Birthday Nostalgia: Posts that Stirred the Pot

Being the birthday and all its time for another trip down memory lane. We’ve already had one trip back into the archives to find posts that I wished had received a bit of a wider readership but today’s nostalgic trip picks up the posts that drew a bit of heat and fire for various reasons. I suppose you can’t really write a blog with conviction and not stir up the pot from time to time. Well here are the posts that either stirred up others or posts where I got a opinionated:

Charismatics and Conservatives Together (15/09/07) – funny that the controversy this post stirred up had little to do with Charismatics or Conservatives coming together. Go figure.

Witherington and Progressive Revelation (21/09/07) – on this one, as much as I respect and admire him, as much as I and read his blog daily, I just couldn’t stomach Dr. Witherington’s understanding of the unfolding of doctrinal accuracy through the course of redemptive history. In fact I still can’t stomach it or justify it from scripture.

Reading Romans 7 and the Evangelical Conviction (11/10/07) – proof that even your own teammates shoot you sometimes (just kidding Kim – all’s forgiven).

“God is Dead” – But was he ever alive? (26/10/07) – a catchy title goes wrong…

Why I don’t Stone People (14/11/07) – I seem to have a fan base of atheists who visit this blog quite regularly. This post resulted in a bit of frivolous banter between us.

Tutu Gay Rant (19/11/07) – This little rant didn’t really stir too much but it did cause someone to write the longest comment I’ve ever seen on a blog.

What is the Gospel – An Open Forum (28/11/07) – ok so this post didn’t really draw all that much heat, except for that one guy disagreeing with me, Tim Keller, I mean who does he think he is? It’s not like he’s got a Facebook appreciation group that’s bigger than all my friends combined!

Proudly South African (17/12/07) – who knew that being a patriot would rattle the cages a bit?

Golden Compass Christian Hernia (17/12/07) – I managed to unsettle some folks twice in one day! There’s a simple math formula for topics like the Golden Compass if you haven’t figured it out yet. It goes like this: Golden Compass + Christian Blog = Controversy + Lot’s of hits! I couldn’t resist throwing my two cents in.

So far 2008 has been controversy free. Although I’m probably not going to shy away from the posts that stir a bit let’s just pray that I stir in godly way – there is such a thing.

Reading Romans 7 and the Evangelical Conviction

If you’ve ever given any detailed attention to the text of the book of Romans before you’ll be well aware of the difficulties that surround chapter 7:14ff. The big debate in scholarship that surrounds this passage comes down to the spiritual status of Paul as he discusses his struggle with sin. There are two main options: Either he is talking about his experiences as a Jew living under the law prior to his conversion to Christianity OR he is talking about his struggles with the ‘flesh’ as a regenerate Christian. The traditional view, from the time of Augustine, has held to the latter option – Paul’s struggles as a Christian. This view has been upheld by the likes of Calvin, Luther, Packer & Stott. The former view though has some notable contemporary proponents such as Moo, Witherington & Schreiner.

After consulting much of the technical exegetical arguments surround this particular text it seems that the evidence tends towards the former view espoused by Moo and co. The problem is that many evangelicals have rather strong emotional ties to this passage as it seems to relate so well to their own inner struggles with sin. So if you challenge the traditional exegesis you are also, in one sense, challenging the spiritual experience of many if not all Christians.

Now what is most fascinating to me is not so much which view is correct (I’m still not 100% sold on either view just yet and need to study it further before I’ll commit to one view, although as I’ve already stated, after having grown up with the traditional view, my initial response to the exegetical evidence is that it presents Paul in his pre-conversion state contrary to the traditional view), what is most fascinating is how we as evangelicals, who proclaim the authority of Scripture – OVER OUR SPIRITUAL EXPERIENCE – debate and deal with this particular passage. My contention is that if this was a passage that didn’t appear to infringe upon such a ‘sacred’ and emotionally charged part of our spiritual experience then we would simply have dismissed the traditional view already. We would have looked at the two views, realised that both views had their difficulties, but that the one view seemed to have more evidence for it than the other, and then objectively we’d have chosen the non-traditional view and upheld the authority of scripture to the best of our ability. It seems to me however that instead of this we’re prepared to flirt with denying the absolute authority and rule of scripture in our lives and practice for the sake of upholding our spiritual experience. Simply put: Evangelicals tend to behave highly ‘un-evangelical’ in situations like this.

Surely the convictions that underpin historic evangelicalism should cause us to rise above even emotion and experience when we attempt to discern the Lord’s voice with clarity in the scriptures? I don’t want to play down emotion and experience and their role in understanding the scriptures but all things, even emotion and experience, in the end must be subservient to scripture for us to be true to our convictions as evangelicals – this has to be the case if we truly believe that scripture is our final rule for life and spiritual experience.

Implicit Call to Holistic Ministry

These are some thoughts I had a while ago:

Romans 8:18-25
Whilst going through this passage in which Paul comforts the suffering, struggling Christian with the predetermined, sure hope of the liberation from our groaning, I couldn’t but help notice the implicit call to Holistic Ministry for all of creation.

Take a look for example at verse 19 – the creation waits for us, the sons of God, to be glorified, because in some way this liberates the creation from its groaning – it really adds to the magnitude of our glorification when Christ returns. Then notice that the creation is in this state of groaning because of the fall. The reference to ‘the one who subjected it’ (vs20) is a reference to Gen 3:17 and the curses pronounced by God after the fall – importantly though, it is not a reference to who is responsible for the fall.

The great thing here though is to hear God’s heart on the matter, he subjects the creation to this state of frustration, ‘in the hope that the creation itself will be liberated from its bondage to decay and be brought into the glorious freedom of the children of God.’ (vs21). Now I don’t presume to know how that’s going to work out exactly in the future (you know the whole pre-mil, post-mil and a-mil debate), but I do know from this passage that God’s heart is for a liberated creation. I think, also, that the term ‘creation’ here is a holistic term embracing all of creation and so this leads me to think that as people who are ‘patiently’ (vs25) awaiting our glorification, surely the implicit lesson for us here is that we get on with living out God’s heart.

This passage places the responsibility on us, as those seeking to please the Lord, to live lives in such a way that we work towards the liberation of this groaning creation – irrespective of how you think things are going to turn out in the end (i.e. your eschatalogical view). We don’t need to believe some sort of thing about the millenium to be proactive in social concern, we do it because its God’s heart – its what he wants. This surely must help us with the false dichotomy between Gospel proclamation and social concern – just do them both and stop worrying about it!

I listened, quite a while back now, to an mp3 of Dick Lucas on Psalm 1 – his first comment was that the Bible is unbelievably black and white at times. Is that not perhaps the case here? Liberate creation – its what God wants!