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August 27, 2014

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Christians Can Be Terrible–You Should Know This Going In

Head in HandsChristians can be terrible. As a reader of the New Testament, this doesn’t surprise me. One of the major premises of the Christian faith is that humans are so flawed, so broken, so rebellious, and so unable to redeem themselves that the eternal Son had to incarnate himself, live, die, and rise again in order to fix them (Romans 1-8). I suppose what does shock me is that Christians are still surprised when other Christians are terrible.

For instance, every time some news report comes out about a pastoral failure, or a fiasco in Evangelical culture, or abuse in the Church, it’s common to see Christians of various stripes updating and bewailing said fiasco. While that’s fine, and probably necessary to some degree, the one attitude I find myself chafing at rather regularly is the “I don’t know if I can call myself a Christian” anymore impulse.

It’s as if this person were introduced to Christianity by having them read bits of Acts, without reading Paul, the Gospels, or heck, even the rest of Acts. As if they were promised a Christianity with nice, cleaned up people, with perfectly cleaned up story arcs where all the sin is “back there” in the past, never to rear its ugly head, so that you don’t have the bear the ignominy of being associated with such foul stupidity and wickedness. Then when they meet real Christians–you know, the sinning kind–they suffer a sort of whiplash on contact.

Well, in order to prevent the kind of whiplash I’m talking about, I’d like to present an incomplete list of sins, wicked behaviors, or assorted troubling phenomena that the New Testament notes happening in the early years–in just 1 Corinthians alone:

  • Arguments about personality cults (ch. 1-4)
  • Lawsuits between believers (ch. 5)
  • Incest, or sexual immorality so gross that even the pagans are shocked (ch. 5-6)
  • Visiting prostitutes, or sexuality that’s basically just pagan (ch. 6)
  • Bizarre confusion about the church’s teaching on marriage and sexuality (ch. 7)
  • Confusion on gender issues in relation to culture (ch. 11)
  • Inequality and pride based on social and economic distinction (ch. 11)
  • People getting drunk at church before communion (ch. 11)
  • Gross spiritual pride related to the gifts (ch. 12-14)
  • Confusion on eschatology and core theological issues like the resurrection of Christ (ch. 15)

How about some other Pauline epistles?

  • Syncretism and mix and match spirituality (Col 1)
  • Legalism and false ascetic restrictions (Col 2; Rom 14)
  • Ethnic particularism and pride (Galatians)
  • Arguments between solid, believing Christians (Phil 4)
  • False teachers perverting doctrine and lying about godly pastors (2 Cor 10)
  • Free-loaders who won’t work, but leach off the community (1-2 Thes)

Honestly, we could just keep going for a while here. These are the kinds of things that the authors of the New Testament, the Apostles who regularly performed miracles and such, had to warn their congregations about.

Now, there is a real sense in which these things “don’t happen” among Christians. D.A. Carson, when talking about the statement in 1 John 3:9 “no one who is born of God will continue to sin”, told a story about an old teacher he had. The teacher would say in class, “We do not chew gum here.” Now, the force of the statement is such to say that, “as a rule, gum-chewing is forbidden and we take it seriously.” Still, he wouldn’t have said it if it weren’t for the fact that people regularly tried, and occasionally did, end up chewing gum in class.  In the same way, Christians do not, and should not sin in the various ways I listed above. At the same time, though, if Paul, or John, or Jesus, are warning about them, clearly they have happened in church. What’s more, apparently these are the kinds of warnings they expected might come in handy for future believers as well, otherwise they wouldn’t be in Scripture (1 Cor 10).

All that said, I suppose I want to say a few things.

First, yes, sin in the life of the believer is many senses shocking. It’s shocking in its flagrance. It’s shocking in its ingratitude towards the Savior. It’s shocking in its resistance to the Holy Spirit who now empowers the believer to a life of obedience. It’s shocking because sin, at core, makes no sense. Yet should it be surprising? Not to anyone who has taken the time to read the New Testament it shouldn’t be.

Second, keep in mind Jesus tends to save all sorts. He saves people from healthy family situations that predisposes them towards basic, moral, sociability that we enjoy. He also saves people out of broken social situations, drugs, prostitution. He saves them out of hyper-religious legalism. He saves them out of sexual addiction and rage. Given all the different pits Jesus manages to drag people out of, don’t be surprised to see varieties of dirt and muck still clinging to them as he sets himself to the slow task of cleaning them up again.

Finally, have a care for your own pride. As Paul says,

For consider your calling, brothers: not many of you were wise according to worldly standards, not many were powerful, not many were of noble birth. But God chose what is foolish in the world to shame the wise; God chose what is weak in the world to shame the strong; God chose what is low and despised in the world, even things that are not, to bring to nothing things that are, so that no human being might boast in the presence of God. And because of him you are in Christ Jesus, who became to us wisdom from God, righteousness and sanctification and redemption, so that, as it is written, “Let the one who boasts, boast in the Lord.” (1 Corinthians 1:26-31)

Remember where you came from. You weren’t on the spiritual a-team either. You’re still not. And yet you don’t want to be ‘associated’ with those people because you’re name is such a big deal? Paul says to us here, “if your name is anything, it’s only because “in Christ” you have gained wisdom, righteousness, and so forth. It is because holy Jesus was willing to identify himself with what is low, foolish, sinful and broken”–you know, you and I. If you have any great shame, any great disgust at the sin of your fellow believer, make sure it is because you care about his name not yours.

And then praise his Name when you remember he’s willing to share it with all sorts.

Soli Deo Gloria

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March 20, 2014

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Wilson’s 3 Ways of Distorting the Bible and My 3 Options For Reading It Without Chucking It

andrew wilsonLast month Steve Chalke wrote a piece over at Christianity.com about the way we’ve been misreading Bible. It wasn’t terrible, but I definitely wasn’t a fan. Then he and my buddy Andrew Wilson had those fun debates over at Premier.TV about the Bible. As you may remember I had an opinion on one of those as well. Well, Christianity.com has just posted Andrew’s piece responding to Chalke’s on the nature of the Bible, and whether or not we can call it the Word of God. He knows the difficulties involved with that:

Most of us know what it’s like to read a section of scripture and find ourselves thinking, I wish that bit wasn’t there.

Sometimes that’s because the Bible contains puzzling details (like when people start swapping sandals in the middle of a love story, or holding each other’s thighs when they’re agreeing a deal). Sometimes it’s because we feel embarrassed about the easy confidence with which it talks about impossible things (parting the Red Sea? Really?). Sometimes it’s because we’re genuinely confused by a difficulty, either within the text (how did Judas die, again?) or outside of it (did a flood really cover the entire Earth, and if so, why isn’t there any geological evidence for it?).

And often, it’s because we simply don’t like it. It’s ancient, different, challenging, scary, radical, courageous, provocative. We live in a world where many of the things the Bible says – God made everything, human beings are responsible for the world’s problems, God chose Israel as his special people, sex is only meant for one man and one woman in marriage, Jesus is the only way to God, the wages of sin is death, God is going to judge the earth one day, and so on – are profoundly unpopular. Saying them out loud may get you labelled a bigot or an idiot; saying them on a reality TV show means either you get kicked off or the show gets cancelled.

But what can we do with those sections?

The question is: what do we do when that happens? Do we stand as judge over the Bible, and decide which bits we will accept and which bits we won’t? Or do we sit under the loving authority of God, expressed through the scriptures, and allow him to shape us, correct us and challenge us? Do we let ourselves edit the Bible, or do we let the Bible edit us?

He helpfully lists three typical distortions one can make when it comes to approaching the Bible.

  1. First, we can make the mistake of “literalism”, essentially ignoring the context and, in general, a sloppy hermeneutic so that, in a misguided attempt to accept it all as true, we accept what it isn’t saying.
  2. Second, we can make the mistake of “liberalism”, which boils down to only accepting those bits we find acceptable according to our own modern reason and sensibilities.
  3. Third, we can make the “mix and match” mistake of selectively appropriating those bits we find lovely and wonderful and chucking out the rest.

That third one is the bit that seems to resemble Chalke’s approach most, which Wilson goes on to elaborate about at length. I’d highly encourage you to read the whole thing because it’s gold.

Also, interestingly enough, I had a post in the queue about 3 options we ought to consider when approach difficult, offensive texts we run across, before concluding it’s wrong and chucking it out.

Well, before we chuck them away in disgust, I would like to suggest at least 3 possible options to consider before you come to the conclusion that the Bible is wrong on a given subject:

  1. The verses you’re reading don’t say what you think they say. Honestly, a good commentary can clear up a lot of heartache by pointing out linguistic confusions and socio-historical factors that show you’re not reading the thing properly. Read carefully. If something disturbs you, don’t just chuck the Bible away in disgust, but wrestle with it and read it charitably, like a letter from a friend that initially reads offensively. Give it the benefit of the doubt and then try to understand it. Whether it’s Sabbath sticks, or the Conquest in Joshua, or maybe even slavery in the New Testament, there are often-times contextual issues at work that need to be considered when you’re reading an ancient text.
  2. The verses say what you think they say, but the problem is not with the Bible, but your own cultural presuppositions. I mean, let’s just be honest and say, this wouldn’t be the first time you were wrong about something, right? Sometimes we don’t stop and consider the finiteness or our intellectual horizons, both at the personal or the cultural level. It should give us pause that the very texts that we appreciate most on the Bible, (equality, forgiveness, grace), are some of the most culturally-offensive in other parts of the world, while the text that give us pause (judgment, wrath), are the ones quickly accepted in other parts of the world. As Keller points out in The Reason for God, if the Bible is the transhistorical truth of God, it makes sense that it would offend and correct some part of every culture throughout history.  You may just have to consider the fact that a dusty old book might get something right that our current culture gets wrong. Humble yourself and be open to your own fallibility.
  3. The verses say what you think it says, but the application is up for grabs. The Bible very clearly condemns adultery and divorce. Nobody’s going to argue that one. There’s still a difference of opinion amongst Jesus-loving, Bible-believing Christians as to what the state should be doing about that. Should the state make/enforce adultery laws? How hard should divorce be? Should non-Christians be held to the standards of the church? These are all legitimate questions that people who agree about what the Bible says on the moral issue still can discuss. Applying the text is not always a straightforward affair. My buddy Alan Noble has some good reflections on misguided Christian appropriation of the Bible for political rhetoric over at Christ and Pop Culture that are worth considering in relation to this.

To conclude, I know it’s a lot easier to look at the Bible and take the parts you like and scrap the parts you don’t like as it fits your own experience or judgments arrived at independent of the text, or simply “read” it and try to ham-handedly apply it to our lives no matter how awkward (or possibly wrong) we are in doing so. It takes a lot more effort to wrestle with the thing, struggle, read carefully, pray, be uncomfortable, struggle again, and submit to what the Lord says. Still, this is the call. May God give us grace to read carefully and read humbly.

Soli Deo Gloria

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September 15, 2013

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Bible

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Genesis 1: Meet the Author (The Story Notes)

My church has begun a church-wide, across all departments, study through The Story, a chronological, abridged edition of the Bible that takes you through the story of Scripture from Genesis to the end of Acts in 31, novel-like chapters. That’s what I’ll be teaching through with my college student for the next 9 months or so. It’s a fun project that’s challenging me to deal with narrative sections, teach large chunks at a clip, and point my kids to Christ throughout the whole redemptive-historical storyline of the text.

That said, it seemed worth it to start posting my notes for these talks on a regular basis. It might happen every week, or not, depending on how helpful I think it is, or time constraints. My one request is that you remember these are pretty rough notes and I’m teaching my students, not a broader audience.

Well, with that intro out of the way, here’s Genesis 1.

God-creating-creatures-by-RText: Genesis 1:1-2:3

Alright,  I’d like to have some nice fluffy intro, but there is so much to say here and  I can’t, which I hate so I’ll just start in. Note right off the bat, this is a beautifully-structured passage. Read it out loud like we just did and you notice it is a carefully constructed, poetic, balanced presentation whose structure has been arranged, measured, and given a rhythm and weight to it. This is not strictly Hebrew poetry, but it’s not just prose either. You’ll notice the repetition of key words and phrases over and over again with minor variations here.

There is a careful structure here built around sevens, which I wish I could go into in detail here, but let me ask you, which word stood out the most in that passage? What dominated it? There’s a lot of repetition and rhythm, but what was the center, the core, the heart of the passage?

“God”, right? I don’t know if any of you counted, but the word “God” is repeated 35 times, a multiple of 7, the number of perfection in Scripture. So, if you weren’t sure what the passage was about, very clearly, right out the gate, you see that, while there’s a lot going on, and we’ll get to some of it, at the center of the passage. and actually, the beginning and the end, stands God.

I make this point bluntly at the beginning because we’re going through the Story of the Bible and one thing you have to get clear if you’re going to understand it is just who the main character is and what is he like. If you think Gollum is the main character of LOTR you will be quite confused and disappointed at the ending, and well, throughout the novels. Or, if you understand that Frodo is the main character, but are under the impression that he is a wizard instead of a hobbit, you’ll be confused as to why he doesn’t magic himself out of certain situations. In the same way, if you miss that God is at the center of the story, and exactly what kind of God you’re dealing with, you’ll be rather confused as you read along.

So, it matters to know that this passage, and indeed, the series as a whole, is about God. This is what we’re trying to get out of this series: a knowledge of who God is, and really of God himself. Now, this passage presents to us a bit about who God is, by showing us the big thing that God ‘does’ to get the whole story going. And it tells us some key things about him that I just want us to start off with:

1. There is one God, ruler of all. – Against the ‘gods’ of the pagans and the polytheistic world, the Hebrew Scriptures testify to one God, sovereign ruler of all. In the Ancient Near East, the dominant creation myth had two gods fighting (Marduk and Tiamat), with Marduk coming out on top, killing Tiamat and creating the world out of her dead body, and human slaves out of her blood, with a pantheon of support gods behind him. In opposition to this, Genesis gives us a picture of a single God who simply commands things into existence. There is no cosmic battle, or fight, but the simple ordering of King God’s world. The stars, the moon, the sun that your neighbors worship? Those are lamps and clocks that Yahweh hung up in the sky. He is incomparable and unique. There is nothing and no one like him.

2. He is the Creator, not the creation. – God made stuff, he is not the stuff. Unlike some strands of modern New Age thought that says that God is the universe, we see that God made the universe. It all bears his mark, but he is not contained within it. Which is why he knows it inside out and is all-powerful over it. He made time and space so he is not contained by time and space. There is no limit to him. He is present to us here and now, but is not limited to here and now.  Something else that flows from this, is that the stuff is HIS stuff. All of it. Also, the stuff is good because he made it. The world is not something to be scared of, but enjoyed as his creation. (Next week we will talk about the fall and how things go bad.)

3. God is a Speaking, Communicating God – How does God make the world? God creates all things by speaking it into existence. He is, essentially, a communicator even in the way he creates. He ‘makes common’ the quality of existence to things that don’t exist yet. This also means that he is a God who can make himself known to us. We get skeptical about this nowadays because of our smallness, and our sinfulness, which is real. We start to doubt that we could ever really know what God is like, especially since so many people have different ideas about God. All we have are guesses.

Now, that sounds humble enough at first, but it denies what we see here in the text: that if God is a God who can effectively bring the world into existence through his words, so he can make himself known to us through his words. No, we can’t figure him out on our own, but God can make himself known to us.  And, in fact, part of our being made in his Image means that we can understand him when he does (apart from sin.)

4. God is Triune – This one is really the most important and undergirds and is revealed in the others. The sovereign King God who alone exists and is not creation but speaks it into existence has revealed himself as the Triune God: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. To see this, we only get hints here in the text (The Spirit, hovering) but if you turn to John 1:1, you read “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God. All things were made through him, and without him was not any thing made that was made. (John 1:1-3, ESV)”

We see that the one God who is before all things and made all things, made it through his Word and Spirit. The fact that the world was made through the Spirit and By the Word, means that they are not the world–they are eternal God alongside the Father. See, from all of eternity, God has been Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, delighting in perfect community. This tells you something about why God created: he didn’t need us. He was perfect and complete, full of joy, love, and endless life. He was not lonely or needy. He did not make us to amuse himself or because eh needed help with things. His life is perfect apart from us. He created the world with a good purpose, though, to share himself with us.

5. God is a God of purpose and that Purpose is to Dwell With Us – To dwell with us. God created all things with a rhythm, a pattern, a meaning, an order (6 days). We saw that earlier. What I didn’t go into yet, was the two-part structure of the first 6 days of Creation. See, if you pay attention closely, you’ll see that what God does in the passage is first, create creation kingdoms (Light & Darkness, Waters & Skies, Land), and then, the next three days he creates creation kings who ‘rule’ or keep the areas (Sun & moon, Fish & birds, animals & Humans.).

More importantly, what we have to see is that the picture we’re getting is of God the King, constructing a palace, a Temple to dwell in and ‘rest’ on the ‘Sabbath’ of creation as the Creator King.  This is what anybody in the ancient Near East would have heard. At the end of those stories, the king god would always set up shop in their palace-temple and begin their rule. Here, we see the Creator King has finished establishing his kingdom and setting up his sub-rulers and so now he will dwell in his palace-temple. In this case, the whole world. (For more on this, see here.)

The idea is to dwell in the Temple of Creation with his creations. This is, in fact, why he creates us. The idea is that he wants to dwell with us to share himself with us and bless us. For us to enjoy him, know him, and enjoy the world that he made in the way that he intended us to.

That said, we are not the point of this text. We’re important. We come at the crown, we’re significant, more so than the rest of the creation, but let’s be honest, we’re still not the point. God is. We exist for God, by God, to God, in God’s Image. He makes all things and provides all things for us, but we are his. We are supporting characters.

And here’s the Problem – We tend to forget all of this. We tend to put ourselves at the center of the story, time and time again. We’ll talk about that next week in more detail when we come to the story of Adam and Eve and the fall. Still, we tend to put ourselves at the center of the story which screws with our ability to see the story for what it is. All of the problems we encounter become our problems to solve. All of the blessings in our life are our gifts to ourselves. All the purpose we have is whatever we’ve chosen for us. All of the good, the bad, the ugly, the weird, etc. is now on us or for us and to us, and the whole thing starts to lose it’s shape.

The biggest tragedy of all is that when we put ourselves at the center, we lose our ability to see GOD for who he is. It’s like losing the north star at sea, or forgetting who you’re married to, or losing equilibrium and living your life off-balance. When you lose sight of God, your life starts to lose shape.

In the Beginning –  This is what Jesus came to do: to put God back at the center of the story for us.

The true light, which gives light to everyone, was coming into the world. He was in the world, and the world was made through him, yet the world did not know him. He came to his own, and his own people did not receive him…And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we have seen his glory, glory as of the only Son from the Father, full of grace and truth…No one has ever seen God; the only God, who is at the Father’s side,he has made him known.(John 1:9-11, 14, 18 ESV)

This God makes himself known, not just in general, but in one way. It’s not just ‘god’ but the God of Jesus Christ. He is the one through whom God made the world. And what we see here in John is that his purposes for Creation are reaffirmed through the life and ministry of Jesus Christ, the incarnate Son. He came to the world he made, and although we denied him, he decided to dwell with his creation that he made.

I don’t know what you needed to hear tonight. Maybe you needed to be reminded that you don’t set the grid for your life? That you are not the one setting the agenda? Maybe you needed to remember that God is bigger than your problems? Maybe you need to remember that the God who made all things can re-create the broken pieces? Maybe you need to be reminded that God’s purpose in Christ is to dwell with you? Or maybe, just maybe, you just need to take this time to worship, praise and adore something greater than yourself.

Listen to the Spirit speaking of the Son who points us to the Father, says in his written Word. Amen.

Soli Deo Gloria

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September 5, 2013

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Bible

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It’s all the Aragorn Parts

aragonrSo, I’ve noticed an interesting trend in the way I read fantasy or sci-fi novels (aside from the fact that I have less time to read it). Whenever there is a multi-thread plotline, with the author following multiple, inter-connected story-lines, I tend to have one or two favorites that I follow very intensely, and one or two that aren’t quite as compelling.

For instance, when reading the Lord the Rings Trilogy, in the later books when the Fellowship breaks up and we split to follow the various story-lines of Frodo and Sam, and Aragorn & Co. I always found the Aragorn bits far more compelling. I’m not saying that the Frodo thread wasn’t fabulous as well, but, let’s be honest, the Dead Marshes can be a bit…well, less lively than one of Aragorn’s romps through Rohan.

Interestingly enough, I found early on that my reading habits were much the same way with Scripture. There were passages and threads that were enticing and compelling, and some that…well, while still God-breathed, seemed like he wasn’t breathing as hard.

What do I mean? Well, while the Chronicles have their moments, the Gospels capture our attention from beginning to end. Jesus’ doings and saying are never boring, or tedious, or to be suffered though in order to get to the good part. In this way, and, actually, in many others, the story of Jesus is the Aragorn bits of Scripture. The rest of it, well, I might get that they’re necessary and, yes, good, but at times I feel myself ‘getting through’ them. I’m sure I’m not alone in feeling this way.

Now, the funny thing about this is that ever since I listened to Tim Keller and Edmund Clowney’s lectures on preaching, I’ve been an advocate of a Christ-centered hermeneutic of the sort taught to us by Jesus, the disciples, the Fathers, and the Reformers, emphasizing both the redemptive-historical and typological reading of Scripture. In other words, to read and apply the text properly you have to see how this somehow this leads, points, foreshadows, or is fulfilled in Christ.

For example:

  • Adam- Jesus is the Second Adam who brings righteousness with one righteous act.
  • Abraham and Isaac- Jesus is the only Son, sacrificed by the Father for us to provide salvation.
  • Moses- Jesus is the Greater Moses who brings his people out of a greater Exodus, not from slavery to Egypt, but out of slavery to sin and death and the devil.
  • Passover Lamb- Jesus is the greater Passover Lamb whose blood was shed to cover you so that the destroyer would passover.
  • Day of Atonement- Jesus is the Great High Priest who enters once and for all to offer up sacrifices, as well as the final sacrifice offered.
  • David- Skipping ahead, Jesus is the greater Son of David, who, like David, defeats our enemies in single-combat, winning a great victory for his people.

We could go on for days here, but those are some easy and obvious ones to give you a picture what I’m talking about. If you’re looking at it from a canonical perspective, everything points to Christ, whether law, prophets, wisdom literature, or poetry.

So where am I going with all of this? Well, it struck me the other night as I was teaching my college students about this way of reading Scripture that, essentially, when read properly, it’s all the ‘Aragorn bits’. There isn’t any bit that somehow isn’t connected, or can’t be seen in light of Christ.

This is why it pays to not skim, to eventually read and study it all. Admittedly it takes a bit more work for some to see Christ in Leviticus, or a genealogy in the Chronicles. But as any mountain-climber knows, when the hard work is done, when we scale the summit of the text, the view we get of Christ is spectacular.

For those interested in learning more about how to read the Scriptures with Christ at the center I’d recommend these resources:

The Unfolding Mystery: Discovering Christ in the Old Testament by Edmund Clowney
Jesus on Every Page: 10 Simple Ways to Seek and Find Christ in the Old Testament by David P. Murray

Soli Deo Gloria

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August 6, 2013

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discipleship, ministry

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Dangerous Seminary

dangerousIn a recent series over at the Gospel Coalition, a buddy of mine wrote about how he wouldn’t trade his seminary experience for anything. It was a deeply formative experience of learning, joy, life, pain, and spiritual growth. I found myself nodding my head in agreement. I loved my years in seminary, not because they were perfect, but because in God’s purposes they were key for forming my character and ministry instincts.

That said, seminary can be a dangerous place if you don’t know what you’re getting into.

Addressing himself to pastors, seminarians, and professors within the seminary culture at large, Paul David Tripp writes of the attendant dangers when it comes to the way pastoral training is undertaken nowadays. He tells the story of a friend whose passion for gardening his roses led him to become an expert in all things concerning roses. He was technically proficient and knew all kinds of arcana when it came to the care and growth of roses. One day though, as he was working on his garden, he realized that it had been years since he’d actually taken the time to enjoy his roses without working on them. Tripp then asks:

Could it be that this is very close to what a seminary education might do to its students? Is it not possible for seminary students to become experts in a gospel that they are not being exposed and changed by? Is it not dangerous to teach students to be comfortable with the radical content of Scripture while holding it separate from their hearts and lives? Is it not dangerous for students to become comfortable with the message of the Bible while not being broken, grieved, and convicted by it? Is it not important for seminary students to be faced daily with the personal implications of the message that they’re learning to unpack and deliver to others? Is it not vital to hold before students who are investigating the theology of Christ the frequent and consistent call to life-shaping love for Christ? Could it be that many students in seminary are too academically busy to sit before the Rose of Sharon in awe, love, and worship? Could it be that in academizing the faith, we have unwittingly made the means to an end the end? Shouldn’t every Christian institution of higher learning be a warm, nurturing, Christ-centered, gospel-driven community of faith? Could it be that rather than having as our mission students who have mastered the Book, our goal should be graduating students who have been mastered by the God of the Book?

—Dangerous Calling: Confronting the Unique Challenges of Pastoral Ministry (Kindle Locations 631-640). Crossway. Kindle Edition.

I can attest that in my own years in seminary, one of the greatest challenges was to see the text as something more than a puzzle to be solved, but rather a Word to obeyed. I’d be lying if I didn’t still struggle with having a devotional life that doesn’t immediately slide into some kind of study session. Resist this at all costs.

I don’t for a minute want to discourage an future pastors or current seminarians from digging in to their time at school. What I would urge you is the heed the warning in these questions. Fight to keep a real devotional life. Do not ever see the text simply as a task to be conquered, but strive to be conquered by the text. Open your study sessions with prayer and stop in the middle to pray regularly. Do not leave seminary with a shriveled devotional life.

Pastors, do the same as you prepare for your sermons. If this didn’t happen to you in seminary, it might happen as you enter the professional life. One simple but key question to always ask yourself after all the exegetical research is done is: “How am I putting this into practice?” Not, “how can my people put this into practice?”, but “how can I be engaged with it?” Your studies of the text are not done if you have not gotten to the personal level, and eventually your preaching and pastoring, if not simply your personal holiness, will show the signs of this neglect.

If you’re a seminary prof reading this (which I’d be surprised at because there are much smarter things for you to be reading than this blog), please pastor your students. I loved that a number of my brilliant professors at seminary had also cut their teeth in the pastorate, and that even the ones who hadn’t, still encouraged us to deeper levels of discipleship, not just technical proficiency. Even if they resist you, don’t listen to them. They are the students, you are the professors: assert yourselves here. They need this and so do the congregations they will eventually pastor.

Finally, I’d encourage anybody in formal ministry, connected to it, elders, pastors, or involved parishioners to read this book. If you’re in seminary, it might help you cut off some signs of spiritual disease early. If you’re a pastor, it might save your ministry. If you’re on a search committee, it might help you know how to look for a pastor, not merely a professional. If you’re an elder, it’ll help your congregation care for the pastor you already have.

Soli Deo Gloria

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June 4, 2013

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Bible, theology

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Perfection And Incarnation (Or, Some Thoughts on Zack Hunt’s Imperfect Bible)

Insert stock Bible image here.

Insert stock Bible image here.

The law of the LORD is perfect, reviving the soul; the testimony of the LORD is sure, making wise the simple – (Psalm 19:7)

If you read this blog often, you know I don’t typically pick fights with specific bloggers, or even positions–I generally just like putting forward positive content. I certainly don’t like challenging smart guys like Zack Hunt. I mean dude’s got some theological chops, a big blog, he’s going to Yale, and is a good enough writer to score a book deal; I have a kind of ugly-but-functional blog my mom reads and a poorly-followed Twitter account. Still he wrote a piece over at Red Letter Christians on the inerrancy or rather, non-inerrancy, of the Bible that I found interesting and worth examining. Also, I was kind of bored.

His basic argument, as far as I followed it, was that the reason he believed the Bible isn’t perfect is because the Bible itself told him so. Also, nobody believed in its ‘inerrancy’ until like, 150 years ago. Or something like that.

If I had to boil down the argument into one quote, it’d probably be this chunk right here:

Do you remember the other big moment when we read about something being “God-breathed” in scripture? Sure you do. We find it in the very beginning, in Genesis chapter 2 verse 7 when God took the dust of the ground and breathed life into it to create humanity.

In that moment God breathed something into existence…..which wasn’t perfect. It couldn’t be. It wasn’t God.

Because scripture is also “God-breathed” it means it too isn’t God. Nor does it even come directly from God, but instead it passes through an intermediary. In the beginning, the intermediary between us and God was dirt. God breathed into it and the result was that we were created.

In the case of the Bible, God breathed His truth into the hearts and minds of people and the result was that the Bible was created. But like that ancient dirt that gave birth to us, the people who wrote the Bible, God’s intermediaries, weren’t perfect. Which is why Paul says “For now we see in a mirror dimly, but then face to face; now I know in part, but then I will know fully just as I also have been fully known.”

Hunt then goes on to affirm that we can basically trust the Bible because, even though Noah probably didn’t get all those animals on the boat, we can still believe what the story is trying to teach: God will take care of us in the storms. We don’t need something to be inerrant or “perfect” for it to convey truth, it just needs to be honest enough. A basically truthful message doesn’t need to keep all the details straight for it to be correct and trustworthy. That’s what faith is about–kinda like with your parents, you trust it even when you have some doubts about it. Holding out for some theoretical inerrancy that doesn’t fit the text itself isn’t faith, but a fearful struggle to control the divine.

Now, on the issue of faith and I’d simply note that Karl Barth had some different ideas than Paul Tillich which are worth considering. The historical point, I will leave to others to debate without comment as well. I think there is definitely something to the idea that testimony can be essentially reliable while a couple of minor details are crossed. I’m not saying that’s what’s happening in the Bible, but I think it’s important to affirm valid points when you see them.

On his argument about perfection I do have a few thoughts, though.

To be clear at the outset, I’m not going to argue in detail for some particular view of inerrancy or infallibility simply because, to be honest, it’s a short blog so there isn’t time. I do think it’s helpful to point out that there are varying views as to what constitutes inerrancy such as the Chicago Statement (which has multiple interpretations), Old Princetonian articulations, and other more rigid views. It’d probably be helpful to define it, but since Hunt doesn’t and it won’t affect my argument, I’ll leave it be. For the curious, whatever Kevin Vanhoozer says, I’m right around there.

What I do want is to briefly, and incompletely, examine a few of the basic components or assumptions in the argument forwarded by Hunt, in no particular order.

It’s Not God, But it is His Work

As Hunt astutely points out, the Bible is not God, but is “God-breathed” (theopneustos). So, it’s wrong to attribute to the Bible all of God’s perfections. Only God is immortal, immutable, eternal, all-powerful, and so forth. The Bible is not these things and to say that it is, is a sort of idolatry that ignores the fact that it is clearly a human book that “was written by people”; humans who left their individual marks on the texts they produced.

Now, to begin, I’d just like to note that the proponents of inerrancy that I know of would easily confess this. For instance, Old Princeton theologian B.B. Warfield, truly old-school on inerrancy, makes a big deal about the way Paul’s letters bear his distinctive stamp–they have the unique marks of his very human personality, thought, and history. And yet, Warfield still affirms that they are God’s works and are to be identified with him. In other words, he ascribes to a view of dual authorship whereby, without violating creaturely freedom and contingency, God somehow brings it about that Paul writes what he wanted him to write; even though they’re human words, it doesn’t prevent them from somehow being divine ones as well. That’s why Jesus can say “it is written”, and Paul can quote the OT and say “Scripture says”, as if it were equivalent to “God says.”

Warfield writes:

When the Christian asserts his faith in the divine origin of his Bible, he does not mean to  deny that it was composed and written by men or that it was given by men to the world. He believes that the marks of its human origin are ineradicably stamped on every page of the whole volume. He means to state only that it is not merely human in its origin…

The Scriptures, in other words, are conceived by the writers of the New Testament as through and through God’s book, in every part expressive of His mind, given through men after a fashion which does no violence to their nature as men, and constitutes the book also men’s book as well as God’s, in every part expressive of the mind of its human authors.

In which case, it’s not quite as simple as distinguishing Creator from creation then, because the two are related. The integrity and characteristics of the one speaks to the ability of the other.

“God-Breathed Humans” and Types of Perfection

Hunt also points out that the other thing we read in Scripture was God-breathed were humans–and they clearly weren’t perfect, just good. Cutting off a quick objection, he says we can’t simply point to the Fall either and say, “Well, we were and then we became sinful.” The Bible only says that we were very good, and yet clearly we were capable of temptation. I mean, we’re not God, so how could we be perfect? So neither is the Bible.

Now once again, yes, humans are not perfect–certainly not as God is perfect. And yet that isn’t the end of it. You see, we are meant to be perfected in redemption, just as we were meant to be perfected in the Garden. Just as there is an eschatological dimension to our salvation now, there was one then; God had the goal of bringing his “good” creation to a point of perfection. One thing we always forget about the glory of salvation is that one day we will be made like Christ, the perfectly glorified human one, without becoming the Creator. We will be a perfectly redeemed creation. What I’m trying to say is that simply pointing out that the Bible isn’t God, doesn’t mean it can’t be perfect. It means it can’t be perfect in the way God is, but it doesn’t rule out a derivative, analogical sort of perfection–perfect for the sort of thing that it is. Eventually we will be perfect for the sorts of non-divine things we are. It seems at least possible then, for something created, like the Bible, to be perfect in it’s own particular way.

Intermediaries and Incarnation

I’ll be briefer here because this point follows after the others, but Hunt makes something of the Bible coming by way of intermediaries. Just as God used dirt to make humans and so we came out a bit dirty (not in that sense), God used dirty humans to get his message across and they wrote a “dirty”  Bible. It’s good enough, but since it is the work of a human intermediary we shouldn’t expect perfection.

Now, to my mind, it seems relevant that we believe in a Gospel that has the Incarnation right at its center. The Divine Son, takes up humanity in order to perfectly say and do what God says and does in a human way. To put it another way, the man Jesus Christ’s saying and doing is simply God saying and doing as a human. Humanity made in the Image of God, set free from sin, is apparently a fit vehicle for the perfect-but-veiled revelation of God himself in Jesus. I’ll be the first to throw up a big caution before collapsing the Creator/creature distinction, but working from the Incarnation, as unique and unrepeatable as it is, we seem to be presented with the truth that a thing’s non-divinity does not disqualify it as medium of perfect, if limited, revelation.

Now, to be sure, “perfect” does not mean “complete” or “full without remainder.” In that sense, yes, we see “through a glass darkly.” This side of the eschaton we do not know all things, nor do we know them as God does; we should not expect to. We can trust that God has perfectly told us those things we need to know now in order to know God fully then. Incidentally, to use that verse as an argument for the errancy of Scripture is as persuasive exegetically as cessationists’ appeal to it as evidence that the gifts ended when we got the Bible–which is to say, not very much at all because those verses aren’t talking about the Bible.

Again, this isn’t a full response, nor was it intended to be. I’m sure I haven’t convinced anybody as to the inerrancy, non-inerrancy, or infalliblity of the Bible. There are probably 20 different issues I could have brought up that play a role in our understanding of Scripture. I simply wanted to make a few clarifying points with respect to Divine authorship, redemption, and Incarnation that might shed some light on the possibility of the Bible’s “perfection.”

Soli Deo Gloria