allow me to help you out. The answer is zero. There is not one time in the New Testament in which the authors of the gospels, epistles, letters and sermons call the Church “Israel.” Instead, each time “Israel” is used, it is in reference to the descendants of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, namely, the Jews.
Also, it would be an extremely rare case for the syntax of the verse to include “and upon the Israel of God,” as an appositional phrase. It would be so rare that it would almost be impossible. The two uses of the preposition “upon” would also beg the existence of two distinct groups; mercy and peace is proclaimed upon the community of faith, the Church, and upon the Israel of God. In so doing, Paul is accomplishing two things: 1. He is making a distinction between believing and non believing Israel. Believing Israel is now a part of the Church (Eph 2:11-22), while non-believing Israel are the ethnic Jews, the chosen people of God from the Hebrew Scriptures (Rom 2:28-29; 9:6). 2. Paul’s proclamation of peace upon both the Church and Israel showed that he was not anti-Semitic (9:1-5).
Argument #2 – Psalm 125 written to Israel now transferred to the new Israel.
(This one amazed me.) Let me quote to you Psalm 125.
Those who trust in the LORD are like Mount Zion, which cannot be shaken but endures forever. 2 As the mountains surround Jerusalem, so the LORD surrounds his people both now and forevermore. 3 The scepter of the wicked will not remain over the land allotted to the righteous, for then the righteous might use their hands to do evil 4 Do good, O LORD, to those who are good, to those who are upright in heart. 5 But those who turn to crooked ways the LORD will banish with the evildoers. Peace be upon Israel.
Do you see how Galatians 6:16 is a direct quotation or an allusion to Psalm 125? Perhaps if I re-quote Galatians 6:16... “And those who will walk by this rule, peace and mercy [be] upon them, and upon the Israel of God.” Still no? Yeah, neither can I, but here is what the pastor said, the words “peace,” “upon,” and “Israel,” exist in both. Three words! Three words!
The pastor (I won’t say who, because I am not mad at the pastor, just the position) went on to say that Psalm 125 was written to Israel, which is absolutely true. Then he said, that the church experiences the peace of God as stated in Galatians 6:16a. Correct again! And because Psalm 125 promises peace and Galatians 6, which is obviously, according to him, a direct quotation from this Psalm, promises peace, the Church must be the recipients of the peace promise of Ps.125 making the Church the replacement of the recipient of the Psalm, i.e. Israel. The Church is Israel. …Uhhh…. Wrong.
Did God promise peace to Israel? Yes. Did God promise peace to the Church? Again, yes! Can God only have one promise at a time? No. Does the church need to be Israel in order to receive a promise of peace? No! God can give a promise of peace to Israel, and give a promise of peace to the Church and the two groups can be distinct and fulfill the Word and the Truth of Scripture.
Why replace Israel with the Church, especially if you are going to admit that God still has a future plan for ethnic Israel as taught in Romans 9-11 and as outwardly held by some major voices in the Covenant world? It goes against a more complete biblical understanding of the plan of God. Any consistent understanding of the New Testament or the whole of Scripture demands a belief in the Church as well as Israel as two distinct groups which come together and share in the plan and purpose of God. One prominent Covenant theologian/pastor, when asked how this future of Israel plays into his theology, in which the Church has replaced Israel, said the Bible teaches a plan for Israel in the future…How that works in my system, I don’t know. It’s confusing (paraphrase mine).
In other words, the system is inconsistent. Replacement Theology is inconsistent, and because Replacement Theology is a major tenant of Covenantalism, Covenant Theology is inconsistent.
Look, this was the first time I’ve ever heard this Psalm 125 argument, but this is exactly the type of argument used all the time for the replacement of Israel. Here is the logic they use:
Premise: Israel is given a promise
Premise: The church is given a similar promise, or is allowed to play a part in the original promise.
Conclusion: Therefore, the church must have replaced Israel
(not exactly a sound argument)
To the replacement theologian, it is inconceivable that God would allow a promise to remain a promise to Israel and there be a promise given to the Church that looks the same or is part of the bigger original promise, without the Church being the real receiver of the original promise.
Let me give you an illustration that might help...
Little Bobby came over Monday wanting a sucker. I told him that I would give him one later in the week after I went to the store. Katie came over Tuesday, after I went to the store. I gave Katie a sucker. Did I give Katie the sucker I promised Bobby? No. I still have a sucker for Bobby. I gave Katie a sucker just like Bobby's sucker, but I still have a sucker waiting for little Bobby when He comes back to see me.
The Covenant/Replacement Theologian would say that I gave the sucker to Katie and therefore there will be no sucker for Bobby. Then the major voices of Covenant Theology would admit, based on Romans 9-11, that when Bobby comes over again later this week, he still will get his sucker. Something isn't working here! How can Bobby have been replaced by Katie as the recipient of the sucker, but still get a sucker later during the week?
Why can’t you guys just be consistent? There is an entity in Scripture called the Church consisting of both Jews and Gentiles. We play a part in God’s plan to bring himself glory. And there is an entity in Scripture called Israel, a remnant of the Jews who will receive the promises made to the Israelites in the Old Testament when God chooses to fulfill his promises (Rom. 9-11).
It sounds like you guys/gals are reading a tradition into the text, rather than taking out of the text, the simple Word and Truth.
From this passage they build a theology known as Replacement Theology. Even though the term “Replacement Theology” has in some Covenant circles taken on a negative context, for all practical purposes the Covenant position believes in Replacement Theology.
This pastor’s argument was two fold:
1. The Israel of God as used in this passage is appositional, meaning, it is another name for the same persons or group of people talked about in the first part of the verse. The Israel of God as seen here would be another name for “those who will walk by this rule, peace and mercy be upon them…”
2. The peace pronounced to this group “those who will walk by this rule” is the promise of peace found in Psalm 125; therefore, the Church is the recipient of this Psalm, a Psalm written to Israel. And so, the Church must be Israel.
Now let us think about this…
Argument #1 - The Israel of God is appositional
Did you know that Israel is used 65 times in the New Testament? Care to guess how many times “Israel,” as used in the New Testament, is another name for the community of Christian faith, known as the Church?...Allow me to help you out. The answer is zero. There is not one time in the New Testament in which the authors of the gospels, epistles, letters and sermons call the Church “Israel.” Instead, each time “Israel” is used, it is in reference to the descendants of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, namely, the Jews.
Also, it would be an extremely rare case for the syntax of the verse to include “and upon the Israel of God,” as an appositional phrase. It would be so rare that it would almost be impossible. The two uses of the preposition “upon” would also beg the existence of two distinct groups; mercy and peace is proclaimed upon the community of faith, the Church, and upon the Israel of God. In so doing, Paul is accomplishing two things: 1. He is making a distinction between believing and non believing Israel. Believing Israel is now a part of the Church (Eph 2:11-22), while non-believing Israel are the ethnic Jews, the chosen people of God from the Hebrew Scriptures (Rom 2:28-29; 9:6). 2. Paul’s proclamation of peace upon both the Church and Israel showed that he was not anti-Semitic (9:1-5).
Argument #2 – Psalm 125 written to Israel now transferred to the new Israel.
(This one amazed me.) Let me quote to you Psalm 125.
Those who trust in the LORD are like Mount Zion, which cannot be shaken but endures forever. 2 As the mountains surround Jerusalem, so the LORD surrounds his people both now and forevermore. 3 The scepter of the wicked will not remain over the land allotted to the righteous, for then the righteous might use their hands to do evil 4 Do good, O LORD, to those who are good, to those who are upright in heart. 5 But those who turn to crooked ways the LORD will banish with the evildoers. Peace be upon Israel.
Do you see how Galatians 6:16 is a direct quotation or an allusion to Psalm 125? Perhaps if I re-quote Galatians 6:16... “And those who will walk by this rule, peace and mercy [be] upon them, and upon the Israel of God.” Still no? Yeah, neither can I, but here is what the pastor said, the words “peace,” “upon,” and “Israel,” exist in both. Three words! Three words!
The pastor (I won’t say who, because I am not mad at the pastor, just the position) went on to say that Psalm 125 was written to Israel, which is absolutely true. Then he said, that the church experiences the peace of God as stated in Galatians 6:16a. Correct again! And because Psalm 125 promises peace and Galatians 6, which is obviously, according to him, a direct quotation from this Psalm, promises peace, the Church must be the recipients of the peace promise of Ps.125 making the Church the replacement of the recipient of the Psalm, i.e. Israel. The Church is Israel. …Uhhh…. Wrong.
Did God promise peace to Israel? Yes. Did God promise peace to the Church? Again, yes! Can God only have one promise at a time? No. Does the church need to be Israel in order to receive a promise of peace? No! God can give a promise of peace to Israel, and give a promise of peace to the Church and the two groups can be distinct and fulfill the Word and the Truth of Scripture.
Why replace Israel with the Church, especially if you are going to admit that God still has a future plan for ethnic Israel as taught in Romans 9-11 and as outwardly held by some major voices in the Covenant world? It goes against a more complete biblical understanding of the plan of God. Any consistent understanding of the New Testament or the whole of Scripture demands a belief in the Church as well as Israel as two distinct groups which come together and share in the plan and purpose of God. One prominent Covenant theologian/pastor, when asked how this future of Israel plays into his theology, in which the Church has replaced Israel, said the Bible teaches a plan for Israel in the future…How that works in my system, I don’t know. It’s confusing (paraphrase mine).
In other words, the system is inconsistent. Replacement Theology is inconsistent, and because Replacement Theology is a major tenant of Covenantalism, Covenant Theology is inconsistent.
Look, this was the first time I’ve ever heard this Psalm 125 argument, but this is exactly the type of argument used all the time for the replacement of Israel. Here is the logic they use:
Premise: Israel is given a promise
Premise: The church is given a similar promise, or is allowed to play a part in the original promise.
Conclusion: Therefore, the church must have replaced Israel
(not exactly a sound argument)
To the replacement theologian, it is inconceivable that God would allow a promise to remain a promise to Israel and there be a promise given to the Church that looks the same or is part of the bigger original promise, without the Church being the real receiver of the original promise.
Let me give you an illustration that might help...
Little Bobby came over Monday wanting a sucker. I told him that I would give him one later in the week after I went to the store. Katie came over Tuesday, after I went to the store. I gave Katie a sucker. Did I give Katie the sucker I promised Bobby? No. I still have a sucker for Bobby. I gave Katie a sucker just like Bobby's sucker, but I still have a sucker waiting for little Bobby when He comes back to see me.
The Covenant/Replacement Theologian would say that I gave the sucker to Katie and therefore there will be no sucker for Bobby. Then the major voices of Covenant Theology would admit, based on Romans 9-11, that when Bobby comes over again later this week, he still will get his sucker. Something isn't working here! How can Bobby have been replaced by Katie as the recipient of the sucker, but still get a sucker later during the week?
Why can’t you guys just be consistent? There is an entity in Scripture called the Church consisting of both Jews and Gentiles. We play a part in God’s plan to bring himself glory. And there is an entity in Scripture called Israel, a remnant of the Jews who will receive the promises made to the Israelites in the Old Testament when God chooses to fulfill his promises (Rom. 9-11).
It sounds like you guys/gals are reading a tradition into the text, rather than taking out of the text, the simple Word and Truth.
Monday, January 12, 2009
Where to Begin?
They say a journey of a thousand miles starts with a single footstep. What they don’t tell you is that the first footstep is the most difficult, intimidating footstep you will take on the entire journey. This is where we begin. Step one…step one…step one… ok, I give up. What is step one? I guess before we begin we need to know where to begin.
“In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. The earth was formless and void, and darkness was over the surface of the deep, and the Spirit of God was moving over the surface of the waters” (Genesis 1:1-2). “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God” (John 1:1-2). I guess this tells us that we should start with Theology Proper—the study of who God is—otherwise known as Trinitarianism.
But did you notice the parentheses? We are beginning here by quoting Scripture. We are assuming Scripture is Scripture, so perhaps we should start with Bibliology—What is Scripture?” Even then, we have to determine what this Scripture means and so alongside Bibliology, we should study Hermeneutics—How do we interpret Scripture? How do we determine its meaning?” But even this assumes that it has a meaning, which leads us not down a theological road, but the road of Epistemology—the study of Knowledge, the study of Truth. The study of how Truth and Knowledge are acquired and whether it is even possible to attain Knowledge and Truth.
This is where it all begins. Is there Truth? Epistomology. Step 1: Determine where to begin…check.
“In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. The earth was formless and void, and darkness was over the surface of the deep, and the Spirit of God was moving over the surface of the waters” (Genesis 1:1-2). “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God” (John 1:1-2). I guess this tells us that we should start with Theology Proper—the study of who God is—otherwise known as Trinitarianism.
But did you notice the parentheses? We are beginning here by quoting Scripture. We are assuming Scripture is Scripture, so perhaps we should start with Bibliology—What is Scripture?” Even then, we have to determine what this Scripture means and so alongside Bibliology, we should study Hermeneutics—How do we interpret Scripture? How do we determine its meaning?” But even this assumes that it has a meaning, which leads us not down a theological road, but the road of Epistemology—the study of Knowledge, the study of Truth. The study of how Truth and Knowledge are acquired and whether it is even possible to attain Knowledge and Truth.
This is where it all begins. Is there Truth? Epistomology. Step 1: Determine where to begin…check.
Saturday, January 10, 2009
Noble Intent?
Some blog as a journal, while others blog for fun. Some blog to share their ideals and to try to convince the world. I am sure there are as many reasons to blog as there are blogs, which means there are a bazillion and three reasons out there to blog. As we begin this journey together, the reader should know and understand the reason for, and the purpose of Word & Truth. Perhaps in so doing, you, the reader, will be able to judge my intent as noble.
Really there are two reasons for this blog and surprisingly, neither of them is because “I needed something else to do.” Reason number 1: Word & Truth provides an opportunity to discuss theology and more importantly to build a Systematic Theology. As such, it will provide a springboard for discussing modern theological issues which shape one’s understanding of God. This is the primary purpose for this blog and I pray that the reader can learn and grow as we dive into the clear cool waters of the wonderful world of Theology.
Reason # 2: From time to time issues so overwhelm me that I just need to vent. Call it stress relief, call it journaling, call it rants and raves; “a rose by any other name.” Right? Word & Truth will provide an opportunity to talk about the latest issue that crosses my plate, or the most frustrating things that I find in the local church.
My hope is this: I would like to build a theological structure that will allow in-depth, consistent discussions of Scripture and Theology, but that takes time. In the meantime, there will be periodic Rants and Raves, concerning everything under the Sun.
So there is the purpose for Word & Truth, so come back often or better yet, subscribe to the blog and tell your friends.
Grace and Peace.
Really there are two reasons for this blog and surprisingly, neither of them is because “I needed something else to do.” Reason number 1: Word & Truth provides an opportunity to discuss theology and more importantly to build a Systematic Theology. As such, it will provide a springboard for discussing modern theological issues which shape one’s understanding of God. This is the primary purpose for this blog and I pray that the reader can learn and grow as we dive into the clear cool waters of the wonderful world of Theology.
Reason # 2: From time to time issues so overwhelm me that I just need to vent. Call it stress relief, call it journaling, call it rants and raves; “a rose by any other name.” Right? Word & Truth will provide an opportunity to talk about the latest issue that crosses my plate, or the most frustrating things that I find in the local church.
My hope is this: I would like to build a theological structure that will allow in-depth, consistent discussions of Scripture and Theology, but that takes time. In the meantime, there will be periodic Rants and Raves, concerning everything under the Sun.
So there is the purpose for Word & Truth, so come back often or better yet, subscribe to the blog and tell your friends.
Grace and Peace.
Friday, January 9, 2009
A Blog Born Out of Frustration
Word & Truth is a blog created to discuss Scripture and Theology in an attempt to add another voice into the ever-growing, ever-progressing, theological conversation. As the administrator of this blog, I feel a duty to the potential reader to give at least a broad idea of the direction I will be taking, and in so, present to you the theological positions which I am committed to and which I hope to represent in my writing.
As mentioned previously, this blog is born out of what I hope is a holy frustration. Generally speaking, my frustration is with the Church. Christian's have but one calling, to make disciples (Matt. 28:19-20). On the whole, most churches have confused evangelism with discipleship and therefore, we have converts who are theologically ignorant; fair-weathered Christians who leave their Christian lives at the drop of a hat, or who cannot stand up to the increasingly relativistic, secular world or worse, are subject to manipulation by cults who prey upon their untrained, immature Christian mind.
Also, it needs to be stated that I am absolutely committed to both Reformed, Calvinistic, Theology as well as Dispensational Theology. I find that other views are inconsistent (another cause of frustration). These theological positions most fully satisfy the teaching of Scripture, allow one to be completely consistent, and serve towards bringing the most glory to God, which is both the unifying theme of Scripture and the final end of all history; “so that God may be all in all.” (1 Cor. 15:28).
With this inaugural blog, let us hold fast to the faith and peaceably seek to present the Word and Truth in an accurate, God honoring way, and with a willingness to learn, grow and honor the Tri-une God in the process.
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