tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-47195005060257815962024-03-13T06:01:50.782-07:00Draw Nigh to GodTheological Reflections of a
Californian in ScotlandAdam Nighhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09878011081056674483noreply@blogger.comBlogger64125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4719500506025781596.post-15057127113067393802011-06-27T14:31:00.000-07:002011-06-27T14:31:06.867-07:00New Blog Announcement!I am pleased to announce the launch of a brand new blog that I am a part of. Four Aberdeen systematic theology PhD students, myself, Jon Coutts, Justin Stratis and Darren Sumner will be contributing to <a href="http://theologyoutofbounds.wordpress.com/">Out of Bounds: Theology in the Far Country</a>, a blog seeking to generate healthy and probing theological conversations. Jon Coutts has written a fantastic opening post articulating the kind of "gospel conversation" we are seeking to foster. Check it out!<br />
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This new blog will now be my primary blogging home. Draw Nigh will still be here, but will remain basically inactive for the immediate future.Adam Nighhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09878011081056674483noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4719500506025781596.post-29662430504526682482011-06-26T08:46:00.000-07:002011-06-26T08:46:47.892-07:00Transitions<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjO7UgV2TIeAeWEBFN2HtmCNqm5Tn7yR2XoSihOPq_Toq_MDWVvvVn961pUsx0ElQrgr-VR_2v6uYvo8ooQbBWPJGnwS0n_gxEbMuKFpWjpfaaKepjj4RuQpfit0pOsEKtlWX3VZ0RIdg/s1600/moving+day.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="161" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjO7UgV2TIeAeWEBFN2HtmCNqm5Tn7yR2XoSihOPq_Toq_MDWVvvVn961pUsx0ElQrgr-VR_2v6uYvo8ooQbBWPJGnwS0n_gxEbMuKFpWjpfaaKepjj4RuQpfit0pOsEKtlWX3VZ0RIdg/s200/moving+day.jpg" width="200" /></a>Though nothing has been going on here at Draw Nigh for several months, quite a bit has been going on for me and its time I post an update. First, my family and I have moved from Aberdeen, Scotland back to our dear old Santa Cruz, Ca. It was crazy trying to get all our stuff between countries, especially since I came back with WAY more books than I went with. It was also very bittersweet as we knew we were coming back to so many friends and family we love in Santa Cruz, but were also leaving friends we love that had become our family in Aberdeen.<br />
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Now settled back in, I'll be splitting my time here between finishing my dissertation and working in ministry at <a href="http://www.tlc.org/">Twin Lakes Church</a> in Aptos, Ca., the church I grew up in and love as my family.<br />
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As for blogging activity, I'm working on a group blog with some friends and fellow theo-bloggers from Aberdeen which will hopefully be launching this week.<br />
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I'm also working on a personal web site which will just be a place to host my CV online and post updates about conferences and publications I'll be a part of.<br />
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As for Draw Nigh, it has been close to totally inactive for several months and will likely remain that way for a while, but I'm hoping to come back to it before to long. My hope is to use it as a forum to extend conversations taking place in my church ministry, discussing biblical and theological questions coming from Christians without much or any academic theological training and seeking to address those questions without technical jargon - a theology blog for the Christian layperson if you will.<br />
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Updates will be coming!Adam Nighhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09878011081056674483noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4719500506025781596.post-67582914187125175872011-04-08T23:18:00.000-07:002011-04-08T23:18:41.366-07:00Evangelical Calvinism Book<a href="http://evangelicalcalvinist.com/2011/04/08/evangelical-calvinism-book/">Here</a> is what the table of contents to the Evangelical Calvinism book will look like. I just submitted the final final draft yesterday for my chapter, which is entitled "The Depth Dimension of Scripture: A Prolegomenon to Evangelical Calvinism", and am pretty excited about it. They are looking for a release date late 2011/early 2012. Be on the lookout!Adam Nighhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09878011081056674483noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4719500506025781596.post-86172599597997395732011-03-24T10:22:00.000-07:002011-03-24T10:22:07.312-07:00Original AutographsSo, I've been thinking. As a person who desires to make a living pastoring and teaching in the Evangelical world, I might be incredibly stupid to bring this up, but I don't like statements of faith that talk about the Bible being inspired "in the original autographs". So many churches and educational institutions have this line in their doctrinal statements, often as the first line of it. This doesn't sit right with me.<br />
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What don't I like about it? Well, I'll tell you.<br />
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<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right; margin-left: 1em; text-align: right;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://www.losviajeros.net/fotos/europa/Disneyland/Disney_6828.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="212" src="http://www.losviajeros.net/fotos/europa/Disneyland/Disney_6828.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">I'm pretty sure this is what people mean by "original autograph".</td></tr>
</tbody></table>First, the historical reality of something called an "original autograph" is entirely doubtable for many books of the Bible. What was the "original" version of the Psalms? Does "original autograph" refer to the first written version of each independent Psalm? The first time a collection of Psalms were brought together? The collection as we now have it in our Bibles? Statements which limit the scope of inspiration to original autographs show a lack of appreciation for the processes involved in bringing much of the Old Testament into the form we have it. Why limit the Spirit's inspiring work to a particular stage in the life of a text's production, especially when a term like 'original autograph' is so ill suited to specify which stage we have in mind?<br />
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Second, more importantly, and more in line with what Evangelicals really care about, explicitly limiting the inspiration of Scripture to a supposed "original autograph" calls into question the authority of Scripture as it is present in the church today. It makes Scripture's authority in the church today definitively dependent on the human work of text criticism rather than the divine work of the Holy Spirit. Our confessions need to be statements of faith in God in his work of revelation and reconciliation, while of course including his use of creaturely media to accomplish his will, among which Scripture is essential. That is to say, our confessions need to be <i>biblical</i>! Scripture speaks of no such things as original autographs, so why make them an object of confession? (If you say, "the Bible doesn't have the word 'Trinity' in it either", I'll seriously punch you.) New Testament writers appeal to the Old Testament as authoritative without ever grounding those appeals on a distinction between original autographs and anything else. In fact, they freely cite the Septuagint, a translation of the Hebrew Old Testament into Greek, obviously not original autographs, yet there is no qualifying of its authority. Likewise, if we are to confess the inspiration of Scripture, which we certainly must do, we need to define that inspiration in terms broad enough to see the Spirit's work include the whole range of processes by which the books of Scripture were composed, redacted, collected, and preserved through the ages. (Actually, we first need to see the composition of the biblical books in coordination with the redemptive acts God has done in the foundation and life of Israel and the church in which Scripture has its authority and is to be interpreted). <br />
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The questions brought up by the admission of stages of composition or redaction, questions such as "if there were several versions of a book along the way, which version is God's Word", make the mistake of thinking of divine revelation entirely in terms of the verbal form of Scripture rather than in terms of the living God continually speaking of himself through those verbal forms by his Spirit. In other words, anxiety over such questions manifests a view of the Spirit's work in history so narrow and punctiliar as to be nearly deistic. If the Spirit doesn't speak <i>now </i>through Scripture as he spoke through it as it was first received, then it is of no use to us. If he does speak now through it, then our statements of faith out to reflect such a trust in Scripture in the unity of its original reception (if it even makes sense to speak of such a thing) <i>and </i>its present reception. <br />
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That being said, I am still willing to sign statements containing language about original autographs. It is not that I hold suspicion about the inspiredness of Scripture in any earlier version than we have now, its just that I see no reason not just say that we believe Scripture to be inspired and authoritative for Christian thinking and living. I see no benefit gained by the inclusion of "in the original autographs", only problems. Am I missing something?Adam Nighhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09878011081056674483noreply@blogger.com10tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4719500506025781596.post-89994544707634082952011-03-19T10:51:00.000-07:002011-03-19T11:48:33.455-07:00Some Worthwhile Rob Bell Reviews<a href="http://apprising.org/wp-content/uploads/2011/03/LoveWins3.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="200" src="http://apprising.org/wp-content/uploads/2011/03/LoveWins3.jpg" width="136" /></a><br />
<b>Updated: 6:51 pm GMT, 3/19/2011</b><br />
Well, if you follow this blog you'll notice I've tried to step back from all the hoopla surrounding Rob Bell's recently released church bonfire fuel, <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Love-Wins-About-Heaven-Person/dp/006204964X?ie=UTF8&tag=drnitogo-20&link_code=btl&camp=213689&creative=392969">Love Wins</a>. But try to avoid it as I may, the onslaught of ridiculous things said about it on the web and the thoughtful things my friends in Aberdeen have said about it, especially since a few of them have now actually read it, has brought me to order it for myself: it'll be here on Tuesday and I'll read it by next weekend - expect some thoughts to follow, if I have any. In the meantime, I've also been encouraged that some thoughtful and respectful reviews have finally started to appear. <br />
<div><ul><li>Fuller President Richard Mouw has a good one <a href="http://www.netbloghost.com/mouw/?p=188">here</a>.</li>
</ul><div><ul><li>Steve Holmes, senior lecturer in systematic theology at the U. of St. Andrews, has a great review series of it . So far there are three parts:</li>
</ul><ul><ul><li><a href="http://shoredfragments.wordpress.com/2011/03/19/rob-bell-love-wins/">Part 1</a>, arguing that though the book is flawed, it is nonetheless important and worth reading for its suggestions that what is wrong with what many Christians have been taught about salvation and life-after-death brings with it a quite unbiblical view of who God is, also that Bell is unambiguously not a Universalist.</li>
</ul></ul><ul><ul><li><a href="http://shoredfragments.wordpress.com/2011/03/19/rob-bell-love-wins-2/">Part 2</a>, arguing that virtually all the pillars of Reformed Orthodoxy (Edwards, Hodge, Warfield, etc.) support Bell's contention that there will be vastly more people in heaven than in hell, though this is one of the most attacked claims in the book.</li>
</ul></ul><ul><ul><li><a href="http://shoredfragments.wordpress.com/2011/03/19/rob-bell-love-wins-3/">Part 3</a>, arguing that Bell has taken an unfortunately reverted to the use of loaded questions, caricature, otherwise less than gracious tactics in this book, unlike his previous books. This entry seems a bit cut off, like he was in the middle of developing a larger point and accidentally hit the "publish" button.</li>
</ul></ul><ul><li>David Congdon has done an expansive (over 13,000 words!) response to a review of Bell's book by Mark Galli, senior managing editor of Christianity Today. The review is broken into five parts; an index can be found <a href="http://fireandrose.blogspot.com/2011/03/beyond-binaries-response-to-mark-galli_19.html">here</a>. I've just begun reading this one myself; the stated intent is to challenge Galli's characterization of Bell as a liberal in opposition to orthodox Evangelicalism.</li>
</ul><ul><li>Finally, though Bell doesn't call himself a Universalist, Robin Parry calls himself one and has a helpful article in the <a href="http://www.baptisttimes.co.uk/bellshells.htm">Baptist Times</a> making clear what Christian Universalism is and what it isn't.</li>
</ul>Though all the controversy will certainly die down before too long, my fear is that its primary legacy will be that of having caused a massive increase of acceptance of conservative Reformed theologies that compromise on the love of God for the sake of a contractual system that fits with our preconceptions and asserts our privilege. That is why I hope more thoughtful people actively engage the controversy so that the primary outcome might be one of growth in understanding rather than further entrenchment. If any of you are aware of other worthy reviews of Bell's book (let the reader understand), let me know in the comments.</div></div>Adam Nighhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09878011081056674483noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4719500506025781596.post-39639663547734099092011-03-18T04:14:00.000-07:002011-03-18T04:19:00.168-07:00Is Theology Totally Irrelevant to the Church Today?<a href="http://www.theopedia.com/images/d/d8/Webster.jpeg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="200" src="http://www.theopedia.com/images/d/d8/Webster.jpeg" width="149" /></a>John Webster's editorial in the new issue of <a href="http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/journal/10.1111/(ISSN)1468-2400">IJST</a> has me a bit depressed. In it he discusses the conditions in which theological intelligence is most likely to thrive. His first point is that it is likely to flourish when it understands its vocation as "contemplative and apostolic", contemplative in that addresses itself to the deep things of God and apostolic because it commends these things to others - no problem there. Second, the whole enterprise of Christian theology is enhanced when it attracts godly and intellectually gifted people to its pursuit - no problem there either.<br />
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Its in points three and four I get bummed out.<br />
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<blockquote>Third, Christian theology flourishes when in some measure it enjoys favourable<br />
institutional circumstances: some particular academic or religious form of life which<br />
is hospitable to a work of the mind with little apparent impact, some happy gathering<br />
of minds with sufficient rapport and energy that their unique talents combine to form<br />
something like a school. (Webster, "Editorial", International Journal of Systematic Theology, vol. 13, no. 2, p. 128)</blockquote>Those of us who have made the sacrifice to leave our normal lives and go to a theological school are blessed (if it is a <i>good </i>school) to temporarily live in a situation that satisfies this condition. I can attest that in Aberdeen we are abundantly blessed with a situation in which academic, spiritual and social life intertwine in an almost Edenic situation for theological pursuit. We read and think and write and talk (some of us even pray) all the live-long day. Those who have gone through this training for the spiritual life of the mind/intellectual life of the spirit and have returned to the real world have made, as Webster notes, "little apparent impact", no sales-record-breaking books, no mega-church ministries. Usually guys like us go into rather humble academic teaching or church ministry jobs. The question is whether we will be able to foster similar intellectual situations when we leave the academy and go back into the real world. Those of us who get university jobs won't have this problem, but those of us who go back to our homes and churches have this question in front of us: Will the insights we have gained and the patterns of reflection we have developed in our theological study benefit the life of the church for whom we toil, or will it all be filtered through ears who only hear the potential for church growth or other practical impact. This leads Webster's fourth point:<br />
<blockquote>Fourth, Christian theology flourishes when it honours and is held in honour by the Christian community. Theology is ecclesial science, a work of reason pursued (whatever its precise institutional locale) within the community of election and faith. All its inquiries ought to hold that community in high esteem, as a servant glad to be about its tasks in such a company; and that company, too, should esteem this servant and expect good things of its service. ("Editorial", p. 128)</blockquote>I've already alluded to my worry here: will the churches us theologians go to and serve, either as pastors or even on a volunteer lay level, welcome us as theologians, value our training and insights, be willing to hear and consider the sometimes difficult things we have to tell the church? Have Evangelical churches in America become so focused on the tangible (cars in the parking lot, butts in the pews, hands in the air, testimony of changed lives - all good things by the way) that it simply does not value the other kinds of good things theologians' service has to offer? Most of us love the church and want to serve it; the worry is that it doesn't love us and doesn't want our service.<br />
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Webster (who I should probably mention is my doctoral advisor, not that I otherwise wouldn't think he is right about everything, which he is), does go on to alleviate my depression in his fifth point which is that we get it wrong when we think these conditions are in fundamentally worse shape now than they were at some other point in history - "Theology is not exiled from its past but its future." The present is not depressing in light of the past but in light of the future in which sin is removed as an obstacle and theology is fully united to He whom it considers. The fifth condition is that we believe theology is actually possible, that in spite of the limitations imposed on us in our currently fallen context, we believe that "God is not hindered by our hindrances", that God speaks and enables us to hear and understand. On that basis, no matter what intellectual climate I find myself in in the future, I will pray with Habakkuk "I stand in awe of your deeds, O LORD. Renew them in our day, in our time make them known" (Hab 3:2), not that God would restore some notion of the past but that he would reach into the present from the future and give the church a love for himself and for thinking on the gospel greater than its present love for spectacle and novelty in his name. I pray this against my own fears that I make myself increasingly irrelevant to the church by pursuing disciplined thinking on the church's foundation.<br />
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<i>(To get more people to be directed to this post from Google: Rob Bell, Hell, Universalism, Sex, Money, Murder - thank you).</i>Adam Nighhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09878011081056674483noreply@blogger.com6tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4719500506025781596.post-61318708500043311822011-03-16T04:37:00.000-07:002011-03-16T04:37:12.769-07:00Church and Gospel: Which determines which?Reading the first pages of prolegomena in Robert Jensen's Systematic Theology is refreshingly brisk and painless work. In situating the task of systematic theology within the self-understanding of the church, he gives a simple account of the church as the community formed by the expansion of the gospel from those who directly witnessed the risen Christ and who both recognized the universal import of what they witnessed and moreover were directly told by Christ to go and tell the nations, to the progressive expansion of people hearing that message and thereby becoming proclaimers of it to new hearers. <br />
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But fairly quickly he makes what I think is a problematic move:<br />
<blockquote><a href="http://cruciality.files.wordpress.com/2010/06/robertjenson-8.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="200" src="http://cruciality.files.wordpress.com/2010/06/robertjenson-8.jpg" width="161" /></a>It is the historically continuous community, which in this way began and perdures, that her own linguistic custom calls "the church." "Church" and "gospel" therefore mutually determine each other. Whether we are to say that God uses the gospel to gather the church for himself, or that God provides the church to carry the gospel to the world, depends entirely on the direction of thought in a context. (Jensen, <i>Systematic Theology</i>, vol. 1, pp. 4-5). </blockquote>Is this right? Does the church determine the gospel in the same way or even to the same degree that the gospel determines the church? To say yes would seem to lead to all kinds of problems, most obviously the problem that since the church is a continuous community and therefore a community spanning generations, centuries, and even millennia of cultural change, as the church inescapably changes with the times we would have to say that the gospel itself changes.<br />
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Of course, if in reaction to this we decide that gospel and church must be conceived so that the gospel is entirely free vis-a-vis the church, able to promote itself through other means just as easily as through the church, then we would have to hold out the possibility of multiple churches, multiple communities that the gospel calls into being with no underlying unity obligating them to work toward making that unity visible. <br />
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It would seem that the solution is to hold gospel and church inseparably together but in a consistently ordered way so that the gospel is the determinant of the church and not the other way around. What the gospel is is the message of Jesus Christ through which the Holy Spirit gathers a people together for God, while the church is the Spirit's servant chosen to continue that message, but always under a unilateral conditioning by the message, not mutually conditioning it. The gospel and the Church are bound together in inseparable unity, but as a unity of master and servant, not substance and container. The master has chosen this servant and carries out his work uniquely through this servant's service, but this service is always freely chosen by the master. Conceived as a relation of substance and container, we would have to say that though it is the value of the substance that determines the need and worth of the container, the container is what actually gives shape to the substance. However, conceived as master and servant, it is the master's command that determines the servants's service; the servant's service does not determine the master's command.Adam Nighhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09878011081056674483noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4719500506025781596.post-29981887515858141082011-03-09T03:10:00.000-08:002011-03-09T07:47:35.041-08:00A Damaging Ambiguity in Modern Worship<a href="http://www.smh.com.au/ffximage/2004/11/06/hillsongworship_wideweb__430x286.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="132" src="http://www.smh.com.au/ffximage/2004/11/06/hillsongworship_wideweb__430x286.jpg" width="200" /></a>After living in Scotland for about a year and a third, attending a Church of Scotland church where the worship music is primarily hymns and an organ, I spent most of December and January back home in Santa Cruz, Ca. It was great in those months to be back at my home church where my wife and I both grew up and have tons of frien<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: inherit;">ds and family, but something I had struggled with for years in the kind of modern worship we do at our home church was brought fresh to my mind in its contrast with more traditional hymnody. (<b>Generalization alert</b>: just go with it). Hymns are focused on who God is, what he has done, asserting the worshippers' faith in him and asking for God's blessings in faith. Modern worship is primarily concerned with the worshipper's (notice the different placement of the apostrophe) subjective response to God's being, presence and/or blessings. Where hymns sing things like...</span><br />
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<blockquote><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: inherit;">See from His head, His hands, His feet, </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: inherit;">Sorrow and love flow mingled down! </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: inherit;">Did e’er such love and sorrow meet, </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: inherit;">Or thorns compose so rich a crown?</span></blockquote><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: inherit;">Modern worship sings things like...</span><br />
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<blockquote><span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 15px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: inherit;">The fullness of Your grace is here with me, </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 15px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: inherit;">The richness of Your beauty’s all I see, </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 15px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: inherit;">The brightness of Your glory has arrived, </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 15px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: inherit;">In Your presence God, I’m completely satisfied</span></span></blockquote>There is an important difference here that I think causes a significant amount of spiritual anguish for many who participate in modern worship. The modern worship song is describing a state of mind that the worshipper is claiming for him/herself, one in which God's beauty is all they see so that they are completely satisfied. How does one sing that if what they actually see is the ugliness engulfing their lives leaving them anything but satisfied? A spiritual pressure is put on the worshipper to feel that way, to manipulate their own psychology to conform to that feeling. Some do. Some are somehow able to play that part with relative ease. I won't speak to their own spiritual situation because I simply can't relate to it, but I usually suspect that they are forcefully hiding something from themselves - I realize, however, that it really isn't my place to judge. Others are faced with a crisis. They are led to the conclusion that this kind of elevated feeling is what faith looks like, and they either need to drum up some good vibrations or deal with the fact that they might just not be capable of faith.<br />
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Notice how the hymn doesn't demand that kind of psychological conformity. It calls the worshipper to think about the gospel, not to feel a certain way but simply to recognize it. It is speaks of the grace, beauty and glory of God's presence in the creaturely realm and even elicits an emotional subjective response, at least from me, but the hymn isn't <i>about </i>that subjective response, it occasions it. The modern worship song is actually<i> about </i>the subjective response; one gets the sense that the feeling is the actual intent or object of the song.<br />
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There is a theological ambiguity at play here that I want to address. As biblical as it is to speak of the faithfulness of God and the satisfaction that comes in receiving it, we must pay constant attention to the lingering effects of sin. That we worship God as sinners means that his beauty will never be all we see until our redemption is made complete when Christ returns. We will never be completely satisfied in God's presence this side of Christ's return because we are not yet in his presence free of the entanglements of sin. We are in his presence in Christ and his presence is in us by the Spirit, but that reality is hidden with Christ in God for the present, the Spirit being present in us as the promise that we will one day be satisfied. <br />
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These thoughts have been brought to mind for me as I have been reading Karl Barth's commentary on Paul's Epistle to the Romans, a troubling book in many ways but nonetheless filled with theological insight. Speaking to my frustration over modern worship, Barth has this to say about people's assumption of experiencing God:<br />
<blockquote><a href="http://libweb.ptsem.edu/uploadedImages/barth.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="200" src="http://libweb.ptsem.edu/uploadedImages/barth.jpg" width="141" /></a>Whenever men suppose themselves conscious of the emotion of nearness to God, whenever they speak and write of divine things, whenever sermon-making and temple-building are thought of as an ultimate human occupation, whenever men are aware of divine appointment and of being entrusted with a divine mission, sin veritably abounds - unless the miracle of forgiveness accompanies such activity; unless, that is to say, the fear of the Lord maintains the distance by which God is separated from men.</blockquote>Later, he quotes Calvin:<br />
<blockquote>Everything by which we are surrounded conflicts with the promise of God. He promises us immortality, but we are encompassed with mortality and corruption. He pronounces that we are righteous in His sight, but we are engulfed in sin. He declares His favour and goodwill towards us, but we are threatened by the tokens of his wrath. What can we do? It is His will that we should shut our eyes to what we are and have, in order that nothing may impede or even check our faith in Him.</blockquote><a href="http://davepohl.com/calvin.gif" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="200" src="http://davepohl.com/calvin.gif" width="146" /></a>Calvin's call to place our faith in what we hear in the gospel rather than what we see in our experience brilliantly captures the heart of the gospel. If we are consciously aware that we are intentionally negating our experience of seeing ugliness and being unsatisfied in faith, then I think we can joyfully sing the modern worship song (though we'd still probably favor the hymn). I can sing it not as a description of how I feel, but as a statement of faith, faith in the reality of the new creation I am in Christ, the one that really does only see God's beauty and really is satisfied in God's presence. The problem is that I don't see modern worship services making this contradiction clear; I see them feeding the confusion, making the worshipper think that it is their job to drum up the feelings rather than having faith in the promise despite their feelings and perception. <br />
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The answer? I don't know, but I think getting more people in leadership in modern worship churches to read Barth couldn't hurt. Keeping the dialectic of God's faithfulness and our faithlessness as a more explicit theme in modern worship would be helpful as well. Your thoughts?Adam Nighhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09878011081056674483noreply@blogger.com24tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4719500506025781596.post-65506966249717814802011-03-08T03:48:00.000-08:002011-03-08T03:48:30.251-08:00Colloquium on Theological Interpretation in NZ<div class="MsoNormal" style="border-collapse: collapse; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; text-align: left;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: inherit;">Anyone living in or able to get to NZ this summer interested in theological interpretation of Scripture should attend this colloquium. </span></div><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="border-collapse: collapse; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; text-align: center;"><b><span style="font-family: Calibri; font-size: medium;"><span lang="EN-NZ" style="font-size: 14pt; font-weight: bold;">Colloquium on Theological Interpretation</span></span></b></div><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="border-collapse: collapse; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; text-align: center;"><b><span style="font-family: Calibri; font-size: x-small;"><span lang="EN-NZ" style="font-size: 11pt; font-weight: bold;">Vaughan</span></span></b><b><span lang="EN-NZ" style="font-weight: bold;"> Park, Long Bay, Auckland, New Zealand, 19-20 August 2011</span></b><b><span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-NZ" style="font-size: 12pt; font-weight: bold;"></span></span></b></div><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="border-collapse: collapse; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; text-align: center;"><br />
</div><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="border-collapse: collapse; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; text-align: center;"><b><span style="font-family: Calibri; font-size: x-small;"><span lang="EN-NZ" style="font-size: 11pt; font-weight: bold;">Announcement and Call for Papers</span></span></b></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="border-collapse: collapse; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="border-collapse: collapse; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><b><i><span style="font-family: Calibri; font-size: x-small;"><span lang="EN-NZ" style="font-size: 11pt; font-style: italic; font-weight: bold;">Sponsored by Laidlaw-Carey Graduate School, Auckland, New Zealand and the Department of Theology and Religious Studies, University of Otago, Dunedin, New Zealand</span></span></i></b></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="border-collapse: collapse; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="border-collapse: collapse; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="font-family: Calibri; font-size: x-small;"><span lang="EN-NZ" style="font-size: 11pt;">Featuring Joel Green and Murray Rae as keynote speakers and respondents, two scholars who have been prominent in the development of theological interpretation as a discipline: </span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="border-collapse: collapse; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><br />
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<tr><td style="font-family: arial, sans-serif; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; padding-bottom: 0cm; padding-left: 5.4pt; padding-right: 5.4pt; padding-top: 0cm; width: 146.5pt;" valign="top" width="244"><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><img align="left" alt="MR Office Photo" height="165" hspace="12" src="https://mail.google.com/mail/?ui=2&ik=3baf8582b1&view=att&th=12e932ece3ce5140&attid=0.7&disp=emb&zw" width="127" /><span style="font-family: Calibri; font-size: x-small;"><span style="font-size: 11pt;"></span></span></div></td><td style="font-family: arial, sans-serif; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; padding-bottom: 0cm; padding-left: 5.4pt; padding-right: 5.4pt; padding-top: 0cm; width: 342.55pt;" valign="top" width="571"><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="font-family: Calibri; font-size: x-small;"><span style="font-size: 11pt;">Associate Professor Murray Rae is head of the Department of Theology and Religious Studies at the University of Otago. He has been involved in a number of initiatives concerned with the theological interpretation of Scripture, including the Scripture and Hermeneutics Seminar and the Journal of Theological Interpretation. He is a member of the editorial board of the JTI and is series editor of the JTI monograph series. He is also the chair of an International Colloquium on theology and the Built Environment and has continuing research interests in the work of Søren Kierkegaard, Biblical Hermeneutics, Christian Doctrine, and the development of Christian faith amongst Maori.</span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><br />
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<tr><td style="font-family: arial, sans-serif; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; padding-bottom: 0cm; padding-left: 5.4pt; padding-right: 5.4pt; padding-top: 0cm; width: 146.5pt;" valign="top" width="244"><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><a href="https://sites.google.com/site/greenjoelb/home/08-Green%2CJoel-300rgb.jpg?attredirects=0" style="color: #114170;" target="_blank"><img align="left" alt="https://sites.google.com/site/greenjoelb/_/rsrc/1248180570101/home/08-Green%2CJoel-300rgb.jpg?height=200&width=144" border="0" height="176" hspace="12" src="https://mail.google.com/mail/?ui=2&ik=3baf8582b1&view=att&th=12e932ece3ce5140&attid=0.8&disp=emb&zw" width="128" /></a><span style="font-family: Calibri; font-size: x-small;"><span style="font-size: 11pt;"><a href="https://sites.google.com/site/greenjoelb/home/08-Green%2CJoel-300rgb.jpg?attredirects=0" style="color: #114170;" target="_blank"></a></span></span></div></td><td style="font-family: arial, sans-serif; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; padding-bottom: 0cm; padding-left: 5.4pt; padding-right: 5.4pt; padding-top: 0cm; width: 342.55pt;" valign="top" width="571"><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="font-family: Calibri; font-size: x-small;"><span style="font-size: 11pt;">Professor J<u><span style="color: #451670;"><span style="color: #451670;">oel B. Green</span></span></u> is Professor of New Testament Interpretation and Associate Dean for the Center for Advanced Theological Studies at <u><span style="color: #451670;"><span style="color: #451670;">Fuller Theological Seminary</span></span></u>. He holds the Ph.D. in New Testament Studies from the University of Aberdeen (Scotland), as well as the M.Th. (Perkins School of Theology) and the B.S. (Texas Tech University). He has completed further graduate work in the neurosciences at the University of Kentucky. In the academic world of biblical scholarship, Professor Green is noted above all for his contribution to the <u><span style="color: #451670;"><span style="color: #451670;">theological interpretation of Christian Scripture</span></span></u>, his work in Luke-Acts, and his commitment to interdisciplinarity. In the world of the church, he is known for wearing his scholarship lightly, for his concern with the mission of the church in the twenty-first century, and for his commitment to renewal.</span></span><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 12pt;"></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><br />
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</tbody></table><div class="MsoNormal" style="border-collapse: collapse; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><b><span style="font-family: Calibri; font-size: x-small;"><span lang="EN-NZ" style="font-size: 11pt; font-weight: bold;">Papers</span></span></b><b><span style="font-size: xx-small;"><span lang="EN-NZ" style="font-size: 2pt; font-weight: bold;"></span></span></b></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="border-collapse: collapse; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="border-collapse: collapse; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="font-family: Calibri; font-size: x-small;"><span lang="EN-NZ" style="font-size: 11pt;">This colloquium will explore the theory and practice of the theological interpretation of Scripture. The contributions by our two key note speaker / respondents will be supplemented by papers from scholars in New Zealand, Australia and the Pacific and from further afield. Potential papers might cover, but are not limited to, the following types of areas:</span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="border-collapse: collapse; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="border-collapse: collapse; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 14px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 36pt; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="font-family: Symbol; font-size: x-small;"><span lang="EN-NZ" style="font-family: Symbol; font-size: 11pt; line-height: 17px;"><span>·<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: xx-small;"><span style="font: normal normal normal 7pt/normal 'Times New Roman';"> </span></span></span></span></span><span dir="LTR"><span lang="EN-NZ">Theological interpretation of particular texts.</span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="border-collapse: collapse; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 14px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 36pt; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="font-family: Symbol; font-size: x-small;"><span lang="EN-NZ" style="font-family: Symbol; font-size: 11pt; line-height: 17px;"><span>·<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: xx-small;"><span style="font: normal normal normal 7pt/normal 'Times New Roman';"> </span></span></span></span></span><span dir="LTR"><span lang="EN-NZ">Issues relating to the practice of theological interpretation.</span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="border-collapse: collapse; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 14px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 36pt; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="font-family: Symbol; font-size: x-small;"><span lang="EN-NZ" style="font-family: Symbol; font-size: 11pt; line-height: 17px;"><span>·<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: xx-small;"><span style="font: normal normal normal 7pt/normal 'Times New Roman';"> </span></span></span></span></span><span dir="LTR"><span lang="EN-NZ">Questions of method and theological interpretation.</span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="border-collapse: collapse; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 14px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 36pt; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="font-family: Symbol; font-size: x-small;"><span lang="EN-NZ" style="font-family: Symbol; font-size: 11pt; line-height: 17px;"><span>·<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: xx-small;"><span style="font: normal normal normal 7pt/normal 'Times New Roman';"> </span></span></span></span></span><span dir="LTR"><span lang="EN-NZ">The history and landscape of the theological interpretation as a discipline.</span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="border-collapse: collapse; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 14px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 36pt; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="font-family: Symbol; font-size: x-small;"><span lang="EN-NZ" style="font-family: Symbol; font-size: 11pt; line-height: 17px;"><span>·<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: xx-small;"><span style="font: normal normal normal 7pt/normal 'Times New Roman';"> </span></span></span></span></span><span dir="LTR"><span lang="EN-NZ">Cross cultural reflections on theological interpretation.</span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="border-collapse: collapse; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 14px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 36pt; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="font-family: Symbol; font-size: x-small;"><span lang="EN-NZ" style="font-family: Symbol; font-size: 11pt; line-height: 17px;"><span>·<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: xx-small;"><span style="font: normal normal normal 7pt/normal 'Times New Roman';"> </span></span></span></span></span><span dir="LTR"><span lang="EN-NZ">Contemporary social, cultural and political reflections from a perspective of theological interpretation of Scripture.</span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="border-collapse: collapse; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 14px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 36pt; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="font-family: Symbol; font-size: x-small;"><span lang="EN-NZ" style="font-family: Symbol; font-size: 11pt; line-height: 17px;"><span>·<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: xx-small;"><span style="font: normal normal normal 7pt/normal 'Times New Roman';"> </span></span></span></span></span><span dir="LTR"><span lang="EN-NZ">Theological interpretation, church and mission.</span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="border-collapse: collapse; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="border-collapse: collapse; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="font-family: Calibri; font-size: x-small;"><span lang="EN-NZ" style="font-size: 11pt;">Papers should be designed to take 30-35 minutes to deliver with 10-15 minutes for discussion following. Abstracts of papers should be submitted no later than 31 March 2011, and should be sent to Tim Meadowcroft: <a href="mailto:tmeadowcroft@laidlaw.ac.nz" style="color: #114170;" target="_blank">tmeadowcroft@laidlaw.ac.nz</a>. Our intention is to publish a book of essays on theological interpretation based on the offerings at the colloquium.</span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="border-collapse: collapse; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="border-collapse: collapse; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><b><span style="font-family: Calibri; font-size: x-small;"><span lang="EN-NZ" style="font-size: 11pt; font-weight: bold;">Attendance</span></span></b><b><span style="font-size: xx-small;"><span lang="EN-NZ" style="font-size: 2pt; font-weight: bold;"></span></span></b></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="border-collapse: collapse; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="border-collapse: collapse; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="font-family: Calibri; font-size: x-small;"><span lang="EN-NZ" style="font-size: 11pt;">There will be a fee of $50 for the colloquium (no charge for students enrolled in R133 for Friday, $15 for Saturday), with an additional $60 per night for accommodation if you wish to stay at Vaughan Park. If you would like to attend this event please register your interest via email to <a href="mailto:christina.partridge@laidlaw.ac.nz" style="color: #114170;" target="_blank">christina.partridge@laidlaw.<wbr></wbr>ac.nz</a> and further information will be forwarded to you in due course.</span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="border-collapse: collapse; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="border-collapse: collapse; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="font-family: Calibri; font-size: x-small;"><span lang="EN-NZ" style="font-size: 11pt;"><a href="http://www.vaughanpark.org.nz/?sid=1" style="color: #114170;" target="_blank" title="Vaughan Park Retreat & Conference Centre"><span style="color: black;"><span style="color: windowtext; text-decoration: none;"><img alt="001_vaughan_park_chapel" border="0" height="172" src="https://mail.google.com/mail/?ui=2&ik=3baf8582b1&view=att&th=12e932ece3ce5140&attid=0.3&disp=emb&zw" width="325" /></span></span></a></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="border-collapse: collapse; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="font-family: Calibri; font-size: x-small;"><span lang="EN-NZ" style="font-size: 11pt;"><img alt="Long Bay" border="0" height="98" src="https://mail.google.com/mail/?ui=2&ik=3baf8582b1&view=att&th=12e932ece3ce5140&attid=0.4&disp=emb&zw" width="325" /></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="border-collapse: collapse; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="border-collapse: collapse; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><b><span style="font-family: Calibri; font-size: xx-small;"><span lang="EN-NZ" style="font-size: 9pt; font-weight: bold;">Vaughan Park Anglican Retreat and Conference Centre</span></span></b><span style="font-size: xx-small;"><span lang="EN-NZ" style="font-size: 9pt;"> is a place of hospitality, conversation, theological encounter and refreshment at Long Bay on Auckland’s North Shore</span></span></div>Adam Nighhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09878011081056674483noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4719500506025781596.post-47890879488528262432010-11-19T01:25:00.000-08:002010-11-19T05:58:01.156-08:00T. F. Torrance Retreat<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://www.a9autos.com/images/LochTay1.jpg"><img style="FLOAT: left; MARGIN: 0px 10px 10px 0px; WIDTH: 388px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 308px" alt="" src="http://www.a9autos.com/images/LochTay1.jpg" border="0" /></a> I had the opportunity to participate in the first annual (probably) T. F. Torrance Retreat this week at the Firbush Retreat Center on Loch Tay (pictured) here in Scotland. It was an absolutely glorious experience. The setting was beautiful, perhaps more so for the horrific weather, the wind and rain beating down on the beautiful lake (loch) and mountains. There were spectacular, if wet and muddy, walks through forests and down by the lake. But more importantly and equally wonderful were the paper and discussion sessions. These were given by scholars and pastors intimately familiar with, and some related to, Torrance and his work. All were fantastic, as were the Q&A sessions due to the makeup of the group of about 25 people, roughly 1/3 doctoral students doing dissertations on Torrance, and the other 2/3 being pastors and professors of theology. Us students were eating up all the anecdotes about Torrance given by those who had personally known him. <div><div><br /></div><div>As I said, the papers were great. Bob Walker, nephew and student of TFT and organizer of the event, gave three papers:</div><div><ul><li>An introduction to the material in <i><a href="http://www.amazon.com/Incarnation-Person-Thomas-F-Torrance/dp/0830828915/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1290159840&sr=1-1">Incarnation</a> </i>and <i><a href="http://www.amazon.com/Atonement-Person-Thomas-F-Torrance/dp/0830828923/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1290159867&sr=1-1">Atonement</a></i>, the two volumes of Christology lectures Torrance gave at New College, University of Edinburgh edited by Bob. </li><li>Resurrection, Ascension and Eschatology</li><li>The Holy Spirit: The Completion of Atonement and the Apostolic Foundation of the Church</li></ul><div>These papers were all outstanding and faithful restatements of TFT's thinking on each of these topics. The conversation after each was deep and engaging and Bob's extensive knowledge of his uncle's writings and thought was impressive as he interacted with the questions.</div><div><br /></div><div>David Torrance, younger brother of T. F. and J. B. Torrance and a remarkable theologian and pastor in his own right, gave a paper on the Vicarious Humanity of Jesus and another on The Doctrine of the Church. These were unquestionably the highlight of the week for me, though I really cannot offer much of a helpful summary of either paper beyond what could be guessed by anyone with a knowledge of Torrance theology by the titles. David is very much a pastor with a profound theological mind. That is to say, he is not first a theologian who might be distinguished by a pastoral bent, but a minister of Jesus Christ who has a profound grasp of the inner coherence of God's love in the Gospel and an ability to articulate it in a way that is both intellectually satisfying but more importantly, spiritually potent. I have an ever increasing sense that T. F. Torrance was the same sort of man. Though David did not have the academic career of his brothers or nephews (Iain and Alan in particular), he very well could have, having been offered teaching jobs such as a chair in systematic theology at the University of Edinburgh but turning them down because of his calling to parish ministry. The papers he gave, the Q&A sessions afterward, and a few personal conversations I was able to have with him, all gave me a clear sense of the kind of theologian, or rather minister of the Gospel, I want to be.</div></div></div><div><br /></div><div>Offering balance with a more traditional Calvinist perspective, Andrew McGowan, minister in Inverness and former principal and professor of Reformed Theology at Highland Theological College, gave a paper on Participation in Christ. While agreeing with TFT that Reformed soteriology needs to have a greater stress on the inclusion of the believer in the person and work of Christ than the Westminster Confession gave it, having itself a more exclusively forensic understanding, he then distinguished between four ways of understanding that inclusion: deification in the traditional Eastern Orthodox sense, theosis as differentiated from deification by Myk Habbets in his recently published dissertation (McGowan thinks Habbets characterizes TFT's position inaccurately on this point), participation in Christ as advocated by Julie Canlis, Bruce McCormack, and TFT (McGowan thinking TFT's position is better understood as participation than theosis), and communion with Christ, which McGowan advocates. The conversations that followed were lively. I greatly appreciated McGowan's willingness to be the sole voice of critique of TFT's understandings of election and soteriology as his clear thinking and commitment to his tradition made for a much more interesting discussion than would have been possible without him.</div><div><br /></div><div>Last but certainly not least was Bruce Ritchie's remarkable paper on the Gospel and the Question of Universalism in Torrance's thought. This one might need its own post. It was intensely interesting. Ritchie acknowledged that Torrance's position here is explicitly and self-consciously inconsistent - Christ has reconciled all humanity to himself through his life, death and resurrection, accomplishing universal atonement, yet people may still end up in hell by rejecting the grace Christ gives them and thus falsifying its work for them. Ritchie told of being a student of Torrance's and hearing him answer the question whether anyone would end up in hell with a clear statement that yes, Scripture clearly teaches that those who deny the Gospel will end up in hell. But then, after gathering his things and preparing to leave the class, he grew a mischievous grin and said the Scripture also said in Revelation 20:14 that in the end death and hell would be destroyed, briskly leaving the room after saying this. Though Torrance apparently left open the possibility of eternal salvation, he didn't press this possibility explicitly in his more well known writings as Barth did at the end of Church Dogmatics IV.3.1 for example. More often he pressed the more clear biblical teaching that hell would be the ultimate destiny awaiting those who cut themselves off from the Gospel by refusing it. Ritchie explored three possible ways of reconciling Torrance's seemingly irreconcilable claims of Christ's universal atonement and the reality of hell for the reprobate. The first two don't really matter as they were dismissed, but the third was a development of one of TFT's most difficult but also most helpful themes, that of the primacy of existence-statements over coherence-statements in their necessary coordination as the church attempts to develop a consistent articulation of the inner logic of the Gospel of Christ as it confronts us in Scripture. When we speak of the mystery of humanity's lingering ability to reject our reconciliation to God in Christ, we come up against an impossible possibility, that is a reality we can speak of in existence-statements (statements that immediately refer to that which is objectively real) but cannot coordinate with our existence-statements about the grace of God through coherence-statements (statements that do not directly refer to objective reality but articulate the pattern by which these external realities are related to one another). Sin, when understood from within the logic of God's grace, has no rationality; it cannot be made sense of or integrated into a logical system. It is like a surd in mathematics, a number that can be expressed but is nevertheless irrational. Thus, the logic of grace does tend toward universalism, but our responsibility is to take in the whole testimony of Scripture, which clearly takes sin and hell seriously. While the task of theology is to seek and articulate the inner coherence of the biblical testimony in Christ, it must not do so at the expense of the biblical testimony itself, running roughshod over certain biblical themes in the interest of building a coherent system based on other biblical themes. This is what universalism does by extending the logic of grace to the point where it has no room to acknowledge the horrible impossible possibility of damnation. But this is also what limited atonement does by so trying to coordinate the reality of hell with the reality of grace that it seeks to make the two logically compatible, which is impossible, but ends up perverting the logic of grace so that God's love is not truly universal, God does not truly love the world (John 3:16) but only "the elect" - here once again the demand for logical consistency trumps Scripture. Like I said, this one might just need its own post.</div><div><br /></div><div>At any rate, this retreat was a truly glorious experience. The fellowship, praying and taking communion together (rarities in university theology), the setting, the formal and informal conversations, and the spiritual and intellectual stimulation were all invigorating. I hope this is the kind of spiritual community the expansion of Torrance study will multiply.</div>Adam Nighhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09878011081056674483noreply@blogger.com8tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4719500506025781596.post-18015390438261682872010-11-13T04:58:00.000-08:002010-11-13T05:38:16.997-08:00Happily Ever Tales<a href="http://happilyevertales.blogspot.com/"><img style="FLOAT: left; MARGIN: 0px 10px 10px 0px; WIDTH: 161px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 204px" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjVyMro5EuD-WVeOyPMdyDliRQoVw4qloU-HDbPsvyHdPcLxzt0iURuTwCDlichFIQsKwFUrOX32vSJPbEymGzLSwobxQ9tWVtQYccOvVIHQ38v3lu9JP1Wjijx8-4TVgVox2fBZot2BJA/s220/meep.jpg" border="0" /></a> <div style="TEXT-ALIGN: left">My amazingly talented (and beautiful) wife Rachel has started a new blog where she shares her own original children's stories, poems and illustrations, as well as children's book reviews. It is called <a href="http://happilyevertales.com/">Happily Ever Tales</a> (<a href="http://happilyevertales.blogspot.com/">http://happilyevertales.blogspot.com/</a>). This is a great place to go with your kids and read stories! </div><div style="TEXT-ALIGN: left"><br /></div><div style="TEXT-ALIGN: left">Also, for those interested in offering us a little bit of financial support while we're living in Scotland and work on my PhD (which is crazy expensive!), there is a donate button. But feel free to just drop by and check out Rachel's stuff. Its beautiful!</div><a href="http://happilyevertales.blogspot.com/"><img style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 660px; CURSOR: pointer; HEIGHT: 137px; TEXT-ALIGN: left" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhYQdJ6b3vR04y_WMLk4egv1LbKm-ppiCwqixTbHeQlFvqQHcW2hpS_WdR1kL0OUZGNNrtMVBVLqGf8OBwtz10NDlGqTqjt-6edmagQRqxqp6TpWQDKy0WHDCm9WrbwoXO-ZXSLv-XJUoM/s660/happilymouse.jpg" border="0" /></a> <div style="TEXT-ALIGN: left"></div>Adam Nighhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09878011081056674483noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4719500506025781596.post-87554993883890552322010-11-12T03:16:00.000-08:002010-11-12T03:46:09.473-08:00Go Somewhere Else!I have been characteristically neglectful of the blog here lately. That has been due primarily to being busy writing my dissertation and conference papers (ok, a conference paper). I did attend AAR a few weeks ago and give a paper - I feel like I should give some kind of summary of the conference from my perspective, but I need to divert all brain power to dissertation at present. <a href="http://resident-theology.blogspot.com/2010/11/aar-meetings-and-musings.html">Here </a>is a great summary from my new friend, Brad East, who very graciously arranged housing for myself a some friends during AAR. My own AAR experience was very tied up with questions about the nature of the Eucharist or Communion. I attended three seminars on the topic and though the paper I gave was on Scripture and had nothing to do with the Eucharist, it came up as a possible analogy for thinking about Scripture in the Q&A. My brain has definitely been spinning on the subject and I think I'm getting closer to a clear position. I will try to write something on this in the next few weeks, but don't hold me to it. <div><br /></div><div>Rather than offer anything interesting of my own right now, I'll indulge in the cheapest kind of blogging I can think of - pointing you to interesting discussion going on elsewhere.</div><div><ul><li>The previously mentioned Brad East is having a fascinating discussion over at his blog <a href="http://resident-theology.blogspot.com/2010/11/on-thomas-oord-embodiment-and-pacifism.html">Resident Theology</a> with "Theologian of Love" Thomas Oord on whether Oord's theological commitment to a the notion that God is "non-coercive all the way down" ought to lead him to a political commitment to pacifism.</li><li>David Guretzki over at <a href="http://dguretzki.wordpress.com/2010/11/11/incarnational-church-blasphemy/#comment-834">Theomentary </a>says using "incarnational" language about the church is blasphemous, citing a passage from Barth in CD IV.3.2, and I think he is absolutely right.</li><li>Daniel Kirk at <a href="http://www.jrdkirk.com/2010/11/09/re-homophobia/">Storied Theology</a> has sparked a conversation way too long to follow, but interesting (and at times infuriating) to scan, by calling for a moratorium on the word "homophobic".</li></ul></div>Adam Nighhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09878011081056674483noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4719500506025781596.post-61299475291033037932010-10-07T02:17:00.000-07:002010-10-07T07:00:05.696-07:00My Quiet TimeI have maintained a habit of silently reading Scripture and praying each morning (more or less) for several years. I say this here to make it clear at the outset that what follows is not meant to be an attack on this practice (as I myself practice it) but some thoughts about how we might most helpfully think about that practice in a broader understanding of the place of Scripture reading in the life of the individual Christian and the Christian community. In particular, I want to say that while having "my quiet time" every morning is an immensely helpful and rewarding thing to do, it is best understood as secondary and supplementary to the corporate hearing of Scripture.<br /><div><div><br />As I understand the prevailing historical scholarship (I'm a theologian, not a historian), reading in the ancient Mediterranean world was entirely an out-loud affair. People just didn't read<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://www.dbcbloodcells.com/resources/ethiopian-eunuch-and-philip2.jpg"><img style="MARGIN: 0px 0px 10px 10px; WIDTH: 186px; FLOAT: right; HEIGHT: 216px; CURSOR: hand" border="0" alt="" src="http://www.dbcbloodcells.com/resources/ethiopian-eunuch-and-philip2.jpg" /></a> silently. Even when reading privately, as in the case of the Ethiopian eunuch in Acts 8:26-40, people would read out loud so that Philip was able to hear the Ethiopian reading Isaiah in his chariot. That then means not only that "quiet time" as a reading practice would have been a foreign concept, but also that the privacy we associate with this practice ("my quiet time") would have been equally foreign. Philip could hear the Ethiopian and even butt in. Can you imagine sitting in your comfy chair reading the Bible out loud to yourself? Even if you knew no one was around to overhear you it would be weird, but I do my reading in my office at my desk with other people close by - that would just be way too awkward. But this just reinforces how privately we conceive of the spiritual practice of reading Scripture. </div><div><br /></div><div></div><div>At a seminar I attended yesterday, a specialist in early Christian literature claimed that the Scriptures were not even intended primarily to be read but memorized and recited in public performance. He claimed that reading was just too mentally taxing to be thought of as something people would do regularly and for extended periods. That is true even in our culture where we have a language with clean type, word spacing, commas, periods and both an upper and lower case. The Greek and Hebrew languages Scripture was written in had none of these things. It was written in all caps with no spaces between words or punctuation of any kind. Hebrew didn't even have vowels - ppl wld rcgnz th wrds jst frm th cnsnnts nd cntxt. That kind of reading is hard to do, so often scholars would have someone read texts out loud to them, leaving their mind free from the duty of translating the visual text into spoken words and able to concentrate on the meaning of the words. That sounds awesome to me, thinking back to high school and how much I hated when it was my turn to read; I could understand what was going on fine when someone else was reading and I could just scan along, but when I had to read it out loud I had a much harder time both making the sounds and understanding their meaning. All of that to say that the original authors and recipients of Scripture didn't have in mind our notion of private quiet time - their alone time would have been for praying, as Jesus often does and tells his followers to do in Matthew 6:6, though I still doubt all of that was done quietly.<br /></div><div><br /></div><div>Why does any of this matter? Well, I think it matters for how we think about God and about the way Scripture reading is meant to form our thinking about God.<br /></div><br /><div>The second commandment says not to make an image to represent God, <a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg5LIvovsmu1hnq-QUBRGIQNkHt4WX3uZfksdidKBF2jYzrDzRbCeSKBhiQ8ScMF_Hrq1QWlzpxINbFgi8iCskMLw9B1GRY0Jc0z4Rfj4LwXvvV3VR5eQddz3-iEbmDRUdsUg8aLXkwDGg/s1600/CharltonHestonTheTenCommandmentsC101021021.jpg"><img style="MARGIN: 0px 10px 10px 0px; WIDTH: 125px; FLOAT: left; HEIGHT: 153px; CURSOR: hand" border="0" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg5LIvovsmu1hnq-QUBRGIQNkHt4WX3uZfksdidKBF2jYzrDzRbCeSKBhiQ8ScMF_Hrq1QWlzpxINbFgi8iCskMLw9B1GRY0Jc0z4Rfj4LwXvvV3VR5eQddz3-iEbmDRUdsUg8aLXkwDGg/s1600/CharltonHestonTheTenCommandmentsC101021021.jpg" /></a>that is, an idol. John Calvin seized on the implications of this for how we conceive of God - He is inherently invisible and is to be thought of in entirely non-visual terms. Similarly, Martin Luther, pressing the point that we know God through his Word, told his congregation that if they wanted to see God they should put their eyes in their ears. We are to know God not through what we see, but through what we hear, through hearing the Gospel of Jesus Christ, the eternal Word that was with God and was God from the beginning.<br /></div><div><br /></div><div></div><div>As God made himself known in this way to Israel, Jewish culture developed in a very aural way, having their children commit huge portions of the Torah if not the whole thing to memory. The Bible came to be within that primarily aural way of thinking. I mean haven't you ever wondered why none of the Gospel writers says a single thing about how Jesus looked? However, we live in a very visual culture, quite like the Greco-Roman culture into which the Gospel went out from its Jewish roots. We are visual thinkers in ways we don't even really realize. We say things like "see what I mean?" or "look at it this way", framing conceptual communication in visual categories. We hear with our eyes. For us, seeing, rather than hearing, is believing.</div><br /><div>Thus, reading for us is primarily visual. We think of the act of reading as going from seeing letters to thinking the thoughts that they signify. We take the thoughts from the page into our minds with our eyes. For the ancients, the visible function of letters was not to communicate directly but to preserve a record of what is otherwise a totally oral and aural affair. The visible letters were to be translated into sounds before they could serve the function of communicating events and concepts. I think the transition of the Christian faith and its engagement with Scripture from a primarily aural culture to a primarily visual culture may be behind much of modern the controversies surrounding Scripture. We have gone from understanding its aural content as the Word of God to conceiving of the visible letters of the "original autographs" as the Word (Letters?) of God.<br /></div><div><br /></div><div><span style="WHITE-SPACE: pre" class="Apple-tab-span">O</span>ne reason for that is control. When we think of reading the Bible in visual terms, we put ourselves in a position of control, making our own decisions about what to read, underlining what we find important (again not disparaging any of this, just wanting to set it in context). This <a href="http://t2.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:XP6aV9751NDNgM:http://levelselect.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2007/10/eye-500x500.jpg&t=1"><img style="MARGIN: 0px 0px 10px 10px; WIDTH: 162px; FLOAT: right; HEIGHT: 115px; CURSOR: hand" border="0" alt="" src="http://t2.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:XP6aV9751NDNgM:http://levelselect.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2007/10/eye-500x500.jpg&t=1" /></a>corresponds to control we have over our vision in general, choosing where to point our eyes, what to focus on, even having eyelids that can shield us from things we don't want to see. Hearing is different. We don't have earlids. Sound comes to us and demands our attention in a different way than vision does. When we hear Scripture being read to us, we have far less control over it. It comes to us and determines our hearing. We can of course choose to tune out and ignore it, but we can't choose to skip what is being said when we don't like it and go to a passage we prefer. This better corresponds to our actual situation before God. God comes to us in his Gospel and calls us to respond. We can choose to listen or not to, but we can't make him what we want him to be.<br /></div><br /><div>So, what I am suggesting is certainly not that we abandon the long established and demonstrably fruitful practice of private silent Scripture reading, but that we think of it as supplementing our communal hearing of the Word. Our primary approach to Scripture ought to center around its public reading in community which we hear together as the Word of God addressing us and evoking our response of worship. Our private reading then helps fill in our knowledge of the broader sweep of the biblical story and its rich diversity of literature so that when we hear a passage in group Bible study or in Sunday morning worship we know what is going on. It also functions as a way we live our private lives in organic connection to our corporate worship, being in private who we are at church on Sundays. The point is that in this understanding, the corporate reading is primary and our private reading is a secondary extension from it.</div><br /><div>Approaching Scripture like this helps us to think about God in a way appropriate to his invisible nature by building into us habits of thought that make room for conceiving of him through what we hear in his Word rather than what we see. God has come to us and made himself knowable to us not through the controlled private silence of visible text but by his Word in public and noisy proclamation.</div></div>Adam Nighhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09878011081056674483noreply@blogger.com9tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4719500506025781596.post-67500958334734150312010-08-13T02:02:00.000-07:002010-08-13T02:11:56.042-07:00Demons as Fallen Angles?Robin Parry over at <a href="http://theologicalscribbles.blogspot.com/2010/08/when-did-angels-become-demons.html">Theological Scribbles</a> has an interesting summary of a paper from Dale Martin on the history of demonology, tracing it through the Septuagint and New Testament and showing that the view that demons are fallen angels does not appear in a fully articulated form until Tertullian (2nd/3rd centurty AD).<img style="TEXT-ALIGN: center; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 360px; DISPLAY: block; HEIGHT: 497px; CURSOR: hand" border="0" alt="" src="http://physicsfundamentals.com/Brain%20teasers_files/satan-fall-from-heaven.jpg" />Adam Nighhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09878011081056674483noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4719500506025781596.post-49624270885986894122010-08-11T06:46:00.000-07:002010-08-11T07:33:09.716-07:00Torrance on Knowing God as Sinful People<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://pics.librarything.com/picsizes/fd/11/fd11bf935fd5877636b46314167434b41716b42.jpg"><img style="float:right; margin:0 0 10px 10px;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 316px; height: 425px;" src="http://pics.librarything.com/picsizes/fd/11/fd11bf935fd5877636b46314167434b41716b42.jpg" border="0" alt="" /></a>In the preface to Theological Science, Torrance shares the following personal reflection on knowing God as a sinner:<div><blockquote>If I may be allowed to speak personally for a moment, I find the presence of God bearing upon my existence and thought so powerfully that I cannot but be convinced of His overwhelming reality and rationality. To doubt the existence of God would be an act of sheer irrationality, for it would mean that my reason had become unhinged from its bond with real being. Yet in knowing God I am deeply aware that my relation to Him has been damaged, that disorder has resulted in my mind, and that it is I who obstruct knowledge of God by getting in between Him and myself, as it were. But I am also aware that His presence presses unrelentingly upon me through the disorder of my mind, for He will not let Himself be thwarted by it, challenging and repairing it, and requiring of me on my part to yield my thoughts to His healing and controlling revelation.</blockquote></div><div>It is only in knowing God that we know we are sinners, that our prideful habits of thinking are the reason we are not able to know God on our own mental power, and thus that we know God only because of the power of his grace.</div><div><br /></div><div>(PS - The artist that drew this picture of Torrance is HOT!)</div>Adam Nighhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09878011081056674483noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4719500506025781596.post-80192653309458334412010-08-09T01:50:00.000-07:002010-08-10T12:39:13.280-07:00Resurrection<a href="http://www.artbible.net/3JC/-Joh-11,01-Lazarus_Resurrection_De_Lazare/17%20REMBRANDT%20THE%20RAISING%20OF%20LAZARUS.jpg"><img style="TEXT-ALIGN: center; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 228px; DISPLAY: block; HEIGHT: 271px; CURSOR: hand" border="0" alt="" src="http://www.artbible.net/3JC/-Joh-11,01-Lazarus_Resurrection_De_Lazare/17%20REMBRANDT%20THE%20RAISING%20OF%20LAZARUS.jpg" /></a> "If only for this life we have hope in Christ, we are to be pitied more than all men" 1 Cor 15:19.<br /><div><br /><div>Does this verse call into question the kind of preaching which addresses itself from beginning to end to those problems we're having with our spouse, kids, job, drug habit, porn addiction, indictment for murder, etc? Of course I see the need to address these concerns in preaching the gospel; Christ's triumph over death certainly has implications for those things we deal with while alive that make us want to die. But our teaching on these day-to-day topics needs to be always and everywhere explicitly tied to our future hope; otherwise all we have is over-hyped advice on how to feel better that usually just doesn't work. As Paul goes on to say, </div><br /><div>"If the dead are not raised, let us eat and drink for tomorrow we die" 1 Cor 15:32.</div></div>Adam Nighhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09878011081056674483noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4719500506025781596.post-16822542340064222142010-07-28T02:05:00.000-07:002010-07-28T02:10:45.631-07:00Hauerwas On What Ordained Ministers Actually DoI've got nothing new to say, but Jason over at Per Crucem ad Lucem posted some <a href="http://cruciality.wordpress.com/2010/07/28/hauerwas-on-christian-ministry-and-speaking-christian/">thoughts </a>from Stanley Hauerwas on what those that work in professional church ministry are actually paid to do, and his answer is to teach people to speak the Christian language. I think it is worth a quick read for those, like myself, who are preparing for and pursuing the pastorate as a profession.Adam Nighhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09878011081056674483noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4719500506025781596.post-62108923669674338042010-07-15T06:04:00.000-07:002010-07-15T06:48:16.629-07:00The Mystery Hidden for Long Ages PastI just finished reading through Romans. It'll be the rest of my life and more before I feel like I totally understand that book - not because of the complexity but because of the depth of the Gospel it presents in its shattering simplicity. <div><br /></div><div>Paul ends the letter by giving glory to God for the Gospel, which he describes in a startling way for anyone interested in the theology of Scripture and its interpretation.</div><div><blockquote>Now to him who is able to establish you by my gospel and the proclamation of Jesus Christ, according to the revelation of the mystery hidden for long ages past, but now revealed and made known through the prophetic writings by the command of the eternal God, so that all nations might believe and obey him - to the only wise God be glory forever through Jesus Christ! Amen. (Rom 16:25-27)</blockquote></div><div>I understand Paul to be saying that the good news (proclamation) of Jesus Christ, God's provision of a vicarious righteousness in fulfilment of his promises given to Israel throughout its existence, is <i>now </i>revealed in the Old Testament Scriptures as a mystery that had been hidden for a long time before. It is striking to think of this mystery being revealed in Paul's time through Scriptures that had been written hundreds of years earlier. It is not that the revelation had been given earlier and was now illumined by the coming of Christ. Paul says in his introduction that the Gospel had been <i>promised </i>before hand through the OT(1:2), but in light of the letter's conclusion I have to think that the promise was given as mystery hidden until its fulfilment. Though the texts had been written long before, they only revealed that mystery at the resurrection of Christ (1:4). The coming of Christ truly opened the Scriptures to his followers and gave it meaning it could not have previously had. I take Paul here to be prohibiting us from imagining that if those Jews living prior to the resurrection of Christ had just read the relevant messianic texts from the Old Testament (passages from Deuteronomy, the Psalms, Isaiah, Jeremiah, Daniel, and a few smatterings from the Minor Prophets) more clearly, they would have understood that God was going to send his Son to provide a righteousness through faith in Christ's vicarious death and resurrection before it happened. No, this was impossible to conceive, and thus impossible for the Old Testament to reveal, until it happened. But when it did happen, these texts written long ago in ages past revealed what had now just recently happened. Staggering.</div>Adam Nighhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09878011081056674483noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4719500506025781596.post-44333535781070184962010-06-19T02:02:00.000-07:002010-06-19T03:52:19.948-07:00Barth on Scripture and the Legitimate Form of Apostolic Succession<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://stormface.files.wordpress.com/2009/02/karl_barth.jpg"><img style="margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer; width: 228px; height: 291px;" src="http://stormface.files.wordpress.com/2009/02/karl_barth.jpg" alt="" border="0" /></a>In between my regular diet of T. F. Torrance and books on theology of Scripture, I'm slowly making my way through Karl Barth's <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Church-Dogmatics-I-1-Doctrine-Word/dp/0567050599/ref=sr_1_8?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1276944647&sr=8-8">Church Dogmatics I.1</a>. Barth is famous for being odd on Scripture, but I find him wonderfully odd. In fact, his oddness makes more 'normal' accounts of Scripture (by which I mean those that start from humanity's need for an infallible source of truth, e.g. Warfield) seem odd. In I.1, his approach to speaking about what Scripture is really took me by a wonderful surprise. Scripture comes in the middle of his introduction of the threefold form of the Word of God, which he briefly introduces in in I.1 in the order of knowing (Church Proclamation, Holy Scripture, Jesus Christ) and will largely expand in the opposite order of being (Jesus Christ, Holy Scripture, Church Proclamation) in I.2 - I'll get through it all eventually.<div><br /></div><div>What I found wonderfully odd in its first appearance in I.1 is that Barth's way of getting to speaking of what Scripture is was in contrast to the Roman Catholic doctrine of apostolic succession. He makes a plea that Protestants be careful to reject the Roman doctrine for the right reasons; apostolic succession cannot be fully rejected as such, but only in its peculiar Roman form in which the manner of succession relates to formal office rather than spiritual service. That is, the spiritual service of the Roman pontiff is seen as included within and guaranteed by the possession of the formal office of the bishop of Rome. As wrong as this is, it is right, argues Barth, that we see the present Church as succeeding the apostles. The Church's proclamation of the Gospel, which is what makes the Church what it is, must rest on a basis external to itself; the Church does not contain its own Gospel, but points past itself to an expectation of a future revelation of God in Christ based on the decisive past revelation of God in Christ. This basis of the Church's proclamation in Jesus Christ is passed from Christ to the world by the apostles so that the Church cannot point to itself as the proper validation of its message but must point to the apostles and therefore seek to succeed them as proclaimers of Christ. However, this succession has to take the proper form. In Roman Catholicism, the current successor of Peter in essence replaces Peter so that in pointing to apostolic testimony for the validation of its proclamation, the Church merely points to itself as the apostolic Church. Barth, however, argues that the current Church in its succession of the apostles cannot seek to replace them but must stand always under them. Scripture is what allows us to succeed the apostles in this way. </div><div><br /></div><div>Now that I've set it up, here is the paragraph that made me happy and I wanted to share:</div><div><blockquote>The apostolic succession of the Church must mean that it is guided by the Canon, that is, by the prophetic and apostolic word as the necessary rule of every word that is valid in the Church. It must mean that the Church enters into the succession of the prophets and apostles in their office of proclamation, and does so in such a way that their proclamation freely and independently precedes, while that of the Church is related to it, is ventured in obedience on the basis of it, is measured by it, and replaces it only as and to the extent that it conforms to it. It must mean that the Church always admits the free power of their proclamation over it. As far as the idea of a living succession is concerned everything depends on the <i>antecessor </i>being regarded as alive and having free power over against the <i>successor</i>. But if, as here, the <i>antecessor </i>has long since died, this can happen only if his proclamation has been fixed in writing and if it is acknowledged that he still has life and free power over the Church to-day in this written word of his. On the written nature of the Canon, on its character as <i>scriptura sacra, </i>hangs his autonomy and independence, and consequently his free power over against the Church and the living nature of the succession.</blockquote></div><div>Love it.</div>Adam Nighhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09878011081056674483noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4719500506025781596.post-7232715770212807712010-06-10T01:08:00.000-07:002010-06-10T01:27:48.565-07:00Hauerwas on Spontaneous Prayer<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0802864872/ref=s9_simh_gw_p14_i1?pf_rd_m=ATVPDKIKX0DER&pf_rd_s=center-2&pf_rd_r=1VC515KQFZSYPTT1NQ0Q&pf_rd_t=101&pf_rd_p=470938631&pf_rd_i=507846"><img style="margin: 0pt 0pt 10px 10px; float: right; cursor: pointer; width: 105px; height: 158px;" src="http://www.andyrowell.net/.a/6a00d8341c0c3a53ef012875e1c74c970c-320pi" alt="" border="0" /></a>I've been reading Stanley Hauerwas's recently published memoirs, <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Hannahs-Child-Theologians-Stanley-Hauerwas/dp/0802864872/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1276157922&sr=8-1">Hannah's Child</a>. This, I confess, is the first Hauerwas book I've read, but it certainly won't be the last. Throughout the book he goes back and forth between narrating the major events of his life and offering theological reflection on them. I found this short paragraph against spontaneous prayer worth sharing:<div><blockquote>I do not trust prayer to spontaneity. Most "spontaneous prayers" turn out, upon analysis, to be anything but spontaneous. Too often they conform to formulaic patterns that include ugly phrases such as, "Lord, we just ask you..." Such phrases are gestures of false humility, suggesting that God should give us what we want because what we want is not all that much. I pray that God will save us from that "just." (255)</blockquote></div><div>He goes on to explain that, because of his distrust of spontaneous prayer, he writes the prayers he prays before the classes he teaches and offers the following, a prayer he wrote for a class he would be teaching on Columbus Day, as an example:</div><div><blockquote>Dear God, our lives are made possible by the murders of he past - civilization is built on slaughters. Acknowledging our debt to killers frightens and depresses us. We fear judging, so we say, "That's in the past." We fear to judge because in judging we are judged. Help us, however, to learn to say "no," to say, "Sinners though we are, that was and is wrong." May we do so with love. Amen. (256)</blockquote></div>Adam Nighhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09878011081056674483noreply@blogger.com18tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4719500506025781596.post-19451762711738789182010-06-09T15:41:00.000-07:002010-06-09T15:45:39.588-07:00Book AnnouncementCheck out this <a href="http://evangelicalcalvinist.com/2010/06/09/the-title-of-our-new-evangelical-calvinism-essays-toward-ecclesia-reformata-semper-reformanda/">announcement</a> for a book called <i>Evangelical Calvinism: Essays Toward Ecclesia Reformata, Semper Reformanda, </i>which I'll be contributing a chapter to! <span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Tahoma, Verdana, Arial, sans-serif; color: rgb(51, 51, 51); font-size: 10px; "><h2 class="pagetitle" style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; padding-top: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-bottom: 9px; padding-left: 0px; border-top-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-bottom-width: 0px; border-left-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-color: initial; font-weight: normal; font-style: inherit; font-size: 2.8em; font-family: impact, Verdana, Arial, sans-serif; vertical-align: baseline; color: rgb(204, 0, 0); text-decoration: none; width: 512px; "><i><br /></i></h2></span>Adam Nighhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09878011081056674483noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4719500506025781596.post-25092005547513616552010-06-08T06:58:00.000-07:002010-06-08T07:09:02.781-07:00Scripture as Spectacles<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://www.insidesocal.com/tomhoffarth/3D-glasses-404_675044c.jpg"><img style="FLOAT: left; MARGIN: 0px 10px 10px 0px; WIDTH: 207px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 150px" alt="" src="http://www.insidesocal.com/tomhoffarth/3D-glasses-404_675044c.jpg" border="0" /></a><span style="mso-ansi-language: EN-GB">Scripture, as the spectacles through which we perceive Christ (Calvin), must be attuned to Christ in order to present him clearly, but no matter how strongly we articulate that attuning, be it in terms of inerrancy, infallibility, clarity, or inspiration, it is not a power in Scripture that enables it to present Christ to us but a power in God through Christ in the Spirit.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>It was the work of the triune God that brought the Scripture into being in the first place and in light of that we must confess its fittingness to be the vessel Christ presents himself to us through, and, moreover, our statements about this fittingness ought not to be vague and abstract but concrete and literary, according to the nature of Scripture as text.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>Biblically, the chief given category in which to speak of this is inspiration, but we need other terms to clarify what we mean by inspiration.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>The terms ‘infallibility’ and ‘inerrancy’ are two of the most common descriptions of Scripture in Protestant theology meant to concretely clarify what we mean when we speak of Scripture’s inspiration.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>I would argue that the preference for, and in many quarters the demand for confessing, such terms is a product of modernist scientific epistemologies that stress the antimony between certainty and the possibility of error.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>Such categories are not thus wrong or wholly inappropriate, but it ought to be questioned whether they are the most helpful or important descriptions of Scripture as the spectacles through which we perceive Christ.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span><?xml:namespace prefix = o /><o:p></o:p></span><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-ansi-language: EN-GB">I question these terms collectively and individually: collectively because they are both morally neutral.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>Scriptures fittingness for Christ’s self-presentation might be described more adequately by terms like ‘faithfulness’ and ‘obedience’, terms that recognize the inherently moral-laden character of knowledge, than ‘inerrancy’ and ‘infallibility’ which fail to bring this reality to view.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>(‘Infallibility’ may escape this charge if it is seen as the Gospel that seeks the conversion of sinners to repentance and faith which is unable to fail.)<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-ansi-language: EN-GB">In regard to ‘inerrancy’ in particular, I do not question it because I think factual accuracy has nothing to do with being faithful and obedient in human testimony to Christ, but because a narrow focus on factual accuracy has often had the historical tendency to get people off on rabbit trails in quests to harmonize apparently conflicting accounts in Scripture or other such distractions.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>Of course being faithful and obedient to Christ must mean that the biblical authors testify in truth and not in falsehood, but the oft repeated notion that if it were proven that Scripture contained even one error we could not trust it is, whether or not such a statement is valid, quite unhelpful in the sense that it beckons us to read Scripture with an eye <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal">only</i> to its factual accuracy and not to the Truth that calls us to repentance and faith.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>This is a subtle distinction and not a radical dichotomy I mean to make.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>We must trust the factual accuracy of Scripture because its authors were inspired by the Spirit to testify truthfully to Christ, not because its inerrancy is what it means to be inspired.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>Moreover, in regard to the statement about the Bible not having even one error, I think such language slips into stating the relation between truth and fact as identical where the relation might be a bit more complex than that.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>I’ve certainly encountered innumerable postmodern approaches to this in which truth and fact have seemingly no relation, and I adamantly resist such a position, but at the same time the fact that Matthew and Mark both have Jesus meeting with his disciples in Galilee after the resurrection while Luke and John have him meeting them in Jerusalem should force us neither to despair of the truth of Scripture nor to seek refuge in some convoluted harmony of the two accounts.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>There may be an inherent ambiguity and mystery here in the relation of truth and factual accuracy that simply eludes explicit articulation.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>We must hold firmly to the truth and accuracy of Scripture but in such a way that allows for such tensions and ambiguities.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>Personally, I am not uncomfortable speaking of some such tensions as errors, as long as we fully understand that in using such language we are consciously using it according to modern definition, that is, we are not foisting our standards on Scripture but simply acknowledging that if such accounts were to be composed within our modern context, we would regard at least one of them as in error.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>I have found that most conservative Reformed theologians, who as a category are those who tend to stress the inerrancy of Scripture most, are considerably careful in their definition of inerrancy to allow for such tensions and ambiguities, but in practice such care rarely transfers to the ministers whose training includes the reading of such theologians or even to the wider discussions about Scripture in the works of those theologians themselves.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>I find that when this approach trickles into ministerial contexts, the result is an overemphasis on factual accuracy which tends to produce the fruit of self-assuredness since a factually errorless book in my hands is a tool I can exploit in argumentation, rather than focusing on the Truth of the Gospel which relentlessly calls me to renounce myself in repentance and faith.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>Speaking of the ‘faithfulness’ and ‘obedience’ of Scripture, on the other hand, addresses not only what Scripture is but what I must be in order to understand it aright.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-ansi-language: EN-GB">I question infallibility in particular because, as I said in the beginning, it is not a power in Scripture that makes us see Christ in it but a power in Christ.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>Spectacles do not make us see.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>If there is no light or if my eyes are shut, no glasses, no matter how clear, can make me see. It is the light objectively and the openness of my eyes subjectively that allow me to see – spectacles are lenses through which I am helped to see.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>Accordingly, that we see Christ in Scripture is due to his own divine infallibility that illuminates himself for us and opens our eyes to see him there.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>Scripture’s faithfulness and obedience to that infallibility allow it to share in it, but we must always recognize that infallibility is never a property which we can ascribe to Scripture in itself but only as it serves the Gospel which gave rise to it and is real independently of it.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></p>Adam Nighhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09878011081056674483noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4719500506025781596.post-66607002274973354482010-06-04T14:45:00.000-07:002010-06-04T14:52:06.349-07:00Torrance mp3sJason over at Per Crucem ad Lucem has links to 10 T. F. Torrance lectures plus Q&A from 1981 at Fuller Seminar. <a href="http://cruciality.wordpress.com/2010/06/05/lectures-by-t-f-torrance-interview-with-trevor-hart/">Check it out</a>.Adam Nighhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09878011081056674483noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4719500506025781596.post-29979554613661998462010-06-02T02:10:00.000-07:002010-06-02T10:06:00.609-07:00Torrance on the Appropriate Circularity of Christian Thinking<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://www.amazon.com/Space-Time-Resurrection-Thomas-Torrance/dp/0567086097/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1275471261&sr=8-1"><img style="FLOAT: right; MARGIN: 0px 0px 10px 10px; WIDTH: 191px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 185px" alt="" src="http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/41B%2BUu3XlZL._SS500_.jpg" border="0" /></a> I have again been quite negligent with you, my precious blog. Here is a bit of Torrance just to show I still care. This paragraph (yep, its a single paragraph) captures quite well what I was unable to say well to my friend Andy last night on the phone about why atheists prove that they just don't get it when they reject Christianity on the grounds that they find no evidence for God. Have a read: <div><blockquote>Now it may be objected, quite understandably, that by claiming to interpret the resurrection within a framework of thought, of which the resurrection, along with the incarnation, is itself a constitutive determinant, I am operating with an essentially circular procedure. I agree, but reject the implication that this is a vicious circularity artificially intruded into the ground of knowledge. What we are concerned with here is the proper circularity inherent in any coherent system operating with ultimate axioms or beliefs which cannot be derived or justified from any other ground than that which they themselves constitute. It is the case, of course, that the primary axioms of any deductive system are held to be justified if they are included within the consistency of all the axioms and propositions of the system, but, as Kurt Godel has demonstrated, any such consistent formal system must have one or more propositions that are not provable within it but may be proved with reference to a wider and higher system. However, when we are concerned with a conceptual system or a framework of thought which includes among its constitutive axioms one or more <i>ultimates</i>, for which, in the nature of the case, there is no higher and wider system with reference to which they can be proved, then we cannot but operate with a complete circularity of the conceptual system. This must be a proper form of circularity, however, for the system must be one which is internally consistent and which rests upon the grounds posited by the constitutive axioms, without any alien additions, so that the conclusions we reach are found to be anticipated in the basic presuppositions. Such a system, of course, even if entirely consistent with itself, could conceivably be false, and must therefore be open to reasonable doubt: but that means that the system stands or falls with respect to its power as a whole to command our acceptance. And here another important factor must also be taken into account, the capacity of the system to function as a heuristic instrument in opening up new avenues of knowledge which could not otherwise be anticipated, and as an interpretative frame of thought to cope with a wider range of elements not originally in view. Nevertheless, in the last analysis we are thrown back upon the question whether we are prepared to commit ourselves to belief in the ultimates which are constitutive of the system. (Torrance, <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Space-Time-Resurrection-Thomas-Torrance/dp/0567086097/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1275471261&sr=8-1">Space, Time and Resurrection</a>, pp. 14-15)</blockquote></div><div>What adds difficulty to understanding this passage is that Torrance is otherwise a good Barthian and rejects the notion of a comprehensive theological 'system', so how is one to be persuaded by the Christian conceptual system as a whole if the Word of God is impossible to humanly systematize? That difficulty aside, I find this account of the inherent circularity in all conceptual systems built upon axioms having to do with ultimate reality very compelling. </div><div><br /></div><div>In the paragraphs that follow (I considered including them, but I didn't want to overtax my loyal readership) Torrance draws on logic and physics as conceptual systems that fit the description he has given and then discusses what happens when an ultimate reality is newly recognized but cannot be fitted into the conceptual system in current use. In that context, says Torrance, 'we are faced with a serious dilemma, of rejecting what has thus become disclosed as absurd, or committing ourselves to a radical reconstruction of that conceptual system, indeed a logical reconstruction of the axiomatic premises of that system.' Such a reconstruction has occurred in the last century in the field of physics in its difficult transition from the Newtonian to the Einsteinian conceptual framework. Torrance argues that it was something similar to this which happened as the early Church came to acknowledge the incarnation and resurrection of Jesus Christ. These were realities that could not be fitted into their current ways of thinking, indeed appeared ridiculous in their current ways of thinking, but because of their inherent persuasive power demanded that the Church revise its entire way of thinking around these new realities as its basic starting point. The new wine needed new wineskins.</div>Adam Nighhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09878011081056674483noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4719500506025781596.post-46084994760726124302010-05-06T05:20:00.000-07:002010-05-06T06:01:01.464-07:00A Defence of ChristianeseSince I haven't posted anything in a while, here's a quick thought. Anyone involved in Church culture is aware of a fear among Christians of using language that alienates outsiders because of its foreignness. We tend to call such language "Christianese". Reading T. F. Torrance's brilliant little book, <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Mediation-Christ-Thomas-Forsyth-Torrance/dp/0939443503/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1273149856&sr=8-1">The Mediation of Christ</a> today, I came to a familiar passage in which he argues that there are certain concepts and words in the Old Testament that have permanent currency for the Church. These concepts and words have such permanency because they form the matrix through which Christ interprets himself to us through his apostles in the New Testament. <div></div><blockquote><div>...only as we are able to appropriate and understand the Old Testament in its mediation of permanent structures of thought, conceptual tools, as I called them earlier, shall we be in a position really to understand Jesus even though we must allow him to fill them with new content and reshape them in mediating his own self-revelation to us through them.</div><div><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> <span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> <span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span></span></span>Among these permanent structures let met refer to the Word and Name of God, to revelation, mercy, truth, holiness, to messiah, saviour, to prophet, priest and king, father, son, servant, to covenant, sacrifice, forgiveness, reconciliation, redemption, atonement, and those basic patterns of worship which we find set out in the ancient liturgy or in the Psalms. (Torrance, <i>The Mediation of Christ, </i>p. 18)</div></blockquote><div>It seems like Torrance's lists here corresponds almost exactly with the 'Christianese' so many Christians are so desperate to avoid. But if Torrance is right, avoiding such concepts and language makes it impossible for us to speak the gospel in a meaningful way. Use of such language doesn't just make Christians awkward; it is part of what makes us Christians.</div><div><br /></div><div>If this list of Torrance's really does correspond to the 'Christianese' we don't want to use, this might tell us something about Christianity's continuing discomfort with its roots in Judaism. This list, after all, represents the vocabulary Christianity inherited from Judaism. This language thus might be more appropriately called 'Jewishese' than 'Christianese'. Either way, the discomfort many Christians have today with the particular language we have inherited in the Church certainly mirrors Old Testament Israel's discomfort with their own cultural-religious-national peculiarity as the people of God. </div><div><br /></div><div>We often speak of wanting to avoid 'Christianese' out of love for those we seek to reach with the message of Christ, and I'm not totally denying a measure of truth in this, but I am suggesting that the primary reason we seek to avoid 'Christianese' is because we don't like the peculiarity of being God's people, we don't like being different for God's sake. Somehow we got the idea that to be good representatives of God we should sound like everyone else; we certainly didn't get that idea from the Bible.</div>Adam Nighhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09878011081056674483noreply@blogger.com7