Apologetics, Current Events, Eschatology, Evangelism, History, New Testament Theology, Prayer Requests, Sermons, Testimonies, Theology

Why Did the Bridge Collapse?

Most of you have seen the new reports and seen the raw video footage of the bridge in Minneapolis, Minnesota, collapsing into the river and killing many people who were driving across it. Though the details of why the structure collapsed in a material sense are not known, we do know why the structure collapsed and why it is that so many people were killed and injured.

For those of you who do not know what I’m referring to, please listen to John Piper’s message overlaid on the video footage from their video team that went out last night after the bridge collapsed. His ministry and church are within only a couple of minutes of where the bridge collapsed and several of the people who work for Desiring God drove across that bridge ever day.

Pray for their ministry and that they will have great opportunities to share this message and the reality of God’s love for this sinful place in the coming days and months of recovery and reconstruction that will take place right in their home town.

Theology

Eugene Peterson on Ritual

Eugene Peterson has an excellent quote from his book, Christ Plays in 10,000 Places:

“A ritual is a way of preserving continuity of action and integrity of language across time and among peoples of various habits and understandings, predispositions and inclinations. We commonly develop rituals to maintain fundamental human transactions. Rituals range from something as simple as shaking hands, to the solemnities of weddings for marriage and funerals at death, to the elaborate rites of royal coronations with their great processions and finery.

The usefulness of a ritual is that it takes a human action that is understood as essential to our ordinary lives and removes it from our immediate “say-so,” protects it from our tinkering and revisions and editing, sets it apart from our moods and dispositions. There is more going on than I am aware of or can be responsible for. Reality is larger than me. A ritual puts me into the larger reality without requiring that I understand it or even “feel” it at the moment. The handshake and “hello,” for instance, put me in a friendly place of encounter without requiring me to invent a greeting or comment each time appropriate to the circumstances. Or even think about it. It saves a lot of time, but it also maintains an appropriate connection to reality. “Rituals are a good signal to your unconscious that it is time to kick in,” says Anne Lamott. But there is another useful dimension to ritual. It keeps us in touch with and preserves mystery. For reality is not only larger than me and my immediate circumstances, it is also beyond my understanding. Rituals preserve the mystery, protect certain essential aspects of reality from being reduced to the dimensions of my interest or intelligence or awareness. So the handshake keeps the mystery of a human man or woman represented in even the most casual human greeting from being reduced to my shifting emotions; marriage protects the mystery of sex and family from exploitation; funeral rites give the mystery of death dignity and witness to something far more than death; the royal coronation sets human rule under the transcendent sovereign mystery of God or gods.”

– Eugene Peterson, Christ Plays in 10,000 Places, page 205

To clarify this for our Theology and Doctrine… God has given His Church two rituals that need to always remain rituals: Baptism and the Lord’s Supper

If we ever depart from the idea of ritual when practicing these sacraments, then their God-centered and Christ-exalting elements will be lost. Baptism must always be seen as the act of God to set us apart for His glory and grace, setting Jesus’ name upon us. And the Lord’s Supper must always be seen as Christ body and blood given for our forgiveness and reconciliation, through which Jesus is present and His Spirit is renewing all who partake in faith and love.

In both of these rituals, the Church is united to one another and united to God and Jesus Christ through the mysterious work of the Holy Spirit. Without these rituals the Church is not the Church and God’s people would never be separate from the World and the World would never be able to see God’s glorious salvation through water, bread, and wine.

In Christ and In Defense of the Faith,

Church Fathers, History, Mp3s, Promotionals, Theology

Historical Renewal

Here is a good web site dealing with history and Christianity. I encourage you all to check it out and see what you can find. If there’s something there that you think would be helpful for us to read about, please come back and post a comment on this blog entry sharing the link and what you thought about it.

historical renewal

A short broadcast for historical renewal is available for download:

Historical Renewal with D.A. LaGue – John Witherspoon [4:37m]

Enjoy!

Books, Covenant Theology, Debate, Eschatology, Justification, New Perspective on Paul, New Testament Theology, Promotionals, Reforming, Systematic Theology, The Solas, Theology

The Future of Justification

Well folks, it’s almost here! Thankfully JT over at Between Two Worlds is giving us some shadows and types of the book about to be released in the near future by Dr. John Piper. The first blurb is a commendation by the well known Dr. Darrell Bock:

A good biblical dialogue needs two good conversation partners, who work hard to understand each other and make their case biblically. Piper’s look at justification does this with a superb tone and a careful presentation of his case. He and Wright exchanged communication before this book went public. Piper appeals to the wisdom of the ages on justification, a wisdom deeply rooted in Scripture. Wright argues his approach is also deeply rooted in Scripture as seen through a fresh appreciation of the first century context of Paul’s writing, a context we too often underestimate. This dialogue is important for the church; Piper has put us in a position to hear both sides of the debate and understand what is at stake. He has served us all well by enabling the reader to be put in the place of considering what Scripture says as he or she listens to this conversation and to our God. Iron sharpens iron, and Scripture is a sword that cuts between the soul and Spirit. Be prepared to be sharpened by a careful dialogue about what justification is.

–Darrell Bock, Research Professor of NT Studies, Dallas Theological Seminary

The Future of Justification

This book is going to be well worth buying as soon as it comes out, whether you are on one side of the New Perspective debate or the other. As Dr. Bock tells us… iron really does sharpen iron!

It is my hope and prayer that any mysteries will be dispelled in regards to the views of N. T. Wright as well as clear concerns stated by John Piper about where the New Perspective, embraced too strongly, can lead people.

I still do not know what the book will ultimately conclude, but I trust that (from past experience) John Piper will have done his best to do justice to the views of N. T. Wright. May God get all the glory and may this book help many, many people to understand the Bible even more than they did before having picked it up!

In Christ and In Defense of the Faith,

Books, Promotionals

Free Book Friday: Fabricating Jesus

This weeks free book offer from the Pastorbookshelf is by Craig A. Evans. Here is the link:

Free Book Friday: Fabricating Jesus

Fabricating Jesus

Here is the book description:

Craig A. Evans. Fabricating Jesus: How Modern Scholars Distort the Gospels. IVP, 2006. 290 pp.

Modern historical study of the Gospels seems to give us a new portrait of Jesus every spring—just in time for Easter. The more unusual the portrait, the more it departs from the traditional view of Jesus, the more attention it gets in the popular media.

Why are scholars so prone to fabricate a new Jesus? Why is the public so eager to accept such claims without question? What methods and assumptions predispose scholars to distort the record? Is there a more sober approach to finding the real Jesus?

Commenting on such recent releases as Bart Ehrman’s Misquoting Jesus, James Tabor’s The Jesus Dynasty, Michael Baigent’s The Jesus Papers and The Gospel of Judas, for which he served as an advisory board member to the National Geographic Society, Craig Evans offers a sane approach to examining the sources for understanding the historical Jesus.

Confessions, Current Events, Debate, ETS, Promotionals, Reforming

Amend ETS?

Ray Van Neste and Denny Burk have started a web site for the co-sponsoring of an amendment dealing with the minimal doctrinal requirements of the Evangelical Theological Society (ETS). For an introduction to the site, see the changes that they want to make below:

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Read Amendment

Before introducing the amendment to you, a little background is in order. In 2001 at the 53rd annual meeting of the ETS, Ray Van Neste proposed that the ETS adopt the doctrinal basis of the U.K.’s Tyndale Fellowship. The Tyndale fellowship unites around evangelical truths a broad group of Christian scholars from varying denominational and theological perspectives (Calvinists, Wesleyans, Baptists, Anglicans, etc). The members of the Tyndale fellowship agree to the statement of belief used by the U.K.’s Universities and Colleges Christian Fellowship (UCCF).

The current ETS doctrinal basis has two parts: (1) a statement on inerrancy, and (2) a statement on the Trinity. It reads as follows:

“The Bible alone, and the Bible in its entirety, is the Word of God written and is therefore inerrant in the autographs. God is a Trinity, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, each an uncreated person, one in essence, equal in power and glory.”

We are proposing that the ETS adopt the UCCF statement with the current doctrinal basis of the ETS incorporated into it. One other addition defines the “written word of God” as the 66 books of the Old and New Testaments. So we propose to amend the current doctrinal basis as follows (underlined words indicate where the current doctrinal basis has been incorporated into the UCCF statement):

ARTICLE III. DOCTRINAL BASIS

1. The Bible alone, and the Bible in its entirety, is the Word of God written and is therefore inerrant in the autographs. This written word of God consists of the 66 books of the Old and New Testaments and is the supreme authority in all matters of belief and behavior.

2. God is a Trinity, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, each an uncreated person, one in essence, equal in power and glory.

3. God is sovereign in creation, revelation, redemption and final judgment.

4. Since the fall, the whole of humankind is sinful and guilty, so that everyone is subject to God’s wrath and condemnation.

5. The Lord Jesus Christ, God’s incarnate Son, is fully God; he was born of a virgin; his humanity is real and sinless; he died on the cross, was raised bodily from death and is now reigning over heaven and earth.

6. Sinful human beings are redeemed from the guilt, penalty and power of sin only through the sacrificial death once and for all time of their representative and substitute, Jesus Christ, the only mediator between them and God.

7. Those who believe in Christ are pardoned all their sins and accepted in God’s sight only because of the righteousness of Christ credited to them; this justification is God’s act of undeserved mercy, received solely by trust in him and not by their own efforts.

8. The Holy Spirit alone makes the work of Christ effective to individual sinners, enabling them to turn to God from their sin and to trust in Jesus Christ.

9. The Holy Spirit lives in all those he has regenerated. He makes them increasingly Christ-like in character and behavior and gives them power for their witness in the world.

10. The one holy universal church is the Body of Christ, to which all true believers belong.

11. The Lord Jesus Christ will return in person, to judge everyone, to execute God’s just condemnation on those who have not repented and to receive the redeemed to eternal glory.

As stated above, the UCCF statement unites a broad constituency of evangelicals in the U.K. We think there is great potential for it to be a unifying doctrinal basis for the various evangelical constituencies represented in the ETS as well.

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The current supporters of this amendment can be found here at this link.

Jesus said, "I am the Way, the Truth and the Life."

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