Category Archives: Theology

Apologetics, Creation, Debate, Evolution, History, Intelligent Design, Interviews, Science, Theology

Stephen Colbert hands a monkey plate to Ken Miller

Notice the dichotomy that Miller brings to the forefront by claiming the Bible is a spiritual document and therefore cannot address scientific ideas. This may seem true at first glance, but it is only a bad ploy that many evolutionists use to snuff out the Bible’s claims about the creation account. It is true that the Bible is not a sciencetific document and that the Bible is not trying to give scientific details about the creation. BUT, please note the BUT…

The Bible is an historical document. This is very important for people to understand. If we do not ackowledge that the Bible records accurate historical material about the creation account, then where does that leave us with the rest of the 66 books of the Bible? You don’t have to be a scienctist to record the fact that God made the world in 6 days… I mean, come on people!

On the point of creation/evolution, the Bible has much to say about this in terms of the historical record. Both modern evolution and Biblical creationism are addressing the issue of history and where man came from. Therefore, on that point, the two must either agree or one of the two be proven wrong and thus a lie.

If evolution is true, then man is not made in God’s image. If evolution is true, then we humans are not special creatures made to rule the creation by reflecting God’s glory into it.

Here’s the video:

[HT: Christendom]

Eschatology, New Testament Theology, Sermons, Theology

The Doctrine of Glorification

My former Hebrew professor’s teaching assistant has posted a good sermon online at Sermon Exchange on the topic of Glorification and the various passages of Scripture that expound upon it. I encourage everyone to read it and be encouraged! Below is an excerpt…

=================

Glorification – Various Texts

by Ike Huges

House, MASH, St. Elsewhere, ER, Doogie Houser, General Hospital, Scrubs, Trapper John, MD, Dr. Kildare, Becker, Ben Casey, Chicago Hope, Gray’s Anatomy, Medical Investigations, Grosse Anatomy. What do all of these have common?

These are all shows about doctors. Some are dramas. Some are comedies. Some are soap operas, or stories as my grandmother used to call them. When you have shows about doctors, what else do you have?

Sick people.

Hollywood has made a very lucrative industry out of shows about sick people.

Then there are books. I went into our bookcase, well one of our book cases, to look for a medical dictionary so that I could regale you with big medical terms and I looked at some of the books that Michelle kept from her time in nursing school and I about fell over.

She has a stack of 4 or 5 books that equal close to an entire semester’s worth of reading for me. And those were a small token of what she had to buy and read during nursing school. I’m sure that Becky and Celia have similar books in their libraries.

Then there are friends of mine who are doctors. I checked out a website that told me it could take up to nine years to become a doctor.

9 years of your life in school and as an intern and as a resident. If you want to specialize in a certain field, it would take another 3 years of study.

Nurses and Doctors spend a great amount of time and effort to gain the information that they have to take care of …sick people.

There are health programs and diet programs and all sorts of programs where you, in the comfort of your own home, can help to prevent some of the illnesses that we deal with in life.

We as a nation invest thousands of dollars into research to prevent many of the illnesses. We take medicines; we exercise; we use anti-bacterial soap all in a effort to keep ourselves from getting sick.

America has made a huge, expensive industry out of health care.

But this fixation on health comes from a deeper drive. This drive to keep from getting sick is pushed on by our drive to stay alive. In many of the shows that I listed above, the people get better.

Usually someone only dies on a show when the actor is ready to move on. And then we know that they will show up on another show or in a movie at some point.

But it’s not the same with you and me. We know that many of the sicknesses that we face end in death. Cancer; Leukemia; Lou Gehrig’s disease; Muscular Dystrophy; Cerebral Palsy, just to name a few.

Funeral homes today are nationwide chains. I worked for a very short period of time with one of the chains that owned 6 funeral homes in Tampa and many more around the country. And I never set foot in a funeral home. I worked in a sales office selling arrangements. My job was to sell you your arrangements prior to your death.

Death is a huge industry in our lives.

No matter where we look, no matter what we do, no matter where we go, sickness and pain and suffering and death are all around us. Some of us today are sick; some of us today are in pain; some of us today are suffering.

Today we are going to look at what hope the Christian can take in the midst of all this pain and sickness suffering and death. We are going to look at a concept called Glorification and what it means for the Christian in light of the fact that we are surrounded by pain, suffering, sickness and death.

(continue reading…)

Apologetics, Creation, Current Events, Debate, Evolution, Intelligent Design, Law and Faith, Theology

Nova is fear mongering

Tonight, I just finished watching the PBS Nova special on the Dover School Board controversy over Intelligent Design and Evolution. It is called “Judgment Day: Intelligent Design on Trial” if you want to search for it online.

The most amazing thing about the whole show was the glaring BIAS that Nova had for the whole controversy and the very good, but extremely BAD, acting that they portrayed in the trial reenactments at the courthouse where the controversy took place most noticeably. In other words, Nova made the Intelligent Design proponents look like goof balls and the Evolutionary proponents look like saints and eloquent speakers who had everything figured out to a tee.

This is just plain silly. And Nova knows that the controversy is so much bigger than this. So much so that they had to make the Intelligent Design viewpoint look like inconsistent, Muslim terrorists in order to make their case (and make themselves feel better). 🙂

In the end, they still did nothing but preach to the choir and try to make the uninformed members of the choir feel more fear and worry about the whole situation than they already felt before the broadcast.

If Nova really wants the respect of non-Evolutionary sympathisers and proponents… then they are just going to have to do a better job in the future. Nova needs to stop their fear mongering and start talking about important things… like the reason why Evolution has been around as popular science for ONLY 150 years and not longer. The point being… yes, Evolution has helped us understand some things better. But it’s search for the “origin” of species, ad infinitum, will never come to a concrete answer because the history records show that God created all creatures according to their OWN KIND. This implies that the links between animals is not a tree of common descent, but a web of common structures built by their Creator God who sought to reveal His glory in and through the whole creation.

In my opinion, the more important topic of study is Baraminology, the study of animal kinds. This field of science that studied animals WITHOUT respect to “common descent” theories of Evolution. This is the type of tried and true science that has been done for millennia, seeking to understand God’s creation that reveals more about Him and His goodness, greatness, and power. The honest truth is that all the great scientists of old who made great advancements and achievements and who helped us better understand the world we live in today… they all believed in a Creator God and sought to think His thoughts after Him and discover the glory of His creation.

Nova’s problem is not its failure to see the fallacies within Evolutionary theory. Instead, Nova’s problem is its failure to glorify God in all things. If Nova desired to think God’s thoughts after Him and to understand His creation in order to better understand and enjoy God… well… things would be a whole lot different now wouldn’t they? 🙂

Enough of the commentary. Enjoy your week and seek first God’s Kingdom and His righteousness and all these other things will become clear in their own time.

In Christ and In Defense of the Faith,

Books, Promotionals, Reforming, Systematic Theology, Theology

Westminster Bookstore – New Arrivals

Hello Everyone,

I just wanted to point you all to some interesting and promising newly published books that are certainly worth reading if you find the time and interest in the subject. Please check them out and see what you think. Enjoy!

A Theological Guide to Calvin’s Institutes: Essays and Analysis

The Legacy of John Calvin: His Influence on the Modern World

New Testament Theology: Magnifying God in Christ

Theology of the New Testament: A Canonical and Synthetic Approach

An Old Testament Theology: A Canonical and Thematic Approach

Ancient Faith for the Church’s Future

The Reformed Faith: Exposition of the Westminster Confession of Faith

Engaging the Doctrine of God: Contemporary Protestant Perspectives

Apologetics, Interviews, New Testament Theology, Promotionals, Theology

Midlands Bible College Interviews Dr. Darrell Bock

2 Comments

I would like to point everyone to a very interesting and informative interview with Dr. Darrell Bock that was recently conducted by Midlands Bible College. He discusses a variety of topics and it is very enjoyable to read. Here is an excerpt:

A short while ago, you wrote widely on matters relating to the DaVinci Code. Is this subject something that you intend to keep at the top of your agenda?

Well, not the DaVinci Code, but I do plan to keep writing in areas where the culture interacts with the Jesus and the Bible. There are so many crazy ideas out there. I distinguish between Christianity, where Jesus is unique and Messiah versus Jesusanity, where Jesus is just a great religious teacher but he is not Messiah nor unique. I will continue to write about the difference and the issues tied to that discussion.

What impact, long-term, do you think the DaVinci Code and similar works will have on the general public perception of the historical Jesus? In other words, do you think the negative effect of these works will be short lived?

It actually is that the DaVinci Code reflects issues that have been in the public square and now, popularized, reflect how many people are coming to see Christianity as a political creation of Constantine that has little, if anything, to do with the historical Jesus. Now Constantine did have a tremendous impact on Christianity, but the theology of the church long predates him as does the church’s view of Jesus, as that is rooted in the experience of the disciples and Jesus’ own teaching. But fighting the impression made by this other story that now shows up in novels and TV specials on Jesus and Christianity is going to be an ongoing task for the church—and many in the church have no idea how to respond to such claims. They sense these alternative ideas are wrong but do not know what to say when “experts” or books say otherwise. Thus the church needs to do a better job of instructing its own on such idea.

For Christians who want to know more about this, there any other books or resources that he would recommend?

There are dozens of books in the DaVinci Code. However there are very few on the early history of Christianity that deal with these issues. Among those that exist are my The Missing Gospels: Unearthing the Truth behind Alternative Christianities; Craig Evans’ Fabricating Jesus; Dan Wallace and two others have Reinventing Jesus. My blog at www.bible.org/bock also discusses these issues now and again. (Read More…)

Interviews, Theology

Interviews worth reading

Mark Dever interviews Kent Hughes about life and preaching.

R.C. Sproul interviews Ben Stein about his new documentary on intolerance toward intelligent design.

Al Mohler interviews Eric Redmond about Jeremiah Wright and Black Liberation Theology.
See also the partial transcript and Rev. Redmond’s pre-primer on the issue.

Monergism interviews Tim Keller about apologetics and his new book.

Adam Cheung interviews Tom Schreiner about his forthcoming book, New Testament Theology: Magnifying God in Christ.

Justin Taylor interviews Craig Blomberg about The Historical Reliability of the Gospels.

Westminster Bookstore interviews John Muether about his new biography of Cornelius Van Til.

[HT: JT]

Apologetics, Biblical Theology, Creation, Eschatology, Interviews, New Testament Theology, Pop Christianity, Promotionals, Reforming, Theology

Bishop bucks views of heaven: NT Wright Interview at Tennessean.com

N.T. Wright’s recent visit to Nashville, TN, included an interview with the Tennessean. It includes some very interesting comments regarding hell and the final state of those who reject God’s Glory and Gospel. While I do not share his views on hell in full, I would say that his heart to see the world renewed is a blessed hope and central teaching of the Bible that we should all think about regularly and share with our family and friends. Below I have reproduced the article found here:

————————————-

Bishop bucks views of heaven

Long-held notions not biblical, he says

By BOB SMIETANA
Staff Writer

Heaven is not retirement on steroids, where people sit around doing whatever they like, with nothing but time on their hands.

Instead it’s more like going on vacation. You rest, relax, stop and smell the roses, and then get back to work. At least, that’s what the Bible says.

“The book of Revelation talks about God making us kings and priests,” said N.T. Wright, bishop of Durham, England, and author of Surprised by Hope: Rethinking Heaven, Resurrection, and the Mission of the Church. “It isn’t just salvation and now you can sit back and relax. It’s that we are saved to be God’s agents and stewards in this new creation.”

Wright who was in Nashville on Tuesday speaking at West End United Methodist Church, believes the notion of going to heaven after death isn’t found in the Bible. Instead, he says, God brings heaven to earth.

“It’s like this world with all the beauty and the grandeur and the power,” he said, “but unfettered by death and decay.”

The Church of England bishop says that he isn’t trying to come up with a new or inventive view of heaven and resurrection. Instead, he is trying to point people to the Bible.

“The odd thing is that I don’t think I am saying anything remotely unorthodox,” he said. “I am trying to give people back some bits of the Bible they have forgotten about … Resurrection may be crazy, but it is what Christians are supposed to believe.”

That’s a notion that appeals to Scotty Smith, founding pastor of Christ Community Church in Franklin. Smith is currently preaching a series on heaven based on the book of Revelation.

He says that evangelical Christians, in particular, have replaced a biblical view of heaven with a romanticized view.

“It (heaven) is going to look a little more like this world than a place filled with cherubs sitting around and singing Bill Gaither songs,” Smith said. “The story the Bible tells is one of redemption, not replacement.”

Resurrection is the focus

Wright, appointed bishop of Durham, a diocese south of Scotland, in 2003, says the Bible and the Christian creeds speak more about resurrection than about going to heaven.

“Without resurrection you are left with a theology which says that the present world of space, time and matter is just junk, and God is going to throw it in the trash,” he said. “If you say this world is basically junk and trash, you can exploit it, you can exploit people. You can abuse the world, and you can abuse people and it really doesn’t matter.”

This focus on resurrection and not just getting to heaven also appeals to Gavin Richardson, director of youth ministries at Faith United Methodist Church in Hendersonville.

“It’s not just ‘get Jesus and you are good to go’,” he said.

In all his talk of heaven, Wright still believes in the reality of hell. He says that, in the end, people are free to choose to be separated from God.

“The Bible doesn’t talk about heaven and hell side by side. The Bible talks about God bringing all things on heaven and earth together. Heaven and earth will be joined. That is the great renewal and God’s victory over evil and suffering and death,” he said. “At the same time, the Bible talks about the certainty of final loss for those who choose not to worship the God in whose image they were made. And it seems to me that the New Testament doesn’t leave us with the option of saying all will be saved. I often wish it did, but it doesn’t.”

Apologetics, Archaeology, Current Events, History, Testimonies, Theology, Wonders of the World

The Destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah

Genesis 19:23-29: “The sun had risen on the earth when Lot came to Zoar. Then the Lord rained on Sodom and Gomorrah sulfur and fire from the Lord out of heaven. And he overthrew those cities, and all the valley, and all the inhabitants of the cities, and what grew on the ground. But Lot’s wife, behind him, looked back, and she became a pillar of salt.

And Abraham went early in the morning to the place where he had stood before the Lord. And he looked down toward Sodom and Gomorrah and toward all the land of the valley, and he looked and, behold, the smoke of the land went up like the smoke of a furnace.

So it was that, when God destroyed the cities of the valley, God remembered Abraham and sent Lot out of the midst of the overthrow when he overthrew the cities in which Lot had lived.”

Well, isn’t it amazing when we discover records from the past. Read the news article here. Below is an excerpt:

A clay tablet that has baffled scientists for 150 years has been identified as a witness’s account of the asteroid suspected of being behind the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah.

Researchers who cracked the cuneiform symbols on the Planisphere tablet believe that it recorded an asteroid thought to have been more than half a mile across.

The tablet, found by Henry Layard in the remains of the library in the royal place at Nineveh in the mid-19th century, is thought to be a 700BC copy of notes made by a Sumerian astronomer watching the night sky.

He referred to the asteroid as “white stone bowl approaching” and recorded it as it “vigorously swept along”.

Using computers to recreate the night sky thousands of years ago, scientists have pinpointed his sighting to shortly before dawn on June 29 in the year 3123BC.

Apologetics, Church Year, Creation, Eschatology, New Testament Theology, Pop Christianity, Promotionals, Reforming, Theology

Resurrection! That is our hope!

Well, since I wasn’t able to post on Easter Sunday, I figured I would at least post about the resurrection sometime this week. So here goes!

This article is from Christianity Today. I encourage you to read more than just the excerpt. 🙂 Enjoy!

——————————–

The bodily resurrection is the good news of the gospel—and thus our social and political mandate.
by N. T. Wright – posted 3/24/2008

There is no agreement in the church today about what happens to people when they die. Yet the New Testament is crystal clear on the matter: In a classic passage, Paul speaks of “the redemption of our bodies” (Rom. 8:23). There is no room for doubt as to what he means: God’s people are promised a new type of bodily existence, the fulfillment and redemption of our present bodily life. The rest of the early Christian writings, where they address the subject, are completely in tune with this.

The traditional picture of people going to either heaven or hell as a one-stage, postmortem journey represents a serious distortion and diminution of the Christian hope. Bodily resurrection is not just one odd bit of that hope. It is the element that gives shape and meaning to the rest of the story of God’s ultimate purposes. If we squeeze it to the margins, as many have done by implication, or indeed, if we leave it out altogether, as some have done quite explicitly, we don’t just lose an extra feature, like buying a car that happens not to have electrically operated mirrors. We lose the central engine, which drives it and gives every other component its reason for working.

When we talk with biblical precision about the resurrection, we discover an excellent foundation for lively and creative Christian work in the present world—not, as some suppose, for an escapist or quietist piety.
Bodily Resurrection

While both Greco-Roman paganism and Second Temple Judaism held a wide variety of beliefs about life beyond death, the early Christians, beginning with Paul, were remarkably unanimous on the topic.

When Paul speaks in Philippians 3 of being “citizens of heaven,” he doesn’t mean that we shall retire there when we have finished our work here. He says in the next line that Jesus will come from heaven in order to transform the present humble body into a glorious body like his own. Jesus will do this by the power through which he makes all things subject to himself. This little statement contains in a nutshell more or less all Paul’s thought on the subject. The risen Jesus is both the model for the Christian’s future body and the means by which it comes.

Similarly, in Colossians 3:1–4, Paul says that when the Messiah (the one “who is your life”) appears, then you too will appear with him in glory. Paul does not say “one day you will go to be with him.” No, you already possess life in him. This new life, which the Christian possesses secretly, invisible to the world, will burst forth into full bodily reality and visibility.

The clearest and strongest passage is Romans 8:9–11. If the Spirit of God, the Spirit of Jesus the Messiah, dwells in you, says Paul, then the one who raised the Messiah from the dead will give life to your mortal bodies as well, through his Spirit who dwells in you. God will give life, not to a disembodied spirit, not to what many people have thought of as a spiritual body in the sense of a nonphysical one, but “to your mortal bodies also.”

Other New Testament writers support this view. The first letter of John declares that when Jesus appears, we shall be like him, for we shall see him as he is. The resurrection body of Jesus, which at the moment is almost unimaginable to us in its glory and power, will be the model for our own. And of course within John’s gospel, despite the puzzlement of those who want to read the book in a very different way, we have some of the clearest statements of future bodily resurrection. Jesus reaffirms the widespread Jewish expectation of resurrection in the last day, and announces that the hour for this has already arrived. It is quite explicit: “The hour is coming,” he says, “indeed, it is already here, when the dead will hear the voice of the Son of Man, and those who hear will live; when all in the graves will come out, those who have done good, to the resurrection of life, and those who have done evil, to the resurrection of judgment.”

(more… )

Apologetics, Church Year, Eschatology, History, Interviews, New Testament - Gospels, New Testament Theology, Promotionals, Theology

Holy Saturday: Anticipating the Resurrection

In honor of Holy Saturday, here is a good interview with N.T. Wright regarding the resurrection of Jesus.

Below is an excerpt…

=====================

At the National Pastors Conference in San Diego, PreachingToday.com’s Brian Lowery got to interview N. T. Wright about his latest book—Surprised by Hope: Rethinking Heaven, the Resurrection, and the Mission of the Church—and how it relates to preaching. Since we are all in the midst of the Easter journey, his words are timely, challenging, and above all else, hopeful.

Preaching Today: In your book Surprised by Hope, you talk about a deeper understanding of hope “that provides a coherent and energizing basis for work in today’s world.” How has that deeper understanding influenced your preaching through the years?

Bishop N. T. Wright: [Studying] the Resurrection for an earlier book, Resurrection of the Son of God … ended up rubbing my nose in the New Testament theology of new creation, and the fact that the new creation has begun with Easter. I discovered that when we do new creation—when we encourage one another in the church to be active in projects of new creation, of healing, of hope for communities—we are standing on the ground that Jesus has won in his resurrection.

New creation is not just “whistling in the dark.” It’s not a kind of social Pelagianism, where we try to improve things by pulling ourselves up from our own bootstraps. Because Jesus is raised from the dead, God’s new world has begun. We are not only the beneficiaries of new creation; we are the agents of it. I just can’t stop preaching about that, because that is where we’re going with Easter.

For me, therefore, there’s no disjunction between preaching about the salvation which is ours in God’s new age—the new heavens and new earth—and preaching about what that means for the present. The two go very closely together. If you have an eschatology that is nonmaterial, why bother with this present world? But if God intends to renew the world, then what we do in the present matters. That’s 1 Corinthians 15:58! This understanding has made my preaching more challenging to me, and hopefully to my hearers, to actually get off our backsides and do something in the local community—things that are signs of new creation. (more…)