Category Archives: New Testament Theology

CPX interview with Don Hagner

Lee Irons said:

John Dickson of the Centre for Public Christianity (CPX) interviewed my friend and mentor, Donald Hagner, on various issues related to New Testament history. The interview has been chopped up into smaller bits each around 4 to 8 minutes long.

The interviewer was well prepared and asked excellent questions. He interacted with Don’s areas of expertise (the rabbinic model of oral tradition, the Gospel of Matthew, the apostolic fathers) and proposed questions that gave him an opportunity to answer common skeptical objections to the historicity of Jesus and the Gospels.

It will be evident, as you watch the interview, that Don does not subscribe to a doctrine of inerrancy such as that enshrined in the Chicago Statement. And yet he adopts a believing posture toward the New Testament as historically reliable and apostolic in origin.

Here are the video links below:

The apostle Paul: redneck or revolutionary?
How should we view the apostle Paul?

Doubts about Jesus and the New Testament
Is the existence of Jesus in doubt?

History and faith
How does the Christian historian avoid
being a Christian apologist?

Sources behind the gospels
Does the use of sources by the gospel
writers make their texts suspicious? 

Gospel of Matthew exposed. Part 1
A brief guide to Matthew’s gospel.

Gospel of Matthew exposed. Part 2
How do scholars explain difficult passages
in Matthew

Gospel of Matthew exposed. Part 3
What are the major themes of Matthew’s gospel?

How was the New Testament put together?
How did the ancient church choose which
books to include in the New Testament?

Second Century Literature
Who were the key Christian writers in the
second century?

Desert Like a Rose by Peter Leithart

First Things has published a thoughtful article by Peter Leithart regarding missions and culture. I encourage everyone interested in understanding how missions should be done in light of various cultures to read this article. It addresses the issue of compromise and the gospel and much more. Enjoy!

A Rose in the Wind

Excerpt:

Time was when Christian missions occurred “over there.” Every now and then, the missionary would show up at church dressed like a time traveler, to show slides of exotic places and to enchant the stay-at-homes with tales about the strange diet and customs of the natives. Foreign missions still happen, but that model seems like ancient history. With the new immigration and the increased ease of travel and communication, the mission field has moved into the neighborhood, and every church that has its eyes open is asking every day how to do “foreign missions.”

That poses a problem. Missions has always been the place where the bookish question of “Christ and culture” turns practical. Now, at the same time that missions has become a challenge “right here,” multiculturalists question the very legitimacy of missions. Since the gospel always comes clothed in culture, how, on the premises of multiculturalism, can missionary work be anything but a veiled form of cultural imperialism? From Chinua Achebe’s Things Fall Apart to Barbara Kingsolver’s Poisonwood Bible, missionaries are depicted as tools of Western hegemony. But, if we’re all missionaries now, are we all cooperating in genocide?

Under the regime of multiculturalism, mission efforts face a cruel dilemma. Either missionaries can preach an uncompromising gospel that will cause everything to fall apart, or they can soft pedal the gospel of God’s judgment and grace in order to permit non-Christian cultures to survive. But is the situation as dire as this? Does the Bible perhaps offer a model for re-conceiving the question in a way that avoids the unhappy choice between compromise and cultural cataclysm?

The answer, I think, is yes. [Continue…]

N.T. Wright and Martin Luther agree on the Gospel

The Gospel in a Nutshell

N.T. Wright: “When Paul talks about “the gospel,” he means “the good news that the crucified and risen Jesus is the Messiah of Israel and therefore the Lord of the world.” Now, that’s about as brief as you can do it” (Interview with Trevin Wax).

Martin Luther: “The gospel is a story about Christ, God’s and David’s son, who died and was raised and is established as Lord. This is the gospel in a nutshell” (Martin Luther’s Basic Theological Writings).

[HT: ]

Conference on the Gospel and Children

From June 2008, at First Presbyterian Church in Columbia, SC:

  • The Gospel for Children – Part 1 (William Mackenzie)
  • The Gospel for Children – Part 2 (Carine Mackenzie)
  • Let the Children Come (Sinclair Ferguson)
  • The Church and Children – Part 1 (William Mackenzie)
  • The Church and Children – Part 2 (Carine Mackenzie)
  • Question & Discussion Session
  • Christian Parenting – Part 1 (William Mackenzie)
  • Christian Parenting – Part 2 (Carine Mackenzie)
  • Can Our Children Survive the World? (William Mackenzie)

[HT: JT]

NT Use of the OT: Test Your View!

NT Use of the OT — Test Your View!
Single Meaning, Multiple Contexts and Referents view

You seem to be most closely aligned with the Single Meaning, Multiple Contexts and Referents view, a view defended by Darrell L. Bock in the book “Three Views on the New Testament Use of the Old Testament” (edited by Kenneth Berding and Jonathan Lunde, Nov. 2008). This view affirms the singular nature of the meanings intended by the OT and NT authors when OT texts are cited in the NT. In spite of this essential unity in meaning, however, the words of the OT authors frequently take on new dimensions of significance and are found to apply appropriately to new referents and new situations as God’s purposes unfold in the larger canonical context. Often, these referents were not in the minds of the OT authors when they penned their texts. For more info, see the book, or attend a special session devoted to the topic at the ETS Annual Meeting in Providence, RI (Nov. 2008); Walter C. Kaiser Jr., Darrell L. Bock, and Peter Enns will all present their views.

Fun quizzes, surveys & blog quizzes by Quibblo

Bill Maher and John Piper

Denny Burk says:

You have probably seen by now one of the ads for Bill Maher’s new documentary “Religulous.” If you haven’t seen it, it’s a movie that was produced for the expressed purpose of denigrating religion. The fundamental point seems to be that having faith in any religion is ridiculous—thus “Religulous.” In the trailer for the movie, the following exchange takes place between Maher and a person dressed up like Jesus.

Maher: Why doesn’t [God] just obliterate the devil and therefore get rid of evil in the world?

Jesus Impersonator: He will.

Maher
: He will?

Jesus Impersonator
: That’s correct.

Maher: What’s he waiting for?

The whole point of the exchange is to show how ridiculous it is that the Christian God will not do anything about evil in the world even though He’s supposed to be both good and all-powerful. Even though it’s delivered with sarcastic humor, Maher is asking a serious question. At bottom the exchange is really about the classical question of theodicy, and the whole thing is framed in a way to discredit the Christian faith.

In a recent blog post, John Piper answers Maher’s question, though he doesn’t mention Maher’s name. Nevertheless, the title of Piper’s essay reads like an allusion to “Religulous”: “Why not destroy the devil now?” Piper gives an answer that is (as you might expect) grounded in God’s passion for His own glory. God is most glorified by allowing Satan to remain for a time. He writes:

“The glory of Christ is seen in his absolute right and power to annihilate or incapacitate Satan and all demons. But the reason he refrains from destroying and disabling them altogether is to manifest more clearly his superior beauty and worth. If Christ obliterated all devils and demons now (which he could do), his sheer power would be seen as glorious, but his superior beauty and worth would not shine as brightly as when humans renounce the promises of Satan and take pleasure in the greater glory of Christ.”

Maher’s question deserved a serious answer, and I am grateful that Piper took the time to write one. You should read the rest.

“Why Not Destroy the Devil Now?” – by John Piper (desiringgod.org)

Bavinck’s Covenant Christology

Covenant Christology: Herman Bavinck and the Pactum Salutis
By Rev. Mark Jones, Leiden Universiteit

For Herman Bavinck (1854-1921) ‘the doctrine of the covenant is of the greatest importance.’ Behind the temporal covenants of works and grace stands the pretemporal pactum salutis (counsel of peace/covenant of redemption). The pactum salutis is an intratrinitarian covenant between the Father, Son and Spirit that provides the eternal, inviolable foundation for the temporal covenant of grace (foedus gratiae). The Reformed orthodox in particular, since the sixteenth century, used the pactum salutis as an argument for the ad intra trinitarian grounding for the ad extra work of salvation. Thus, soteriology is decidedly trinitarian, that is, ‘salvation is an undertaking of the one God in three persons in which all cooperate and each one performs a special task.’ Consequently, this doctrine is the starting-point for any Christological discussion of the person and work of the Mediator, Jesus Christ.

In defending and giving expression to the pactum salutis, Bavinck is conscious that this doctrine has a fairly long and illustrious history among Reformed covenant theologians. And though this doctrine is ‘rooted in a scriptural idea’, Bavinck suggests that not a few of the Reformed were guilty of ‘scholastic subtlety’ by quoting various Scriptural passages (e.g. Zech. 6:13, translated by the Latin Vulgate as consilium pacis) that did not have reference to the pactum salutis. Thus, while clearly appreciative of his Reformed heritage, Bavinck is not uncritical of various formulations of the pactum salutis.

In order to understand why Bavinck gives such prominence to the pactum salutis, something of this doctrine’s history must be understood, which will show, among other things, that his theology reflects the broad parameters and concerns of the Reformed interpretive tradition.

(Continue Reading…)

[HT: James Grant]

The Judgment of God continues…

As America has seen fit to usher in a man who will act in the ways that will destroy the foundations of this country’s constitution, the rights of individuals and states, and the freedoms that we have enjoyed for so many years… I cannot help but look to God in Jesus Christ for my only hope and joy and comfort!

God’s judgment is being revealed against all ungodliness and wickedness of mankind through the election of Barack Obama as President of the United Stated of America. America and the Church in America will receive the judgment that God sees fit to bring upon it in the coming months and years. Freedoms will be reduced and Government will seek to grow bigger and make more and more people dependent upon it. We can only hope that people will feel in their hearts that freedom and liberty are more important than peace and safety “at all costs.”

May God have mercy upon this country and may God glorify Himself and show forth the rule of Jesus Christ over all powers and principalities that seek to make themselves greater than He.

Thankfully, this is a day of change that will work against the glory of America and work for the glory of God in Jesus Christ! Amen.

In Christ and In Defense of the Faith,
Glenn Jones

The Impassibility of God

If you have never studied this doctrine of the divine impassibility, I encourage you to read the following history by Dr. Robert Culver. It is very good and thought provoking:

THE IMPASSIBILITY OF GOD

Here is an important excerpt from the paper:

Impassibility comes into our language as translation of the Greek word apatheia in the writings of Church fathers, according to the Oxford English Dictionary. Apatheia, despite the obvious etymological connection with apathy and apathetic in modern English, (Pelikan) started out as meaning “the state of an apathes” (alpha privative, plus pathos) without pathos or suffering” (Liddell and Scott Lexicon). Among the Greek Fathers pathos or passion was the right word for the suffering of Christ, as it still is. So in theology to be impassible means primarily to be incapable of suffering. Early theology affirmed that in heaven our resurrected bodies will be pathes in this sense. The word came to be extended to mean incapable of emotion of any kind and beyond that, apathes (impassible) in important theological discourse meant without sexual desire (Gregory of Nyssa, The Great Catechism, chap. xxxv, “Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, Second Series,” edited by Philip Schaff and Henry Wace, 1910, ii, 5, pp. 502-504). As applied to God, incapacity for any emotions sometimes is meant. We will return to this. The twelfth canon of the Second Council of Constantinople (553, Fifth Ecumenical) seems to say Christ on earth was impassible in the sense of “longings (passions, presumably sexual) of the flesh” (Henry Denzinger, The Sources of Catholic Dogma, trans. R. J. Deferrari, Hersler Book Co., 1954, 224).

In this paper I am interested mainly in the question of whether or not the divine nature is capable of emotion, including, in a secondary way, the experience of suffering.

Biblical Arcing Method of Interpretation

John Piper says:

It was a life-changing revelation to me when I discovered that Paul, for example, did not merely make a collection of divine pronouncements, but that he argued. This meant, for me, a whole new approach to Bible reading. No longer did I just read or memorize verses. I sought also to understand and memorize arguments. This involved finding the main point of each literary unit and then seeing how each proposition fit together to unfold and support the main point. (Biblical Exegesis: Discovering the Meaning of Scriptural Texts, pg. 18, my emphasis)

If you want to learn this method of biblical interpretation (which works especially well in Pauline texts), there is now a website devoting to the art of biblical arcing.

[HT: JT]