Euangelion

Euangelion Has Moved to Patheos.com.

2011-05-07T23:15:00.004-05:00

Dear friends, just to let you know that Joel and I have decided to move Euangelion to a new host site Patheos.com. We think this will represent a bigger and more manageable platform for us to do what we do: blog on biblical studies, theology, and church life. So adjust your browser, RSS feed, and Google Reader accordingly.

Our new site is Euangelion.

The web address is: http://www.patheos.com/community/euangelion/

It will be found under the evangelical portal at Patheos.com.

Thanks to everyone who has read, commented, and followed us at this blog site. We hope you will join us for a more bibliologging adventures at our new location.

Thanks

Mike Bird & Joel Willitts

New Testament in Antiquity

2011-05-07T09:29:00.008-05:00

The New Testament in Antiquity: A Survey of the New Testament within Its Cultural Context
Zondervan, 2009

The perfect textbook for an undergraduate introductory course on the New Testament in an evangelical setting! The New Testament in Antiquity is handsomely produced, highly accessible and sufficiently indepth without overwhelming a reader with detail.

The major focus of the book is clear from the subtitle A Survey of the New Testament Within Its Cultural Contexts: a student comes away from the book aware of the importance of the historical and cultural setting of the New Testament documents for its interpretation. The book is probably not a sufficient introduction for a graduate and seminary level course, although as a supplemental text it could serve quite nicely. I used it in conjunction with one of my favorites: Oskar Skarsaune's In the Shadow of the Temple: Jewish Influences on Early Christianity.

Around the Blogosphere

2011-05-07T04:22:00.001-05:00

Here's some stuff around the blogosophere:

Jim Hamilton muses on how often we should take communion - warning, he couldn't be turning Anglican on us! Tim Henderson discusses 1 Corinthians 11 and 1 Timothy 2 about women and authority. Andrew Perriman writes about election.

Note also the first book length response to Rob Bell by Michael Wittmer In Christ Alone (HT: Kevin Wax). He writes: "Theology, or our understanding of God, is more like a sweater than a smorgasbord. We can’t logically walk up to the Bible buffet and load up on the teachings we like while skipping the ones we don’t: give me an extra helping of love but hold the stuff about wrath. Instead, our beliefs about God and the Christian life are intertwined like the strands of yarn in a cable-knit sweater. When we tug on one, the others tend to come, too. "(2).

Thanks to Marc Cortez for this caption about the KJV at 400 years!

Should Colleges Ban Fraternities?

2011-05-06T18:12:00.003-05:00

"A recent op-ed article in The Wall Street Journal cited the Yale incident and called for fraternities to be banned to protect the safety of women. But should fraternities be singled out? The Education Department's civil rights office is reviewing several sexual harassment and assault cases at other colleges.

Are fraternity members really more apt than their male peers to tolerate sexist attitudes and sexual misbehavior? What role does drinking play, given its role in inciting aggression? Should colleges be doing more to prevent sexual offenses?"

From the NY Times.com

N.T. Wright on Osama bin Laden

2011-05-05T22:01:00.004-05:00

N.T. Wright comments on the killing of Osama bin Laden over at Ruth Gledhill's blog.

I hear Wright's objections and I am no fan of American exceptionalism. The point I would like to make is that this is not really exceptional but typical of how governments go after terrorists. The UK and other governments spasmodically engage on seek and destroy missions in other countries where the goal is to terminate rather than capture terrorists. Israel does it all the time and they are not alone. To give an example, an SAS hit team killed three IRA members in Gibraltar in 1988. In terms of the degree of force applied, in the 1980 siege in the Iranian embassy in London all but one terrorist was shot and killed by the SAS who had explicit orders to take no prisoners! You can pursue terrorists with a Tomahawk missile or a special forces hit team, but the result is the same. It is important to remember that under the Laws of Armed Conflict that terrorists are not subject to the protection of the Genevan conventions because they do not qualify for its provision (long story, but it's true). For this reason, the rules of engagement given to soldiers dealing with terrorists are usually different from that during conventional warfare or peace keeping operations.

There are questions of legality and morality about war, how warfare is conducted, and how Christians tackle these tough ethical issues. For all of its limitations, I still think Just War Theory is the best way to go and provides the framework for us to approach this subject.

Post-Rapture Pet Care

2011-05-05T21:51:00.003-05:00

Thanks to some Crossway students I've come across several websites for post-rapture pet care. That's right, if you are raptured, left behind unbelievers promise to take care of your pets for you as they unfortunately will not be joining you to meet King Jesus. But there is a fee!

There is Post Rapture Pets who will caters to those pets you love and care for in the event of the rapture. And an atheist site called Eternal Earth Bound Pets (USA) run by dedicated atheist pet-lovers who promise "For $135.00 we will guarantee that should the Rapture occur within ten (10) years of receipt of payment, one pet per residence will be saved. Each additional pet at your residence will be saved for an additional $20.00 fee. A small price to pay for your peace of mind and the health and safety of your four legged and feathered friends."

I can't really say much about this since I'm not dispensational. So I'll hand over to my co-blogger Joel Willitts, a Dallas Theological Seminary grad, to give us the low down on how DTS grads were taught to care for their pets in the event of the rapture.

What's your political persuasion?

2011-05-05T14:36:00.003-05:00

Click the "here" at the bottom of the first paragraph of this article.

Quotable: Christian Living

2011-05-05T09:01:00.005-05:00

"Learning to live as a Christian is learning to live as a renewed human being, anticipating the eventual new creation in and with a world which is still longing and groaning for that final redemption."

Tom Wright, Simply Christian: Why Christianity Makes Sense, 223

Folks are Reading "Introducing Paul"

2011-05-05T01:48:00.002-05:00

Over at Academia Church my Introducing Paul is book of the month with some kind comments about how folks have found the book helpful (HT David Byrd).

Latest Issue of Themelios

2011-05-05T00:28:00.002-05:00

The latest issue of Themelios is up and includes:

Editorial: On Abusing Matthew 18

Minority Report: Know Your Limits: The Key Secret of Theological ControversyCarl Trueman
Trinitarian Agency and the Eternal Subordination of the Son: An Augustinian PerspectiveKeith E. Johnson
A Spirited Humanity: The Trinitarian Ecclesiology of Colin GuntonUche Anizor
Review Article: Magnum Opus and Magna Carta: The Meaning of the PentateuchStephen Dempster
Pastoral Pensées: The Hopelessness of the UnevangelizedRobert H. Gundry

Tom Wright for Everyone

2011-05-04T04:34:00.003-05:00

Just came across this book from SPCK by Stephen Kuhrt called Tom Wright For Everyone: Putting the Theology of N.T. Wright into Practice in the Local Church. Here's the blurb:

Addresses the difficulty many evangelicals have found in really engaging with what Tom Wright has been saying for some time now, then seeks to explain what difference his theology can make when an attempt is made to put it into practice in church life.

The Good Shepherd is the Messiah

2011-05-04T01:09:00.000-05:00

John 10 centers on the singular suitability of Jesus to be the leader of God’s people on account of his self-giving actions. The climax of the discourse is obviously the ‘I am’ statements that ‘I am the Good Shepherd’ (10:11, 14). The shepherd metaphor concerns the intimate care and sacrificial protection that Jesus gives to the sheep as their leader. However, no one can escape the regal imagery because in the ancient near eastern sources and in Graeco-Roman traditions a ‘shepherd’ was primarily an image for kings. The Egyptian monarch Amenhotep III (1411-1374 BCE) was called: ‘The good shepherd, vigilant for all people, whom the maker thereof has placed under his authority’. The Homeric phrase ‘shepherd of the hosts’ referred to a commander of military forces.[1] In the Old Testament, the metaphor of a shepherd is applied to both Yahweh and to ancient kings. To give a few examples, first, concerning Yahweh, Isaiah contains the words, ‘See, the Sovereign LORD comes with power, and his arm rules for him. See, his reward is with him, and his recompense accompanies him. He tends his flock like a shepherd: He gathers the lambs in his arms and carries them close to his heart; he gently leads those that have young’ (Isa 40:10-11). The Lord of the nations guides them into the pastures of a restored land like a shepherd directing a flock. Second, it is interesting that Cyrus is labeled as ‘my shepherd’ in Isa 44:28 and then ‘my anointed’ in Isa 45:1. He was the anointed shepherd used by Yahweh to end the exile of the remnant in Babylon. Third, the quintessential shepherd king was David, the shepherd boy who became a king. At Hebron the tribes reminded David that, ‘The LORD said to you: “It is you who shall be shepherd of my people Israel, you who shall be ruler over Israel” (2 Sam 5:2). The hope for a new Davidic king was the hope for a new shepherd king to guide Israel into its day of restoration (Jer 23:1-6; Mic 5:1-9). In fact, Ezekiel 34 depicts of the coming of Yahweh as Shepherd in and through the raising up a new Davidic Shepherd-King (Ezek 34:16, 23-24).[2]

The upshot of this is that when Jesus says, ‘I am the Good Shepherd’ we are not confronted with merely a claim pertaining to his quality of pastoral care giving. It is a royal and even messianic claim. Jesus will be the restorer of Israel, exactly what is attributed to him elsewhere in the Gospel (1:11-12; 10:16; 11:47-52), and precisely what the Messiah was supposed to do. Furthermore, John 10 is analogous to the Animal Apocalypse found in 1 Enoch 89–90 that focuses on shepherding as a key metaphor for national restoration. In 1 Enoch the ‘Lord of the sheep’ leads Israel and bring them into pasture (89.42; 75; 90.29, 33) and also gathers them into a new Jerusalem (90.32-36). In imagery reminiscent of Jeremiah 23 and Ezekiel 34–37, Jesus as the Good Shepherd in John 10 is the true and benevolent shepherd who leads Israel into the pastures of restoration. Building specifically from Ezekiel 34, Jesus seems to take on the shepherding roles of both Yahweh and David. Jesus the Shepherd is contrasted with the false shepherds or the ‘hirelings’ – the Judean leaders and the Pharisees – who should have led people to their Messiah rather than hinder their faith and attempted to thwart Jesus’ ministry at every turn. What will prove the true nature of Jesus’ shepherding is when he lays down his life for the flock (10:15-18).[3]

[1] Chae, Jesus as the Eschatological Davidic Shepherd, 19-25 (esp. 21-22).

[2] Cf. survey of the OT imagery for shepherds in Chae, Jesus as the Eschatological Davidic Shepherd, 25-172.

[3] John A. Dennis, Jesus’ Death and the Gathering of True Israel (WUNT 2.217; Tübingen: Mohr/Siebeck, 2006), 270-71.

Tilling the Ground for Easter

2011-05-04T01:07:00.000-05:00

My good buddy Chris Tilling delivered some lovely Good Friday meditations at Holy Trinity Brompton which are worth checking out. He's not just an English git, he actually can preach!

Good Friday from Holy Trinity Brompton on Vimeo.

HT: Michael Gorman.

Blessings and Woes of Preaching

2011-05-04T00:16:00.004-05:00

Clifton Black of Princeton Theological Seminary has an excellent little piece of beatitudes and woe oracles about Preaching from the Gospels and Acts. Well worth reading.

HT: Steve Walton.

Karl Barth on Exegesis

2011-05-03T19:30:00.000-05:00

“We have been studying cheerfully and seriously. As far as I was concerned it could have continued in that way, and I had already resigned myself to having my grave here by the Rhine! …And now the end has come. So listen to my piece of advice: exegesis, exegesis, and yet more exegesis! Keep to the word, to the scripture that has been given to us.”

Karl Barth on the occasion of his farewell to his students in Bonn prior to his expulsion from Germany in 1935.

Writing Style 4

2011-05-03T14:52:00.007-05:00

Joseph Williams and Gregory Colomb's continue to tackle the question of clarity in the fourth lesson of their book Style: Lessons in Clarity and Grace (10th Edition). In the last lesson the point was made that clear, direct, concise writing is characterized by two principles of clarity:

Principle #1: A sentence seems clear when its important actions are in verbs.
Principle #2: A sentence seems clear when its important characters are subjects.

In lesson four the focus is on the second of the two principles: “Make the subjects of most of your verbs the main characters in your story”.

Now you might be saying to yourself, I don’t write stories; I write non-fiction essays or blog posts or something other than narrative. But before you stop reading, consider this: every sentence is a story with actors and actions. It is true that sometimes our “characters” are abstractions like “the argument” and “my thesis”, or “freedom of speech” or “the incarnation”. Nevertheless, our sentences tell stories about those subjects.

Readers expect to find characters expressed in simple concrete words early in a sentence. Williams and Colomb’s put it this way:

Readers want actions in verbs, but even more they want characters as subjects. We create a problem for readers when for no good reason we do not name characters in subjects, or worse we delete them entirely (47).

Williams and Colomb’s recommend that whenever possible, we use flesh-and-blood characters as our subjects. Often, even when we’re using abstract nouns as subjects, we can convert them into flesh-and-blood characters.

Consider my silly simple examples:

My argument is dogs are better than cats.
* I argue dogs are better than cats.

or

It has been shown that people find more enjoyment from dogs than cats.
* Researchers conclude that people gain more enjoyment from dogs than cats.

These are very simple examples admittedly, but the principle can be applied to the writing on the most complex of subjects. It is not the subjects so much as it is the style of our writing that is at issue. One qualification: when your main characters are necessarily nominalizations (verbs or adjectives made into nouns), be sure to use as few around as is possible. Keep the nominalizations to a bear minimum.

One final thought from the lesson: In summing up the main point, Williams and Colomb’s refer to something Albert Einstein said. Einstein used to say that everything should be made as simple as possible, but no simpler. They develop that one step further to make their point: “a style should be as complex as necessary, but no more” (64).

Here’s the Writer’s Golden Rule:

“Write to others as you would have others write to you”.

See first post: Writing Style 1, 2, 3.

Craig Keener on the Reliability of the Gospels

2011-05-03T02:06:00.003-05:00

A couple of weeks ago Craig Keener (soon to be at Asbury Theological Seminary) was at Crosssway College in Brisbane, Australia and while he was here he delivered a lecture to students on the "Historical Reliability of the Gospels". You can find the audio here. Annoying voice doing the introduction is mine.

Gospel of John and Christology Debates

2011-05-03T01:05:00.001-05:00

The Gospel of John is a big link in the chain that moved christology towards Nicea. In the debates about subordination in the early church (Arius vs. Athanasius) and even in the modern church (Kevin Giles vs. Bruce Ware) the Gospel of John looms large for both sides. Those who stress equality or distinctive roles in the Godhead all appeal to the Fourth Gospel for support. I just came across a cute quote about this.

According to F.C. Conybeare: "If Athanasius had not had the Fourth Gospel to draw texts from, Arius would never have been confuted" and he adds "[I]f Arius had not had the Fourth Gospel to draw texts from, he would not have needed confuting."

Cited from James D. G. Dunn, ‘Let John be John – a Gospel for Its Time,’ in Das Evangelium und die Evangelien, ed. P. Stuhlmacher (WUNT 28; Tübingen: Mohr/Siebeck, 1983), 311 n. 4.

Love Wins 6

2011-05-02T09:11:00.015-05:00

Rob Bell’s fourth chapter in his new book Love Wins: A Book About Heaven, Hell, and the Fate of Every Person Who Ever Lived asks a great question: “Does God Get What God Wants?” This is the sixth installment of a series of posts on the book. In this series, I intend to expose the main lines of argument in each chapter and critically reflect on them. Admittedly, this is not always done systematically as today’s post will reveal.

I think this is probably the best chapter of the book because the argument is tight and the question is significant.

So what do you think?

Does God get what God wants? Is this answer obvious? But perhaps a more important question is: What exactly does God want? Is it presumptuous on our part to state is so simply? Could it be there a number of different answers to the question depending on the point of view or subject?

Rob asks: “Have billions of people been created only to spend eternity in conscious punishment and torment, suffering infinitely for the finite sins they committed in the few years they spent on earth?” (102). Great Question. And this really is the central issue of the chapter.

Rob surveys biblical evidence of an inclusive salvation of every person who has ever lived. On reading the list, the conclusion seems obvious: God wants to save everyone. Yet, when one drills down, it becomes a much more complicated picture. Of these complications Rob seems completely unaware. When the Bible speaks of the pilgrimage of the nations to God in the OT, does this mean every person on the earth at the time, let alone every person who's ever lived? There is a difference in the way writers can use the word “all”. “All” can mean: (1) all without exclusion of any one [this is the way Rob takes it] or (2) all without distinction between parties. While not taking the time now to show this exegetically, it is clear from the OT contexts that the second of the two is most often meant. In other words, the prophets are not predicting that every person who ever lived will come to God, but that when God visits in the last days, all the “nations” will come to him. Revelation 5:9 captures this idea in the NT: “for you were slain, and by your blood you ransomed people for God from every tribe and language and people and nation”. Notice that text doesn’t say every person from every tribe, language, people and nation, but representatives, a remnant, of every tribe, language, etc. This is “all with out distinction”. Besides in the very concrete perspective of the OT, there’s no conception of an afterlife salvation. This picture is in purely earthly terms. When God acts in history in bringing salvation, this act will be inclusive of a remnant of people of every nation not only the remnant of Israel.

Now for the sake of argument, it may be true that God will save everyone, but that is not the point of these passages. It seems to me that if one wishes to conclude that God will save all without exception, this is a deductive conclusion because no biblical passage teaches this explicitly. One needs to theologize to this conclusion. This is not a criticism, we do this on plenty of important issues (e.g. Trinity), but it is not specifically stated in Scripture. Thus, an argument like Rob’s doesn’t hold up to scrutiny because his evidence doesn’t actually support the claim. This by the way, goes for the NT evidence as well. Did Jesus and Peter and Paul and James and John believe that every person that ever lived would be saved in the end? Does Jesus’ statement in Matt 19:28 and Peter’s in Acts 3 and Paul’s in Col 1 mean that every person who ever lived will be saved? Again this theological claim may be right, but not based on the evidence given.

God doesn’t get what he wants in salvation from a biblical perspective, only if you define what he wants wrongly. God’s aims are universal, yes cosmic. God’s intentions are inclusive; yes they will reach every nation. And yes, God attains his universal aims and his inclusive intentions.

In order to answer the apparent issue of between God’s universal salvation purposes and the traditional doctrine of hell, Rob lists five options for understanding how to reconcile this contradiction. The options range from the traditional evangelical view, to extreme universalism. Rob maintains that all five of these are comfortably within “orthodoxy”: “Serious, orthodox followers of Jesus have answered these questions in a number of different ways”? (109) This conclusion is of course questionable as I've stated elsewhere since it includes the word "orthodox", although it is true that "serious followers of Jesus" have believed these things and one's view on this question does not make or break one's Christian identity.

Any reader will be able to discern that it’s the fifth option (universalism) that Rob likes best and is most convinced by, although others seem to at least be amicable to him. You even think that the fifth option is what he opts for. But before you can feel that you have got him pegged, he pulls back from that fifth choice in the subsequent paragraphs (pgs 113-17). Rob does not appear to be a universalist because for him human freedom trumps even God’s unrelenting love. But as it turns out, this circumstance is not contrary to what God wants because God wants to love. God’s love has consequences. Love wins, but it doesn’t mean that hell will ultimately be evacuated. Rob may hope for this and surely does, but he’s apparently a realist. Rob says, “Love demands freedom. It always has, and it always will. We are free to resist, reject, and rebel against God’s ways for us. We can have all the hell we want" (113).

In the final analysis according to Rob the question of the chapter “Does God get what he wants?” while a good, interesting and important one, is fraught with speculation about the future. It is no doubt true that God gets what he wants; the precise manner of it is concealed. However, there is a question that he thinks is much easier to answer and no less important. The question: “Do we get what we want?” To that question the answer is absolutely yes. Yes we get what we want, because “God is that loving” (117). So as C.S. Lewis said, there are two kinds of people in the world, those who say ‘Thy will be done’ and those who say, ‘My will be done’.

There is a vague sense of justice in the chapter’s conception of restoration, but it is the weakest part of the chapter and Rob’s whole proposal in my view. Rob writes

This is important, because in speaking of the expansive, extraordinary, infinite love of God there is always the danger of neglecting the very real consequences of God’s love, namely God’s desire and intention to see things become everything they were always intended to be. For this to unfold, God must say about a number of acts and to those who would continue to do them, “Not here you won’t” (113).

Still this chapter surfaces what I think to be the most significant and thorny question with which traditional evangelicals must deal: the question of the justness of infinite punishment for finite sin. And this is not simply an issue Rob Bell has raised. The idea that the sin we commit in our finite bodies deserves an infinite amount of punishment seems absurd on any definition to a growing number of people. We can pretend that it makes “perfect sense”, as someone has recently remarked [Tim Keller: “I seems perfectly reasonable for an infinite God to punish infinitely” – round table discussion at Gospel Coalition].

But simply saying it’s “perfectly logical” does not actually deal with the question. To growing number of people it's just not. While it in fact may be reasonable, the biblical argument needs to be made today in a way that is freshly compelling and grounded in Scripture. I don’t completely know where I am on this and I haven’t thought enough about it to offer anything of a thoughtful cohesive view. I think there are fundamental parameters, however, within which one must work. In spite of arguments to the contrary, biblically the afterlife of the unrighteous is:

(1) eternal—final and unalterable,
(2) conscious—there is a person, mind and body, and
(3) retributive—there’s no reformation

The actual working out of these is where things are fuzzy for me. In addition, the extent of the actual punishment in this eternal, conscious and retributive state is also something I continue to mull over.

Recently, Scot McKnight in his book One.Life: Jesus Calls, We Followhas given us a proposal to consider. First Scot rejects the idea of infinite punishment for finite sin, although he maintains, I think, the three fundamentals above. This leads him to the second part of the proposal. I’ll let him speak for himself:

So where are we? I have thought long and hard about hell and have come to a view that modifies the second above: hell is a person’s awareness of being utterly absent, which is what “death after death” means, but yet in the presence of God, like C. S. Lewis’ wraiths yearning to be observed and present but deeply aware that they have declined both options. I am unconvinced that annihilation fully answers all that Jesus says, but I also believe that the second view doesn’t contain enough mercy and grace (165).

I can’t say I’m convinced by his view. What’s more, I have not rejected the idea, as Scot seems to have, of infinite punishment on the basis of it being unjust. Yet, Scot exhibits the kind of fresh thinking on the question that I think is beneficial. I think we need to go back to the Bible and present its view of ultimate punishment of the wicked in a convincing well-argued manner. Simply appealing to the old argument of an infinite God who, because of his infiniteness, punishes infinitely is not adequate.

For earlier posts for Love Wins see: Post When your wife . . ., 1, 2, 3, 4, 5.

If you find this post helpful, please share it with others.

Judgment as Retribution and Restoration?

2011-05-01T00:07:00.003-05:00

A common theme in recent theological work is to stress God’s justice as restorative rather than retributive. The underlying assumption appears to be that retribution is mean, nasty, and unnice and therefore unworthy of a God of love, grace, and mercy. For instance, Tom Smail comments: “God’s justice is concerned less with punishing wrong relationships than with restoring right ones. Like the heroes of the Book of Judges, Jesus is concerned with freeing the land from the evil forces that have infested it and setting our humanity free from the personal and social twistedness that is corrupting and destroying it.”[1] Stephen Travis believes that “Retributive concepts are forced toward the edges of New Testament thought by the nature of the Christian gospel. It is a gospel that proclaims Christ as the one through whom people are invited into a relationship with God. Once the relationship to Christ and to God is seen as central, retributive concepts become inappropriate. The experience described by such terms as forgiveness, love, grace and acceptance overrides them. And the experience of those who refuse to respond to this gospel is not so much an experience of retributive punishment as the negation of all that is offered in Christ.” He points out that the biblical imagery for justice contains warnings of retribution against the wicked, but they are largely metaphors for exclusion from God’s presence rather than speculative descriptions of postmortem torments like that found in some Jewish literature. Moreover, retributive judgment is frequently juxtaposed with wider visions of the triumph of God’s glory and love. In his conclusion he asks whether “retributive language should be displaced from Christian vocabulary” in favor of “the language of a relationship to Christ”.[2]

Now I can genuinely sympathize with a desire to escape the western captivity to a contractual understanding of divine-human relationships and the limitation of justice to recompense of deeds. Aristotle and Anselm have set the agenda and grammar for theology for too long. So instead may God give us a covenant relationship rather than a contract. May his justice be transformative rather than punitive. But the more I think about this the more baby and bath water comes to my mind. God’s covenants are intimately relational, but they are also legally binding, hence the law-suit motif one finds in the Pentateuch and Prophets. God’s justice will transform the world, but a transformed world must be one where the most insidious of evils and their perpetrators are not lightly rinsed with a perfume of goodness. Evil is such that it must be destroyed or quarantined if the goodness of God has utter supremacy in the new creation. Precisely because God condescends to covenant with creation is why he can prosecute his contention when his covenant partners fail to follow the obligations in that relationship. Precisely because God is love is why he must not allow evil to have the last enduring word in any corner of the galaxy.

We do not have to choose between retributive and restorative schemes of divine justice. The righteousness that brings judgment also fills the universe with God’s shalom for. For “the fruit of that righteousness will be peace; its effect will be quietness and confidence forever” (Isa 32:17; cf. Ps 85:10; Isa 9:7; Heb 12:11). There can be no reconciliation without recompense otherwise the disorder, destruction, and decay of evil prevents peace from lasting. The incarnation and the cross achieve both: juridical judgment and relational peace wrought in the atonement. As Henri Blocher comments: “Retribution and restoration are not mutually exclusive; the good news is the retribution, and the basis of restoration is in the person of the head and substitute.”[3] Theologians will protest that this is divine violence and it sanctions human violence rather than preventing it. Yet God’s justice is about vindication not vindictiveness. The “vengeance” (ekdikeō) of God is not his unbridled and disproportionate violence unleashed through an unchecked hatred at his opponents. It is more properly his righteous decision to be the God who vindicates those who suffer and avenge their pain with an appropriate action that holds the subjects of evil responsible for their actions (see esp. Deut 32:43; Luke 18:3, 5; Rom 12:19; Rev 6:10). Divine vengeance – like it or not there is such a thing – is not a license for human violence, but the grounds for the end of it. As Miroslav Volf states: “The certainty of God’s judgment at the end of history is the presupposition for the renunciation of violence. The divine system of judgment is not the flip side of the human reign of terror, but a necessary correlate of human nonviolence”.[4]

[1] Tom Small, Once and For All: A Confession of the Cross (Eugene, OR: Wipf & Stock, 1998), 95.

[2] Stephen H. Travis, Christ and the Judgment of God: The Limits of Divine Retribution in New Testament Thought (2nd ed.; Milton Keynes, UK: Paternoster, 2008), 325,327.

[3] Henri Blocher, “God and the Cross,” in Engaging the Doctrine of God: Contemporary Protestant Perspectives, ed. B.L. McCormack (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker, 2008), 140 (125-41).

[4] Miroslav Volf, Exclusion and Embrace: A Theological Exploration of Identity, Otherness and Reconciliation (Nashville: Abingdon, 1996), 302.

Interview with Rob Bell and British Evangelical Adrian Warnock

2011-04-30T13:09:00.003-05:00

A rather enlightening interview with Rob Bell appeared on the British evangelical program Unbelievable hosted by Justin Brierley on Premier Christian radio. The interview included a chap named Adrian Warnock who represents a more traditional evangelical perspective.

Some very interesting dialogue was generated over the issues most important to Evangelicals. You can watch the entire program here or listen here.

In this excerpt Adrian questions Rob about really being an Evangelical.

HT: Denny Burk

The Royal Spectacle . . . But Why?

2011-04-30T10:24:00.005-05:00

Why did nearly 1 million people descend on London with an another online and TV viewing audience estimated at 2 billion (that's 33% of the world's population!) to watch the wedding of Prince William and Kate Middleton? What was it about a royal wedding that caused people all over the world to tune in? Into what deep human affection does such an event tap?

Kids just make you laugh . . .

2011-04-30T09:42:00.005-05:00

Check out my daughter Mary practicing her ballet. Also, keep an eye out for Zion's impersonation of Tom Cruise in Risky Business in the background.

HT: Audra for the footage.

ESV Greek Tools

2011-04-30T08:01:00.000-05:00

There is a cool Greek resource from Crossway called ESV Greek Tools. Go and watch the video here. It sounded really cool right up until the guy said "Macarthur study Bible" (though ESV study Bible does make up for it). I suppose Greek tools are Greek tools and this one is fairly cheap! It's not Bible Works, Logos, or Accordance - the Trinity of Bible software - but it's better than eSword (which I wish my students would stop using).

Easter Mob Song in Beirut

2011-04-29T00:54:00.000-05:00

Check this out, it is flipping awesome! I'm currently learning a bit of Arabic and it really is a beautiful language when sung like this.

HT: Trevin Wax.

Accidental Anglican!

2011-04-28T11:06:00.001-05:00

Just finished reading The Accidental Anlgican: The Surprising Appeal of the Liturgical Church by Todd D. Hunter (Downers Grove, IL: IVP, 2010). Find it at Amazon with look-inside feature.

Good read. The book narrates Hunter's journey from Jesus people to being head of the Vineyard Churches to Executive Director of Alpha USA to Bishop in AMiA. He was ordained a priest and then a bishop a month later! Now that is fast. He also gives snap shots of his Anglican heroes in J.I. Packer, John Stott, and N.T. Wright. A big theme of the book is Churches-for-the-sake-of-others or CS4O! He also unpacks the Anglican treasure chest of the liturgical calendar, the Book of Common Prayer, the ministry of the word, reciting the creed, and eucharist. Good overview of the Anglican Evangelistic Tradition and bios on some top Anglican leaders in Africa.

David Neff has a write up about the book in CT.

Here is a clip of Hunter preaching at Christ Church in Plano.

I find it interesting that John Wesley was an Anglican and so were the creators of the Westminster Confession. That's right boys and girls, we owe Methodism and Presbyterianism, partly, to Anglicanism!

Papers in San Francisco

2011-04-28T05:39:00.000-05:00

For those interested, I've got a few fun gigs lined up at SBL and ETS in San Francisco.

SBL: I've got a spot to discuss Darrell Bock and Robert Webb, Key Events in the Life of Jesus and Beverly Gaventa and Richard Hays, Seeking the Identity of Jesus at the Theological Hermeneutics of Christian Scripture group.

ETS: "Raging against the Roman Empire with Romans: The Value of Anti-Imperial Readings of Romans" at the Pauline Studies Session.

Writing Style 3

2011-04-26T09:31:00.003-05:00

In the third lesson in Joseph Williams and Gregory Colomb's book Style: Lessons in Clarity and Grace (10th Edition)they begin to tackle the question of clarity. They usefully observe that readers reflect on the writing of others with words like

clear, direct, concise or
unclear, indirect, abstract, dense, complex.

These adjectives don’t really tell us anything more than how the writing makes us feel. To say something is unclear does not actually say anything about the writing on the page. What then makes a piece of writing feel or seem clear or dense? Williams and Colomb begin here to make their case. Clear, direct, concise writing is characterized by two principles of clarity:

Principle #1: A sentence seems clear when its important actions are in verbs
Principle #2: A sentence seems clear when its important characters are subjects.

Lesson three’s focus is on the first of the two principles.

Readers will think your writing is dense if you use lots of abstract nouns, especially those derived from verbs or adjectives, nouns ending in –tion, -ment, -ence, and so on, especially when you make those abstract nouns the subjects of verbs (32).

When, for example, you create an abstract noun by putting an –ing on the end of a verb (e.g., eating), you are nominalizing the verb. Nominalization is the technical name for the phenomenon. You are transforming the part of speech from a verb to a noun. This can be done to both verbs and adjectives. Consider these examples:

Examples of verbs:
discover = discovery
resist = resistance
She flies = her flying
We sang = our singing

Examples of adjectives:
careless = carelessness
different = difference

No element of style more characterizes turgid writing, writing that feels abstract, indirect, and difficult, than lots of nominalizations, especially as the subjects of verbs. (33).

Williams and Colomb recommend a three-part revision process for writers. This process is is tailored here to address the question of clarity.

1. Diagnose – Underline the first seven or eight words of each sentence
2. Analyze – Decide your main characters and look for the actions of the main characters
3. Rewrite – Make nominalizations verbs, make characters subjects and rewrite using subordinating conjunctions (because, if, when, etc).

Near the end of the chapter they return to a key question they raised earlier, but return to again:

Why are we so often right about the writing of others and so often wrong about our own?

Answer:

Because we all read into our own writing what we want readers to get out of it.

Thus we need a "mechanical" method of revision that sidesteps our "too-good understanding" of our writing.

So the bottom line here is that to be a clear writer we need to take two concrete actions: (1) remove most of the abstract nouns from our sentences (certain abstract nouns are necessary) and (2) revise our sentences so that the action is contained in the verb and the character is in the subject.

Being de-churched!

2011-04-26T01:50:00.004-05:00

From time to time I meet folks frustrated, phased, and frazzled by church life. People who cannot bear to see the church compromised by cultural forces to the left and right but just don't know how to do anything about it and feel like leaving church for some kind of monastic de-churched existence. For such folks there is a good little quote from James Lloyd Breck, an Anglican leader in 1800s, who said: "It is base cowardice to run away from the church because she is not what she ought to be, and thereby leave her to those who care naught for her claims" (cited in Todd Hunter, The Accidental Anglican, 21-22). For others, they are de-churched because God does not pay off. They've been really good and nice Christian folk, accumulating millions of kudos with church camps, memory verses, and following the rules. And then something bad happens - divorce, loved one dies, or whatever - and God does not bless their absence of immorality with freedom from suffering or misfortune. Turns out that God was not indebted to them for their mostly good behavior and they leave God like he's a slot machine that won't pay up. For those guys and gals, see an excerpt from Matt Chandler's sermon on the "de-churched".

12 Ways to Make Arminianism Cool Again

2011-04-25T10:18:00.000-05:00

Rachel Held Evans blogs on 12 Ways to Make Arminianism Cool Again.

1. Petition Microsoft to make Arminian an actual word so that bloggers ranting about the pros and cons of Armenians don’t sound like complete racists.

2. Create a Stuff Arminians Like blog. Entries could include: love, freedom, and “secretly wondering if we’re not elect.”

3. Three words: Driscoll. Boyd. Cagefight.

4. Instead of the “Gospel Coalition,” we’ll form the “Gospel Welcoming Committee.”

5. Get Roger Olson some thick-rimmed glasses and a pipe and send him to Catalyst.

6. The Calvinists have their own flower, so why shouldn’t Arminians? But instead of TULIP (“total depravity, unconditional election, limited atonement, irresistible grace, and perseverance of the saints”) we’ll adopt the DAISY (depravity of all, atonement for all, inclusion of all, salvation is a gift,you can accept or reject).

7. Start referring to Donald Miller as “Arminian Donald Miller.” (I don’t know if he’s actually an Arminian, but it’s worth a try.)

8. To counter the “young, restless, and Reformed” movement we’ll create the “middle-aged, Arminian, and not-in-the-mood-to-argue ” movement.

9. Start a “I bet we can find 1 million people who don’t want to be predestined to hell” Facebook group.

10. Launch an Arminianism Awareness Day to address some of the common misconceptions about Arminians—that we think grace is earned, that we have a “man-centered” theology, that we’re all dispensationalists, that just because we lost that one argument with our Calvinist roommate back in 2003 we’re always wrong.

11. Calvinists make T-shirts that say “Jonathan Edwards is my homeboy.” Arminians can make T-shirts that say “Arminius is my homeboy…but not in such a way that I uncritically accept everything he teaches” (because we’re nuanced like that).

12. Keep talking about how real love requires freedom while extending kindness and grace to those with whom we disagree…because living your theology is more important than arguing it.

Love Wins 5

2011-04-24T06:57:00.010-05:00

I continue my interaction with Rob Bell’s book. Today we come to the third chapter and the topic of hell.

The central point of this chapter is to argue that hell is a real place. But, and most importantly, the reality of hell is not only or even primarily a future place. Hell is present in the world today. Hell is the outcome of people’s choices when they reject “the good and true and beautiful life” God has for them.

Here’s a statement of summary:

And that’s what we find in Jesus’ teaching about hell—a volatile mixture of images, pictures, and metaphors that describe the very real experiences and consequences of rejecting our God-given goodness and humanity. Something we are all free to do, anytime, anywhere, with anyone (73).

Before reading my bullet point comments, think about the idea:

Aside from the Bible’s teaching on the subject, do you think this idea of hell is a sufficient answer to humanity’s universal longing for justice?

Now for my quick hits.

1. Hell is not for the victims; what a victim of a hate crime or a rape or genocide has had to endure can be absolutely called “hellish”, but hell is not for them. Hell’s purpose is the final judgment of evil in any form: human and non-human—angels and people.

2. Jewish people at the time of Jesus, and Jesus himself, had no problem believing in eternal punishment. I suspect that most oppressed people don’t.

3. There is plenty of ancient Jewish evidence about hell that would make the most graphic images of hell in the New Testament look like watercolor paintings. I could give references if you want them.

4. Gehenna, to the best of our knowledge, was not a “trash dump”. There’s not one shred of evidence to support this idea that has become self-evident.

5. In the Bible, restorative punishment, punishment whose purpose is to restore, is generally corporate and only for Israel in the OT. What I mean here is that individuals are not the objects of restorative punishment in the OT. Much is made of Ezekiel’s vision of the restoration of Sodom (Ezek 16:44-58) in the chapter. Rob overreaches to make his point. A careful reading of the passage reveals that Ezekiel is speaking of Sodom corporately. The city will be restored with Samaria and with Jerusalem. In the NT, members of the church are chastised in order that they might be restored. There’s no scenario presented that gives even the hint that the unrighteous suffer divine judgment in order to bring them to faith and salvation. See Romans 1:18-32.

6. As the presence of heaven has broken in to the present the present age in the coming of Jesus, so too has the presence of hell. God’s wrath, indeed, is presently being poured out in the present (Rom 1:18-32). But this is not hell.

7. The warnings of judgment on the lips of Jesus transcend the Jewish War of 68-70 and the destruction of Jerusalem and the temple. I am in no way suggesting that these were not within the scope of the judgment, but they do not exhaust the reality of the judgment Jesus predicted.

8. The interpretation of the parable of the Rich Man and Lazarus told in Luke 16 is formative for the teaching on hell espoused in the chapter. Rob's reading just doesn't stand up under scrutiny. You can look it over for yourself. In the parable Jesus is teaching that deeds of mercy or lack there of in this life are determinative for the life to come. What one does in this life determines where one will spend the life to come and that final state is unalterable.

In addition, a brief word is required on the interpretation of the phrase “aion kolazo” (“eternal punishment”) in Matthew 25:46. First, the word “kolazo”. The term in Matt 25:46 is the noun not the verb, but both are only used twice in the NT (verb Acts 4:21; 2 Pet 2:9; noun 1 Jn 4:18; Matt 25:46). In none of its uses either in the verb or noun form does it speak of “pruning” or does it refer to a restorative punishment. Second, Rob again, as in the chapter on heaven, insists that Jews didn’t have a category for the idea of forever. This is just wrong. Let me show you a passage where the concept of forever is meant in a context of divine punishment: Revelation 20:10 and 14-15.

Rev. 20:10
And the devil, who deceived them, was thrown into the lake of burning sulfur, where the beast and the false prophet had been thrown. They will be tormented day and night for ever and ever.

Rev. 20:14-15
Then death and Hades were thrown into the lake of fire. The lake of fire is the second death. 15 All whose names were not found written in the book of life were thrown into the lake of fire.

These two texts are related and express a vision of the final fate of God’s enemies. In the first text were told that the devil, the beast and the false prophet will be “thrown” into the “lake of burning sulfur” to be “tormented day and night. This torment according to John will be “for ever and ever”. This phrase is created by repeating the word aion twice. It means something like “for ages upon ages”. In this way John is expressing the idea behind our term “forever”. While the term aion may mean a distinct period of time with a beginning and an end, it can be and is used by biblical authors to express an unending period or set of periods.

Another observation about these passages is the assumption that the lake of fire is not only for God’s explicit enemies. Anyone whose name is not written in the “book of life” will suffer the same fate with the devil, the beast and the false prophet. A so-called neutral position (even giving someone the benefit of the doubt) for John is implicit support for God’s enemies. As someone said once, “You’re either with us, or with them”.

Finally, it appears that Hades, hell that is, is not the same thing as the “lake of fire”. If we harmonize Jesus’ parable about the Rich Man and Lazarus in Luke 16 with the teaching of Revelation here, we would have to say that the Rich man who died and was in Hades in his first death, will be thrown into the lake of fire in the “second death”.

For earlier posts for Love Wins see: Post When your wife . . ., 1, 2, 3, 4.

If you find this post helpful, please share it with others.

Lucky Sheilas!

2011-04-23T22:58:00.002-05:00

First people to worship the risen Jesus were women (Matt 28:9).

First people to proclaim the resurrection to others were women (Matt 28:10).

Lucky sheilas!

The Installation of the Priest King

2011-04-23T22:31:00.003-05:00

The resurrection (and exaltation) of Jesus are frequently correlated with Psalm 110 in the New Testament. In fact, Ps 110 is the most frequently quoted OT text in the NT!

¹ The LORD says to my lord:

“Sit at my right hand
until I make your enemies
a footstool for your feet.”

² The LORD will extend your mighty scepter from Zion, saying,
“Rule in the midst of your enemies!”
³ Your troops will be willing
on your day of battle.
Arrayed in holy splendor,
your young men will come to you
like dew from the morning’s womb.

⁴ The LORD has sworn
and will not change his mind:
“You are a priest forever,
in the order of Melchizedek.”

⁵ The Lord is at your right hand;
he will crush kings on the day of his wrath.
⁶ He will judge the nations, heaping up the dead
and crushing the rulers of the whole earth.
⁷ He will drink from a brook along the way,
and so he will lift his head high.
(NIV 10)

The thing you have to remember is that David is the speaker of the Psalm. So Yahweh says to David's Lord: "Sit at my right hand until I make your enemies a footstool," meaning that one in David's line will be greater than David. Why? Because the coming Davidide will be a king on with unprecedented authority and he will be a priest in the order of Melchizedek.

Melkizzi who? Melchizedek the priest-king of Salem. He is mentioned only in three places in the Bible: Genesis 14, Psalm 110, and Hebrews 5-7. The coming Lord to whom David looks forward to will be the ultimate mediator as he converges the royal and priestly functions in his person. He is like the priest king of Jerusalem whom Abraham honored with tithes.

But keep in mind the convergence of priestly and royal roles was not limited to a messianic interpretation of Melchizedek. During Jesus' own day, the Roman emperor Tiberius minted coins with his image on them which said Pontifex Maximus (high priest). He was the ruler of the empire and the representative before the gods. He was highest religious authority of the empire in addition to his military and political hegemony too.

One thing that Resurrection and Ascension day tell us is that there is no other intermediary between God and his people. Jesus is installed as priest and king for all eternity. No emperor, no clergyman, and no temple stands in between us and God. We are a kingdom of priests and we are the holy temple of the Priest King Jesus Christ.

The Grave Robber Comes

2011-04-23T22:28:00.000-05:00

Great song from Petra about the resurrection!

"Zion, don't hang on the cross!"

2011-04-23T06:29:00.010-05:00

So last night our church had a Good Friday service. In the middle of the large lobby, just outside the 2500 seat auditorium, a cross was displayed. The cross was probably about 20 feet long and the span of the crossbeam was probably 10 feet. The top of the cross was propped up about 4 feet so that the whole thing was on an incline. Draped across the central beam was a scarlet silk clothe. This was a power image as it set in the middle of the huge dimly lit room.

Zion, my four year old son, was told that there was a cross and he got excited. "Daddy, there's a CROSS!" he said with as much enthusiasm as he would have had if it were an ice cream cone. "Daddy, let's go see the cross!", he shouted. Everyone in earshot of him in that crowded lobby would have heard his voice. So we went and looked at the cross.

As we were examining it, beginning at the lowest end and working our way to the top, I continued to repeat, "Son, you can touch the cross, but don't pull on the red clothe". Zion is extremely tactile so he's got to touch and experience everything and he's impulsive (I wonder where he gets those qualities from . . . his mother I'm sure).

As we moved to the top of the cross, I looked away for just a second and when I turned back to look at him, Zion was hanging on the top of the cross, his feet dangling off the ground about a half inch. Without thinking I blurted out, "Zion, don't hang on the cross!".

As soon as it came out of my mouth I realized how funny that must have sounded. My son was hanging on the cross.

A Roman executioner's stake is not where you want your son hanging--whether in a church lobby on a Good Friday night or outside the city walls of Jerusalem the night of passover.

Yet that is exactly where God wanted his.

For God so loved the world that he gave his only son, that whosoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life - John 3:16

Good Friday is Really Good!

2011-04-22T07:46:00.007-05:00

Unlike the UK and USA, Good Friday is a public holiday in Australia -- and rightly so! Good Friday is good.

Here's a great vid for thinking about the cross.

After that check out Scot McKnight's reflection An Atoning Death.

And if you doubt the importance of the Christus Victor view of the atonement then go and sing a few lines from the hymn Christ Alone: "And as he stands in victory, sins curse has lost its grip on me!".

Happy Good Friday!

Yankees and Baseball

2011-04-22T06:58:00.010-05:00

Has any noticed its baseball season and the Yankees are in first in the American League East?!

For those that don't know me very well--this will be of no surprise to my friends--I am huge baseball fan and particularly a Yankees fan. Now before you begin to hurl insults at me and label me a bandwagon fan, I come by this fandom honestly--I grew up in New Jersey. I remember the Yankee teams of the late 70's with Reggie Jackson. These are my first memories of watching baseball. My dad was a Phillies fan however, and my first game was at the old Veteran's Stadium in Philly. But it was too late, I was a Yankees fan!

We'll we are 16 games into the young 2011 season and there are two excellent trends in the American League East.

First, the Yanks with a record of 10 and 6 are in first by 2.5 games.

Second, the Red Sox are in last place with a record of 7 and 11.

Go Yanks!

NTW Version (Update)

2011-04-21T23:01:00.003-05:00

Thanks to Mason we have more info on the NTW translation lifted from his New Testament for Everyone series. The translation will formally be called The Kingdom New Testament: A Contemporary Translation. I think that is better than King's Version since the translator is not a king and you can hardly say that King Jesus authorizes this 2011 version in the same way that King James authorized the 1611 version!

D.A. Carson Festschrift

2011-04-20T16:57:00.000-05:00

Prof. D.A. Carson (TEDS) was given his Festschift last Tuesday night by John Piper, John Woodbridge, and Lane Dennis. You can read about at it the TGC post and read John Piper's tribute of appreciation to Carson.

NTW Version

2011-04-19T16:34:00.002-05:00

Thanks to Mark Stevens it looks as if N.T. Wright has produced his own NT translation. No, it's not called the "NTW Version" or even the "Bishops's Bible" (that's already been taken). It is called The King's Version and is slated to come out in September 2011 with Harper Collins. It arguably stands in the tradition of James Moffatt who was a Scottish scholar who produced his own translation of the New Testament (and eventually Old Testament) and it even had its own commentary series that accompanied it, i.e. the Moffatt New Testament Commentary. You can see the one on Hebrews at Google Books by, you guessed, James Moffatt.

The Gospel Coalition on Love Wins

2011-04-17T14:35:00.013-05:00

At the recent Gospel Coalition Conference here in Chicago, a session was dedicated to discussing Rob Bell's Love Wins. There are two links: one is Don Carson's talk on universalism and the other is a round table discussion with Don Carson, Kevin DeYoung, Tim Keller, Stephen Um, and Crawford Loritts.

This at the very least should be very interesting and likely useful stuff. I'm listening to it today. I don't think Love Wins offers a straightforward universalism -- pluralism most definitely, universalism no. It would be correct I think to call the view hopeful universalism; but Love Wins does not claim that Hell will be ultimately evacuated. For the book, Love wins out because God, in his love, allows people to choose Hell and that, primarily for Rob Bell's argument, in this life.

Stewarding the Garden: Reflections on Yard Work

2011-04-17T08:45:00.008-05:00

I just love the spring! Well who doesn't right. This is especially true of those of us who live in climates where moderate temperatures disappear for a good six months. Even though yesterday we saw snow showers in the Chicago suburbs, there is no doubt spring is here in North America [Now I know for our readers down under, spring is a thing of the past and your in fall].

This is the first year we've owned a home and its been great fun being outside yard work. We don't have a big yard by any means, but we've got several beds that need tending. So I've been spreading fertilizer, raking leaves, and edging the beds. Right now I'm looking at a pile of mulch in my driveway that a dump truck put there, to the delight of my two four year olds I should add, that needs to be spread.

I find that working out in my yard is very satisfying. For me it has to do with the act of completing something that I can enjoy. It is appreciating the fruit of labor. It is getting dirty and being sore after working a rake, shovel or edger for an afternoon.

Question: What is it about yard work that is so satisfying to you?

Jesus and the Eucharist 4

2011-04-17T07:18:00.003-05:00

We’ve been working our way through Brant Pitre’s recent book Jesus and the Jewish Roots of the Eucharist: Unlocking the Secrets of the Last Supper.

Chapter three presents the subject of the New Passover. You might recall that in his second chapter, the subject of your last post, he made the point that at the time of Jesus many Jews were expecting a “new Exodus”: an end-time deliverance that would outshine the first Exodus out of Egypt. Chapter three builds on this by suggesting that the new Exodus, as with the first one, would be kicked off with a new Passover event, one that would again outshine the first. Why would this be relevant to Jesus and the Eucharist meal? Because Jesus’ last meal with his disciples in the upper room was most likely the Passover meal eaten at the start of the Sabbath on the 14^th day of the Jewish Month of Nissan. Brant states,

On that night, Jesus was not just celebrating one more memorial of the exodus from Egypt. Rather, he was establishing a new Passover, the long-awaited Passover of the Messiah. By means of this sacrifice, Jesus would inaugurate the new exodus, which the prophets had foretold and for which the Jewish people had been waiting (49).

Brant believes that knowledge of the Jewish background of the Passover both biblically and in the context of first-century Judaism is crucial for understanding the meaning of the Lord’s Supper. He takes his readers on a very brief and readable survey of the details of the Passover meal.

The Passover ceremony involved five steps as outlined in Exodus 12.

Step 1. Choose an unblemished male lamb.
Step 2. Sacrifice the lamb
Step 3. Spread the blood of the lamb on the home as a “sign” of the sacrifice.
Step 4. Eat the flesh of the lamb with the unleavened bread.
Step 5. Every year, keep a Passover as a “day of remembrance” of the exodus forever.

At the time of Jesus, a few significant changes to the ceremony had taken place. It should be emphasized when studying Jesus it is not the biblical framing of teaching, but how those teachings were interpreted and practiced in the first century that is most important. Brant notes four relevant alternations.

1. The Passover sacrifice was now made in the temple in Jerusalem. In the Bible the lambs were sacrificed and eaten in the home of the Israelites in Egypt, but at the time of Jesus these two activities were split and the sacrifice was required to be done in the Jerusalem temple by the Levites. The implication is obvious: you could only celebrate the Passover in Jerusalem. This made for a very busy and bloody day of sacrifice at the temple leading up to the Passover meal. Brant points out impression that would have been left on all those who attended the Passover. This was a brutal sacrifice.

2. The Passover lamb was “crucified” in the process of the sacrifice. Brant appeals to a little known tradition that in the process of the sacrifice two stakes were thrust through the lamb which resembled a crucifixion. This element it must be admitted cannot be historically verified to represent the practice of first-century Jews. Still, if it is correct Brant is right to conclude:This an aspect of the Passover in his day that is neither mentioned in the Bible nor part of the modern-day Jewish Seder, but which as the power to shed light on Jesus’ conception of his own fate (64).

3. The Passover at the time of Jesus became a way to participate in the first Passover. The manner of this contemporizing of the event took shape in traditions that accompanied the Passover meal. The Mishnah, a third-century Rabbinic text, tells us that in the midst of the Passover meal, the son would ask the father, “Why is this night different from other nights?”. This tradition is still practiced today in the Seder. The Passover meal was a way for Jews in every generation to participate in the exodus.

4. Jewish traditions that admittedly date much later than the New Testament but might represent views in the air in the first century, link the Passover feast to the coming of the Messiah and the dawn of the age of salvation. “The Messiah comes on Passover night, and God will redeem his people on that same night” (68).

All of this then forms the frame for seeing Jesus and the Passover meal correctly. Brant suggests that the key is to pay attention to the similarities and differences between the Jewish Passover meal, as described in the Jewish sources, and the meal Jesus had with this disciples recorded in the synoptic gospels. The major observation drawn from a comparison is that Jesus alters the Jewish Passover by placing himself at its center, as the sacrificial lamb. Jesus instituted a “new Passover”.

By means of his words over the bread and wine of the Last Supper, Jesus is saying in no uncertain terms, “I am the new Passover lamb of the new Exodus. This is the Passover of the Messiah, and I am the new sacrifice” (72).

Now the pay dirt for Brant in all of this is that according to the ancient biblical tradition, the lamb was to be eaten. Central to the Passover ceremony was the consumption of the flesh of the lamb. As Brant puts it, “the sacrifice of the Passover lamb was not completed by its death. It was completed by a meal, by eating the flesh of the lamb that had been slain” (74).

Brant’s interpretation is very interesting and at many points is profound and instructive. He’s done a great service to us to so clearly spell out the Jewish context of the Passover meal and to draw out connections between Jesus’ last meal with his disciples and the practice of the Passover. Even if not all his connections can be validated, understanding the Eucharist as the Passover of the Messiah is no doubt rich in meaning.

There is one thorny historical issue in all of this that should at least be registered. The question of whether the last supper was the actual Passover meal or a meal on the night before Passover is still a scholarly quandary. John’s Gospel, on the one hand, has the meal on the night before the Passover so that Jesus dies at the time of the sacrifices. On the other hand, the Synoptic Gospels clearly have Jesus’ meal as the Passover. The historical issues are nearly intractable. And while hypotheses have been suggested to harmonize the two accounts no one hypothesis has won the day. What one can say, nevertheless, is that Jesus’ death is associated in all the Gospels with the Passover.

For earlier posts see: Jesus and the Eucharist 1, 2, 3.

Writing Style 2

2011-04-17T05:46:00.007-05:00

In the second lesson of Joseph Williams and Gregory Colomb's book, Style: Lessons in Clarity and Grace (10th Edition), the question of grammatical rules is the topic. They argue that a scrupulous focus on following rules and being grammatically "correct" is misguided.

They put grammatical rules for English into three categories:

1. Real Rules – these are rules that do matter and must be followed. They are the rules that make English English (e.g. articles precede nouns).

2. Social Rules – these are rules that separate standard usage from nonstandard usage. Schooled writers follow these naturally. Only those for whom English is not their first language have to think about these.

3. Invented Rules – these are rules that grammarians have created which they think we should follow. Most of these date from the last half of the eighteenth century. A good example of these kinds of rules is the “split infinitive”.

Williams and Colomb’s advocate a careful, but balanced approach to the invented rules. They write with some irony,

But if you try to obey all the rules all the time, you risk becoming so obsessed with rules that you tie yourself in knots. And sooner or later, you will impose those rules—real or not—on others. After all, what good is learning a rule if all you can do is obey it? The alternative to blind obedience is selective observance. But you then have to decide which rules to observe and which to ignore (14).

So which rules should you follow and which can you ignore? It goes without saying that Real Rules must be followed and that Social Rules will usually be obeyed out of habit. But when it comes to Invented Rules, selective use is recommended.

What then should be the overarching concern when it comes to grammatical rules if it is not to be a scrupulous rule keeper? The primary concern should to be your audience. Some audiences expect a more elegant sophisticated style of writing, while others a more straightforward style. For the former, paying attention to Invented Rules that have come to represent a more elegant style will win over your audience. This list of rules includes:

1. Don’t split infinitives.
2. Use whom as the object of a verb or preposition.
3. Don’t end a sentence with a preposition.
4. Use the singular with none and any.

I think what this lesson is driving at is that what we should be aiming for in our writing is not correctness but clarity. And if we can throw in a little grace and elegance all the better.

See first post: Writing Style 1

Love Wins 4

2011-04-16T12:38:00.009-05:00

I’m continuing to work my way through Rob Bell’s book Love Wins: A Book About Heaven, Hell, and the Fate of Every Person Who Ever Livedand in this post I want to think about chapter two which is titled “Here is the New There”. The topic of the chapter is heaven.

It seems to me that the central issue in this chapter is the misconception that heaven is “somewhere else”. This misguided and unbiblical perspective, according to Rob, is captured graphically in the picture that used to hang in his grandmother’s home. He says the painting tells a story:

It’s a story of movement, from one place to the next, from one realm to another, from death to life, with the cross as the bridge, the way, the hope . . . But the story also tells us something else, something really, really important, something significant about the location. According to the painting, all of this is happening somewhere else . . . I show you this painting because, as surreal as it is, the fundamental story it tells about heaven—that it is somewhere else—is the story that many people know to be the Christian story (23).

Rob believes this story is an unbiblical story. And this unbiblical story has led to two errant consequences. First, because of the story of “heaven somewhere else”, questions related to heaven are generally otherworldly. For example, a question like “what will we do in heaven?” is characteristic of this kind of thinking. Second, the story creates an imbalanced emphasis on the question of who’s in heaven and who isn’t.

So, the dominant question of this chapter is: what is the correct biblical story of heaven? This question then provides a corrective for the two additionally related questions: Where is heaven and what kind of person will get there?

There are a number of points of detail that could be dealt with in this post. As you might expect this is one of the more length chapters in the book. I will make some brief comments about a few things at the end, but am going to focus more attention in this post on Rob’s reading of the story of the “Rich Young Ruler”, which for all intents and purposes, is the center piece of the chapter.

To correct this “mistaken notion” about heaven [I put this phrase in quotes because it’s a quote from Tom Wright’s Simply Christian—Tom’s been asserting for years and it is no doubt where Rob has gotten it--most comprehensively in Surprised by Hope], Rob turns to the gospel’s story of the “Rich Young Ruler” as told in Matthew 19:16-22 (see parallels in Mark 10:17-22 and Luke 18:18-23).

In the story, Rob finds the truth about heaven. When the young man asked Jesus the question, “What good thing must he do to have eternal life?”, he wasn’t asking about how he gets into heaven when he dies. According to Rob, neither this man nor Jesus ever thought about the future in terms of “going to heaven” when you die. Jesus did not come to make it possible for people to a heaven somewhere else.

To validate this contention, Rob springboards off the story of the Rich Young Ruler to teach a lesson on eschatological views (ideas of the end times) in first-century Judaism. He paints a unified picture of how Jews of Jesus’ day thought about the “end of the world”. Drawing on the Old Testament, Jesus’ Scriptures, Rob shows that ancient Jews thought of history in terms of two ages: the present (this) age and the age to come. He points out that the Greek word translated as “eternal” in the phrase “eternal life” (Matt 19:16) can mean more than one thing, but more significantly, he denies that the term can mean what we most often think it means: “forever” (see discussion below). Instead, Rob suggests that the first of these meanings is best captured with a term like “age”, which he defines as “a period of time with a beginning and ending” (32).

Rob’s point in all this discussion is to show more correctly what the young man was asking Jesus. He wasn’t asking to “go to heaven”; rather he was asking, “How do I participate in the New Age?” As Rob summarizes:

They did not talk about a future life somewhere else, because they anticipated a coming day when the world would be restored, renewed, and redeemed and there would be peace on earth (40).

For Rob the point is more a question of how the man participates in this new world God will bring about when he turns the eschatological calendar. Jesus’ answers the man in the way one would expect a Jewish rabbi would: “live the commandments”. “God has shown you how to live. Live that way” (40). The man responds that he does keep the Mosaic commands. As an aside, the man was not saying he was perfect, but that he was living a Torah-observant life within the Covenant God had established with Israel on Sinai. But as Jesus had already been teaching that this kind of obedience was not enough. Here I am alluding to the Sermon on the Mount (Matthew 5-7) where Jesus intensifies the Mosaic commandments as the Messianic Teacher of the Torah. The so-called “antithesis” in Matthew 5, where Jesus discussed the commands of the Mosaic Torah with “you’ve heard it said, but I say to you”, could be given the title “Yes and More”. The man then was likely right to ask the “what else must I do” question and it was probably stimulated by Jesus’ own teaching.

Most importantly, however Rob seems to miss the main point of Jesus response which quite rightly is the last word: “follow me” (19:20). It was not a summons simply to sell all he had and give to the poor. Jesus wasn’t primarily going after his “greed” as Rob thinks. Jesus called him ultimately to “follow”. Obedience is ultimate yes, but it’s also Jesus oriented. The man had to follow Jesus and was unwilling to do so, bottom line.

Nevertheless, I think Rob's comment is insightful and profound: “Jesus takes the man’s question about his life then and makes it about the kind of life he’s living now” (41). This is a significant insight. If you don’t follow Jesus now (this presupposes a lifestyle of ultimate obedience), you won’t be with him then. Heaven isn't simply about someday; its a present reality. Jesus does "blur the lines"; he does merge "heaven and earth".

Now very briefly a few more things:

1) The discussion of “eternal”, aionios, has serious problems. Rob wants to deny that the word aionios ever means what we think of “forever”. This is both right and wrong. It is true that ancient Jews would not have had the same notion of forever as we do, but to say that they could not have thought in terms of forever and that they did not use this word to denote that conception is flat out wrong. Also, there is no evidence to support Rob’s idea that aionios means “intense” (see pg 57). No lexicon of the Greek language supports such an understanding.

2) Rob seems to assume in his retelling of the story of the Rich Young Ruler that the man will participate in the eternal life no matter what. The only question is: Of what will his participation consist? As Rob poses the question “How do you make sure you’ll be part of the new thing God is doing? How do you best become the kind of person whom God could entrust with significant responsibility in the age to come?” (40). This is perhaps the assumption behind his erroneous idea that in heaven fire will purify you and make you fit to “handle heaven” (50). Rob wants to argue that Jesus didn't teach about “getting into" heaven or the age to come. Instead Jesus taught about being “transformed, so that we can actually handle heaven”.

I have to say it, this is just nonsense. Jesus, in point of fact, primarily taught on what Rob says he didn’t. Reflecting on the young man’s refusal Jesus even states, “only with difficult will a rich person enter the kingdom of heaven . . . it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of God” (19:23-24). They’ll be no flames in heaven making you fit for it. Jesus does not assume that the young man will be there. Jesus makes the distinction between following Jesus in the here and its reward and “inheriting eternal life”, which is simply another way of saying enter, in the here after (19:29). There is a difference between the two. And being in one does not mean you’ll be in the other. But how you live in the one will determine your presence in the other. You'll enter the other by how you live in the present.

3) The discussion of “treasure” and whether treasure is static or dynamic (43-47) is baffling to me. What is ironic is while arguing for a view of heaven rooted in a first-century Jewish mindset, the topic of “treasures in heaven” is untethered from any such rootedness. It seems that Jesus himself promised “static” rewards (19:28).

4) Definition of “heaven”:

Sometimes when Jesus used the word “heaven” he was simply referring to God, using the word as a substitute for the name of God. Second, sometimes when Jesus spoke of heaven, he was referring to the future coming together of heaven and earth in what he and his contemporaries called in the age to come. And then third—and this is where things get really interesting—when Jesus talked about heaven he was talking about our present eternal, intense, real experiences of joy, peace, and love in this life, this side of death and the age to come (58-59).

Taking these points in turn. First, only Matthew has Jesus do such a thing; in other words in none of the other Gospels does Jesus replace “God” with the term “Heaven”. This may just have been Mathew’s preference and not much can be assumed than from this about Jesus’ usage. It is true that Matthew uses “heaven” this way. Second, while this is somewhat true. Ancient Jews and early Christians still maintained the distinction between heaven and earth. When saints died they went to heaven from where they will return with Jesus at the end of the age. Collapsing the distinction between heaven and earth to the extend Rob does is unbiblical. If Paul is right “to be absent from the body is to be present with the Lord” then there is a heaven somewhere else at least until the time of Jesus second coming. Jesus did pray that God’s will be done on earth as it is in heaven, but that has yet to occur. Third, this category of heaven is an illusion. Neither Jesus nor any biblical writer defines heaven this way.

So what is the final word on Love Wins and heaven? I think it is right to critique the story that the portrait tells with which the chapter opened. I don’t think the picture truthfully represents the biblical story of salvation because the story the picture tells is truncated. I'll say only here that God’s ultimate place for humans is a renewed earth. God is going to make all things new (Rev 21) and the New Jerusalem comes down out of heaven to earth. As I make this point, I am surprised that Rob didn’t discuss Revelation 21-22 in the chapter. It’s absence startling.

Heaven is a complex biblical idea however. There is a heaven that is distinct from the earth. They are not the same place. Right now God is in heaven and at the time of his choosing he’ll turn the eschatological calendar sending Jesus to finish the work. Yet, in the meantime because of Jesus’ resurrection life and the gift of the Spirit in the church, heaven can be enacted in this time and in this place through the work of the church. Where the church steps, heaven’s footprint is left.

This finally brings us to the question of who is in heaven. First, it needs to be said that Jesus does call people to "enter heaven", although we need to define that term appropriately. The story of the Rich Young Ruler itself shows this. Second, the saints in both the Old and New Testament times are in heaven right now. When we die, if we have entrusted ourselves to Jesus [if we follow Jesus], we’ll be in heaven immediately. This however is not the last word and it might not have been what Jesus the the young man were discussing as Rob points out. Heaven will unite with a renewed earth and it’s this harmony that the Bible foresees as the final state, eternal life. Eternal life is both a quality of life (Rob’s point) and a quantity of life (forever).

For earlier posts for Love Wins see: Post When your wife . . ., 1, 2, 3.

If you like this post please share it with others.

Rob Bell on Tour

2011-04-16T09:39:00.008-05:00

For our UK readers, Rob Bell is on a book tour and is coming to 4 venues in England this week. Tickets are required and can be reserved here.

April 18, London, Westminster Central Hall
April 19, Cheltenham, Cheltenham Racecourse
April 20, Liverpool, Liverpool Cathedral (Sold out)
April 21, Cambridge, Corn Exchange

Just this week Rob was in the northern Chicago suburb of Winnetka. I was not able to attend, but a few of my North Park students did. They reported that the meeting was unsatisfying because Rob's answers continued to be less than clear. One said, "I just wish he'd say what he thinks". The student also mentioned that the questions posed to Rob were more pastoral than theological.

So, I'm not sure how much would be gained by going to the event if you're looking for clarification. But I think the benefit of attending would be to see who attends and what is the nature of the conversations and questions.

D.A. Carson Festschrift

2011-04-14T07:42:00.005-05:00

Understanding the Times: New Testament Studies in the 21st Century. Essays in Honor of D.A.Carson on the Occasion of His 65th Birthday

Edited by Andreas Köstenberger and Robert Yarbrough

Wheaton, IL: Crossway, 2011 - due out 30 April!

In appreciation of Carson’s life work, editors Andreas J. Köstenberger and Robert Yarbrough, themselves respected scholars, have assembled a team of contributors, including Stanley Porter, Grant Osborne, Mark Dever, John Woodbridge, Douglas Moo, Peter O’Brien, Eckhard Schnabel, Craig Blomberg, and David Pao, together to produce this volume of essays on New Testament studies in modern times. The book is divided into three parts: New Testament Studies and Ancillary Disciplines, Special Topics in New Testament Studies, and New Testament Studies Around the World. Pastors, professors, and students will benefit not only from the example of a man who understands the times, but also from the high quality of scholarship and wide variety of topics covered in this volume.

“Don Carson is one of the most productive and capable evangelical scholars in the English-speaking world, and this volume by former students and teaching colleagues reflects the breadth of his interests and especially his concern for the development of biblical studies in a global context. Alongside fresh personal contributions to New Testament study, there are informative surveys of developments in New Testament studies in Africa and Asia, as well as in North America and Europe. This solid volume thus offers not only a worthy tribute to its honoree but also valuable assessments of the state of New Testament scholarship worldwide.”

-I. Howard Marshall

“D. A. Carson is the Renaissance man of North American evangelicalism. He is a biblical scholar of the highest caliber, a preacher and evangelist of renown, and a theologian of unswerving commitment to the gospel. His teaching ministry has spanned the globe; in fact, I’ve heard his sermon on Matthew 27 on three different continents and found it equally stirring each time. This book is a snapshot of issues in the international New Testament scene as it stands today. This erudite collection of essays is rightly dedicated to one who has committed his life to serving the global church.”

-Michael F. Bird

The Father is Merciful

2011-04-14T06:58:00.003-05:00

I remember seeing Rob Bell's clip where he asks the question whether Jesus saves us from the Father! An orthodox theology (i.e., one that is Trinitarian) would say emphatically "no!" because the cross is a triune event. Here are some words from Bruce McCormack on the subject:

“If the Father were not mercifully inclined toward the human race all along, why would he have sent his only Son into this world in the first place? Surely, a determination to be merciful and forgiving must precede and ground the sending of the Son into the world to die in our place. Surely forgiveness is not elicited from the Father (grudgingly?) by what Christ did on our behalf; it is rather effected by the Father in and through Christ’s passion and death. So the picture of an angry God the Father and a gentle and self-sacrificial Son who pays the ultimate price to effect an alteration in the Father’s ‘attitude’ fails to hit the mark.”[1]

[1] Bruce L. McCormack, “The Ontological Presuppositions of Barth’s Doctrine of the Atonement,” in The Glory of the Atonement, ed. C.E. Hill and F.A. James (Downers Grove, IL: IVP, 2004) 366 (346-66).

Promo: Paul and the Gospels

2011-04-12T16:29:00.003-05:00

Over at the T&T Clark blog is a promo of me and Joel's forthcoming volume Paul and the Gospels.

Jesus and the Eucharist 3

2011-04-10T07:17:00.003-05:00

In his second chapter Brant Pitre, begins to set the stage for his discussion of the Jewish roots of the Eucharist in his recent book. We’ve been doing a series of posts through this interesting and provocative book. Brant begins by asking “What were the Jewish people waiting for?” This indeed is an important question not only for his study, but more generally because the answer to this question will put into context the words and deeds of Jesus more generally that the Eucharist is merely on case in point.

Brant corrects the false notion that the Jewish people were only expecting an earthly, political Messiah, one who would boot out the Romans and rule over a restored political kingdom. It is true that this was an element, perhaps a central one, of first century Jewish expectation, but it is not comprehensive enough an understanding. He comments,

While some Jews may have been waiting for a merely military Messiah, this was not necessarily the case for all. According to the Jewish Scriptures and certain ancient Jewish traditions, for others, the hope for the future consisted of much, much more (41).

Brant points out that in addition to a political deliverance, the Jewish people were expecting a “new exodus”. In the pattern of the first exodus led by Moses, at the end of the age, God would bring about an even great exodus—God would return the exiles back to the Promised Land from the lands to which they were scattered. In order to do so, God would (1) raise up a “new Moses”, (2) establish a “new covenant”, (3) and build a “new temple”.

It was a hope for the coming Messiah, who would not just be a king, but a prophet and a miracle worker like Moses. It was a hope for the making of a new and everlasting covenant, which would climax in a heavenly banquet where the righteous would see God, and feast on the divine presence. It was the hope for the building of a new Temple, where God would be worshiped forever and ever. Finally, it was a hope for the ingathering of God’s people into the promised land of a world made new (41-42).

The New Exodus tradition, and its concomitant elements, that Brant argues is the appropriate background against which to understand Jesus words and deeds generally and in particular the meaning of the Last Supper.

Brant's point is certainly correct and provides a more complete conceptual background for understanding Jesus. If I were to suggest one friendly critique, I would press him on his discussion of the "new promised land" as "not necessarily identical to the earthly land of Israel" (39). While on the surface I can agree with this statement--there is a New Creation element in the New Exodus--I think it is misleading.

The new promise Land will indeed be identical to the earthly Land of Israel, but it includes more. The expectations begin with and are centered on the restoration of the Land (the land promised to the patriarchs, apportioned by Joshua, but never fully acquired) and expand out from there to the entire earth. The expectations don't contain a conception of replacement of the old earthly Land with something else.

Christus Victor Hoopla

2011-04-09T22:27:00.004-05:00

Over at CT Mark Galli has an article on The Problem with Christus Victor where he notes the increasing popularity of the Christus Victor (CV) model for the atonement, but thinks it can down play notions of personal sin and guilt if not cojoined to the theory of penal substitutionary atonement (PSA). He concludes: "Here, I'm simply suggesting that Christus Victor may not be a theory that Protestants, and evangelicals in particular, should tie their wagons to. While it brings to the fore some crucial and forgotten biblical truths, it's clearly a secondary atonement theme in the New Testament. And at least for today's Protestants, it has an uncanny tendency to downplay a sense of personal responsibility, which in the end, sabotages grace. In my view, more than ever in our day, we need Christus Vicarious."

Tom Schreiner argues similarly in his response to Greg Boyd in The Nature of the Atonement. Several posts have appeared around the biblioblogosphere about Galli's article including the Anglican Priest, Through a Glass Darkly, Brambonius, and Already Not Yet to name a few.

I agree that CV and PSA go together because Jesus is only Christus Victor because he is also Agnus Dei. PSA deprives the Satan of his key weapon: accusation against the saints! However, I think CV is the the most comprehensive model of the atonement for several reasons:

1. Canonical: The first and last intimations of the atonement in Scripture are about the victory of Jesus' death (Gen 3:15; Rev 12:11).

2. Historical: CV appears to have been more popular in Church History as a model for the atonement than any other. Though PSA can be found in the fathers as a minor key, CV can be found among the Reformers as a minor key too.

3. Biblical Theological: CV links together a lot more themes than PSA does. CV brings together kingdom, atonement, resurrection, and new creation.

4. Pauline: Note how Romans 8 and 1 Corinthians 15 both start off with the sacrificial nature of Jesus' death, but then climax in affirmations of divine victory! PSA is the basis for CV, but CV is then the goal of PSA.

I like the words of John Calvin on the subject: “Finally, since as God only he could not suffer, and as man only could not overcome death, he united the human nature with the divine, that he might subject the weakness of the one to death as an expiation of sin, and by the power of the other, maintaining a struggle with death, might gain us the victory … But special attention must be paid to what I lately explained, namely, that a common nature is the pledge of our union with the Son of God; that, clothed with our flesh, he warred to death with sin that he might be our triumphant conqueror.”[1]

[1] Institutes II.12.2-3. Calvin also wrote: “And so, by fighting hand to hand with the power of the Devil, with the horror of death, he won the victory over them and triumphed, so that now in our death we should not fear those things which our Prince has swallowed up” (Institutes II.16.11).

Response to Maurice Casey on Jesus as Messiah

2011-04-09T05:35:00.005-05:00

Over at BTB 41.2 (2001) Maurice Casey has a review of my volume Are You the One Who is to Come? The Historical Jesus and the Messianic Question. Unsurprisingly it is a fairly negative review with one or two polite hat tips. Truth be told, several criticisms he raises have some validity while some seem a little strange or ill-founded.

First, Casey thinks that I failed to engage with the linguistic evidence about the usage of the words Mashiah and Meshiha in ancient sources. He follows Jo Fitzmyer and Marinius de Jonge in opting for a narrow definition of messianism as tied strictly to the word "Messiah" occuring in the sources. But the problem is threefold. (1) As many scholars have recognized (I think esp. of John Collins, Martin Hengel, James Charlesworth, Matthew Black, Gerd Theissen, Andrew Chester, William Horbury, and Antii Laato), roles are more important than titles. The conceptual framework of messianism is not contingent upon the occurrence of the word "Messiah" in every instance. (2) Casey backs de Jonge's claim that there was no absolute use of the term "Messiah" in second temple Judaism (see Maurice Casey's Is John's Gospel True? 58-59). Just one wee small problem, namely, there is an absolute usage of "the Messiah" in 1QSa 2.11-12! Furthermore, the reason why most usages of the word are not absolute is because the majority of references to a Messiah/Anointed One comes from the DSS which differentiate the anointed figures as the "Messiah of Aaron and Israel" or the "Messiah of righteousness". The qualifications were needed to disambiguate which "Anointed" figure was referred to. (3) More common in the Old Testament and elsewhere is reference to the "Lord's Anointed" (e.g. Psalms of Solomon 17; Luke 2.11) and the absolute use of "the Messiah" arguably developed as an abbreviation of the fuller reference that emerged in colloquial usage. So "the Messiah" was definitely not a Christian invention as a title for Jesus.

Second, in regards to the Son of Man, I tried desperately to build a bridge between the linguistic approach to the "Son of Man" as a generic reference in Aramaic (Bar Enasha etc.) and the eschatological approach that sees it as dependent upon Daniel 7. I accepted many of Casey's claims about the linguistic approach, but argued that the particularizing connotation of the Son of Man (i.e., one man in particular) make it possible to bring Danielic allusions into some of the Son of Man material in the Gospels. I don't deny that the one like a Son of Man is a symbol for the Saints of the Most High in Daniel 7. But he is also the heavenly counter-part to the wicked "horn" (Antiochus Epiphanes) and he is also symbolic of God's kingdom. In fact, a large number of scholars regard the Son of Man in Daniel 7 as an angelic figure, not simply a corporate symbol for the nation, but an individual angel with a representative role. I should note also that our earliest sources (4Q246, Similitudes of Enoch, Gospels, Revelation, 4 Ezra) seem to have read Daniel 7 in a messianic sense with the Son of Man as an messianic deliverer. I also attended Maurice Casey's paper at the British New Testament Conference several years ago where he argued for an Aramaic source underlying the Son of Man sayings of 1 Enoch that meant that the Son of Man was in fact Enoch (see 1 Enoch 71.17). But most scholars regard 1 Enoch 71.17 as a later interpolation and if the Son of Man is Enoch then why doesn't Enoch recognize himself in his vision? (see further John Collins, "Enoch and the Son of Man" here). His approach has not convinced any Enochic scholars I know or Pseudepigrapha experts like Darrell Hannah, G.W. Nickelsburg, or Jim Davilla that the Son of Man is anything other than a messianic/eschatological figure in the Similitudes (see esp. Hannah's essay in Who is the Son of Man).

Third, in person Casey is very charming and personable chap. So I must say that I find it rather disappointing then that in book reviews he is rather ad hominum in his review of "evangelical" scholars. His reviews of books by Stan Porter, Craig Evans, N.T. Wright, and now myself have exposed our principal error of espousing conclusions that are sadly all too congruent with evangelical beliefs. The fact that one can find liberal Protestants, Catholics, and Jewish scholars arguing for the same conclusion that I make in the book - that Jesus was a messianic claimant - does not perturb Casey from dispensing such criticism and hoping that the implied reader shares his acute dislike at this religious sub-group. I do not know what demons haunt Casey's religious biography, but I plead with him that book reviews are not the place for exorcising them.

In any case, I remain grateful that Casey took time to review the book, and it is another reminder that one should read his Jesus of Nazareth as it represents the conclusions of a career of work on the Gospels. Casey has his own take on how the messianism of the church emerged from a non-messianic figure.

Protestants and the Gospels

2011-04-09T05:14:00.003-05:00

I lament the fact that Protestants love their epistles (esp. Paul) for all it's doctrine, but struggle with the Gospels. Yes, the Gospels give us Jesus which is great, but it is Jesus as the subject of Paul's atonement theology that really matters for many folks. Yet surely it should be the other way around: for doctrine and discipleship we should start with Jesus and them move to Paul. As I often tell my students, Paul rocks, but Jesus reigns. The good thing about the Book of Common Prayer is that every day you get a reading from the Gospels, every day, words from Jesus, or a story about Jesus. I think that is important. Yes, I know of the debate about "Red Letter Christians," but the fact is that we have more manuscripts of the Gospels than the rest of the New Testament from antiquity and the Fathers seemed to have quoted the Gospels more than Paul. The primordial genesis of Christian doctrine took the form of a concerted dialogue with Jesus and the Gospels. As such the Gospels should be foremost in our theology, preaching, and discipleship. If ye believe not me, consider the words of J.I. Packer:

“Finally, we could then correct the wooliness of view as to what Christian commitment involves, by stressing the need for constant meditation on the four gospels, over and above the rest of our Bible reading; for gospel study enables us both to keep our Lord in clear view and to hold before our minds the relational frame of discipleship to him. The doctrines on which our discipleship rests are clearest in the epistles, but the nature of discipleship itself is most vividly portrayed in the gospels. Some Christians seem to prefer the epistles to the gospels and talk of graduating from the gospels to the epistles as if this were a mark of growing up spiritually; but really this attitude is a very bad sign, suggesting that we are more interested in theological notions than in fellowship with the Lord Jesus in person. We should think, rather, of the theology of the epistles as preparing us to understand better the disciple relationship with Christ that is set forth in the gospels, and we should never let ourselves forget that the four gospels are, as has often and rightly been said, the most wonderful books on earth.”

J.I. Packer, Keep in Step with the Spirit: Finding Fullness in Our Walk with God(Downer’s Grove: IVP, 1984, reprint: 2005), 61.

Love Wins 3

2011-04-08T16:08:00.007-05:00

Chapter one of Love Wins is a stream of consciousness. It is a set of ideas in the form of questions that loosely hold together.

Reading the chapter I felt like I often do when talking to my 4-year-old daughter. Mary, my budding conversationalist, beads ideas together whose only relationship is that the one idea caused her to think of another. But perhaps that’s the point. Perhaps Rob didn’t intend for the chapter to be read like as a geometric proof. Perhaps the issue then is genre. This chapter is more like poetry than an argument to be dissected or carefully analyzed. Perhaps to treat it as such would be to miss the overall poetic affect. Giving the benefit of the doubt to the author, let's go with this more poetic approach.

What then is the poetic affect? What does it all add up to?

At least two stand out to me. One, the chapter leaves you with the impression that the author is a critical thinker. Someone whose thought hard about this stuff and is in a position to offer more convincing alternatives. Two, the chapter leaves you with the undeniable impression that there is something terribly wrong with conventional evangelical thinking.

What particular areas of evangelical thinking? Based on the lines of questioning I came up with twelve topics:

1. Presumptive epistemological confidence
2. Population sizes of heaven and hell
3. Infinite punishment for finite sin
4. The age of accountability and infant mortality
5. Postmortem second chances
6. “Accepting Jesus” / praying the “sinner’s prayer”
7. Heaven somewhere else
8. Perspectives of Jesus
9. Missionary responsibility
10. Monergism/synergism (Is salvation all God or a combination of God and us?)
11. Personal relationship with Jesus
12. Supposed diversity of NT teaching

So what do we make of these two poetic impressions?

The thinking behind the questions at points is critical in the best sense of the word. As examples, I point to the important problems of an infinite punishment for finite sin and the population sizes of heaven and hell. I do think these are important subjects that are at least worthy of reconsideration. How should the Bible’s figurative language of end-time judgment be understood? Does the Bible teach that God will punish eternally sin committed in a finite body? Will more people go to hell than heaven? I think there are solid biblical reasons to believe that both of these questions are to be answered in the affirmative, but there are also biblical counter arguments that should be honestly weighed and not ignored.

Also, to the extent that our evangelical telling of the Gospel is reductionistic to the point of making God look like someone with a polarity disorder, that should be redressed.

But on the whole the chapter appears to me be more a pseudo-intellectualism rather than real. The problem of a supposed diversity of NT teaching on the way to salvation which takes several pages of the chapter is a pseudo-problem for example. While appearing quite insightful, it really amounts to nothing. What’s more, several of the lines of questioning Rob traces are caricatures based on the worst stereotypes of evangelical teaching around.

Penetrating and important questions can be found in this chapter. But they aren't the only kind.

Post 1 and Post 2

Writing Style 1

2011-04-08T10:26:00.006-05:00

I've started reading the book by Joseph M. Williams and Gregory G. Colomb Style: Lessons in Clarity and Grace (10th Edition). The first lesson provides some gems about writing clearly. They list four reasons for unclear writing:

1. Some writers complicate their prose to impress. They wrongly think that the more complex the writing the deeper the thinking. Fact is the less clear the writing often means we don't really know what we're talking about.

2. A writer is too self-conscious about their writing so that they over think as they compose. They are afraid to make even the slightest grammar mistake.

3. Some writers especially those new to a subject freeze up as they are trying to think and write. They are intimated by the material and consequently the prose worsens as we seek to master a new idea.

4. Writers cannot predict what bits of their writing will appear unclear to a reader or even what makes it unclear. They point out that our writing always appears clearer to us because we don't read out what we've written, we read in what we think.

Williams and Colomb argue that the most important skill to master in order to write clearly is how to objectively analyze your writing that is "on the page".

One other point of advice the first lesson raises is one I have found so true and can be captured in a saying I've been repeating since reading it during my doctoral days:

"Good writing is the result of many revisions".

As Williams and Colomb put it, "most experienced writers get something down on paper or up on a screen as fast as they can. Then they revise that first draft into something clearer" (8).

Dirk Jongkind on P52

2011-04-07T07:39:00.002-05:00

Tyndale House textual guru (at least on Codex Sinaituc) Dirk Jongkind explains the papyrus fragment p52 on You.Tube. Gotta love that dutch accent!

Jesus and the Eucharist 2

2011-04-03T08:18:00.009-05:00

Brant Pitre has written a very informative and accessible book on the Jewish roots of the Eucharist and this is the second post in a series engaging Brant’s thought-provoking volume.

In the first chapter, “The Mystery of the Last Supper”, Brant discusses his primary goal to situate Jesus’ teaching on the Eucharist in its historical setting in order to show that, in spite of its seeming incongruity with Jesus’ own Jewish tradition, his teaching on eating his flesh and drinking his blood (John 6) (Brant takes this passage eucharistically – more on that in ch. 4) was meant literally. Of his purpose he writes:

My goal is to explain how a first-century Jew like Jesus, Paul, or any other of the apostles, could go from believing that drinking any blood—much less human blood—was an abomination before God, to believing that drinking the blood of Jesus was actually necessary for Christians” (18).

Brant wants to take his reader on a journey back to the first-century world of Jesus and the first Jewish believers in Jesus to help us “see things” as they saw them. Brant believes when we use an informed imagination “we will discover that there is much more in common between ancient Judaism and early Christianity”. In the end, Brant will attempt to show that a Catholic view of the Eucharist (Transubstantiation) is consistent with Jesus’ teaching in their first-century Jewish setting.

There are two points of reflection that I wish to make. First, I am not Catholic. I have never believed in Transubstantiation and still don’t. My own view of the Eucharist is probably somewhere between Zwingli and Calvin. Nevertheless there is a great deal to be gained from reading Brant’s engagement with ancient Judaism and the Gospels both on the question of the Eucharist, but also a proper approach to reading the canonical Jesus in his context. Brant has given me a newfound appreciation for the Catholic doctrine. Reading his book I’ve come to see a biblical foundation for the view and while I am not convinced—this is a whole other issue related to conversion for to be convinced would mean a need to convert to Catholicism—on exegetical grounds, I now better understand and respect the view.

Second, in light of my previous post about Love Wins and the question Rob Bell raised about Jesus’ purpose and the meaning of the Jesus story, I think Brant’s discussion of Jesus humanity is instructive. He states,

For anyone interested in exploring the humanity of Jesus—especially the original meaning of his words and actions—a focus on his Jewish identity is absolutely necessary. Jesus was a historical figure, living in a particular time and place. Therefore, any attempt to understand his words and deeds must reckon with the fact that Jesus lived in an ancient Jewish context . . . this means that virtually all of his teachings were directed to a Jewish audience in a Jewish setting (12).

If this is the case, then it seems overly reductionistic to narrow the meaning of Jesus’ story to “love of God for every single one of us”. “Jesus loves me this I know, for the Bible tells me so” is no doubt true, but a childish (I don’t mean this negatively) abbreviation of the Gospel. Jesus did not present his mission or his message in these terms. Brant points to Jesus’ announcement of his mission and message in Luke 4 to show just how Jewish Jesus’ framework was. Here in his hometown as Jesus began to reveal his identity as Messiah he appealed to the Jewish Scriptures, Isaiah 61:1-4 particularly) and announced that the “anointed one” is here. “Jesus proclaimed to his fellow Jews that their long-held hope for the coming of the Messiah had been fulfilled—in him” (12-13).

Love Wins 2

2011-04-02T11:32:00.024-05:00

In the preface, we find three main assertions. First, the Gospel, Jesus’ story, is “first and foremost about the love of God for every single one of us”. This story, according to the book has been “hijacked” by other stories that “Jesus isn’t interested in telling” because “they have nothing to do with what he came to do”. The book makes the claim that there is a “misguided and toxic” idea circulating widely among many, perhaps most, Christians in the world. This idea, this message, according to Rob Bell “subverts the contagious spread of Jesus’ message”. That message:

A select few Christians will spend forever in a peaceful, joyous place called heaven, while the rest of humanity spends forever in torment and punishment in hell with no chance for anything better. Its clearly communicated to many that this belief is a central truth of the Christian faith and to reject it is in essence to reject Jesus.

The book is an attempt to “reclaim” the correct, true plot of the Jesus story.

Second, the kind of faith Jesus invites believers into “doesn’t skirt the big questions about topics like God and Jesus and salvation and judgment and heaven and hell”. However, there are some Christian contexts where questions are not welcomed. The book advocates that questions, inquiry and the discussion that it generates is itself divine. Rob states, “There is no question that Jesus cannot handle, no discussion too volatile, no issue too dangerous”.

Third, nothing in the book has not been taught or believed by many Christians before Rob Bell. The content of the book it is claimed has been taught an “untold number of times”. He contends that the historic, orthodox Christian faith is a “deep, wide, diverse stream that’s been flowing for thousands of years, carrying a staggering variety of voices, perspectives, and experiences”. The book claims to introduce the reader to “the ancient, ongoing discussion surrounding the resurrected Jesus”.

What do we make of these claims three claims?

The first claim represents an issue of colossal importance because if Rob Bell is in fact correct then we indeed need to repent immediately of our misguided and toxic understanding of the Gospel and push restart. We need to reboot our theological hard drives. If we have the Gospel wrong we won’t have much else right. But is Rob right here? Has the Gospel story been hijacked? Does the majority of evangelical Christians in the twenty-first century have the Gospel all wrong? Have most of us totally lost the plot? Have we left behind Jesus’ primary point? Have we somehow misunderstood or twisted the truth of what Jesus came to do? Well, this is a huge question that would require survey of Gospel accounts let alone a wide-ranging study of Gospel presentations today. Neither of which did Love Wins provide. So, it is certainly an overstatement. But it is worth asking don’t you think? It is possible that given our cultural conditioning we have gotten at least parts of the Gospel wrong? Or perhaps we have overly emphasized some aspects and neglected others?

While it is not yet altogether clear what Rob thinks is wrong with the typical evangelical Gospel story we can see glimpses of what he is protesting and what he will consequently develop in the book.

Traditional View		Love Wins
1. A select few will ultimately be saved.		1. Many if not most or all will ultimately be saved.
2. There’s no second chance after death.		2. There are an innumerable number of chances to be saved in this life and the next.
3. Heaven is a place somewhere else.		3. Heaven is here not somewhere else.
4. The central truth of Christianity is about getting out of hell and into heaven.		4. Whatever the central message of Christian faith is, it’s not about getting in and staying out.

The second claim about the importance of question asking is interesting. And there is indeed some truth in what he’s said in my opinion. I have noticed that some have taken issue with Rob’s questions asserting that they are not questions so much as statements, rhetorical questions. These are not questions Rob is really asking, they say, they are rather questions to stir up controversy, to cause confusion, to create disequilibrium. I can’t say speak to what the motivation is behind the questions. It seems reasonable to suppose I guess that the author is not simply asking questions for the sake of it. He clearly is making a point with the book and is using questions to create something of a need in his reader to receive his answers. Whatever the motivation, I am convinced that many of the questions the book raises are in fact good questions. And many Christians sitting in our churches are secretly asking them, but afraid to raise them publicly. I have a person at my church come to me late last year and confess that they were an evangelical universalist. I suppose they thought I would be a safe ear. While many are not as informed about the issues as this particular Christian, I’d be shocked if we conducted a survey of people in our churches and not many of them were either pluralistic or universalists. There is the official teaching of the church and then there is what the Christians who sit in the pews believe. Often these are two very different things. So applaud the book for raising the issues surrounding heaven and hell and putting them front and center. I think that to assume that there aren’t many people who if they thought about it would be convinced that in the end God’s going to sort it out and a good God will not send most of the world’s population who have ever lived to an eternal conscious punishment.

The third claim is perhaps the least able to stand up under the weight of the evidence not in its favor. It is incontrovertible that there has been a wide range of views with the context of what can loosely be labeled Christianity through the two millennia of its existence. However, it is not accurate by any stretch to call orthodox a view that (1) tends toward universalism, (2) presents a “second-chance” theology, and (3) argues that nothing of what is central to the Gospel story is about “getting in”. This view can claim the label orthodoxy about as much as those found among the Gnostic Gospels. Sure there were so-called Christians used these texts and who thought of them as Christian Scripture, but they were on the very fringes of early Christianity representing only a very small minority.

Paul and the Parousia

2011-03-30T20:29:00.001-05:00

Yes, I'm in eschatology mode today, here is Joseph Plevnik's summary on Paul's teaching on the Parousia:

The parousia is the culmination of Christ’s present rule, the beginning of God’s kingdom, and the moment for the resurrection of the dead. The Lord’s coming is thus the moment for the resurrection of the dead. The Lord’s coming is thus the culmination of Christ’s own resurrection and of his lordship, which began with that event. Christ was raised as the first of many and as the one through whom all others will be brought to life. And he was made Lord so that he may put everything under his feet. The parousia is also the culmination of the present existence ‘in Christ.’ Those who belong to Christ will be with Christ at his coming.[1]

[1] Joseph Plevnik, Paul and the Parousia: An Exegetical and Theological Investigation (Peabody, MA: Hendrickson, 1997), 328.

Richard Hays on why we need Eschatology

2011-03-30T20:15:00.002-05:00

Richard Hays lists six reasons why the church needs apocalyptic eschatology (includes my own summary, paraphrase, and additions to his chief articles):[1]

1. The church needs apocalyptic eschatology to carry Israel’s story forward. Without a future oriented hope one cannot affirm God’s faithfulness to Israel and God’s covenantal promises become unintelligible. Or even worse, a faithless God means we have fickle deity whom we cannot be sure abut. God intends to vindicate his peple (Deut 32:36) at the appointed time when the Redeemer comes to Zion (Isa 59:20). These promises find their proleptic fulfillment in Jesus Christ in the church as a prefiguration of the eschatological people of God, which is a sign in itself of the full divine embracing (proslēmpsis) of eschatological Israel.

2. The church needs apocalyptic eschatology for interpreting the cross as a saving event for the world. If we are to grasp the centrality of the cross, then we must see it as more than a propiatory sacrifice for the forgivnesss of the sins of individuals. The cross should be interpreted as an atoning even within a larger apocalyptic narrative where God destroys the powers of the old order and inaugurates the new creation (Gal 6:14-16).

3. The church needs apocalyptic eschatology for the gospel’s political critique of pagan culture. The biting edge to Christian eschatology is that Jesus is the Lord to whom every leader and government will one day bow (Phil 2:9-11). Christian apocalypticism reminds us that Caesar’s power (in whatever form it takes) might claim to be totalitarian, but in fact it is transient. Christian loyalty to the Lord means resistance to the power, politics, and pleasures of the world around us. If we train our eyes on the ultimate reversal of fortunes then we will never become accommodated or complacent with the status quo in an injust world.

4. The church needs apocalyptic eschatology to resist ecclesial complacency and triumphalism. The looming reality of a final judgment – a judgment that begins with the church – strikes a chord because it prevents the church from having grandiose concepts of its own importance (see 2 Cor 5:11–6:2). The church is a provisional servant of God, a life boat between shipwreck and salvage, and so must avoid becoming fat, sleepy, or abusive.

5. The church needs apocalyptic eschatology in order to affirm the body. Apocalyptic eschatology is in one sense dualistic between certain temporal and spatial entities (e.g., heaven vs. earth, future vs. present, etc.). However, that dualism is never annunciated as a radical rejection of the material world in toto. For apocalyptic eschatology looks forward the the Creator’s redemption and renewal of the created order and his refusal to abandon it to decay. God redeemes what he creates. That is why Christians look forward to the resurrection of the flesh and not to the immortality of the soul (1 Cor 15:35-58).

6. The church needs apocalyptic eschatology to ground its mission. The resurrection and ascension of Jesus was a sign that Israel’s restoration was indeed at hand (Acts 1:11). Yet it was also a call to engage in witness to the expanding kingdom. That witnessing inevitably brings the witnesses into conflict with a world hostile to the message of the lordship of Jesus Christ. The Holy Spirit empowers the church and forms the community as a missional organism that works out God’s purposes for redemption and judgment. Without this endtime perspective the content and urgency of the Christian mission is greatly retarded.

7. The church needs apocalyptic eschatology to speak with integrity about suffering and death. Those armed with an apocalyptic eschatology need not live in denial of the sufferings of this age and the groaning that accompany it. Cynicism nor despair takes over Christians because they know that their telos is the resurrection of their body assured by the resurrection of Jesus’ body. Christians therefore know how to grieve with hope in the face of the horror of death knowing that every tear will one day be wiped away their eyes in the new creation.

[1] Richard B. Hays, “‘Why Do You Stand Looking Up Toward Heaven?’ New Testament Eschatology at the Turn of the Millennium,” in Theology at the Turn of the Millennium, eds. L.G. Jones and J.J. Buckley (Oxford: Blackwell, 2001), 113-33.

Ian Paul on 1 Tim 2:11-14

2011-03-28T17:15:00.002-05:00

Ian Paul gives a spirited defence of an egalitarian take on 1 Tim 2:11-14 and tries to answer several pointed questions. Still not sure if the use of the article can mean that Paul refers to one "specific" birth!

Jesus and the Eucharist 1

2011-03-28T07:49:00.006-05:00

My friend and Catholic New Testament scholar Brant Pitre, for whom I have the greatest respect, has just released an interesting, accessible and important book on the Lord’s Supper (i.e. the Eucharist, for those of us low church folks!). The book is Jesus and the Jewish Roots of the Eucharist: Unlocking the Secrets of the Last Supper.

I grew up a Protestant low church Baptist so my understanding of the Lord’s Supper has always been very Zwingli-ish. In other words, I have understood the Lord’s Supper as primarily memorial. In the Lord’s Supper we “remember” and reflect on the death of Jesus. Brant’s provocative thesis in the book is that the traditional Catholic view of transubstantiation, which believes that the bread and wine in communion are transformed literally into the body and blood of Jesus, is rooted in Jesus’ own teaching and first century Jewish context. The book presses me, and all readers, to consider a fresh Jesus’ teaching on the Eucharist. However, this is more than a book about the Eucharist.

In the book, Brant shows the importance of understanding the Jewish context of Jesus. This, for me, is a lesson nearly as important as his thesis on the Eucharist. I will be reflecting on the book in a series of posts.

Brant begins in this introduction with a somewhat darkly comical but yet poignant story of a pre-martial interview with his soon-to-be wife's family's Baptist pastor over 15 years ago. Upon hearing that Brant was a Catholic, the meeting turned from a pre-marital interview into a theological interrogation. As Brant recounts it, the pastor "grilled me on every single controversial point in the Catholic faith". pulled no punches in his questions of Brant over all things Catholic: Mary, the Canon of Scripture, the Pope and the Eucharist.

On the latter topic, the Eucharist, the pastor asked/asserted "How can Catholics teach that bread and wine actually become Jesus' body and blood? Do you really believe that? It's ridiculous!" Brant reflected on the fact that in the moment he was unable to provide a biblical and theological response. He left the meeting devastated. To make matters worse, the pastor said to Brant's fiance that "he has serious concerns about yoking you with an unbeliever".

Brant reflected that this experience was a "major turning point" in his life. He shares that this event became one of the reasons he is a biblical scholar today. Brant writes, "In effect, my exchange with the pastor poured gasoline on the fire of my interest in Scripture". One of the major lessons he learned as he pursued a biblical studies in undergrad, graduate and post-graduate work was this:

If you really want to know who Jesus was and what he was saying and doing, then you need to interpret his words and deeds in their historical context. And that means become familiar with not just ancient Christianity but also with ancient Judaism.

Clement on Love

2011-03-28T07:46:00.001-05:00

1 Let him who has love in Christ keep the commandments of Christ.

2 Who can describe the |blessed¦ bond of the love of God?

3 What man is able to tell the excellence of its beauty, as it ought to be told?

4 The height to which love exalts is unspeakable.

5 Love unites us to God. Love covers a multitude of sins. Love beareth all things, is long-suffering in all things. There is nothing base, nothing arrogant in love. Love admits of no schisms: love gives rise to no seditions: love does all things in harmony. By love have all the elect of God been made perfect; without love nothing is well-pleasing to God.

6 In love has the Lord taken us to Himself. On account of the Love he bore us, Jesus Christ our Lord gave His blood for us by the will of God; His flesh for our flesh, and His soul for our souls.

(1 Ceml 49:1-6)

Restoration of Israel

2011-03-28T04:24:00.003-05:00

Over at the new Moore College blog Think Tank, my friend George Athas has an interesting post on The Restoration of Israel and whether the modern state of Israel is such a restored state. I'd also like point out that the modern state of Israel is only possible because Queensland Mounted Infantry won the battle of Bathsheba on 3 Oct 1917 at allowed the British forces to pour into Palestine. See about the battle here.

Love Wins 1

2011-03-27T18:39:00.005-05:00

Ok. So what do I think of Rob Bell’s book? What if I say I liked it? What if I say that I didn’t like it? What if I say there were parts that I absolutely agree with and other parts that I could not be more fundamentally in disagreement over? What if I came with anything less than a full condemnation of the book? What if I came down with a full commendation of the book? What if I said this was the best book I’ve read in a long time? What if I said this was the worst book I’ve ever read? Would it matter either way? Or any way?

Decisions about the book, about Rob, have been rendered and sides have been taken. Some have been generous in their disagreement, some vicious in their attack. A few have found it to be a refreshingly positive message. In writing a review of such a provocative book, one puts oneself in a position to get shot at from several directions. Well so be it.

I intend to write a series of posts reflecting on the substantive chapters of the book. My intention is that it serve as something of a “reading guide” for those who may wish to read it, but don’t feel they are in a position to think about it critically and theologically.

I don’t at all think this book is an especially important book on the subject. I think in fact that this will be little more than a “flash in the pan”. But the book has received a tremendous amount of buzz and I have found that people want to read it and talk about it. I think this is a great opportunity to take seriously the views offered here and engage them. I think this has at least two benefits: (1) the topic of heaven and hell and the salvation are extremely important--perhaps the most important topics in the Bible; and (2) such topics deserve attention and rigorous thinking. Again, this book is not important, but the topic and discussion is. To the extent that Love Wins has raised the discussion, it is beneficial.

I am going to avoid discussing or naming Rob Bell directly in these posts. I think it is more prudent to address the book and the ideas contained therein and not to discuss Rob or to make personal statements about him. There is too much of this going on in my view. Let's talk about the ideas!

I will begin in this post by listing in random order some affirmative statements about the book by way of introduction. This list will serve to show what I think about the book generally.

I don’t think this book is well written . . . surprisingly. It doesn’t seem to flow well. Sections in the chapters don’t move seamlessly. I found myself at many points asking “how did we go from there to here?” It feels very “cut and paste”.

The introduction is a confusing barrage of questions and seems to not really lead anywhere.

It took me 5 hours to read the book carefully.

I believe there are errors in the interpretation of the biblical texts in this book.

I don’t think the book roots the discussion enough in Jesus’ first century Jewish context as perhaps ironically as that may sound.

I believe the book mischaracterizes the history of the church in suggesting that the orthodox Church (Chalcedonian church [West and East]) allowed universalistic views. This of course does not include the church in the East and Far East.

I believe the book is right in the general contours of its understanding of heaven eschatologically (in the final analysis) will be a renewed earth.

I believe the book is right to describe the hellish nature of some of this world and folk’s experience of it.

I’m not sure I understand the significance of these complementary observations:
It often appears that those who talk the most about going to heaven when you die talk the least about bringing heaven to earth right now, as Jesus taught us to pray: “your will be done on earth as it is in heaven”. At the same time, it often appears that those who talk the most about relieving suffering now talk the least about heaven when we die (45).

Often the people most concerned about others going to hell when they die seem less concerned with the hells on earth right now, while the people most concerned with the hells on earth right now seem the least concerned about hell after death (79).

I believe the book does not place hardly any emphasis on final judgment (the kind of emphasis the NT puts on it—e.g. read 2 Thes 1:5-10) although talking about the need for justice and the work of God in bring about a just world in the future (37).

I agree with the opinion that God gets what he wants, but I don’t believe we know fully what God wants or exactly how he gets it.

I agree that not every person that ever lived will enjoy heaven with God one way or another.

I don’t agree that humans can exercise total freedom in their choices.

I think the presentation of Atonement in the book (ch 5), while mentioning the full range of biblical images for the significance of the work of Jesus, ends up deficient because it settles on just one.

I believe that the book presents the hope of universalism, but is not in the end universalistic.

I believe that the book teaches Christological pluralism (many ways to heaven) and not universalism.

I believe the book presents a deficient doctrine of hell by narrowing it to “the refusal to trust God’s retelling of our story” (170 [whole ch 7]).

I agree that the we are invited to "trust" God's love; to "entrust" ourselves to Him.

Jason Hood on Idolatry, Gospel, and Imitation of God

2011-03-24T16:33:00.001-05:00

Over at CT, Jason Hood has a fine piece on Idolatry, Gospel, and the Imitation of God.

Johannine Eschatology

2011-03-23T18:48:00.003-05:00

There other day I was describing the Gospel of John to my students. I described it kinda like the town of Nimbin in New South Wales (Nimbin is known for its hippie culture). Everyone there is chilled, they like to talk about love, its a reflective atmosphere, and it's very different to the hustle and bustle of city like in the Synoptics. That's an intro to my summary of Johannine eschatology:

The Fourth Gospel clearly favors the realized component of Jesus’ work. John sees in Jesus the coming of God’s revelatory light, the incarnation of divine glory, and the life of heaven made manifest (John 1:3-4, 14; 3:31). The final resurrection expected at the end of the age (see John 11:24), is burgeoning in the spiritual life that Jesus imparts to followers (John 5:25; 11:25-26). Eternal life becomes intractably bound up with, almost collapsed into, the act of knowing and believing in the God who sent Jesus (John 17:3). The Johannine Jesus can even aver that “Now is the time for judgment on this world” by virtue of the presence of the judge (John 12:31; cf. 5:22, 27, 30; 8:15-16; esp. 9:39). Still, John has not forfeited all sense of the future as he refers to a future judgment and resurrection (John 5:28-29; 6:39; 40, 44, 54; 11:23-26). The demonic “prince of this world” is still yet to be fully driven out (John 12:31). The kingdom of God is something that one must yet enter into (John 3:3-5). The Fourth Evangelist also knows that Jesus is preparing a place for where his disciples and will one day return to take them there (John 14:1-3). Putting this together, in the Gospel of John an absolute distinction between this age and the coming age has become fluid so that believers can experience real blessings, even eternal life, in the here and now. The Johannine Jesus brings a “rift” between evil and good, darkness and light, belief and unbelief, future and present. John knows of the cosmic “hour” that already has come and is yet to be, an hour that brings judgment as well as life, unity as well as division, it is the hour of salvation and reprobation that exudes form Jesus’ person (John 5:25). Contra much scholarship, John is not for the abandonment of a future apocalyptic kingdom for an existential present experience, rather, “John’s sense of time – his eschatology – is shaped by his recognition that in the coming of Jesus the light has made a decisive difference between the past and present. But John also knows that the present is the scene of conflicting claims. True life is a current reality, yet so is death; some people can now see; yet others have become blind. These truths grate against each other like a dissonant sound pressing for resolution. The Gospel assumes that there is no going back, as if Jesus never came. There can only be going forward to the point where the dissonance resolves into harmony,” and for John that harmony transpires at the future judgment.[1] John offers a summons to believe in Jesus as the light, life, and judge of the present hour and so avoid condemnation “at the last day” (John 12:44-50).

[1] Craig R. Koester, The Word of Life: A Theology of John’s Gospel (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2008), 176.

New Blog: Theology for Real Life

2011-03-23T18:46:00.001-05:00

My buddy Dr. Preston Sprinkle of Eternity Bible College has alerted me to a new blog started by the faculty of EBC called Theology for Real Life. Looks good, check it out when ya get a chance.

Martin Hengel on Unity and Diversity in the Early Church

2011-03-16T06:58:00.002-05:00

In a forthcoming memorial volume for Martin Hengel, his essay on "Confessions" is reproduced (and wonderfully translated by Daniel Johansson) and it includes this statement about the unity and diversity of the early church:

“Whether then it was I or they, so we preach and so you believed” (15:11). This succinct sentence contradicts the assumption so common today that in early Christianity there was not one fundamental confession of the faith which united all, but all kinds of kerygmas, not one Gospel, but many Christologies contradicting each other, and many churches whose teaching and living were quite disjoined, so that one must speak of a chaos at the beginning of the early Church. The Pauline letters in particular show that the opposite is true. In order to justify itself, modern theological pluralism here project itself onto early Christianity against the clear statements of the texts. There were of course – considerable – differences in the preaching of individual apostles and missionaries, even contradictions and conflicts. I just remind of the struggle at the apostolic council, the later incident at Antioch, and, what I believe, the permanent conflict between Peter and Paul. There are also, for example, considerable theological opposition between Romans and Galatians on the one hand and the Letter of James on the other. Nevertheless, all early Christian writings agree that eschatological salvation is effected through Christ, the Kyrios, his death and his resurrection. Only on this foundation, the attachment to the one Kyrios, was an agreement such as the one Paul depicts in Gal 2:1-10 at all possible, and in Gal 2:15ff. he assumes that Peter too acknowledges justification by faith alone and not through works of the law.

Reflections on Universalism

2011-03-16T05:54:00.004-05:00

It just so happens that I'm lecturing on the "scope of salvation" for Friday's systematics lecture. Here is part of the notes that I've prepared:

Calvinists like to tout themselves as holding to a form of monergism whereby God alone works salvation in the individual, while those horrid Arminians and Catholics purportedly teach a synergism of divine and human wills. The problem is that any system of theology, including Calvinism, that recognizes a tension between divine sovereignty and human responsibility is going to entertain some form of synergism. Unless humans are nothing more than puppets there is always going to be the objective work of God countenanced with the subjective response of humanity to the divine work. In the Reformed scheme human will is freed and faith is activated by the regenerating work of the Spirit. God takes the initiative, he is utterly sovereign, his purposes are assured, but I’d hardly call it mongergism in the literal sense. Truth be told, the only true monergism is universalism since God alone does everything for salvation, no response, not even faith is required, and there simply is no tension about divine sovereignty and human responsibility on the universalist scheme. Understood this way universalists are the true “Calminians,” a hybrid Calvinist-Arminian offspring, as they combine the Calvinistic view of the efficacy of God’s saving power with the Arminian view of the universal scope of God’s salvation. God’s love is universal and his power is limitless; what God desires must effectively come to pass. If his desire is that all people be saved, then all people must be saved. However, this is a jaundiced view of salvation. God produces the means of salvation (the cross and empty tomb) and also induces the prescribed response (faith and repentance). God determines the end of salvation and also the means. God’s glory is manifested in the satisfaction of his justice, the exercise of his grace, the protection of his holiness, and the effusion of his love. God gives to each as they deserve, though to some, for reasons ineffable and mysterious to us, he designs to show mercy by bestowing the gift of faith. I would add that the universal offer of the gospel does not require a universal salvation. Irenaeus believed that the incarnation was purposed to unite humankind to the Logos so that they might receive adoption. But he also believed in an eternal punishment for the wicked who failed to embrace the gospel. So there is an objective dimension to salvation, but it needs a subjective appropriation.[1] God’s communion with creation will only transpire once it is purified of the sin and evil that has entangled it, and it is believers who cling to the Logos through the Spirit, that will enter into that world.

Wrapping this topic up, part of me would like to be a universalist (I think), but the testimony of scripture and the witness of the broad Christian tradition suggests that it is not a legitimate theological option. The exegetical gymnastics used to justify universalism will not score high before a panel of exegetes. Howard Marshall rightly concludes: “The major weakness in the universalist view is thus that in attempting to explain the few text which it interprets to refer to the salvation of all people it has to offer an unconvincing reinterpretation of texts about God’s judgement and wrath and to postulate an unattested salvific action of God in the future … The New Testament does not teach nor imply universal salvation. It teaches the reality of a final judgment on the impenitent and sadly it states that some will be lost. That is why there is such an urgency to proclaim the gospel to all the world.”[2] I agree, a passion for mission will inevitably evaporate in the universalist scheme. If everyone is saved whether they know it or not, does it really matter if we make it known or not?

But there is another problem for universalism concerning justice. Is it the case that the Pol Pot’s and the Billy Graham’s, the Adolf Hitler’s and the William Wilberforce’s of world history, will share in God’s paradise with only a temporary detention for the wicked? Does the depth of depravity perpetrated against other human beings and against the infinite holiness of God not warrant a proportionate punishment? If martyrs for the faith receive the same destiny as those that murdered them, is there any point in suffering for the faith, and do martyrs really receive a reward that is different from what their murderers receive? Will God not answer their prayer and avenge their blood (Rev 6:10). In the end, I have to agree with Dale C. Allison who reflects: “I do not know what befell Mother Theresa of Calcutta when she died, nor what has become of Joseph Stalin. But the same thing cannot have come upon both. If there is any moral rhyme or reason in the universe, all human beings cannot be equally well off as soon as they breathe their last and wake again.”[3] Though heaven may be the will of God, an eternity without God is the natural will of fallen humanity. For I believe that many on the last day, though they may regret their sin and the estate it has brought them, will still loath their Judge, show contempt for the Saviour, and would prefer to reign in hell than to serve in heaven.

What is more, I would add that that announcement of judgment is something that is part of the gospel message (Rom 2:16; Acts 17:31) and judgment is partly deserved for not believing the gospel itself (Rom 10:16-18; 2 Thess 1:8; 1 Pet 4:17). For the universalist this judgment is effectively neutered, denied, or curtailed by their scheme. Let us remember that the gospel is news about destruction and salvation, it is invitation and warning, it pertains to persons lost and found, it is both gift and demand. A denial of a final separation between God and the wicked tears apart the very heart of the salvation that the gospel offers. For if we are not saved from the judgment of God, what is it that we are saved from? For the universalist the best he or she can say is that by believing in Jesus one avoids an unfortunate though entirely temporary purgatorial state that cleanses a person before entering paradise. For the universalist the gospel is news of salvation for all, not an invitation for the lost to be saved. For the universalist the good news is so good that it need not be announced for Jesus Christ and faith in him are not, never were, and never will be the necessary means of salvation. But this is not the gospel we have received in the church. The condemnation resulting from Adam’s fall can only be undone by the condemnation of sin in the flesh of the Son of God, so that the sons and daughters of Adam, through faith in the Logos, attain to reconciliation with their Creator. I might also point to the words of the Serpent in the Garden of Eden who told Eve that if she were to eat of the tree of knowledge, “You will not certainly die” (Gen 3:4). The gospel was required because the first doctrine denied by anyone was the doctrine of judgment. If a denial of judgment facilitated the Fall and necessitated the gospel, if the gospel saves believers from the judgment of God against their sin, then denying judgment can be nothing other than a denial of the gospel story. What univeralism offers is a mirage, what the gospel offers is hope.

[1] Against Heresies 1.10.1; 3.19.1; 4.37.1.

[2] Marshall, “Universal Salvation”, 73-74.

[3] Dale C. Allison, “The Problem of Gehenna,” in Resurrecting Jesus (London: T&T Clark, 2005), 99.

On-Line Lectures by Bauckham and Hurtado

2011-03-16T05:27:00.002-05:00

I've seen posted on-line lectures by Richard Bauckham on the Gospels and History and Larry Hurtado on the Resurrection and History.

Joshua Jipp Appointed to TEDS

2011-03-16T05:20:00.003-05:00

I'm proud to announce that my buddy Joshua Jipp has recently been appointed as a lecturer in New Testament at Trinity Evangelical Divinity School. I've known Josh since he was an undergrad at NWC and we met on a discussion forum about the New Perspective on Paul. Josh is finishing up his Ph.D at Emory University on Acts. He'll be a fine addition to TEDS.

HT: Ardel Caneday.

Couple of early reviews of Rob Bell's Love Wins

2011-03-15T07:23:00.003-05:00

See Tim Challies and Kevin De Young.

Rob Bell Interviews

2011-03-15T06:48:00.016-05:00

See last night's interview with Rob Bell about Love Wins.

After viewing the interview, I have this to say. It seems that Rob’s greatest concern in raising the issue about hell and salvation has come from his pastoral ministry. I believe him. Rob said in the interview that he has grown concerned from his pastoral work that the Gospel retold as it has been in effect paints God into this person with polarity disorder. On the one hand, the Gospel says, "God loves you and has a wonderful plan for your life", on the other, "if you don’t believe in him at this moment, that loving God will reek havoc on you for eternity." "If you don’t pray these words after me, you could die tonight and suffer for an eternity in hell being tortured because you rejected God’s free gift." Rob thinks this telling of the Gospel story is not at all good news because of what it presupposes about God. The God of that story is not a God who loves by any human measure, according to Rob. As I recall, Brian McClaren made nearly the same point in Generous Orthodoxy.

The understanding of the Gospel in fact is perhaps the key issue for many emerging Christians. What I took away from the interview is that it seems that the central question for Rob Bell is "what is the Gospel?"

I agree that how we as evangelical Christians understand and frame the Gospel is an important and relevant question. And I'm just post-modern enough to believe that our cultural influences can shape how we understand the Gospel such that a constant evaluation of our understanding of the Gospel is essential. As early as Paul's day, there were "culturally conditioned" alterations of the Gospel with which he had to contend (Gal 1:6-9). And while Rob’s proposal is seriously flawed and dangerous theologically, that does not take away from the truth of his pastoral observations. When the Gospel is put in these terms it can lead in fact to equally flawed and dangerous theological points of view.

So, I agree with Rob, “the Gospel is good news indeed!”. But it’s not likely for the reason Rob proposes. I don’t intend a full discussion at the moment, but after watching the interview, I think at least one thing that is missing in Rob’s proposal is that for love to win, something or someone has to lose. With biblical salvation comes judgment, as my friend Jim Hamilton in his recent book, God's Glory in Salvation through Judgment: A Biblical Theology, has eloquently made plain:

In the powerfully redemptive story that Rob told about the “Cutter” in his congregation, the men who perpetrated the abuse which led to the woman's psychological pain need to be brought to justice. At least part of the good news of the Gospel that Jesus told is that those who commit such things will meet justice if not in this life, than in the “death after death” to use a phrase from Scot McKnight in One.Life: Jesus Calls, We Follow, in which Scot has a nice short discussion of hell (160-65). A Gospel which doesn't announce justice is no Gospel.

Addendum:

Rob also appeared this morning on ABC's Good Morning America.

HT: Jameson Ross & Taylor Clausen

Triune Nature of Salvation

2011-03-09T16:59:00.002-06:00

In her cracking book book, Images of Salvation in the New Testament, Brenda Colijn notes the triune nature of salvation in these terms:

Throughout the New Testament, as in the Old, sōtēria is regarded as the work of God. It is provided by the Father, accomplished by the Son, and applied by the Spirit. The Father is the source of sōtēria; he sends the Son into the world so that it might be saved (Jn 3:17). Jesus is the mediator of sōtēria. He came to seek and save the lost (Lk 19:10), and salvation comes only through him (Acts 4:12). Jesus provides sōtēria through his healings, forgivness, his death and his life (Rom 5:10). The power of sōtēria is the power of his resurrection (1 Pet 3:21; cf. Rom 1:4). The Holy Spirit makes sōtēria actual in the lives of believers by setting them apart for God and making them holy so that they can share in the glory of Christ (2 Thess 2:13). [p. 137].

Ambassadors of Reconciliation

2011-03-09T05:31:00.000-06:00

One of the upshots of reconciliation is that Christians preach a message of reconciliation to God, but they can also model reconciliation in a community context. For Jesus, being reconciled to a brother was more important than offering sacrifices at the altar (Matt 5:24). The gospel is lived when Christians practice reconciliation among themselves and model it before others. The ambassadors for reconciliation have the opportunity to promote peace-making in communities rife with factions, distrust, and mutual suspicions. Because we have been comforted we can be a comfort to others (2 Cor 1:4). As John Chrysostom wrote: “If he who reconciles only is called a son of God, of what shall not he be worthy, who makes friends of those who are reconciled? Let us engage ourselves in this trade, let us make those who are enemies to each other friends, and those who are not indeed enemies, but are not friends, them let us bring together, and before all, our own selves.”

D.A. Carson on Westminster Catechism Rap

2011-03-09T05:28:00.001-06:00

Denny Burke has the audio for a rap song about the Westminster Catechism that features D.A. Carson. Very amusing. Carson has many talents, now I know that rapping down in da hood is one of them. Worth listening to for a laugh!

New Book in honor of the memory of Graham N. Stanton

2011-03-05T13:05:00.006-06:00

I want to announce a new book due out this year of which I am a co-editor.

Jesus, Matthew's Gospel and Early Christianity: Studies in Memory of Graham N. Stanton.

Here is the description:

The passing of Professor Graham Stanton, former Lady Margaret chair of divinity at Cambridge University, in 2009 marked the passing of an era in Matthean scholarship and studies of early Christianity. Stanton’s fifteen books and dozens of articles span thirty-four years and centre largely on questions pertaining to the gospel of Matthew and early Christianity. The present volume pays tribute to Stanton by engaging with the principal areas of his research and contributions: the Gospel of Matthew and Early Christianity. Contributors to the volume each engage a research question which intersects the contribution of Stanton in his various spheres of scholarly influence and enquiry. The distinguished contributors include; Richard Burridge, David Catchpole, James D.G. Dunn, Craig A. Evans, Don Hagner, Peter Head, Anders Runesson and Christopher Tuckett.

The book is in the LNTS series published by T & T Clark. See the book here.

When your wife tells you to comment about Rob Bell's new book

2011-03-05T11:20:00.011-06:00

I did not intend to weigh in on the blog-troversy about Rob Bell's new book Love Wins: A Book About Heaven, Hell, and the Fate of Every Person Who Ever Livedbeing released now by Harper One on March 15th.

But when your wife tells you to write a comment about about something you do! Karla, my lovely wife of nearly 18 years, is not one to engage in theological debate. She has been my greatest supporter through my theological education, but her eyes glaze over within a few seconds of hearing a theological or biblical debate. She's practical and no non-sense. But on the issue of heaven and hell and God's will in allowing people entrance into heaven or sending people to hell she is always frustrated. She believes the Bible, she loves God, but she hates the doctrine of hell. and she doesn't understand the God behind it. She cannot understand how God could send a person to eternal torment because they did not accept Jesus as their Lord and Savior. But she is not a universalist. She won't be. And my guess is neither is Rob.

When Karla heard about the book Rob has written she immediately wanted to watch the promo video. Not because of Rob (who the heck is Rob Bell?!!) but because the questions Rob is asking are her questions. The tensions Rob is willing to entertain in a public forum are exactly the ones she struggles with. And apparently so do thousands of other biblical evangelicals.

I have two thoughts for what its worth.

1. I think this book is important. Not because Rob will somehow set the record straight or because he has some new insight on the age old issue, or because he is in some papal position to render the final word on the issue, but because he is raising the issue for discussion. A discussion that is going on all over our country in living rooms, dorm rooms, coffee shops, driveways, bus stops, pubs and anywhere else where there are believers in Jesus who care about people.

2. I think we need to wait to read the book. There's no sense prejudging. It seems to me that what his critics are up in arms about is that he asks questions. But since when are questions out of bounds? Are there any questions that are "off limits"? I hope not. While the particular social contexts within which we are raising questions matter (e.g. church, academy, etc), the minute we put a limit on the kinds of questions we are allowed to ask, we've ceased being people of the book. We've become instead a people of dogma. For the life of me I can't figure out why John Piper would say something like "Farewell Rob Bell"? Was it because in the promo he asked "Will only a few select people make it to heaven and will billions and billions of people burn in forever hell "? Was it because he raised provocative questions that everyone is asking? Was it because he hinted at answers that press traditionally articulated answers?

Rob Bell may offer heretical views in this book, we won't know until it is read. But my suspicion--grounded as it is like everyone else's on almost no evidence--is that Rob is less a heretic and more a critic of biblical answers that don't speak in ways that make sense to people. Again my very uninformed guess (and we'll have to see if I'm a prophet or not) is that Rob will greatly nuance a traditional opinion on the matter in which he will be willing to let things that are unknowable remain so while emphasizing primary NT themes.

I suppose both sides will just have to wait an see. I will review the book when it comes out for the blog.

The meaning of "glorified" (Rom 8:30)

2011-03-03T07:18:00.002-06:00

Writing a Systematic Theology, here's my thoughts on "glorification":

According to Paul’s sequence beginning in Rom 8:29, persons were predestined in order “to be conformed to the image of his Son”. God purposes to imprint all those who belong to Christ with the image of the second Adam. As to when this occurs is debated, but the parallel language with Phil 3:21 (God “will transform our lowly bodiesso that they will be like his glorious body”) and 1 Cor 15:49 (“just as we have borne the image of the earthly man,so will webear the image of the heavenly man”) suggests that the conforming to Christ’s image is a future eschatological event. That is to say, God predestines believers to a future glory, the glory that Christ currently enjoys.[1] Consequently glory is a future hope for the believer to share in Christ’s glory (Rom 8:17; Col 1:17; 3:4; 2 Thess 2:14; 2 Tim 2:10; Tit 2:13; 1 Pet 4:13; 5:10). This meshes with the final item mentioned in Paul’s sequence in Rom 8:29-30 that those justified are also “glorified”. Too much is made of the Aorist tense form of edoxasen as if it means a completed or punctilliar event, but the main issue is the verbal aspect which is perfective and so the action is envisaged as a simple whole. Perhaps as a protreptic Aorist the point could be that those whom God justified he will also glorify. The Aorist is fitting because God has already decreed that it will take place.[2] Yet in another sense “glory” is a proleptic experience for the believer. For Paul, transformation into the glory of the Lord Jesus has already begun: “And we all, who with unveiled faces contemplatethe Lord's glory,are being transformed into his imagewith ever-increasing glory, which comes from the Lord, who is the Spirit” (2 Cor 3:18). Peter informs believers that “the Spirit of glory and of God rests on you” (1 Pet 4:14). Undoubtedly “glorification” is essentially a future hope, but it has proleptically begun through the ministry of the Holy Spirit who unites us with and patterns us after the Lord of glory. Glorification represents the culmination of salvation as the “redemption of our bodies” (Rom 8:23) and being “brought into the glorious freedom of the children of God” (Rom 8:21). If justification means being freed from the penalty of sin, if transformation means being gradually freed from the power of sin, then glorification means to be freed from the presence of sin. The future “glory” means entrance into the new creation, to dwell in God’s new world, in God’s eschatological reign, among the glorified host of God’s people.

[1] Moo, Romans, 534-35.

[2] Stanley E. Porter, Idioms of the Greek New Testament (Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1992), 37.

Jobs: NT Lecturer at Vose Seminary

2011-03-02T04:26:00.003-06:00

Vose Seminary is the Baptist Theological College of Western Australia and they are looking for a New Testament lecturer. See details here.