Paid Pastoral Staff? A Calling to the Ministry?

Andrew Hamilton has an interesting post, something I haven’t thought very hard or long about. In it he asks this question:

“Can anyone provide a compelling biblical argument for the existence of paid pastoral staff within a local congregation?“

It’s an interesting question. He concedes that you could probably make more than one good pragmatic argument for paid pastoral staff he then also mentions his own experience of calling to ministry as perhaps a compelling argument. That got me thinking even more. If I re-phrased his question then we have another question that is often taken for granted or thought very little about:

“Can anyone provided a compelling biblical argument for the existence of a subjective call to the ministry of a local congregation?“

Life is becoming more and more complicated the more I study the Bible – the questions just keep on coming, and often they’re questions that impinge upon me directly – like questions about paid pastoral ministry. Anyone got any thoughts on these questions?

Narrative-Realism or Preterism? Help Me

Can anyone help me out with a bit of theological jargon and terminology that I’m trying to get my head around? I’ve been reading a fair bit of the articles on Open Source Theology and I keep coming up against, what many of their authors call the ‘narrative-historical argument’ or the ‘narrative-realist’ approach. Andrew Perriman, one of the authors, even describes himself as doing ‘biblical theology after Christendom in a narrative-realist mode’. In reading the various articles however this narrative-realism seems to sound a whole lot like classic preterism. My question for all the budding theologians out there is what is the difference between the two (preterism and the narrative-realist approach)? Or are they pretty much the same thing – in which case this narrative-realist approach is not really all that new. Help me please…

Goldsworthy Talks

Justin Taylor has links to three talks that Graeme Goldsworthy gave at Southern Seminary on the subject of Biblical Theology.

Harmon on New Testament Unity

Matt Harmon outlines 5 reasons in support of the theological unity of the New Testament documents. He also helpfully points to further reading on the subject.

iPod therefore I Am

George Whitefield College is running its annual ‘Summer School of Biblical Christianity’ from 23 Jan to 1 Feb 2008 at their campus in Muizenberg, Cape Town. They’re offering courses on Biblical Theology, Church Response to Contemporary Issues, New Testament Greek, Old Testament Hebrew, Advanced Exegesis and Post-Graduate Research. I’ll be attending the Post-Graduate Research course.

What was really interesting to me is that Mark Norman will be down from Pretoria to teach 6 sessions on understanding postmodernism entitled ‘iPod therefore I Am‘. Here’s his schedule:

Part 1: Understanding Postmodernism – The differences between ‘Premodern’, ‘Modern’ and ‘Postmodern’ societies.

Part 2: Postmodernism and the Problem of Truth – A Christian critique of postmodern views of knowledge and truth.

Part 3: Postmodernism, Terrorism and Fundamentalism – The new global war and what it means for the church.

Part 4: Postmodernism and African Thought – How post-colonial African thought relates to postmodernism and its relevance for the church.

Part 5: Postmodernism and the Use of Language – A study of postmodern approaches to language, with special relevance to Jacques Derrida.

Part 6: Postmodernism and the Stories We Live In – Are you living in the Christian story?

Mark’s talks will take place in the mornings of each day prior to the other Summer School classes.

For more information contact GWC  (021) 788-1652

Or see the college website.

Genesis 6 – Poor Animals!

In the last few months I’ve been scanning the bible for links between humanity and the creation and the relationship between the gospel and the complete re-creation of all things. Here’s an interesting little insight I came across in Genesis 6 and 7 this morning.

Notice that God gets ticked with the wickedness and rebellion of humans – so what does he do? Well he drowns almost the entire animal and bird population! Yes he drowns the people too – but we expected that. The poor animals go to Davey Jones’ locker because of man’s rebellion. Seems that somehow the fate of the natural world is intrinsically tied to the relationship between people and God. And so when God rescues Noah and his family animals get rescued too – now you might argue that God only rescues the animals because Noah and his family won’t last for very long in a world with out animal life. But then you come to Paul in Romans 8:19

“The creation waits in eager expectation for the sons of God to be revealed. For the creation was subjected to frustration, not by its own choice, but by the will of the one who subjected it, in hope that the creation itself will be liberated from its bondage to decay and brought into the glorious freedom of the children of God.”

Humanity getting rescued leads to the liberation, ultimately, of the entire creation – that seems to be the biblical pattern. The crux question though for us then is: How does this affect the rescued Christian’s relationship to the natural creation?

Why I don’t Stone People

A Friend of mine asked me to respond to the following piece of writing from the book ‘The End of Faith’ by Sam Harris:

…we must decide what it means to be a religious “moderate” in the twenty first century. Moderates in every faith are obliged to loosely interpret (or simply ignore) much of their canons in the interests of living in the modern world…The first thing to observe about the moderates’ retreat from scriptural literalism is that it draws its inspiration not from scripture but from cultural developments that have rendered many of God’s utterances difficult to accept as written. In America, religious moderation is further enforced by the fact that most Christians and Jews do not read the Bible in its entirety and consequently have no idea just how vigorously the God of Abraham wants heresy expunged. One look at Deuteronomy reveals that he has something very specific in mind should you son or daughter return from yoga class advocating the worship of Krishna:

Deuteronomy 13:6-11
“6 If your very own brother, or your son or daughter, or the wife you love, or your closest friend secretly entices you, saying, “Let us go and worship other gods” (gods that neither you nor your fathers have known, 7 gods of the peoples around you, whether near or far, from one end of the land to the other), 8 do not yield to him or listen to him. Show him no pity. Do not spare him or shield him. 9 You must certainly put him to death. Your hand must be the first in putting him to death, and then the hands of all the people. 10 Stone him to death, because he tried to turn you away from the LORD your God, who brought you out of Egypt, out of the land of slavery. 11 Then all Israel will hear and be afraid, and no one among you will do such an evil thing again.”

While the stoning of children has fallen out of fashion in this country, you will not hear a moderate Christian or Jew arguing for a “symbolic” reading of a passage of this sort. (In fact one seems to be explicitly blocked by God himself…

Deuteronomy 12:32 (New International Version)
32 See that you do all I command you; do not add to it or take away from it.

The above passage is as canonical as any in the bible, and it is only by ignoring such barbarisms that the Good Book can be reconciled with life in the modern world. This is a problem for “moderation” in religion: it has nothing underwriting it other than the unacknowledged neglect of the divine law.’

So the question i pose is ‘are religious moderates either ignorant or deliberately ignoring certain parts of the bible?’
‘is being uninformed a requirement for being religious in the modern world?’

Here’s my initial reply:

Context, context, context!!!

The Bible is an unfolding narrative of redemptive history.
Those laws were given to a group of people who lived in a theocratic state governed solely by God through the Mosaic law and his manifest presence in the Tabernacle.

So here’s my answer as to why I don’t obey that specific command:
1. I don’t live in an earthly theocracy.
2. The NT makes it abundantly clear that Christ both fulfills the law (I take that to be in a prophetic sense) and frees us from obeying the law slavishly.
3. Hence I interpret all of the Mosaic law (613 commandments) through the lens of the Gospel of Jesus Christ.
4. Those laws were given for judgment inside the covenant community. According to Paul, in 1 Corinthians 5 we are to continue this internal judgment by expelling those who claim to be believers but refuse to repent of blatant sin – I still keep this law.
5. That same passage in 1 Corinthians 5 tells us not to judge those outside the church – and so I won’t stone people outside for idolatry.
6. The Gospel of Christ now judges people, I proclaim the message thereby bringing judgment on all who hear and refuse to repent and install Christ as king – and BTW this judgment is a hell of a lot worse than simply being stoned! Excuse the pun.

I could probably come up with more – but that’s a start.

I am NOT a Christian moderate – I am a radical, Jesus has called me to die to self and become a servant to all – in some ways its easier to stone someone then really obey that command.

Church: The Place to Encounter God?

I recently heard someone describe church as the place where we encounter God. My question is: Can this concept be derived from a New Testament understanding of the assembly? Is the assembly a place for encountering God – or is the assembly the place where those who have already encountered God, by encountering him at the cross, come together to meet with each other for the purpose of encouragement and partnership and praise?

Preaching Errors According to Manchester #2

Part #1 – here.

Simon Manchester’s second error – ‘Craft beats meaning’:

Another (similar) idea around today is that craft beats meaning. No-one would put it this foolishly, but there is more attention paid (in this error) to the presentation than to the meaning. What is the long-term benefit of a passage used devotionally (without proper biblical theology) if its packaging is better than its truth? What is the point of abusing a text to sell a clever idea? Some sermons are so formulaic in their presentation, only a discerning person realizes that its all ‘form over facts’ – and that’s the sad problem! Sermon craft is a great servant in preaching; it helps the communicator and the listeners. But its a bad master when it pretends that there is an only way to do things (clever story to begin, three points and a bombshell to finish). The Bible is  bigger than our craftiness.

I think its often easier to follow a set form in preaching than to let the rich diversity of the text inform how you craft different sermon forms. But we’re lazy – well I’m lazy – and so often the ‘clever story, three points and a bombshell to finish’ just gets perpetuated because of that. One of the things I’ve done to try and combat this in my own preaching is to listen to a lot of preaching from a lot of different preachers and then have a sort of eclectic approach to form that doesn’t stifle the text but rather, as Manchester says, is a servant to the text. So I regularly try to listen to Tim Keller, Mark Driscoll, John Piper, Don Carson, Phillip Jensen, John Woodhouse, John Chapman, Simon Manchester, Dick Lucas, Vaughan Roberts, Richard Coekin, Justin Mote, John Stott, plus some of our own preachers here in South Africa. Its one way to avoid getting stuck in formulaic preaching that stifles the text.

Who are the ‘Poor’?

I spent the day doing some work on Isaiah 61:1-3. This short text is full of great gems of insight into the promise of the Gospel which comes through the Servant/Messiah, ultimately fulfilled in Jesus Christ. After all the passage is most famous because it is quoted by Jesus in Luke 4:18-19 where Jesus directly identifies himself as that Servant/Messiah. One of the issues surrounding the passage revolves around the exact meaning of the term ‘poor’ in verse one – just how narrow or broad is the term being used. Well John Oswalt, an accomplished commentator writes the following:

‘The connotation of this term is not restricted to financial or material conditions. Nor is there any justification in the context for limiting the reference to an oppressed minority of righteous persons. Rather, it speaks of all who are distressed and in trouble for any reason, including sin.’ (The Book of Isaiah – chapters 40-66, NICOT, p. 565)

I think there’s a word of caution here for us as we operate within a younger evangelicalism that is horrified at the neglect of the poor (in the narrow sense) by previous generations of evangelicals and so is busy reconstructing a theology to address the problem.  Let’s make sure we use the texts in such a way that we bring out the full meaning of terms and not just the narrow sense in order to support our personal battles – even if those battles are good and right in and of themselves.

To Judge or not to Judge…

I’ve been working on the Sermon on the Mount as part of a post grad program and have found it wonderfully satisfying as well as troubling at the same time.  Jesus’ words are both immensely encouraging and go right to the heart of hypocritical religion.  As I study it more, His words seem to stick to me as I slowly begin to realise my own religious hypocrisy.  One such text that has taken me aback is Matthew 7:1-6.  Jesus begins simply enough:  

“Judge not, that you be not judged.” 

This is his guiding principle for the text; if one of his followers displays judgment then they will be judged.  Before we go further, we need to realise that Jesus was critiquing the deficient righteousness of the Pharisees (cf. 5: 17-48) urging his followers to capture the true meaning of righteousness as putting Christ’s commands into practise.  So we have Jesus warning the disciples that if they display the same kind of critical, harsh judgemental attitude that the Pharisees did by condemning others then they are in danger of the greater judgement (see v2). This he helpfully illustrates in v3-5 where he uses the word picture of a man trying to help his brother remove the speck from his eye.  But Jesus condemns him as a hypocrite!  Why?  Because of the log in his own eye; this was the fault of the Pharisees who condemned others for their failings while not being able to see the greater problem of their own hearts, hearts hardened to God and others.  And so Jesus warns his followers to not fall into that trap of hypocrisy; Christians do not have the right to condemn a man, which is God’s ultimate job.  Ours is to love our neighbour and love God which is the sum of the Law (cf. 7:12).   

But don’t we see Jesus judging others?  The disciples are told to judge false teachers by their fruits so is this a contradiction? No, for the opposite extreme of being judgemental/condemning is just as bad a mistake.  That extreme is to suspend all faculties of critical thought and action.  This would mean to let sin go unpunished within a church community, this would mean allowing false teaching that wrecks faith to go unchallenged and that is why v6 is included in the context. It is puzzling and needs some research but the picture is that of a warning that Christians are not to give what is holy (the pearl) to what is unholy (the dogs and pigs) for they may turn and attack!  The pearl I take it is that is the Gospel message (cf. Mat 13:44-45) which must at some point NOT be given to these “animals”.  The animals come to represent those who are particularly opposed to the Gospel and its implications, who would at any opportunity seek to revile and mock Christ whenever they are given the message. 

So Jesus would have his followers love others by helping them and challenging them in their serving of God and men by not judging and condemning them.  Yet they must show some level of discrimination against serious opponents of the Gospel for the sake of the glory of God. So I take it that as we engage with non believers and believers we are to do so knowing our place, listening and loving.  Yet we cannot accept all that we hear without a critical eye or ear and must be ready to engage and challenge false living and teaching but always be focussing that critical eye to our own lives first (v5). Loving others means challenging their beliefs and life if it does not come in line with Christ’s ethic, but it’s how we do this that is immensely important!   

Thoughts on Zion

I did a short presentation today on the biblical theological concept of ‘Zion’ and without going into too much detail its safe to say that the term ‘Zion’ brings with it three main theological concepts for the New Testament believer: Divine-presence, rule and salvation. Its quite fascinating then that of the two occurrences of the term in the New Testament (outside of other Old Testament quotations that occur in the New Testament) one of them occurs in Hebrews 12:22 where the believer is told that in one sense he/she has already come to Zion. Now what does it mean that the believer has already come to Zion? Well if we’re consistent with our usage of this theologically-laden term then we have to say that in one sense the believer already enjoys the presence of God, his rule and the application of his salvation – we’ve already come to Zion. Revelation 14 suggests a further eschatological fulfillment of these truths, but they are also truths now for us. So how do we respond?

Well first off I think we like to ‘limit’ the presence of God and therefore, by implication and through following the natural course of things, his rule too. With our dividing up of our lives into ‘sacred’ and ‘secular’ compartments, which I’ve blogged about before, we actually deny the truths of Hebrews 12:22, or perhaps not deny but at least play down the significance of having come to Zion. By implication then we compartmentalize his rule too and so whilst we seek to uphold a sort of general morality, because we figure that as Christians we’re supposed to be good, its not a morality based upon the rule of God but more of an obligation. Now in one sense we should feel obligated to obey God simply because he is God – but knowing that God rules through his king Jesus, out of Zion (cf. Ps. 2), and knowing that we have now come to Zion and live in that kingdom, adds new meaning to what it means to live under his rule as his subject.  This impacts our third concept because it means that we’re not earning our salvation, rather we are living out the salvation already applied – the difference between religion and relationship with a king.

Beginningwithmoses Updates

The guys at Beginningwithmoses.org, who do a brilliant job of providing us with great biblical theology resources, have added some new updates to their site for the month of October.

Witherington and Progressive Revelation?

I’m a firm believer in progressive revelation, as you can see by the number of posts I’ve written categorized ‘biblical theology‘, but when we talk about the revelation of scripture progressing does that mean that everything in the bible is progressing all the time? The short answer is no: God, the ultimate author of the scripture (albeit through human authors) is the same in terms of his attributes throughout the bible storyline. God’s attributes do not progress through the bible so that you get some sort of angry, kill-joy God in the Old Testament who turns into a loving caring and gracious God in the New Testament.

So whilst God remains constant the story of his redeeming a people for himself is in a state of progression with Jesus Christ at the pinnacle. This is most clear in Paul’s writing in Ephesians 3:2-7 where Paul talks about ‘the mystery’ that has now been made known, and verse 7 clarifies that ‘the mystery’ was in fact the gospel of Christ. In the past it was hidden but now, in Christ, is revealed – a clear example of progression in the story and the revelation.

I think these two observations are pretty clear and we’d all be in agreement about them. The big question though is whether or not there are other kinds of progression in the bible. One such type of progression that I’ve recently encountered is the contention that the doctrinal understandings of various Old Testament saints were in a state of progression. So Ben Witherington, for example, in his recent discussion about what he feels are erroneous views concerning sovereignty was confronted by one commenter concerning the fact that Job seems to attribute his hardships directly to God in his well known statement:

“The LORD gives and the LORD takes away. Blessed be the name of the LORD.”

Now clearly Job’s doctrinal position doesn’t agree with Witherington’s critique of Piper. However Witherington doesn’t see this as a problem because as far as he is concerned Job’s theology…

“… is an imperfect, and indeed inaccurate one, not one that a Christian should affirm.”

So because, as Witherington goes on to explain, the bible is a progressive revelation so too is the doctrinal quality of the Old Testament saints. So Job, being one of the earliest saints had a ridiculously inadequate theology of the attributes of God according to this view because he was right at the beginning of the progression.

Now this sounds to me like a bit of a moving of the goal posts. Let’s take this to some logical conclusions: Firstly the whole creation narratives are completely useless in terms of doctrinal content because they stem probably from some extremely early oral traditions that Moses picked up on, in fact Moses must have spent quite some time re-working the creation narrative and sorting out all the doctrinal error since he was probably a bit further along the line in terms of progressive revelation, but then he couldn’t have got it all right either and he must have had some pretty big errors in his writing because he’s still fairly early in the whole progression. As for David and his psalms, well they’re really just a bunch of nice songs now that helps us empathize with him in his struggles, but as far as doctrinal content – useless – he’s at least 1000 years too early in the progression to be of any use doctrinally.

Come on Dr. Witherington, if we go that way where does it end?

Eucatastrophe on the Blogroll

Dan Cruver writes a really great blog over at Eucatastrophe so I’ve decided to add him to the blogroll. He was kind enough to add my other blog ‘The Gospel Conversation‘ and so he definitely deserves a shout out – thanks Dan. I must mention that Dan’s a fan of Graeme Goldsworthy and so you budding biblical theologians should have plenty to chew on at his blog. He’s also a fan of Keller, Piper and O’Brien so there’s much overlap in interests with ‘…daylight‘. Go give him a look.

Context, Context, Context

This a constant refrain that comes out of my hermeneutics lecturer’s mouth. In hermeneutics class when asked a question and you’re unsure of the answer then simply answer with the word, ‘context’ and there’s a fairly good chance you’ll get it right. In terms of determining the meaning of a text context is king and without it you can pretty much make the Bible say what you want. Now this should be quite straight forward – nothing new. What I was thinking of the other day is how many different types of contexts you have to take into account to derive meaning and then make that meaning understandable. As I see it you have the following contexts to deal with:

Redemptive Historical Context: The Bible is a story of God’s work in the world, it is a story of progressive revelation and therefore it means that texts at certain points of the story, if not connected to the broader story, will become nothing more than proof-texts. My short experience in evangelicalism tells me that this is the most neglected context. We have to locate our texts in the bible storyline before drawing conclusions.

Historical Context: Our text has to be located within the history in which it is set. The Bible is a book written by people living in particular historical settings and we have to take that into account and not assume that the people we’re reading about all had Ipods, Macs and watched ‘Prison Break’ every night on television. This context is a bit tricky in that our knowledge of this context is based on disciplines that fluctuate. I experienced this at university in the Classical Civilizations department where there is a large amount of varying opinion as to exactly what historical conditions were like in certain eras – and opinions constantly change as new findings come to the fore. So whilst this context is helpful and necessary, it needs to be treated with humility and I would be wary of the person who puts too much stock into the historical context in order to derive meaning.

Literary Context: The Bible is literature, we have poetry, history, parable, discourse, apocalyptic etc. etc. We need to be genre sensitive and then we need to learn the rules of those various genres and be able to work with them to derive meaning. The Bible is not a systematics textbook where the meaning is just set down for you in neatly packaged propositional statements.

Those three are the standard contexts that you’ll learn about in a hermeneutics class. There are two others that I want to add:

Historical Theological Context: Texts have a history of interpretation, to ignore that history and the gifted people that God has given to the church through the ages is foolishness. We don’t do hermeneutics as islands, isolated from the rest of the church and so this context needs to be recognized.

Personal Context: I didn’t know what else to call this, but we all come to the text with our own baggage and so a helpful question to ask is, ‘why am I reading the text in this way – what from my own context causes me to see the text in this way’. This is a difficult process as you wade through your socialization, enculturation and present context to try and achieve an as objective as possible reading of the text.

From here you would start to talk about conveying the meaning to specific contexts – but that’s a whole new blog post.

Jensen on Unity

Nope, its not Peter or Phillip but rather the intriguing Michael Jensen who writes just about the most interesting blog on the web. Michael is a stack-load more clever than myself, or most people for that matter, and his grasp of literature, both theological and secular is amazing. He draws on all of this in each of his posts and manages to produce fresh insights into fascinating topics without really being drawn too much into the regular mish mash that does the rounds in the Christian blogsphere (issues like the Emerging Church, the atonement wars, missional church, and basically all the other stuff I write about!).

Today he’s having a look at the issue of the unity of Scripture. Having studied under Graeme Goldsworthy at Moore College, he’s well placed and informed to talk about this subject. And its a subject that I think has not only been neglected in the modern evangelical church in terms of its implications on hermeneutics but its also a subject that I think is fundamental for any budding bible teacher to get their head around. For me, where you land up on the unity of Scripture issue will often determine where you land up on the gospel and just how central it is to salvation and living. Have a look at Michael’s thoughts.

Chrysostom and Biblical Theology

Ben Witherington has some interesting insights drawn from the hermeneutic of the church father John Chrysostom (my number 1 ancient hero of the faith). He takes a look at Chrysostom’s view of the relationship between the Old Testament and the New Testament. Having written and researched on Chrysostom in the past I’m becoming more and more convinced that he held a theological and hermeneutical framework very similar to the contemporary practitioners of Reformed Biblical Theology. A web-page dedicated to the life and writings of John Chrysostom can be found here.

Gentiles and Judgment

In Mark 10:33-34 Jesus predicts his death. Up to this point though in the narrative of Mark he hasn’t mentioned that the Gentiles are going to ‘mock him and spit on him’ and ultimately kill him. The mocking and spitting seems to be drawing on Isaiah 50:6 and it seems that Jesus is marrying the two concepts of ‘Son of Man’ and ‘Suffering Servant’ (something I think that NT Wright fails to do in his overarching view of atonement, the christus victor view – but that’s another blog post altogether).

What I’m interested in though is the specific mention of the Gentiles – why the mention? My initial thoughts are that in the Old Testament Israel’s rebellion and sin was punished by the historical invasions of Gentile nations. I wonder if Mark wants us to pick up on this? Previously in redemptive history Gentiles were used by God to punish sin. Is it not a hint in the text of Mark that Jesus is going to the cross so that sin might be punished and so we have this mention of Gentiles who will, in the langauge of Isaiah, mock and kill the suffering servant? (Has anyone read Peter Bolt’s book The Cross from a Distance – does he pick up on this in that book?)

Baptism Debates

Justin Taylor has recently posted Lig Duncan’s view on paedobaptism in an attempt to give the paedobaptist view a credible hearing I suppose. As can be naturally expected his post has brought with it a long stream of comments batting about the issue of baptism from the two differing perspectives. Everyone has their arsenal loaded with their favourite books that disprove this or that theory and they throw them at each other. Everyone states how they moved, in their own thinking, from one position to another.

So instead of weighing in to that stream of comments I thought I’d post here on my own opinions on the subject. It would just be wrong if I didn’t weigh in with my credentials! So I was a baptist, even worked for a baptist church – now I’m an Anglican and a sympathizer with the paedobaptist view (how’s those credentials?). The piece of literature that helped me most in my shift in thinking was this article by Dennis Johnson, who like me moved from a baptist to a paedobaptist position. Since reading the article a number of my colleagues have cemented my thinking on the subject. In all of it though I found the article most convincing – even more so than Lig Duncan’s article.

To me the issue comes down to the discontinuity/continuity debate – wherever you draw your line on that issue is where you’re going to draw your line on the baptism issue – the baptism is just a subset of the bigger debate. Anyway – read the article and see what you think.