In a recent post I reproduced an interview of Richard Hays. Here is a review of his latest book which is very informative on its own and whets the appetite for further investigation.

The Miracle Writer

Craig Keener: A Scholar Who Pursued the Truth of Impossible Things

by Terrell Clemmons

In his fine study of Sin: A History (Yale, 2010), Notre Dame professor of theology Gary Anderson rendered an understanding of his subject richly textured by references to the Hebrew Bible, New Testament, intertestamental literature, early rabbinical writings, and patristics. In this new book, he offers a parallel look at charity. And that’s the problem. Anderson argues in Charity that good works—and particularly the good work of giving alms—generate merit much as evil works generate damage, or debt, or some other problem in the universe. In this neatly symmetrical economy, therefore, good works serve to fill the holes or pay the debts or fix the problems generated by bad ones. And such an economy is widely approved: it’s called (although Anderson never refers to it thus) as the dharma-karma construct inherent in all Indian religions.

Anderson enjoys ranging fairly widely in his sources, but not that widely. And he earnestly wants to commend his views to Christians and Jews, and even Protestant Christians who are resistant to any talk of meritorious action. So his challenge is to square this idea of charity generating something very like a credit in a heavenly treasury with a generic Christian reliance on the atoning work of Jesus Christ and even with a Protestant appreciation of sola gratia and sola fide. So I shall respond to his effort as one such Protestant reader: initially resistant, but genuinely open also to new ideas that can be shown to have adequate scriptural backing. After all, I’m a sola scriptura person as well.

Bible-believers of all sorts can travel a long way with Anderson’s concerns, of course. The Epistle of James, yes, but also much of the gospels and epistles by the other apostles make clear that genuine faith—trust in God’s salvation to forgive, renew, rehabilitate, and mature—issues properly in appropriate actions. And high on the list of any such faithful actions would be practical care for the poor: “This is true religion” (James 1:27), as well as the passage to which Anderson himself often refers, Matthew 25: 31-46. So far, so good.

To what end, however, is all this good work aimed? Martin Luther, in his famous tract “The Freedom of a Christian,” argues that God in Christ has so abundantly blessed us that we need no longer seek our own benefit in good works. God has already bestowed upon us, is bestowing upon us, and in the world to come shall bestow upon us goods we could not possibly merit. We are free, therefore, truly to seek the good of the other—out of grateful obedience to God who commands us to love our neighbors.

To be sure, as is typical of Luther writing in the early stages of the Reformation, when his field of view was filled with the Roman Catholic Church of his day, the tract does not deal much with the rigors of sanctification that await any truly converted person. It would take prodding from Erasmus on one side and from the Radical Reformation on the other for Luther to balance out his celebration of God’s active righteousness in us with counsel about how to realize God’s healing and improving work in us toward an eternity spent in God’s holy presence—a time when it would simply no longer do to be simul justus et peccator.

Such concerns for “lived” or “actual” righteousness, however, are at the core of Old Testament religion. Within the “this-world” horizon of ancient Israel and Second Temple Judaism, good works were promised divine blessing per the Deuteronomic covenant. Anderson bores into the Hebrew Bible, yes, but especially into Apocryphal texts—Tobit above all—as well as subsequent rabbinical literature to show that charity stands as a way of investing in God’s economy. Since God stands with the poor, giving to them (with scant hope, in most cases, of ever receiving repayment) is, in truth, “lending to Yhwh.” And since Yhwh is no one’s debtor, but instead loves to bless those who bless others, almsgiving is certain to result in … well, what?

Anderson hedges here, as he sees the sources themselves to be divided. Some see a frankly commercial metaphor of cause and effect, of investment and return. (Let’s call this the “automatic version” of merit.) Others shrink back from this rather magical view of the cosmos and instead see one’s good works piling up beside God in heaven as a memorial, as a prompt for God to respond generously—albeit with no kind of compulsion upon the Almighty. (We’ll call this the “suggestive version” of merit.)

If God is, in fact, moved to respond (one way or the other), in what form does he bless? In the “this-world” setting, God heals sicknesses, provides long life, and fills that life with material goods, healthy children, and happy marriage—per Job at the beginning and end of his story. Tobit also is willing to see God’s blessing fully realized only in the welfare of Tobit’s offspring, the extension, as it were, of his life into subsequent generations.

But Christian readers also look at this question in a “world to come” horizon—as do later Jews as well. And here Anderson’s exposition becomes yet more provocative, particularly for Protestants. Rather than dealing with the common Christian folklore of good works resulting in condign acquisitions—say, you get a lovely mansion while I get a tidy hovel—Anderson turns to the question of deficits. Few of us there be who enter the life to come entirely fit for an eternity of perfect holiness. Thus there is purgatory to make us ready. Purgatory, like sanctification in this life, generally hurts. But good works, and charity in particular, are acts of faith and as such advance us toward holiness. Thus such works shorten our purgatorial stage.

Furthermore (and you kinda knew this was coming, didn’t you?), loved ones can engage in acts of charity on behalf of the dead, offering up to God their prayers and alms either in expectation that the departed will benefit thereby (the automatic version) or in hope that God will have mercy (the suggestive version). Anderson even mentions as part of this economy both medieval Jews and medieval Christians setting aside considerable amounts of their estates to endow prayers for them and almsgiving on their behalf after their deaths—particularly if they do not have kin upon whom they can rely to engage in such helpful works. So, yes, indulgences, penance, purgatory, masses for the dead—all come rushing back, even as Anderson does his utmost to keep John Tetzel out of view.

What, then, should a Protestant make of all this?

Frankly, not much. The biblical content is awfully narrow, and for the Protestant skeptic that is exactly what one would expect. Yes, Proverbs 10:2 is invoked a lot, and Anderson claims that it is among the most frequently exposited verses by the Fathers. Still, if there really is a purgatory and almsgiving really can be rendered on behalf of others, one might expect the New Testament to be more directive about such a crucial matter and the early church to have relayed to us a robust tradition. I think we Protestants have not satisfactorily answered the question of what happens to Christians who die without being fully holy. There may well be a kind of purgative/maturational experience ahead of some or even most of us after death. But to connect that straightforward extension of what we know about the process of sanctification in this life is one thing. To connect it with a quasi-material scheme of works, merits, transferable credits, and the like is quite another.

Back in the 16th century, and in every century since, Protestants have asked whether such a scheme is coherent. Is there in fact a parallel between sin and charity, between evil works that cause a problem to be solved and good works that solve that problem?

More particularly, Is the idea of “supererogation” coherent in a Christian view of things? If sin, as defined in the Bible, is a “missing the mark” or a “straying off the path” (to pick the two metaphors most frequent in the Old Testament), how can one “hit the mark” or “stay on the path” in a way that makes up for previous misses/missteps? What would “really hitting the mark” look like, or “really staying on the path”? From a Protestant point of view, vocational obedience is just required, and of everybody all the time. There is no way to be “extra-faithful.”

Atoning for sin is one thing. Either each of us atones for our own sin in hell, or we turn to the crucified Jesus as our substitute. That makes clear enough sense. But sanctification is not about building up as a parallel to sin tearing down except in the most basic of metaphors (as in “edification” or the imagery of worthwhile labor versus vanity in 1 Corinthians 3). Yes, Jesus does tell us to do what we are supposed to do and we will then have “treasure in heaven” (Matt. 6:20). But we are to do what we are supposed to do, and thus receive the blessing of the God who always wants to bless and always does bless unless we impede him (or unless, in the convoluted subtlety of his plan of salvation in this topsy-turvy world, he must temporarily and uncharacteristically forbear blessing). There is nothing “extra good” we can do to make up for what we didn’t do right or did wrong before. If I am to give a certain amount of money, say, to the poor, then I am to give that money to the poor. That’s my calling. There’s no such thing—at least, not that this Protestant can see in the New Testament—as giving, say, an extra percentage to the poor to make up for my bad temper or corrupt business dealings or slothful parenting … or even previous stinginess to the needy.

The “reward” of cooperating with God in the process of sanctification is, therefore, holiness. It is acquiring the knowledge of, and taste regarding, and appetite for the good. It is enjoying thereby both greater experience of and greater appreciation for what is truly good—just as a long-disciplined musician enjoys a symphony more than does the ignorant theologian beside her, and just as an accomplished athlete sees beauty in a game that others find to be yet another dull 1-0 snorefest. Sanctification results in—indeed, consists in—improved capacities and relationships. How, therefore, can they be transferred to someone else?

The parallel between sin and charity, therefore, just doesn’t hold. Anderson gives it a masterful try, but as a responsible scholar he knows he has to mine mostly extrabiblical sources. And that sort of exercise, however interesting to a Protestant, just cannot win the day on a matter so profound.

At least, that’s what I’m counting on. Otherwise, I hope our three sons all convert to Catholicism in due course and do for me what I have, alas, failed to do for my forbears. And Gary Anderson will, I’m sure kindly, shake his head at my folly.

http://www.johnstackhouse.com/2017/06/01/treasure-in-heaven-a-review-of-gary-andersons-charity/

The goal Simon Peter wants his audience to experience is “the knowledge of Jesus Christ” (vs. 8). I mentioned previously that this is a comprehensive knowledge from building these 7 disciplines in our lives. Verse 8 also tells us the default nature of a believer is bareness without these qualities. These disciplines are exercised by faith and upon faith (vs. 5). Grace and peace will be dispensed by God as the believer deploys the disciplines in their lives (vs. 2). Also, those things necessary for life and godliness arrive with this fuller knowledge of Jesus Christ (vs. 3).

The New Covenant promised to Israel had as its most distinguishing feature that all individuals would “know” the Lord (see Jer. 31.31). This means that all under (or in) The New Covenant would “know” the Lord intimately in their hearts. The Lord would now be “in” them directing and teaching His chosen ones through a new, fuller relationship provided by Christ’s sacrifice for our sins and conquering death through the Resurrection.  The New Covenant was promised to Israel and so it was fulfilled to Israel in that Christ fulfilled the Passover and 50 days later (Pentecost) sent The Spirit fulfilling the feast of Shavuot (weeks–7 weeks and 1 day). The embryonic church was all Jewish and they were the ones with whom The New Covenant was made. They were both ethnic and spiritual Israel. The unbelievers in Israel were not included in this new entity where all would “know” The Lord.

As I mentioned, these disciplines were to be added to the faith we have received (vss. 1,5). Therefore, after believing in Christ, as an act of faith, Peter urges us to add these qualities to our lives as a foundation for fuller understanding Christ through The Spirit. These qualities will ensure that we do not quench or grieve The Spirit. Instead, these disciplines provide commodious arrangements where The Spirit may illumine our hearts about all we have in Christ.

The first of these disciplines then is virtue (some translators render arete as goodness, excellence). Generally speaking, translators have struggled to define the term as it relates to the recipients to whom Peter was writing. Originally, the term appears in ancient Greek as what characterized the Olympic contestants: physical prowess. The Greek Games eventually included poetic readings and also the term arete referred to the qualities of speaking as well. By first century usage the term is understood to connote an ‘all-around excellence.’ In vs. 3 the term is used of God in that He has called the believers either to or by this excellence (the preposition’s meaning is governed by context and so an interpretive choice needs to be made). To me it seems “to” is the better choice if the goal were seen in an idealistic sense. Christians will not be able to have complete excellence but see it as something to aspire towards. For the most part, however, either rendering of the preposition hardly makes a difference. God has inherent excellence by which He calls us or He calls us to imitation of Himself.

In connection with faith and excellence Christians are to add “knowledge” (gnosin). This “knowledge” doesn’t have to be bible knowledge necessarily since in a very real sense: ‘all truth is God’s truth.’ Many areas of study will either directly indicate God’s truth or support it indirectly. Bible knowledge is necessary regardless of what other knowledge is gained as indicated by vs. 19: “we have the prophetic word more fully confirmed, to which you will do well to pay attention as to a lamp shining in a dark place, until the day dawns and the morning star rises in your hearts.” The study of the scriptures is assumed by the writers of the N.T. since they quote so much of the previous given revelation contained in the O.T.

The next discipline is self-control which Peter connects with knowledge, and, as itself, is connected with arete. Here, I wish to point out that while the disciplines are all interconnected, they are added to our faith (vs. 5) therefore they are performed in faith. Noting their progressive nature, the disciplines seem more defined as they are listed. While excellence is added to faith, it needs some knowledge to perform cogently. Overall excellence is directed by knowledge. Knowledge though may overextend itself if not corralled by self control. Self control may give up without perseverance. Perseverance may devolve into stubbornness without true godliness refining the Christian along biblical ways. Godliness can be cold if it is merely an exercise without a horizontal dimension of brotherly kindness toward others. Brotherly affection will remain earth-bound if another quality is not present: love.

Simon Peter tells his readers that great promises toward Christians will enable them to experience the divine nature and so not be mired in things which corrupt: inordinate desire (vs. 4). These disciplines continually performed and perfected contain two promises: 1. Will never stumble into sin (vs. 10), and 2. A rich entrance (rewards) provided into the eternal kingdom (vs. 11).

Garrick V. Allen reviews Alan Mugridge’s study of early papyri to determine if aspects of the setting can found in the production of these copies. Mugridge’s work and Allen’s review highlight for the non-specialist the various areas under examination. Transmission studies have always fascinated and confirmed the historicity of the text for me.

Alan Mugridge. Copying Early Christian Texts: A Study of Scribal Practice. WUNT 362. Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2016. xx + 558 pages. ISBN: 9783161546884.

Review by Garrick V. Allen, Dublin City University.

In this valuable resource, Alan Mugridge examines the codicological features of 548 early papyri originating from before the fourth century CE in an effort to be understand the social setting of their production. He is particularly interested to ascertain whether the copyists of the early Greek papyri transmitting early Christian works were ‘Christians’ (not necessarily professional scribes), or if communities hired professional copyists outside their immediate social context. The entirety of this detailed volume is devoted to the argument that “the copyists of the majority of Christian texts were trained scribes, probably working in a variety of settings, and that there is no firm evidence that the copyists were generally Christian” (p. 2). This argument has drastic implications for how we understand the textual transmission and variation of early Christian documents.

In his first chapter (“The Papyri and their Handwriting”) Mugridge lays the foundation for this study by defining “Christian Papyri” (pp. 2–5). He also identifies a small control group of non-Christian papyri (pp. 5–6). He examines the date, languages, the writing material used in the example documents (papyrus, parchment, wood), the presence of non-Christian material among Christian documents, and the provenance of the material (heavily weighted toward Egypt). Mugridge also clears the ground by providing a taxonomy of writing activity in this period, which proves essential to his evaluation of the “professionalism” of particular manuscripts (pp. 11–22).

The second chapter (pp. 26–50) examines the features of the papyri identified in its title: “context, material, form and size.” Mugridge examines the correlation between the quality of a manuscript’s palaeographic profile and its other features. He notes that most literary or sacred works tend to have a higher quality producer and that of other types of works. Additionally, multilingual features of a papyrus indicate a learned producer, and Mugridge notes examples of Coptic glosses, Latin translations, and the presence of other languages among the Greek exemplars (e.g. Syriac, Demotic, Hebrew onomastica). However, he argues that the form of a manuscript (codex, roll, sheet, or wood) does not necessarily correlate to the quality of writing. He concludes by comparing the palaeographic profiles of his corpus against the size of the exemplars, noting that the professionalism of the copy does not necessarily have any relationship to its size. The producers of Christian papyri fit into the overall trend of the corpus, with some exceptions (p. 49).

Next, the layout of the corpus is compared to the skill of the palaeography in an effort to divine a relationship between the two (pp. 51–70). Mugridge concludes that the wide margins, narrow columns, and wide inter-columnar spaces generally correspond to well-trained hand (esp. in rolls), but that these features are not absolutely correlated to scribal expertise. The most prescient feature is the consistency of margin sizes, which closely corresponds to the quality of the hand.

The next chapter (pp. 71–91) examines the presence of reading aids in his corpus to explore the relationship between the level of professionalism in palaeography and the presence of these aids. Mugridge explores a number of paratexts, including pagination, titles and headings, section markers, sense units, stichometry, punctuation, and a series lectional notations. He concludes that there is no difference in the deployment of these paratexts in skilled or unskilled copies, and “Christian” and “non-Christian” copies.

The final substantial analytical chapter – “Writing the Text” – explores a variety of scribal habits and copying mechanics preserved in the corpus (pp. 92–143). Again, the analysis of these features is correlated to the quality of an exemplar’s palaeography to explore the relationship between “skilled” scribes and the mechanics of a manuscript’s production. Especially in his discussion of nomina sacra (pp. 121–37), Mugridge is keen to argue that the personal convictions of a scribe are not necessarily borne out by the content or features of their copy. We need not think that the copyist of a manuscript with nomina sacra was a Christian.

The last chapter of the book (pp. 144–54) is a summary of Mugridge’s conclusions, in which he argues that the level of professionalism in Christian papyri through the fourth century was relatively high and that the format and size of manuscript bearing Christian works are commensurate to the broader textual culture. From this, he concludes that “most copyists were not simply occasional writers who turned their hand to copy manuscripts of personal value to themselves or to friends” (p. 148). Early Christian works were produced like all other works in the Roman world at the time – primarily by trained professionals (p. 149). Here, Mugridge comes to his underlying contention: because it is not possible to identify the scribes of Christian works as Christian themselves, one cannot ascribe perceived theological changes in texts to scribes. Also, the use of professional scribes ensures the accuracy of copying, indicating that the early Christian papyri offer a special insight into the text of the works they contain. The analysis portion of this work is supported further by twelve tables of data, ranging from the content of the papyri to various marginal measurements to the presence of nomina sacra, that serve as the foundation for Mugridge’s conclusions (pp.  445–517).

Following the conclusion, Mugridge includes a “Catalogue of Papyri” (pp. 155–413), which is by far the most valuable aspect of the volume. For each papyrus in his corpus, he provides the date, provenance, publication information, contents, location, various catalogue numbers, a brief bibliography, locations of plates, a terse description, and comment on the hand. This vast aggregation of data should prove beneficial for future papyrological studies on early Christian artefacts. The book also necessarily includes a concordance that compares Mugridge’s numeration system to the systems of the Leuven Database of Ancient Books, Rahlfs, Turner, van Haelst, the Repertorium, and Gregory-Aland (pp. 518–36).

All in all, this thick volume represents an arduous and prodigious effort on the part of the author. Its organization, scope, and methodological tenacity are characteristics to which studies of this type should aspire. I am convinced by Mugridge’s argument that early Christian manuscripts are not of a lesser quality or different nature to exemplars that transmit non-Christian works. Careful craftsmanship and an appreciation for the norms of production are the markers of the majority of these early exemplars. It would, in fact, be strange to imagine that early Christianity possessed a textual culture devoid of any influence from contemporary practices of artefact production.

However, I am less convinced by Mugridge’s conclusion that, because these manuscripts show signs of professionalism, they were likely produced by non-Christian professionals responsible also for the production of pagan literature and documentary material. In all probability, some early Christian manuscripts were produced by those outside the community, but the evidence remains ambiguous. The material evidence that Mugridge musters fails to conclusively point in either direction. The rarity of stichometric notations would seem to indicate that very few of the remnant manuscripts, as far as we can tell, were produced for a profit. Also, while he asserts that by the fourth century many scribes were Christians, he assumes that professional scribes in an earlier period were not. He insinuates that professional copies mean that they were produced by non-Christians for profit. In fact, the underlying argument of the book seems to be that, because early Christian literature was copied by non-Christian professionals, then the reliability of the text of these exemplars is very high for two reasons: (1) professionals generally copied more accurately that non-experts, and (2) non-Christians would have no reason to alter the wording of a text for theological reasons. If this is Mugridge’s underlying argument (a sort of anti-Ehrman polemic), a textual analysis of this corpus would seem more appropriate than a material one, since the best way to observe the religious conviction of a copyist is to judge the textual changes made to a copy, especially when those changes are exegetically motivated or show a level of awareness of remote parallels. Although, even then, it is difficult to distinguish between the work of the scribe, his or her copy, and an antecedent exegete or exegetical tradition.

Garrick V. Allen
Dublin City University
garrick.allen [at] dcu.ie

In 1973 I enrolled in a bible college to study the scriptures. I was warned that this college like the many others in the Fundamentalist Orbit had strict rules on all kinds of activities such as keeping one’s dorm room clean. If the bed was not made or the room unkempt then demerits would soon be issued by the hall monitors who would check them before chapel and it would not take many infractions before expulsion from the college occurred. The exhortation from The Apostle Peter however is starkly different from the Fundamentalists both in its goal and nature. If this institution would have focused upon biblical motivations and goals then Christian training would have been better accomplished in the lives of their students. As a point of record I never received any demerits while at the college but others were actually expelled because of demerits. I, in misguided zeal, myself became a stickler of all things ethical and moral in the lives of other Christians for a period of time. I was following Christian leaders after all and these leaders had, at best, a fuzzy understanding of the Christian life as explained in the scriptures.

These qualities or disciplines that Simon Peter lists are regarded as crucially important to the early Christians in that he wants to repeatedly remind his readers of their deployment in in their lives (vss. 12-13). These followers of Christ already knew the disciplines, but Peter thought they were so important as to continually remind his audience of them and to even record them for posterity before his own prophesied death (vss. 14-15). These qualities then form very important instruction for The Church of Jesus since they were given by an Apostle of Christ, and as such have received completed instruction (John 16.12-13) and are placed first in the Universal Church (1 Cor. 12.28).

Conceptually, how should these exercises or disciplines be viewed in regard to other instructions in the bible? Firstly, in the family of God, His revelation is given to us to study and continually ponder and reflect upon for our benefit (see Dt. 6.4-9). In analyzing The Book of Proverbs it is easy to recognize the work as instruction for godly living to someone operating in the context of a redeemed community yet exposed to dangers and temptations. Solomon’s Book (divinely inspired) deals with relating horizontally among others whereas The Mosaic Law dealt primarily about the vertical relationship between a person and God (yes, of course societal and other benefits accrued from The Mosaic Law as well). The Book of Proverbs helps believers during their time on earth to navigate their way successfully. The proverbs instructs on how to build character or discipline oneself to interact with others while on sinful earth. Neither Solomon’s Proverbs or Peter’s list of disciplines promise any direct reward for keeping them. Rather they (the disciplines) function as preparatory for other blessings. This then, is quite different than working for sanctification which is almost what the Fundamentalists were doing. Sanctification is a grace by The Spirit where the believer becomes more reflective of Christ. Christ is seen in the believer by the Spirit’s presence. The degree of the Spirit’s operation in the believer, as I understand it, is directly rewarded at the judgement. The Book of Proverbs and the list of disciplines in Peter instead provide ‘a ground’ or a basis of continually living successfully on earth (2Pe.1.10: “you will never stumble”).

I propose that these qualities in 2 Peter resemble the instructions given in the O.T. book of Proverbs. In Pr. 1.2 a summary statement appears at the beginning of Solomon’s work indicating purpose: “to know wisdom and instruction” this idea of knowing (lada’at) speaks of realizing, perceiving, personal internalization according to Bruce Waltke’s study of The Book of Proverbs. This “experiencing of wisdom” that Solomon calls his listeners to in 1.2 is, in essence, what Peter says the disciplines he lists accomplishes by the term epignosko (knowledge) of Jesus Christ in 2Pet. 1.8. This is a fuller knowledge than in 1.5 since that term “knowledge” (gnosin) is distinguished as preparatory and in part toward the knowledge (epignosko) of Jesus Christ. All the elements Peter lists completes this knowledge so it seems in context that epignosko  indicates a fuller orbed  realization or an experiencing of the spiritual wisdom that is in Christ. In Col. 2.3, Paul agrees with this sentiment saying: that in Jesus are “hidden all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge.” Of course in the eternal state the redeemed will have no need for the wisdom contained in Proverbs or 2 Peter. These disciplines enable a blessed life during the evil days of this world. As redeemed Christians we are still responsible for our own fall in Adam so no room exists for complaints about our troubles now.

In part 2 I will discuss the disciplines while this post introduced their nature and how they fit in an over all conception of biblical instruction.

James Anderson points out Elliot’s observation on what often affects us unwittingly. Both the Old and New Testaments of the bible tells us to watch our words and deeds. The only real way to do this is to consciously decide to observe the command. It is another matter entirely that when we try to do right that we fail. This is because we attempted righteousness from ourselves. This is not possible without aid from God and is for a different post (I should say that this is where God often shows a person that forgiveness and reconciliation are found in Jesus whether prospective in The Old or retrospective in The New).

http://www.proginosko.com/2017/05/t-s-eliot-on-reading-for-amusement/

Some insight from Eliot’s essay “Religion and Literature” (1935):

Now what we get, as we gradually grow up and read more and more, and read a greater diversity of authors, is a variety of views of life. But what people commonly assume, I suspect, is that we gain this experience of other men’s views of life only by “improving reading.” This, it is supposed, is a reward we get by applying ourselves to Shakespeare, and Dante, and Goethe, and Emerson, and Carlyle, and dozens of other respectable writers. The rest of our reading for amusement is merely killing time. But I incline to come to the alarming conclusion that it is just the literature that we read for “amusement,” or “purely for pleasure” that may have the greatest and least suspected influence upon us. It is the literature which we read with the least effort that can have the easiest and most insidious influence upon us. Hence it is that the influence of popular novelists, and of popular plays of contemporary life, requires to be scrutinized most closely. And it is chiefly contemporary literature that the majority of people ever read in this attitude of “purely for pleasure,” of pure passivity.

The relation to my subject of what I have been saying should now be a little more apparent. Though we may read literature merely for pleasure, of “entertainment” or of “aesthetic enjoyment,” this reading never affects simply a sort of special sense: it affects our moral and religious existence. And I say that while individual modern writers of eminence can be improving, contemporary literature as a whole tends to be degrading. And that even the effect of the better writers, in an age like ours, may be degrading to some readers; for we must remember that what a writer does to people is not necessarily what he intends to do. It may be only what people are capable of having done to them. People exercise an unconscious selection in being influenced. A writer like D. H. Lawrence may be in his effect either beneficial or pernicious. I am not sure that I have not had some pernicious influence myself.

One can only imagine what Eliot would have concluded about the influence of movies, TV shows, and YouTube videos on our “moral and religious existence.”

Leonardo De Chirico is a pastor in Rome, Italy. His PhD is from Kings College London. Here he examines the use of term by Roman Catholics which now carries new meanings.

Words to those in Thessaloniki by Paul in the First Century seem appropriate:  Don’t suppress the Spirit, and don’t stifle those who have a word from the Master. On the other hand, don’t be gullible. Check out everything, and keep only what’s good. Throw out anything tainted with evil. (The Message)

http://vaticanfiles.org/2017/05/137-sanctuaries-as-places-of-evangelization-are-they-really/

Evangelization seems to be a popular word. Being traditionally part of the vocabulary used by evangelicals (often referred to as “evangelism”), it has become increasingly used by Roman Catholics too. It was Paul VI with his 1975 exhortation Evangelii Nuntiandi who introduced it in Catholic language. It was Benedict XVI who launched in 2010 a new Vatican department to support efforts towards the “new evangelization”. It is Pope Francis who regularly speaks about and practices forms of evangelization, making it a central task of the Church, as attested in his 2013 exhortation The Joy of the Gospel.

The word “evangelization” is therefore used across the spectrum of the Christian world. The question is: What is the meaning of it? How is it defined? What does it refer to? In his last motu proprio (i.e. a document signed by the Pope on his own initiative) on April 1^st, 2017, Pope Francis opens a window on what he has in mind when he speaks about evangelization. The document is entitled Sanctuarium in Ecclesia (The Sanctuary in the Church) and transfers the competences on the sanctuaries to the Pontifical Council for the Promotion of the New Evangelization, the Vatican department inaugurated by Benedict XVI. The basic idea is that sanctuaries and shrines are thought of as being primary places where evangelization takes place and must be encouraged.

Focus on Sanctuaries

What is a sanctuary? Fatima, Guadalupe, Aparecida, Lourdes … these are places where major sanctuaries attract millions of pilgrims and visitors every year. These are shrines dedicated to Mary or to a particular saint, at which special devotions are practiced and promoted in the form of rosaries, prayers, pilgrimages, contemplation of sacred images, etc. They are home to popular forms of spirituality that endure in spite of the steady decline of religious practice associated with the local parish.

Francis explains that sanctuaries are places “where popular piety has felt firsthand the mysterious presence of the Mother of God, the saints and the blessed”. In approaching and entering them, many people “deeply experience the closeness of God, the tenderness of the Virgin Mary and the company of the Saints: an experience of true spirituality that cannot be devalued”. God, the Virgin Mary, and the saints are all considered to be part of the same spiritual experience. Moreover, “many Shrines have been perceived as part of the lives of individuals, families and communities to the extent that they have shaped the identity of entire generations, even affecting the history of some nations”.

Therefore, given their inspirational and symbolic importance, “walking towards the Sanctuary and participating in the spirituality expressed by these places is already an act of evangelization that deserves to be valued for its intense pastoral value”. It follows that “the Shrines, in the variety of their forms, express an irreplaceable opportunity for evangelization in our time” and “a genuine place of evangelization”.

What Evangelization Are We Talking About?

We come back to the question previously asked. The word evangelization is used here; the practice of it is apparently endorsed. Evangelicals, for whom the word strikes deep spiritual chords, may celebrate the emphasis that the Roman Catholic Church is putting on evangelization. Yet a careful and honest reading of the document shows that the kind of “evangelization” the Pope is advocating for here is something utterly distant from the biblical meaning of the word.

According to the 1974 Lausanne Covenant, perhaps the most representative evangelical document of the 20^th century, evangelism is “the proclamation of the historical, biblical Christ as Saviour and Lord, with a view to persuading people to come to him personally and so be reconciled to God” (n. 4). Notice the different elements of this neat and clear definition: “proclamation”, “historical and biblical Christ”, “persuasion”, “personal reconciliation to God”. None of these elements can be found in what happens in and around the shrines according to the Pope. There is no proclamation of the biblical gospel, but rather contemplation of sacred images and the practice of other forms of Catholic piety. There is little focus on the biblical Saviour and Lord, but rather devotion to Mary and the saints. There is no persuasion to abandon one’s own idols to turn to the living God, but rather encouragement to cultivate deeply entrenched forms of spurious spirituality. There is little or no talk of the necessity of being reconciled to God, but rather the reinforcement of the idea that pilgrims and nations already “belong” to God.

What evangelization are we talking about? The word is the same, but the meaning is far different. In its understanding and practice of evangelization, the Roman Catholic Church legitimately brings in the whole of its theological system, which is based on a combination of the Bible and traditions, Christ and the saints, faith and folk piety, and so on. Its evangelization promotes and commends this kind of blurred and erroneous gospel. Before celebrating the fact that the Catholic Church has become seriously engaged in evangelization, one needs to understand what kind of evangelization Rome stands for.

Here are some resources holding to a young Earth. I am not sure exactly how old the Earth is but concede it may be relatively young.

http://creation.com/is-genesis-history-doco-review

The philosopher introduces a book by his Christian friend and adds his own perspective. I want to state however, other existing formulas to Gal. 3.23-5. Helm portrays the plural variously: “protection, correction or discipline, destruction.” These do not seem to align neatly. Other commentators see a singular law being the guardian of many people. Believing the latter idea, I merely quibble a minor point which in no way distracts from the whole.

http://paulhelmsdeep.blogspot.com/2017/05/mass-destruction.html

It is a great pleasure to be asked to write some words of introduction to the latest book of my long-time friend, Melvin Tinker. He has many gifts, one of which, not the least, is as an apologist for the faith. Melvin’s contemporary  style, his wide reading, his knowledge of the Bible, and his theological grasp enliven and inform all that he has to say.

The new book may be thought of as an exercise in consistency, or better in Christian integrity. None of us have any difficulty in finding warm and comforting words from the Bible: Psalm 23, or Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount, or the way Jesus welcomed children, or fed the hungry and healed the sick. But the Bible has a darker side. Not only Jesus’ kind words and deeds, but his anger, his driving men from the Temple with a hand-made whip, his pointed remarks about the division his teaching will cause, and his statements on Hell as well as on Heaven, for example.

In this book Melvin is dealing with this darker side. If the Christian teaching about the Bible being one book, with one overall theme or message, is true, we must not overlook its darker side. The  darker side of Jesus’ ministry, but also the deeds of the ‘God of the Old Testament’. In a day when the Bible is dissected by the critics, or divided by specialists, this in itself is a welcome emphasis.  The Bible is the one word of God, and its entirety is to be taken seriously and faced honestly. The darker side cannot simply be brushed under the carpet. Apart from anything else, this is simply to push the culture further away from the sunnier side of its teaching. For as was aptly said, ‘If you belittle the disease you belittle the physician.’ The Lord our God is one Lord. Integrity demands that we form a consistent judgment of both the shadows and the sunshine.

Preparatory to this, we need to be reminded of God’s character. Any attentive reader of the Bible can see that it is impossible to make sense of it without the idea that God has a mind of his own. He is not simply the rather ineffective help to satisfying the latest desires of men and women. In any case, these are constantly shifting, with an ever-enlarging portfolio of ‘rights’ to benefit from.  God is not a human agent, not even a human prime minister or president or business leader, but our Creator and Lord. He is not driven by his desires to please us, but is just and holy. Because of this his love, disclosed in his covenant with Abraham and in Jesus the Mediator of the Covenant, is not moody, but deep and unwavering, rooted in his own unchanging character, and involving the humiliation and death of God incarnate. God did not spare his Son but delivered him up for us all.

God has a plan. Much of the detail of this plan is hidden from us, but it is clear that it involves the choice of a people, the people of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, and of blessing of them through a gracious covenant. This arrangement both allows for the  people’s chastisement if and when their fidelity to the covenant falters, and their protection from the attacks of surrounding nations intent on snuffing them out. Paul, the Apostle to the Gentiles, says that in the Old Testament the people of God were under age, ‘under guardians and managers’ while being surrounded by bitter enemies. Both the correction  and protection of his people required that their God undertook acts of holy discipline and destruction.

In other words, Melvin is arguing from the Bible itself, that it is necessary to contextualize the darker side of things. These are not isolated events which show us that God, is capable of losing his temper, or of being vicious and bloodthirsty. This is not how the destruction of the Canaanites is to be seen. Rather they are instances of his protective care of his people, just as the disobedience of his own people has to be visited with the destructive-corrective action of God. These are parts of one consistent picture, what Melvin refers to as the non-partisan action of God. Not an isolated case of bullying or of loss of composure, but the understanding of God as ‘the judge of all the earth’ who ‘does what is just’. Though God is high and lifted up, nonetheless he has a deep commitment of grace and love to his unprepossessing people. The nations surrounding Israel were not pure and innocent, but idolatrous and abominable. Their actions revealed their detestable character, calling for righteous  punishment.

God does not suddenly grow up, as if the caterpillar of the Old Testament becomes the butterfly of the New Testament. However, his revelation does develop from being focussed exclusively on Israel to his concern for the international church of Jesus Christ.  This is the true, the full, ‘Israel of God. ’It is in Jesus Christ, the Suffering Servant, that we see God’s wrath and grace best refracted.

To spell out these dark themes in some detail is characteristic of the courage and commitment to the truth that is Melvin’s outlook. Some of this makes uncomfortable reading, but then Melvin’s  aim is not  to ‘speak to us smooth words….illusions’, but to be faithful to the God of Israel and the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. As he says, both Testaments portray ‘God in his holiness as implacably opposed to all sin which issues in judgment, and yet in his love he shows mercy which calls for repentance’.

Instead of trying to wax eloquent about my understanding of the empty tomb, here is Craig Evans contextualizing the scene.

https://blog.logos.com/2017/04/understanding-ancient-history-uncovers-hope-easter/

So if the body of Jesus received proper burial late Friday afternoon, why did women visit his tomb early Sunday morning? The Gospels tell that the women brought spices with them (Mark 16:1; Luke 24:1). They did this because of the Jewish custom of visiting the tomb of the recently deceased every day for one week (Josephus, Ant. 17.200; Semahot 12.1; cf. Gen 50:10; 1 Sam 31:13). This was primary burial, or the first funeral, as it were. The spices and perfume helped mask the unpleasant odor of the decomposing corpse. One year later, as prescribed by Jewish custom (b. Qiddushin 31b), family members gathered up the skeletal remains and placed them in a niche, or in an ossuary (m. Sanh. 6:6; Semahot 12.9). In the case of one executed, the remains were collected from the burial place of shame and placed in the family tomb or other place of honor (m. Sanh. 6:5–6; Semahot 13.7). The belief was that after one year of death, and the consequent wasting away of the flesh, removed the stain of guilt.

According to the Gospel of Matthew, the tomb of Jesus was sealed, which made it clear that his body could not be removed and placed elsewhere. The famous Nazareth burial inscription (SEG VIII 13) is probably relevant here. Tampering with tombs was a serious offence. If such happens, Caesar orders that charges be laid. However, visiting the tomb of an executed criminal and weeping quietly were permitted (m. Sanh. 6:6). This is what the women plan to do, so they wonder who will assist them in moving aside the heavy stone (Mark 16:3), that they might enter the tomb, anoint the body of Jesus, and silently pray and grieve.

As it turns out, all of their preparations and plans were thrown to the wind. When they arrive at the place of burial, they find that the stone has been rolled aside and there is no body of Jesus to be anointed. There will be no one week of private, quiet mourning. What has happened? It is probable that they assumed that the body of Jesus had been removed by the Jewish authorities, perhaps on the grounds that the body should have been placed in tomb previously used and designated for the burial of the executed. Perhaps the kindness of Joseph of Arimathea in making his not-yet-used tomb available for Jesus had been overriden by the high priest. It is not likely that the first thing that popped into the minds of the women was resurrection.

What persuaded the women, and soon after several of the male disciples, that Jesus had in fact been raised from the dead was not the empty tomb but actual appearances of Jesus to them. The appearances demonstrated that Jesus still lived; the empty tomb made it possible to speak of resurrection and not merely ghostly apparitions. After all, according to the Jewish understand, resurrection was the raising up of the dead from their dusty graves (as in Isa 26:19; Dan 12:2).

The appearances of Jesus, not only to disciples, supporters, and friends, but also to the indifferent and hostile, offer strong evidence that he had in fact been raised from the dead, that the Easter proclamation was not a hoax or silly urban legend. The resurrection of Jesus, which includes the story of his death and burial, is consistent with all known evidence and makes very good sense of the narratives that the four New Testament Gospels give us. It is therefore important to become familiar with the relevant background archaeology and literature.

Prof. James Anderson has conveniently listed his writings that help Christians “give reply” for the reason they hope in Christ’s work. “Apologetics” is a funny name to give to the study of defending the faith but initially, in the first Christian century, the use of that Greek word meant: “to give answer,” or “reply.” Some methods are better than others and by studying God’s word we will be  more competent. The calling, convincing, and saving of sinners is an act of God where He ordains the means as well. As Christians we are to disciple all nations until the full number of the Gentiles are brought into the fold. 

One criticism of presuppositional apologetics is that its advocates rarely if ever offer serious arguments for their distinctive claims (e.g., the claim that our ability to reason presupposes the existence of God). The criticism is overstated, but there is a measure of truth to it. I count myself a presuppositionalist, but I’ve been frustrated in the past by presuppositionalists who seem to imagine that declaring what Van Til’s “transcendental argument” purports to demonstrate is tantamount to actually making that demonstration. Simply asserting that “without God you can’t prove anything at all” or that “your very ability to reason presupposes the existence of God” does nothing whatsoever to explain why those weighty assertions should be believed. Likewise for the failure of non-Christians to answer questions asking them to account for their ability to reason, to know truths about the world, to make meaningful moral judgments, etc., in terms of their own worldviews. Questions cannot substitute for arguments, no matter how pointed those questions may be.

So it’s important for presuppositionalists to present arguments in support of their claims, and to ensure their critics are aware of those arguments so that they can be critically evaluated. In that spirit, I thought it would be useful to gather in one place my own presuppositional arguments, as well as my attempts to explain or reconstruct the arguments of other presuppositionalists:

• If Knowledge Then God (2005) — a paper in which I summarize Van Til’s transcendental argument (actually multiple versions of it) and contrast it with the theistic arguments of Alvin Plantinga.
• The Theistic Preconditions of Knowledge (2006) — an argument that human knowledge presupposes the existence of God.
• Presuppositionalism and Frame’s Epistemology (2009) — an essay on John Frame’s distinctive contributions to epistemology and apologetics, in which I sketch out (in the final section) a triperspectival presuppositional critique of naturalism.
• The Lord of Non-Contradiction (2011) — an article (co-authored with Greg Welty) which argues for the existence of God from the laws of logic.
• In Defense of the Argument for God from Logic (2013) — our responses to several critiques of the argument in the previous article.
• Antitheism Presupposes Theism (2011) — a defense of Van Til’s provocative claim, which extends the argument for God from logic into an argument for God from any belief stance (including agnosticism).
• Atheism, Amoralism, and Arationalism (2016) — the outline of an argument to the effect that atheism cannot account for objective rationality.

In addition, my book Why Should I Believe Christianity? offers a broadly presuppositional (and evidential!) case for the biblical Christian worldview.

http://www.proginosko.com/2017/04/a-selection-of-presuppositional-arguments/

“Do not suppose that I will accuse you before the Father. The one who accuses you is Moses, in whom you have placed your hope. If you believed Moses, you would believe me, because he wrote about me. But if you do not believe what Moses wrote, how will you believe my words?” (NET)

For the longest time the clause: Indeed, he wrote of Me at the end of verse 46 of John 5, I, like most other readers I consulted, believed the writing referred to the prophecies of Christ’s coming in predictive form such as Balaam’s oracles: “A Star  out of Jacob, and a Scepter shall rise out of Israel.”  However, looking at the wording of Heb. 10. 5-10, another more pervasive, albeit implicit reference is indicated.

The key verse in my contention is Heb.10:7 – Then I said, ‘Here I am: I have come—it is written of me in the scroll of the book—to do your will, O God.’ This clause connects well with the claim in John’s Gospel of Moses writing about Jesus since the content spoken about in Hebrews 10.5-10 is solely written by Moses (sacrificial system) while predictive prophecies of Christ’s advent in Moses’ writings are far rarer.

A note about the Law of Moses at this juncture is appropriate since Christians, along with society in general today, are removed both in thought and practice of animal sacrifices. First, Num. 3.10 indicates that only Aaron and his sons are to serve as priests. This is why Jesus could say in Mk. 2.26: “When Abiathar was High Priest.” Narrowly (and falsely), Abimelech was High Priest and Abiathar was a son among many other of Abimelech’s sons. Additionally, some may say that these sons of Aaron in Num. 3.10 refer to his sons after he (Aaron) has died. According to several biblical sections, the living sons of Aaron seemed to perform the High Priestly work while Aaron was living. Therefore, it seems best to regard all of The High Priest’s sons as alternate High Priests. This reality seems implicit since any number of reasons could occur to render the father either unclean or possibly ill and so, a son could stand in the father’s stead to perform the yearly entrance into the most holy place on Yom Kippur. The succession of the priesthood would be the firstborn son with the other sons then relegated to other priestly duties but not as alternates which would then be inherited by the new High Priest’s sons.

The rationale of animal sacrifices is the substitution of an innocent victim in the stead of the sinner. Most Christians who I know regard the institution of these sacrifices at the Fall of Humanity in Eden. The covering of the guilty pair required animal skins, hence a sacrifice. The Mosaic Law of sacrifices greatly expanded and codified the observances to further reflect The Redeemer. So, when thinking about the “Law of Moses,” it is primarily about the law of sacrifices instead of the laws of human regulations like the Ten Commandments. The Law of Moses included both of these observances.

Returning to our text, John 5: 45-47, this section seems a discrete ‘sense unit’ where the flow is closely related in the narrative. Jesus presents His purpose in a partially veiled way: He did not come to condemn the world but to save it as He said elsewhere. The false hope of Moses’ “regulations keeping” such as the punctilious Sabbath observance by the Pharisees while they plotted murder in their heart, is what will condemn them in the end. The reason is clear: no one has or is able to keep the Mosaic regulations flawlessly except Jesus.

This is where the prescribed sacrifices for purification from sin appear in the text as a remedy for failure to perform the regulations: The “sin offering” code involved putting one’s hands on the head of a prescribed animal and confessing the sin they committed. Then the substitute victim would be slaughtered and the blood ritually splashed on the exterior of the Bronze Altar. Also, once a year The Day of Atonement purified the observant worshipers for that previous year. Thus, the real blessings of the Mosaic code was not the performance of laws tediously kept, but the laws of the sacrifices, since they were shadows of the “the good things” to come in Christ.

Since the law has only a shadow of the good things to come and not the true form of these realities, it can never, by the same sacrifices that are continually offered year after year, make perfect those who approach. Otherwise, would they not have ceased being offered, since the worshipers, cleansed once for all, would no longer have any consciousness of sin? But in these sacrifices there is a reminder of sin year after year. For it is impossible for the blood of bulls and goats to take away sins. Consequently, when Christ came into the world, he said,

“Sacrifices and offerings you have not desired, but a body you have prepared for me; in burnt offerings and sin offerings you have taken no pleasure. Then I said, ‘See, God, I have come to do your will, O God’ (in the scroll of the book it is written of me).” When he said above, “You have neither desired nor taken pleasure in sacrifices and offerings and burnt offerings and sin offerings” (these are offered according to the law), then he added, “See, I have come to do your will.” He abolishes the first in order to establish the second. And it is by God’s will that we have been sanctified through the offering of the body of Jesus Christ once for all. (Heb. 10.1-10 NRSV)

Douglas Douma reproduces Nash’s review in which he points out some items which seem ‘loose ends’ in the theology of Cornelius Van Til. Gordon Clark was the most prominent and bitterest rival to Van Til in formulating Christian thought. These two theologians’ thoughts organize into Presuppositional (Van Til) and Evidentiary (Clark) Apologetic stances.

https://douglasdouma.wordpress.com/2017/04/06/ronald-nash-on-clark-and-van-til/

No student of Christian theology and philosophy should regard his education as complete until he has carefully worked his way through at least one of Professor Van Til’s books. In this extension of his earlier Defense of the Faith, Van Til continues his attack on all systems of thought that exalt the autonomy of man at the expense of the sovereign God of the Scriptures. If God is sovereign, nothing can be above him (such as the law of logic) or can exist independently of him (such as “facts”). Human knowledge is impossible unless man’s knowledge is analogical of the divine knowledge, that is, unless man thinks God’s thoughts after him. Van Til’s purpose in this book is to show modern man the relevance of Christianity by demonstrating that only Christianity has the answer to the questions that modern thought seeks in vain.

The thesis of modern theology, philosophy, and science is that “nothing can be said conceptually about a God who is above what Kant calls the world of phenomena, the world of experience.” But, Van Til counters, if the God of Christian theism does not exist (or cannot be known), then Chance is ultimate. And if Chance is ultimate, then nothing (neither words, nor thoughts, nor events) can have any meaning. But if nothing has meaning, it is impossible to deny (or affirm) the existence of God or anything else. The effort to eliminate God turns out to be self-defeating. “If Christian theism is not true, then nothing is true…. So far as modern thought is not based upon the presupposition of the truth of Christianity it is lost in utter darkness. Christianity is the only alternative to chaos.” The “death of God” is simply the inevitable result of the elevation of autonomous man over God. It is what we should have expected all along.

The foundation of all non-Christian thought is the presupposition of human autonomy. Van Til is especially hard on non-Reformed Christians who try to support their faith by appeals to logic, to “facts,” or to probability. If God is sovereign, neither he nor his Word can be compromised by such appeals. Van Til also attacks (correctly, I think) the modern dialectical approach to Scriptures, which prides itself on its “dialogue” with modern man. The dialogue is spurious, Van Til contends, because the Christ presented by dialectical theology is a Christ that no one can know.

While Van Til devotes space to several of his critics (Floyd Hamilton and J. Oliver Buswell, Jr.), his book does not contain one reference to the man who over the years has offered the most serious objections to his position. I am referring to Van Til’s “fellow Calvinist,” Gordon Clark of Butler University. Clark continues to be concerned over the qualitative difference that exists in Van Til’s system between the divine and human knowledge. According to Van Til, God’s knowledge and man’s do not (and cannot) coincide at a single point, from which it follows that no proposition can mean the same thing to God and man. Clark’s contention is then that Van Til’s view leads to skepticism, because if God knows all truth and man’s “knowledge” does not coincide with what God knows at a single point, then man does not possess knowledge. Until Van Til answers this objection, I must agree with Clark.

I have several objections of my own, also. All Van Til’s conclusions are supposed to follow from the principles set forth in his first three chapters, but it is exactly at this point that his argument is weakest. Take, for example, his defense of the Scriptures. Like Van Til, I believe in the authority and the inspiration of the Bible. But so far as the ultimate validity of his system is concerned, everything depends on Van Til’s ability to defend the authority of the Scriptures without making any appeal to logic or to “facts.” He argues then that the authority of the Scriptures is self-attesting.

As I see it, a self-attesting truth is one that cannot be questioned. A good example of a self-attesting truth would be an analytic statement like “All bachelors are unmarried man.” No evidence can be offered that could throw the truth of this statement into questions; no evidence is even needed to support its truth. But in the case of the Scriptures, even Van Til admits that there are problems. He does not think the problems are sufficient to undermine the authority of the Bible, but the important thing here is his recognition that problems do exist. I fail to understand how a system of truth that faces problems which even Van Til admits may never be fully resolved (see page 35) can be self-attesting.

A second problem concerns Van Til’s peculiar understanding of the term fact. It is impossible, he argues, to separate a fact from its ultimate interpretation, which means God’s interpretation. I am willing to grant this, but how is a sincere disciple of Van Til supposed to know when his facts are God-interpreted? When they are consistent with the Scriptures? Hardly, for the Bible says nothing about most of the facts in question. When our interpretation coincides with God’s? Hardly, for we must never forget that there is no point of identity between the divine and human knowledge. I content then that Van Til’s use of “facts” is vacuous, since there is no way for man to know when his facts are God-interpreted.

Finally, I am most uncomfortable in the presence of Van Til’s treatment of logic, which he derides as a test of truth. Yet at the same time, he warns that we must not take the biblical teaching about both divine sovereignty and human responsibility as a contradiction. In fact, he admits on the bottom of page 38 that the presence of a logical contradiction in the Bible would be evidence against the Bible’s claim to be the Word of God. For the life of me, I cannot understand this vacillating use of logic. It looks very much as if Van Til introduces logic when it is convenient and ushers it out the back door when it is no longer needed.

I believe these problems are serious. But I do not think they detract from the importance of this book or from Van Til’s stature as one of the most important and original Christian apologists of this century.

Sometimes a question is asked and and the hearer learns items from how the question is asked or maybe the content of the question tells the one asking certain things about the questioner. For instance: a class of students may ask the lecturer questions about the lesson where the lecturer gauges the general and specific comprehension of the students. However, this is not my focus.

Language usage has fascinated me from my youngest years. I almost couldn’t help it. Whenever my parents wanted to talk among themselves something they didn’t want their children knowing, they would speak their native language, which wasn’t native to their children. Also, the language of our home was different from the surrounding culture. So, I had one language to talk with my friends and at school, another with which to converse with my sister, brothers, and parents, and one to try to figure out what was being kept from me. All languages have ways to ask questions, give commands, and make statements according to Peter Cottrell and Max Turner in Linguistic and Biblical Interpretation.

However, these authors note, about 70% of the interrogatives in the New Testament are rhetorical, and as such, they give information rather than making a quest for content. The authors give a few examples to highlight this feature: When the writer of Hebrews states: “How shall we neglect so great a salvation? (2.3)” he is not expecting his audience to formulate creative ways of neglect. Additionally, in John 7.51, Nicodemus asks his fellows at the Sanhedrin: “Does our Law judge a man without first giving him a hearing and learning what he does?” It is not that Nicodemus didn’t know the answer to his question, but to remind them of what they were ignoring.

But when the fullness of time had come, God sent his Son, born of a woman (Gal. 4.4a)

Here, Paul sets forth in a logical sense what needed to happen for the redemption of humanity. I stress this logical connection since no verbal connection exists explicitly. No argument is presented that would point to any nascent Gnosticism among the recipients as to why “born of a woman” is used if in fact Paul was combating the idea that Jesus was an unimbodied spirit. Paul’s appeal to the Galatian Christians uses theological reasoning to show the dire consequences of leaving Christ to return to human efforts such as the Jewish O.T. observances formulated in syncretism with the faith of Christ.

Exploring the clause contextually shows that The Law’s regulations functioned to enslave (v.3). Yet this Law Christ fulfilled in our stead: “born under the law, in order to redeem those who were under the law, so that we might receive adoption as children. (vss.4b-5). So we are enslaved sinners by nature and freely adopted by grace.

Thus, no explicit reason seems to exist for the clause “born of a woman” but several implicit ideas are present to suggest a connection. Previously, Paul spoke of the “Seed of Abraham” being Christ and those who belong to Christ as the resultant “seed of Abraham” (see ch. 3), this is the significant ‘one and the many’ examples of the use of “seed” in scripture. Paul clearly says “seed” is singular and the reference is Christ, then further in ch. 3 he says the resultant believers in Christ constitute also “the seed of Abraham.” This is exactly what the sentence imposed in Gen. 3. 15 does with this word “seed”: it uses it collectively and in a singular fashion at the same time. It will not do to just translate the word “offspring” and be done with it. This was the practice of some in the past which clouded the issue. The best resource to fully explain the ‘one and the many’ usages of “seed” is John Sailhamer’s Meaning of the Pentateuch.

So I have already given it away what I believe the implicit use is for the clause “born of a woman.” Since Paul has already mentioned “the Seed of Abraham” a few lines back “born of a woman” refers to the “seed of the woman.” When God called Abram, it was in light of the previously imposed sentence on the serpent, namely, the Seed of the woman would crush the head of the serpent as the final judgment. That this Seed would have its heel pierced by the snake speaks of the priestly office in dying and conquering death for the collective “seed” (humanity).

So God’s call to Abram with the promise that “in your Seed all the nations would be blessed” (Gal.3.16-modern translators have obscured the citation to “seed” in many places but in 3.16 it would be nonsensical to render it “offspring” as it defeats Paul’s usage), has as its antecedent the Gen. 3.15 passage of the “seed of the woman.” Therefore, in a compositional and logical sense, the clause “born of a woman” connects with the previous “Seed of Abraham” since that clause itself has its foundation in the promise of redemption in Gen.3.15 of that “Seed of the woman” who would vicariously die instead of us. So it is a hammer-anvil moment where a definitive moment occurs: God sent His Son, born of a woman to fulfill the crucial requirement of being the Last Adam. Hence, because of the virgin birth, Christ has no connection with Adam’s failure and becomes the Savior of the world.

Here are a few images posted on Prof. Rasmussen’s site (https://wordpress.com/read/feeds/222152/posts/1364932460). In his post, Carl Rasmussen points out the dog underneath and connects it with the account of Jesus and the Syrophonecian woman to show the typical domestic scene and the plausibility of the narrative.

These images depict idyllic moments which those, now interred, would have participated in during their earthly life. The scenes portrayed seem to render periods of the deceased while in the prime of life and not immediately before their death when they would have been enfeebled generally (This observation is not limited solely on these ancient Grecian reliefs but reflects this author’s familiarity with other Grecian, Etruscan, and Latin ossuaries and sarcophagi).

Some preliminary observations, which await confirmation, can be made from these scenes:

1.Only the men ate reclined while the woman is seated and may have served the food.

2. The servant is always younger, naked (to show no weapons are secreted by the servant while the man is prone).

3. The reclining and drinking of the man probably depicts the eventual drowsiness and resultant sleep of that activity. The woman would wait and assist with this eventuality and tuck the man in for the night.

This is a great post and shows how Jesus meets our needs in unexpected ways. We have a wonderful God.

Here is an informative snippet from Larry Hurtado:

In 1979 two seminary friends and I self-organized a tour of the seven churches of Rev. 1-3. We sort of had to ‘wing it’ in Turkey since English was hardly used in the western part. An archaeologist working at the ancient site at Sardis told us that: “it gets a bit wilder the further east you go” when we told him about being surrounded by a mob who harassed us previously. We survived, however, I got a serious bout of dysentery during our return to Greece and had to spend an extra day or two on the island of Samos for the infection to pass. We were able to go to six of the “churches” or the ruins thereof but the Laodicea area was deemed too far afield for our time frame. It was fortuitous also that we didn’t venture to ancient Laodicea since only shortly after the decision, the dysentery struck. Thankfully we made it back to Greece. So much for the personal travails, here is information about ancient Laodicea:

Laodicea is the last of the seven churches addressed in the book of Revelation (1:11; 3:14–22). In the letter there may be a number of allusions to the local setting of Laodicea: the lukewarm water…

Source: Laodicea — Menorah and Cross

All who came before me were thieves and robbers, but the sheep did not listen to them. (Jn. 10.8)

Just recently I was reading a learned scholar who struggled with the meaning of Jesus’ statement about the thieves and robbers prior to Jesus. The scholar thought Jesus might have been somehow referring to biblical writers before the time of Christ. This is not the case. If we remove the reference numbers from our versions and observe the discourse as a whole, we can see our Lord is addressing the Pharisees (see 9.40) in a parable .

The following is a reproduction of Mt. 13.10-15 (NET) and shows the rationale for the parables, namely to hide spiritual truth from the superficial and hypocrites.

Then the disciples came to him and said, “Why do you speak to them in parables?” He replied, “You have been given the opportunity to know the secrets of the kingdom of heaven, but they have not.  For whoever has will be given more, and will have an abundance. But whoever does not have, even what he has will be taken from him. For this reason I speak to them in parables: Although they see they do not see, and although they hear they do not hear nor do they understand.  And concerning them the prophecy of Isaiah is fulfilled that says:

‘You will listen carefully yet will never understand,

you will look closely yet will never comprehend.

For the heart of this people has become dull;

they are hard of hearing,

and they have shut their eyes,

so that they would not see with their eyes

and hear with their ears

and understand with their hearts

and turn, and I would heal them.

In the very next verse (Mt. 13.16) Jesus says “but your eyes are blessed, for they see” (speaking to the disciples). So Jesus knows His disciples and rejects these punctiliously observant religious leaders who were not His. Further in Matthew’s Gospel (ch.23), Jesus calls them snakes and offspring (seed) of vipers. This expression hearkens back to Gen. 3.15 where it indicates the two groups of people now inhabiting the world: the seed of the serpent and the Seed of the woman (who is Christ and they who belong to Him).

ASIDE: The One and the Many 

In biblical thought “seed” refers to a singular as well as a collective. Without going into the how or why this conception operates in this manner, perhaps it is best illustrated from an instance in scripture. There are several times this occurs in the O.T. but Paul’s explanation in Gal. 3.15-29 presents the idea the fullest. In Gal. 3.16, Paul says the seed is referencing a singular: Christ. Yet all who belong to Christ are Abraham’s seed (vs. 29). The same term is used in vss. 16 and 29 to refer to  the singular and the collective. For a full explication of the idea, please see John Sailhamer: The Meaning of the Pentateuch.

Now back to the thieves and robbers in John 10: notice that Jesus identifies these as “climbing up some other way” besides the door as the thieves and robbers in verse 1. This cannot refer to biblical writers since they were showing the true way in counter distinction to the false the prophets in their days. So in our verse 8, these same thieves and robbers appeared before Jesus was on the scene. The verb tense is present (not “were” but “are”), so the translation: “all who came before are thieves and robbers.” This use of the present tense at least identifies those living are the referents since the now departed false prophets in previous times are not now thieving and robbing. The prime candidates for the moniker would be the Pharisees before Him but it may also refer to the Herods and Herodians (who were closely connected to the Pharisees). The messianic pretensions of the Herods however is for another post.

Here is a list of things to watch out for as we try to determine meanings. Knowing more than one language helps to see the differences folks use in expressing the same idea across cultures.

From Evangel University professor Bill Griffin:

Here’s are some tell-tale signs that people who claim to have “special insight about Hebrew secrets” have no idea what they are talking about:

1. They treat Hebrew as a code to be deciphered, rather than as a language.

Ancient Hebrew was a _language_. People did not wonder about the mystical meanings of various letters when they were engaging in ordinary speech, making contracts, arguing, or trading with other people.

The Old Testament was written in Hebrew, not because the language is inherently holy, but because that’s what the people spoke! It is basically the language of Canaan, and anyone who knew Hebrew could talk with their Moabite neighbors who basically spoke a variant of the language (the difference between “Hebrew” and “Moabite” is the difference between how people speak in Iowa and Arkansas). When Moabite King Mesha had an inscription written, in which he brags about defeating Israel, he is not talking about Jesus when he exalts Chemosh over Yahweh and uses the aleph-tav in his inscription.

2. They cite Strong’s Concordance as an authoritative Hebrew resource.

Strong’s Concordance has a “dictionary” in the back which can give a little extra information about Hebrew and Greek words to the English speaker. However, it is not designed for someone who knows Hebrew, and it lacks the precision of a “real” Hebrew lexicon (that’s a fancy word for “dictionary”)–a precision which only someone trained in Hebrew can use.

3. They show you an interlinear and claim that certain words are not translated and therefore have a special meaning.

An “interlinear” is a text which has Hebrew or Greek words with English equivalents written below. Many people who use interlinears are unaware of the word order differences between Hebrew and English, and they also do not know or understand Hebrew _syntax_. (Syntax is the relationship between various words and the meanings which combinations have which might not be the same as what one would expect from individual words–context is quite important.)

Humans convey meaning by combinations of words, rather than by arbitrary definitions of individual words, and a context is needed to figure out what someone means.

For example, take the English words “put” and “up” or “down”. “Put” implies placing something somewhere, and “up” is a direction which is the opposite of down. But “put up” can mean “tolerate” or “place somewhere above”, depending upon other words. Thus “He put up with John’s speech” means he tolerated John’s speech, while “He put up a painting on a wall” means he hung a painting on a wall. “He put his cup down on the floor” (placed it on a low place) is different from “He gave John a put-down” (insulted John).

4. They assign mystical meanings to Hebrew letters.

The Hebrew alphabet is based on the Phonecian alphabet, and those letters are basically pictographs of ordinary objects. There is no spiritual significance to a house, door, throwing stick, camel, ox, or water.

5. They convert Hebrew letters to numbers and make mystical claims.

During Old Testament times, letters were not used to represent numbers. Instead, they wrote out words to represent numbers, just like we use “three”, “two thousand”, or “seventy”. The practice of (think in terms of English) having A=1, B=2, C=3 (but w/Hebrew letters) did not begin until after the Old Testament was completed.

6. They cherry-pick Hebrew words (such as names) and string them together to make an English sentence which is supposed to have spiritual significance.

Even if it was legitimate to pick a word here or there and put it together (and it is not), Hebrew word order is quite different than English word order. If you have studied _any_ human language other than English, you are aware of the differences between the order of one language and another. Biblical Hebrew likes to put verbs at the beginning of sentences, before the “whodunnit” (subject). We put the whodunnit before a verb. When people extract a bunch of Hebrew words, put them together in an English order, and then claim that God intended a particular meaning in the original Hebrew, the level of irrationality in which they are engaging and which they are promoting is difficult to quantify.

William P. Griffin, Ph.D.

For me it seems very clear exactly what the sign of circumcision meant for Paul virtually explains it in Phil. 3.3:  “For it is we who are the circumcision, we who serve God by his Spirit, who boast in Christ Jesus, and who put no confidence in the flesh— “(NIV)

Paul goes on to explain what “confidence in the flesh” means in the following verses as either being (for example-“of the tribe of Benjamin”) or, doing (“as for zeal, persecuting the church”). So, in the flesh, Paul could boast about these things from a natural, fleshly perspective.

Circumcision is however a removal of a piece of flesh and given as a sign of an inward condition as in Dt. 10.6: “circumcise your hearts, therefore, and do not be stiff necked any longer.” Dt. 30.6: “The Lord will circumcise your hearts and the hearts of your descendants, so that you may love the Lord with all your heart and with all your soul, and live.” Jer. 4.4: Circumcise yourselves to the Lord, circumcise your hearts, you people of Judah and the inhabitants of Jerusalem.” These O.T. verses were given to Jews who were physically circumcised but lacked spiritual vitality since they were uncircumcised in their heart.

Back to our verse in Phil. 3.3, Paul’s boast was in Christ and not his own doing. It was the Spirit’s ability in whom Paul relied. So it seems the sign shows grace and not self effort. This lines up to Abraham’s experience since he was called graciously and believed God and later received the sign of this righteousness in circumcision. So those who rely on the Spirit’s power  instead of fleshly efforts are the true circumcision.

For a somewhat different take on the rite, please see John Piper here: http://www.desiringgod.org/messages/how-do-circumcision-and-baptism-correspond

As Christians we are commanded to “prove all things” or, as another states: “examine everything carefully.” This, I believe, is what we find in the following analysis.

http://bnonn.com/evangelical-complementarian-leaders-mostly-just-teaching-feminism/

The evangelical crisis about gender roles is much worse than you think. I know this because discerning, biblically-grounded complementarian friends read Gospel Hope in Hookup Culture by Owen Strachan, and thought it was pretty good.

It was not pretty good. It is lightly-rebranded feminism.

Why is the Gospel Coalition sponsoring an articulation of “biblical sexuality” that is basically rebranded feminism? Why is that articulation coming from a former president of the Council for Biblical Manhood and Womanhood—an organization dedicated to correcting this sort of error? And why are discerning, biblically-grounded complementarians reading it without their bullshit detectors going off?

Because see the first sentence of this article.

Satan used just enough truth when he tempted Eve to prevent any red flags going up. The same thing is happening here. Owen’s points are just truthful enough for us to nod our heads and keep reading, instead of saying, “Wait a minute, what about…”

Let’s work through each of his four points. I’m going to start with point 2 first, because it comes logically prior to point 1—and the fact that Owen seems oblivious to this is almost certainly part of the problem:

2. Promote God-honoring romance, not sexual utilitarianism.

This is a lopsided secular caricature of what the Bible actually says about the relationship between sex and love. God designed sex to image covenant love—not romantic love. I think the ideal covenant love within marriage does involve romance, but it is the covenant that sanctifies the sex, not the romance. Romance doesn’t purify sex, and sex without romance is not dirty. Marriage purifies sex, and sex without marriage is dirty.

This Disney-chivalry notion of romance has a great deal to do with where we are today. Once romance became all that was required to legitimize sex, fornication became a matter of course.

1. Promote an ethic that focuses on the whole person, not ‘hotness.’

This is the standard feminist solution to perceived problems of objectification. The issue is not that it’s wrong, per se, but that it promotes an indirect solution to physical attraction, instead of the direct solution which the Bible explicitly advocates. What about…marriage (1 Corinthians 7:9)? If you’re going to “hook up” with someone, the way the Bible says to do it is to marry.

Here’s another way of getting at the problem: Owen is suggesting we should encourage serial fornicators to consider that God would rather they treated people as more than just objects of sexual desire. The implicit hope is that they will therefore realize that purely physical sex degrades both parties, and so stop fornicating. But that isn’t realistic, and it doesn’t represent what God would have them do anyway:

• It isn’t realistic because what will actually happen is that since their sexual urges won’t go away, they will think that God would rather they chose their sexual partners on the basis of more than just looks (see: romance sanctifies sex)—and they will keep fornicating anyway.
• It isn’t what God would have them do, because God would have them repent of their fornicating and make proper use of their sexual urges by marrying someone to have sex with.

Moreover, couching the solution in terms of the “whole person” secularizes what the Bible says about the qualities to desire in a spouse (aside from hotness): namely, virtues like fidelity, responsibility, wisdom etc. Once you’ve disconnected marriage as the proper context for sexual urges, and connected up romance instead, you naturally become quite coy about what to look for in a partner, because you’re thinking like a romcom instead of like a Christian.

3. Train men to care for women, not prey on them.

Obviously we don’t want men preying on women. But as commenters on the article asked, does Owen have any actual working knowledge of hookup culture? Like them, I doubt it. From the first-hand accounts I have read, it is the women who typically prey on the men. Indeed, it is a cliché in our culture that women are in control of sex. Men always want it; women exercise power by selectively granting it.

Owen’s point here is especially insidious because if you react against it, there’s a presumption that you are soft on rape. Well, no. I’m as hard on rape as the Bible is. But if you’re trying to offer a solution to women’s consistently and insistently treating men as sexbots, and your solution is, “teach men to behave better,” I am going to point out that you are a fool, because the problem starts with the women behaving badly. You don’t fix a leaking roof by putting a bucket under it.

4. Help students see they are not defined by their sexuality.

Yeap, once again true…except look at how Owen describes the problem:

Hookup culture is equally corrosive for women. According to Wade, “Sexy costume themes” at campus parties “reward women for revealing and provocative clothes, stratify them and put them into competition, all while reminding them that it’s their job to make parties sexy” (195). By Wade’s own testimony, the postmodern approach to sex robs women of their dignity, puts them into competition, and plunges them into unhappiness by rendering them as mere objects.

Notice the grammar. Who are the actors in this paragraph? It is not the women. The women are passive. It is the “parties” and the “postmodern approach.” Since parties and approaches are merely proxies for the real actors, the clear implication is that it is men who are doing this to women. But that is simply garbage. The entire philosophy underpinning what Owen describes is feminism: driven by women. Enabled by men, certainly—but driven by the sin of women’s envy. And in terms of the practice, if you consult first-hand sources, you will discover that again, while men often enable this behavior, it is women who eagerly jump into the most provocative outfits they can find; women who establish hierarchies and competition with each other; women who see it as their jobs to make parties sexy; women who are the first to bid men to treat them as mere objects (and, of course, the first to complain when men comply).

If I were to put my criticism another way, I’d perhaps say this: Owen claims that he is advocating for a gospel hope in a hookup culture, but he fails to actually anchor a single point he makes in the gospel. He doesn’t even anchor them securely in the facts. He mostly just regurgitates received cultural wisdom—aka feminism.

A fascinating post by Dr. Bivin reproduced on Holy Land Photos’ blog.

David N. Bivin, founder and editor–in–chief of the Jerusalem Perspective has produced a wonderful article A Farewell to the Emmaus Road. Bivin writes: The Emmaus Road narrative is the climax of Luke’s Gospel. In it, two of Jesus’ disciples encounter their resurrected Lord as they follow the road leading west from Jerusalem. Not only do […]

via The Road to Emmaus — A Farewell — HolyLandPhotos’ Blog

Louis Markos teaches English at Houston Baptist University. He also holds a distinguished chair at the school. Prof. Markos gives clear voice to as to how to communicate effectively: say what is meant in concrete and understandable terms. This is fresh air for me.

In this review he describes all the benefits of Latta’s work in combing his personal correspondences to analyze Lewis’ work.

Orwell (1903-1950) and Lewis (1898-1963) both spoke over the BBC during WWII helping their fellow Brits understand what they were fighting for. Both wrote dystopic novels–Animal Farm and 1984; That Hideous Strength–that exposed the dangers of totalitarianism from the right or left and that warned against social engineering and the loss of personal freedom. Both spoke to the common man and both deserved the title of apostle of common sense.More to the point of this review, both men were prose stylists of the highest order who equated clear writing, not only with clear thinking, but with moral clarity as well. In his seminal essay, “Politics and the English Language,” Orwell exhorts his readers to use simple, concrete language, avoiding such rhetorical pitfalls as abstract terminology, academic jargon, tired clichés, pretentious syntax, and weak, foggy euphemisms.Poor and lazy writers succumb often to these pitfalls, but so do wicked writers who manipulate language for their own nefarious ends. The political propagandist uses abstraction, jargon, and euphemism as a way of hiding his atrocities. For the Nazi or Communist ideologue, the goal of writing is not clarity but obfuscation; words are not meant to reveal goodness, truth, and beauty, but to lend an aura of respectability, or at least inevitability, to inhuman thoughts and actions that should be unthinkable.Although Corey Latta does not mention Orwell in his new book, “C. S. Lewis and the Art of Writing,” he makes it clear that Lewis approached writing with the same type of aesthetic and moral seriousness. Writers are not people who play with words, but stewards entrusted with a precious gift. Latta, an author, teacher, and public speaker who has written on Lewis, the imagination, apologetics, and literary theology, demonstrates that Lewis, from early childhood to the closing weeks of his life, identified himself primarily as a writer, one equally devoted to his own individual writing and to the community of writers that God put in his path.Latta’s contention that Lewis’s dedication to writing lies at the core of his being should come as no surprise to lovers of Lewis. And yet, no critic to date has devoted a book to the fascinating subject which Latta describes in his lengthy subtitle: What the Essayist, Poet, Novelist, Literary Critic, Apologist, Memoirist, Theologian Teaches Us about the Life and Craft of Writing.In keeping with his subtitle, Latta quotes passages from all the various genres in which Lewis wrote; however, what makes his book a treasure trove for Lewis lovers is the time Latta has spent combing through the thousands of letters Lewis wrote to achieve an admirably rounded and nuanced view of him as a writer. What emerges from Latta’s loving interaction with Lewis’s letters is the portrait of an Inkling whose veins ran with ink: “There is hardly an area of Lewis’s life untouched by writing. Every relationship. Every loss. Every fear. Every ambition. Every hope. Every disappointment” (5).Composed as it is of brief, impressionistic, kaleidoscopic chapters, C. S. Lewis and the Art of Writing is a hard book to summarize, but its mostly chronological approach draws out facets of Lewis’s character missing from most of the standard biographies:

• Lewis wrote because he had to, because he was a writer: “I am sure,” he wrote in one of his letters, “that some are born to write as trees are born to bear leaves: for these, writing is a necessary mode of their own development” (134).

• Lewis the writer possessed, as his atheist tutor Kirkpatrick pointed out in a letter to Lewis’s father, “fixity of purpose, determination of character, [and] persevering energy” (109).

• Though dedicated to his craft, Lewis was discerning enough to know when a project needed to be dropped; contrariwise, he had a long enough memory to be able to pull out an idea he had dropped decades before and bring it to completion.

• Lewis’s dutiful letter writing–much of which he dreaded–included not only personal and spiritual advice, but his reading and commenting at length, often with considerable detail, on poems, stories, and essays that had been mailed to him by friends, acquaintances, and strangers.

• Lewis’s experience and philosophy as a reader and writer are inseparable: “Each work Lewis wrote was an attempt to give the reader a new view of the world. To turn readers into witnesses of and participants in what was for Lewis a transcendent act” (76).

• Lewis downplayed the role of originality in writing, not only on aesthetic grounds, but because of his spiritual understanding of the relationship between God the Creator and the human artist: “Beauty descends from God into nature,” wrote Lewis in a letter to his longtime friend Arthur Greeves, “but there it would perish and does except when a Man appreciates it with worship and thus as it were sends it back to God: so that through his consciousness what descended ascends again and the perfect circle is made” (145).

• Lewis also downplayed originality because he believed “the writer wasn’t responsible for–or even capable of–original thought, [but] was more of a translator for pre-existent truths” (165-166); and not just any translator, but one who translated “existent ideas into accessible language, into vernacular” (166).

Most lovers of Lewis will know that Lewis’s colleagues at Oxford were highly critical of his popular and Christian works and that his dear friend J. R. R. Tolkien–whose Lord of the Rings Lewis championed–was dismissive of his Narnia books. Most will also know that Lewis’s original ambition was to be a celebrated poet, an ambition he never realized.Still, even here, Latta brings a fresh approach and new insights to the table. It was not until Lewis was able to die to his early desire for fame, not until he was able to embrace his gift for writing as an end in itself, that he was able to persevere through all setbacks and mature into a truly accomplished writer: “It’s when, Lewis believed, the writer stops seeking reputation as one who communicates great ideas and starts loving the ideas for themselves that he can actually write. It’s dying to the novelty of being a writer that frees one up to go and write. Lewis discovered this unlikely artistic version of ‘he who wants to gain his life will lose it’ by writing for himself. Without the motivation of the public’s praise, Lewis found the act of writing its own reward” (133-134).Finally, in the midst of painting his rounded portrait of Lewis the author, Latta offers plenty of sound advice on how to become a good writer. He culls this advice mostly from Lewis’s letters, particularly one he wrote to a young American girl in which he listed five rules of thumb for crafting prose. Latta sums up those five points for us–“1) make quite clear what you mean, 2) prefer the plain, 3) never use abstract nouns when concrete ones will do, 4) instead of telling us a thing, describe it, and 5) don’t use words too big for the subject” (4-5)–and then devotes a number of chapters to fleshing them out, with Lewis, of course, as his model. As an added bonus, Latta invites us to become Lewis-like writers ourselves by providing, at the end of each chapter, a series of probing questions and thought-provoking assignments.

– See more at: http://www.reformation21.org/featured/cs-lewis-and-the-art-of-writing.php#sthash.xXOmonw1.dpuf

Kevin James Bywater draws attention to a significant, I dare say definitive, report regarding sexual identity. This research is rigorous, done at publicly funded universities and institutions by leading scientists, and seeks to depoliticize the issues. If nothing else, the executive summary details the findings for the busy reader.

Sexuality and Gender – A Special Report I think this report is essential reading here at the beginning of 2017. I don’t say that lightly. Given the pressing nature of these and related subjects, and given the ongoing politicization and social threatenings, being ignorant of reigning academic, psychological, and political claims, as well as their…

via Sexuality and Gender – A Special Report — By Living Waters

A good summary post by Dr. Irons on how we should think about biblical communication. Also, throughout this series, the importance of church history is revealed. History’s use here by Dr. Irons discloses how these early Christians interpreted their native language and thus gives us valid insights to the Greek text.

Μονογενής in the Church Fathers: A Response to Kevin Giles, Part 5 — The Upper Register

Most Christians are familiar with John 3.16 which says that Jesus was “only begotten” or some versions: “unique.” So which is it, or possible is it a combination somehow of these two ideas or something else? Lee Irons engages Kevin Giles to note his disagreement with translating the Johannine term (monogenase) which only occurs 5 times in Scripture. These instances of the word however are found in direct speech from which Christians derive important conceptions about the nature of God and Jesus and their relation to each other. This is already part 4 in a series upon which I was planning to write an introduction on the first post. Oh well!

Lee Irons and Kevin Giles both believe in the Eternal Generation of The Son which formulation for some adherents hinges at least in part to ideas from the term under examination: monogenase (only begotten, unique).

Adjacent issues to the understanding of the divine relationships are both practical (complementarianism or egalitarianism-since Paul uses divine relating to teach about Christian marital relationships in 1 Cor.11.1-16) and conceptual (Functional Subordination of The Eternal Son).

Lee Irons indicates that both Wayne Grudem and Bruce Ware announced on the first day of the recent ETS meeting (Nov. 2016) that they now hold to The Eternal Generation of the Son. This conception I became convinced of a few years back and I credit Lee Irons explanation of it as what made sense to me. The Son is both eternal and generated, therefore: eternal generation.

Μονογενής in the Church Fathers: A Response to Kevin Giles, Part 4 — The Upper Register