You're Already An Idiot!

Me too

The Apostle Paul taught that the “Word of the Cross” was (is) foolishness to those who are perishing (I Cor. 1:18; see also 2:12-14). This statement, as I understand it, draws the logical implication that all Christians believe something that is and will always be illogical in the eyes of non-Christians.
As a seminarian, I have often been perplexed by teachers who confidently assert both the historicity and regenerating implications of Christ’s death and resurrection, while at the same time questioning and sometimes rejecting the historicity of miraculous Old Testament stories like the “global flood,” or “parting of the Red Sea”. When approached and asked to explain their lack of confidence in the biblical record, often the reply involves some reference to the number of scholars who don’t think it really happened, followed by a declaration that it makes Christianity “look foolish to assert such stories as historical.” The idea is… that by making Christian history more believable or reasonable, more people will believe in Jesus without having to be viewed as an idiot.
Here’s my thought… If we minimize the biblical stories of God’s mighty and miraculous deeds, how can we expect someone to accept that God is real, has a divine Son, that this Son came to the earth, lived a sinless life, died an atoning death for all of humanity, and rose from the dead. Doesn’t that seem like nonsense? I mean, either God is in the business of working miracles, or we don’t have any hope in Christ. So why do we draw conclusions like this? (My personal opinion is that scholars have caved under pressure from secular scholastic institutions, academic journal editors, and liberal peer pressure in trade for professional legitimacy). Since there is no substantiated (historical, scientific, or otherwise) argument against the old Bible stories, other than probability, I see no reason to question them. The Apostle Paul had a similar debate with some Jewish academic types… I think he had the right idea…

“Now, if Christ is preached, that He has been raised from the dead, how do some among you say that there is no resurrection of the dead? But if there is no resurrection of the dead, not even Christ has been raised; and if Christ has not been raised, then our preaching is vain, your faith also is vain.”(I Corinthians 15: 12-14 NASB)

What’s more important, a “legitimate” profession, or a legitimate faith? That is the question.

Need Help Getting Sleep At Night?

I just posted a paper I wrote last year titled, Bad Thinking: Modern Scholarship’s Neutralization of Conservative Minority Voices. Check it out if counting sheep isn't getting the job done (or if you have a bone-to-pick with the modern critical paradigm). Click the link listed under "pages".

Themelios July 2010 is availiable

Everything from a critique of Brian McLaren to a discussion on Ancient Near Eastern parallels. Check it out. Here is the link

http://thegospelcoalition.org/publications

Empty Churches with Open Arms

My family and I had the privilege of living in Amsterdam for about 5 months in 2004-05. While there, we were struck by both the post-Christian culture and the emptiness of the churches. A salient example was the Oudikirk (old church) which towers above the neon windows of the Red Light District. There it stood... a symbol of faith and holiness surrounded by prostitute windows, drug dealers, and thrill seeking tourists. A church that we learned was at one time overflowing with people and salvation...now filled only with art and spiritual emptiness.

For the last decade the debates have raged throughout American churches over issues of morality and lifestyle choice. There has been a push for the normalization of life decisions that the Bible identifies as sinful. These same decisions are no longer debated in European culture. The debate there is over and done, and the verdict is that any lifestyle chosen is okay. The result over time has been two fold; 1) churches in Europe have become more “accepting” and “supportive” of immoral lifestyle choices; and 2) the same churches, over time, have become more irrelevant and largely abandoned. Somewhere along the way people, having found the affirmation they were seeking, had no reason to remain in churches that taught that the Bible was sometimes authoritative and sometimes not. Simply put, if it wasn’t all true maybe none of it was true.

In the United States the battle rages on. Scholars and pastors behave more like teenage girls rummaging through the closet looking for what fits and gains peer approval than keepers of God’s Word. Many churches are coming to the conclusion that the more “accepting” they are of people, the more their churches will grow. They may be right in the short term. But eventually people will ask themselves why they are following a religion where many of the teachings have to be explained away, deemed as no longer culturally relevant, or obscured to a point beyond recognition in order to become acceptable to its followers. . Like the church in Europe, if the debate is won in favor of those who wish to minimize the Bible’s authority and influence, the church will be abandoned by the same.

A Most Common Question

What should I do with my life?

It’s funny throughout the years of my life and interaction with people few questions have been asked more. The question comes most commonly to us at significant moments. 

Should I marry this guy/girl? What should my major be?

And now as a church planter I get calls/emails/etc. regularly from guys wondering if they have what it takes. In, and out of, for that matter, pastor circles it is known as the question of calling. 

Should I be a church planter?
Should I pastor an existing church?

The odd part of the question for me is most folks want to be called in some mystical, miraculous way. But it doesn’t happen like that very often, at least not for me. Jesus didn’t shine the cross shaped symbol in the night sky and stand on a roof waiting for me to arrive. I didn’t flip open my Bible to II Hesitations, drop my finger on Chapter 3 verse 5 and read replant this dying church. My call came from jail. Literally. Late on a Friday night a friend called, asked me for a favor and without realizing the implications of saying yes, I accepted. The craziest part was…I wasn’t even looking for a calling. I wasn’t asking the question. All I was doing was trying to faithfully serve right where the Lord had already put me.
And that to me is the real answer to the question of calling. Are you already being faithful? If you can’t be faithful to the girl while you are dating….God doesn’t want you to get married. If you flunked out of Algebra….God isn’t calling you to be a math teacher.

If you aren’t serving with integrity and faithfulness in a local church, making disciples, gathering people who want to follow you & haven’t read your Bible in a week….God isn’t calling you to church planting.
The reason we see so many men get their calling out of the wilderness is because the Lord was teaching them that faithfulness always come before fruitfulness. Most guys need to serve right where they are first and worry about the call second. I have seen few folks through the years who were simply walking with Jesus everyday being faithful to what was in front of them who didn’t get the call when Jesus rang.
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What's the point of being a Christian?

It seems to me that we as Christians (yes, even evangelical Christians) all too often lose sight not only the point of being a Christian, but of what it means to be a Christian. There appears to be two (at least) ruts we manage to fall into on either side of the proverbial road. On the one hand is the hardcore evangelical thinking that it's all about salvation in terms of a personal relationship with Jesus Christ (I'm not saying it isn't). So in this rut the point is to get people converted, and then to begin the process of doing Christian things (usually reading the Bible, praying, worshipping, serving, and evangelizing--all good things!). On the other hand is the thinking in much of the emergent church movement in which the greatest emphases seem to vary between extravagant worship and righting social injustice (also good things!). The depth of the ruts come when, in the first, being a Christian means you experience a conversion to Christ and then set about merely doing Christian things; and in the second, when being a Christian becomes merely about your social activity and Christ becomes optional. In brief, I suppose, one could describe the ruts as the tradtional "faith" vs. "works," however each involves faith and works, but in different spheres.
Now, I have often heard that the solution to avoiding the ruts is to find a balance of each: you know, equal portions of faith and works. I'm not so sure that's been working for us. It seems that we as a people keep finding ourselves in one rut or another (or am I the only one who sees an uncanny resemblance to the emphasis on social justice today and the social gospel of the early 20th century? Or the intellectualized gospel of much Reformed theology today and Medieval scholasticism?).
Instead, I think we need to focus on the road itself to avoid the ruts. Jesus called Himself the road (well, ok, the "way"), so it seems logical to focus on Him, eh? But often focusing on Christ simply becomes learning about Jesus, or at best exploring and deepening our relationship with Him as Lord, Master, Teacher, Guide, etc. These are all legitimate expressions of our relationship with Christ, but fail to hit at the heart of what it means to be a Christian.
Our relationship with Christ as Christians is more than an external relationship. 1 Cor 6:17 says that the one who joins himself to the Lord becomes one [spirit] with Him. There is a union of the believer's spirit with the Spirit of God which creates an essential transformation in the life of the believer. A Christian is truly crucified with Christ and lives in a true (not merely symbolic) life with Christ (Gal 2:20). This is what (at least one thing) Paul means when he talks about Christians being "in Christ."
In my experience, far too many Christians are unaware that the point of being a Christian is not just to be saved from our sins, or to be with God in heaven when we die, or to have a constant companion and guide here on earth: it is to walk in communion with God through Jesus Christ by the power of the Holy Spirit. It is to experience a oneness with God in Christ that transforms us from the inside-out. This model of Christianity thus includes both ruts, but by spanning them rather than dividing time and energy between them. To view "being a Christian" as communion with God in Christ incorporates conversion, faith, and the spiritual disciplines as well as the outward expression of our union with God through acts of service, love, and justice. The danger of reducing Christianity to a dead "faith" or a Christ-less social justice is reduced, because the focus is on walking by faith through the Spirit with a living and active Lord, who leads and moves us toward loving action of others.

How Much is Sola Really Sola in Relation to Scriptura?

Sola Scriptura, well know among the other sola slogans of the Protestant Reformation, is a bit of an awkward proposition if taken completely literally. If taken in this way, the teaching might seem to imply that scripture is the exclusive material for all things Christian. To translate such a view into spirituality and theology could mean for the church that all worship should be taken directly from scriptural passages and all theological reflection should express itself in a string of scriptural quotations. Such a reductionistic and wooden view of sola scripture was in fact never embraced by Luther or Calvin, who were quite comfortable drawing on the ancient ecumenical consensus of the churches in the east and the west. They certainly disagreed on the level to which ancient traditions should be integrated into the life of the church (Luther more accepting of them than Calvin), but both were certainly not ready to start anew with only the scriptures in mind. That is what set them apart from the more radical figures of the reformation era: they were trying to reform something that already existed not strip away the greater part to restore some primitive ecclesial reality. For this reason their understanding of sola scriptura needs to be articulated very carefully.

The term sola is an adjective in Latin for: “only, single, alone, or unique.” Of these meanings I would like to suggest that “unique” captures best the thrust of Luther and Calvin’s use of the term. Scripture is a unique authority for Christians, holding the primary though not exclusive place in the life of faith. Many of the traditions passed down from the early church (e.g., the ecumenical creeds) were of enduring value for Luther and Calvin, who were attentive to the Christological and Trinitarian language of Nicaea and Chalcedon. With this in mind, Luther and Calvin were able to maintain some sense of continuity with the ancient churches while at the same time critique other historical developments in the traditions of the western church. If this element of continuity is not taken into account then the critiques remain of figures like Robert Bellarmine (1542–1621) and Matthias Scheeben (1835–1888) that Protestant biblical interpretation is susceptible to arbitrary and infinitely individualistic judgments. After all, if scripture alone as interpreted by each Christian (apart from any historical awareness of what the church has taught and lived out over time) is to result in the fullness of understanding of God’s revelation for humanity then how can one account for the multiplicity of interpretations of what the biblical texts mean? It seems to me that one needs to admit that the consensus reached by the majority of Christians throughout church history is relevant to one’s reading of scripture. This is to say nothing of the Spirit’s work in guiding the church throughout history.

To return to my initial question: how much is sola really sola in relation to scriptura? I am inclined to say that it is sola up to the point of implying uniqueness and primacy. The scripture is a sure and reliable source for Christians. It holds an irreplaceable place of authority in the Christian community. It cannot be read in a vacuum however by hermeneutically neutral interpreters, therefore awareness of the ancient ecumenical heritage of the churches as well as reliance on the illuminating work of the Holy Spirit are necessary means to transcends the limits of individualism and sectarianism.

Posted by Jacob, who regularly blogs at Inter Christianos.

I Just Can't Seem To Get Sex Off Of My Mind

I heard a commercial for a local church on a classic rock station in the city where I work. The confident voice, pumping through the speakers argued that in his opinion, Christians, by addressing issues of marital infidelity, homosexuality, and abstinence are overstating sexual concerns. The challenge posed by the radio personality was to somehow follow God's advice about sexuality, while not addressing specific contemporary concerns. Is this possible? Is it helpful?
On hearing this monologue, two thoughts immediately came to mind. The first is the (in my humble opinion) misguided contemporary Christian conviction that all sins are the same. Many Christians would be surprised to find that the Bible doesn't teach this conviction. The Bible does not teach that all sins are equal before God. What the Bible does teach is that God equally forgives all sins. No matter what the sin may be, once confessed, is forgiven on account of Christ's sacrificial death and victorious resurrection.
The second thought was that Christians have consistently focused on the issues that give impact and conscience within its own contemporary context. To say that Christians talk too much about homosexuality is like criticising Christians in the 1960's and 70's for focusing too much on issues of racial equality, or rebuking the early church reformers for overemphasising the priesthood of believers.

Christians, in order to be relevant and influential must address the concerns and issues of their times.

Death of the Quest?

The following excerpt is a quote taken from the article, The Jesus We'll Never Know: Why scholarly attempts to discover the 'real' Jesus have failed. And why that's a good thing. Written by Scot Mcknight and posted on Christianity Today's website on 4/9/2010.

"As a historian I think I can prove that Jesus died and that he thought his death was atoning. I think I can establish that the tomb was empty and that resurrection is the best explanation for the empty tomb. But one thing the historical method cannot prove is that Jesus died for our sins and was raised for our justification. At some point, historical methods run out of steam and energy. Historical Jesus studies cannot get us to the point where the Holy Spirit and the church can take us. I know that once I was blind and that I can now see. I know that historical methods did not give me sight. They can't. Faith cannot be completely based on what the historian can prove. The quest for the real Jesus, through long and painful paths, has proven that much."

I thought that this quote (and the article) was very interesting. What do you think?

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