Dr. Carl Trueman on mortality: “Each Day Dies with Sleep.”
Mortality
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Monthly Archives: October 2015
Ken Ham and the Darleks
No, biblical stand on Genesis. In this episode he shares an exciting update regarding the life-size reconstruction of Noah’s ark and its significance as an outreach tool to engage the popular culture around us. Oh, and it turns out that Ken Ham is a fan of Doctor Who. You will have to watch the episode to learn about darleks. 🙂
Passive Sanctification?
he outlines why the concept is attractive to some:
Passive sanctification is an error that has stalked and hurt the Christian church and many Christian lives through the years. The basic idea is that personal holiness is achieved without any personal activity, without any physical effort. Rather, holiness is received the more we are enabled to yield, to give up, or to believe.
The older form of this error has been summed up in the phrase, “Let go and let God.” We are passive and God is active. The more passive we become the more active God becomes. The less we try to succeed the more God will succeed in us.
The newest form of this error can be summed up in the phrase “Believe in your justification and you will be sanctified.” The idea is that the more you believe in your justification the more holy you will become. As faith receives and embraces justification, spiritual growth will happen. Faith simply receives, and this automatically produces godliness. There is no effort or activity on our part, apart from the effort of believing and receiving what Christ has already accomplished. Sanctification happens by believing in our justification.
There are a number of reasons (good and bad) why so many Christians are attracted to this modern version of passive sanctification.
1. Keeps justification central in the Christian life
Although we are only justified once, by our initial act of saving faith, yet we need to appropriate that justification time and time again. We do need to understand it more, believe it more, know it more, and experience it more. Remember it, recognize it, realize it, relax in it, and rejoice in it. Yes!
2. Reduces the danger of legalism in the Christian life
Some Christians have the tendency to think “I’m saved by God’s sovereign grace, but now it’s over to me.” “I get in by Christ’s work but I go on by my work. I’m saved passively but I’m made holy by my activity.” The Christian life then becomes a ceaseless round of activity, service, obligation, targets, resolutions…and failures, disappointment, frustration, etc. By helping the Christian return again and again to their justified status, the danger of legalistic activism is avoided. Continue reading
Earliest List of the Canon
What is the Earliest Complete List of the Canon of the New Testament? scholars like to highlight the first time we see a complete list of 27 books. Inevitably, the list contained in Athanasius’ famous Festal Letter (c.367) is mentioned as the first time this happened.
As a result, it is often claimed that the New Testament was a late phenomenon. We didn’t have a New Testament, according to Athanasius, until the end of the fourth century.
But, this sort of reasoning is problematic on a number of levels. First, we don’t measure the existence of the New Testament just by the existence of lists. When we examine the way certain books were used by the early church fathers, it is evident that there was a functioning canon long before the fourth century. Indeed, by the second century, there is already a “core” collection of New Testament books functioning as Scripture.
Second, there are reasons to think that Athanasius’ list is not the earliest complete list we possess. In the recent festschrift for Larry Hurtado, Mark Manuscripts and Monotheism (edited by Chris Keith and Dieter Roth; T&T Clark, 2015), I wrote an article entitled, “Origen’s List of New Testament Books in Homiliae on Josuam 7.1: A Fresh Look.”
In that article, I argue that around 250 A.D., Origen likely produced a complete list of all 27 New Testament books–more than a hundred years before Athanasius. In his typical allegorical fashion, Origen used the story of Joshua to describe the New Testament canon:
But when our Lord Jesus Christ comes, whose arrival that prior son of Nun designated, he sends priests, his apostles, bearing “trumpets hammered thin,” the magnificent and heavenly instruction of proclamation. Matthew first sounded the priestly trumpet in his Gospel; Mark also; Luke and John each played their own priestly trumpets. Even Peter cries out with trumpets in two of his epistles; also James and Jude. In addition, John also sounds the trumpet through his epistles [and Revelation], and Luke, as he describes the Acts of the Apostles. And now that last one comes, the one who said, “I think God displays us apostles last,” and in fourteen of his epistles, thundering with trumpets, he casts down the walls of Jericho and all the devices of idolatry and dogmas of philosophers, all the way to the foundations (Hom. Jos. 7.1).
As one can see from the list above, all 27 books of the New Testament are accounted for (Origen clearly counts Hebrews as part of Paul’s letters). The only ambiguity is a text-critical issue with Revelation, but we have good evidence from other sources that Origen accepted Revelation as Scripture (Eusebius, Hist. eccl. 6.25.10). Continue reading
Why a Pastor Should Have a ‘Study,’ and Not an ‘Office’
Interesting article by Gerald Hiestand here.
The Charge of Inconsistency
in an article entitled “Old Testament Law and The Charge of Inconsistency” writes:
I find it frustrating when I read or hear columnists, pundits, or journalists dismiss Christians as inconsistent because “they pick and choose which of the rules in the Bible to obey.” Most often I hear, “Christians ignore lots of Old Testament texts—about not eating raw meat or pork or shellfish, not executing people for breaking the Sabbath, not wearing garments woven with two kinds of material and so on. Then they condemn homosexuality. Aren’t you just picking and choosing what you want to believe from the Bible?”
I don’t expect everyone to understand that the whole Bible is about Jesus and God’s plan to redeem his people, but I vainly hope that one day someone will access their common sense (or at least talk to an informed theological adviser) before leveling the charge of inconsistency.
First, it’s not only the Old Testament that has proscriptions about homosexuality. The New Testament has plenty to say about it as well. Even Jesus says, in his discussion of divorce in Matthew 19:3–12, that the original design of God was for one man and one woman to be united as one flesh, and failing that (v. 12), persons should abstain from marriage and sex.
However, let’s get back to considering the larger issue of inconsistency regarding things mentioned in the Old Testament no longer practiced by the New Testament people of God. Most Christians don’t know what to say when confronted about this issue. Here’s a short course on the relationship of the Old Testament to the New Testament.
The Old Testament devotes a good amount of space to describing the various sacrifices offered in the tabernacle (and later temple) to atone for sin so that worshipers could approach a holy God. There was also a complex set of rules for ceremonial purity and cleanness. You could only approach God in worship if you ate certain foods and not others, wore certain forms of dress, refrained from touching a variety of objects, and so on. This vividly conveyed, over and over, that human beings are spiritually unclean and can’t go into God’s presence without purification.
But even in the Old Testament, many writers hinted that the sacrifices and the temple worship regulations pointed forward to something beyond them (cf. 1 Sam. 15:21–22; Pss. 50:12–15; 51:17; Hos. 6:6). When Christ appeared he declared all foods clean (Mark 7:19), and he ignored the Old Testament cleanliness laws in other ways, touching lepers and dead bodies.
The reason is clear. When he died on the cross the veil in the temple tore, showing that he had done away with the the need for the entire sacrificial system with all its cleanliness laws. Jesus is the ultimate sacrifice for sin, and now Jesus makes us clean.
The entire book of Hebrews explains that the Old Testament ceremonial laws were not so much abolished as fulfilled by Christ. Whenever we pray “in Jesus name” we “have confidence to enter the Most Holy Place by the blood of Jesus” (Heb. 10:19). It would, therefore, be deeply inconsistent with the teaching of the Bible as a whole if we continued to follow the ceremonial laws. Continue reading
50 Years Ago Today
Through the use of a short story, I’d like to give you a glimpse into why common grace should amaze us.
The story concerns a young Christian lady of 18 years of age in York, England. Born in Malta, of Irish parents, she was engaged to be married to a bright young man in the British military. The plan was that after the war was over, they would both serve the Lord as missionaries together, wherever He would lead them to go.
Sent over to France on D-Day, June 6, 1944, the young man was thrust into the battle for the city of Caen in Normandy, France. Tragically, just weeks afterward, on July 10, 1944, he was killed by one of the enemies’ bullets.
On hearing the news of her fiance’s death, the young lady was obviously devastated. Grief filled her heart. While attending church services in York for the next several months, she would hear dramatic testimonies of Divine protection, as loved ones returned home recounting the stories. All of these returning soldiers were protected from imminent danger. Many of these soldiers were extremely conscious of the Lord’s direct intervention in keeping them alive. And yet, the young lady had to live on knowing that the man she loved was not coming home.
Question after question plagued the young lady’s mind. Nothing that was said to her seemed to ease the pain and grief. And those hostile, haunting questions continued relentlessly.
One day, she rushed into her bedroom and flung herself down on the bed in great grief, as she often did. Then something very dramatic and life-changing happened. The Lord Himself appeared to this young lady. The brightness of His glory filled the room. He didn’t say a word. But in that moment, He stretched out His hand to her. She was totally caught up with the look in His eyes. She beheld the greatest love and compassion in the world. All her questions subsided as He smiled at her. Her heart’s cry was answered by one look into His eyes, full of unspeakable love.
The young lady very rarely speaks of this incident. However, when she does, usually only with close family and friends, tears well up once again at the grace she found in the face of Christ.
The story continues. At the same time, a Welsh military man was stationed in the same city of York in England. Brought up as a Roman Catholic, this young man had a dramatic conversion to Christ while serving in the British army in Gibraltar. In understanding the Gospel of Christ, this young man came out of the Roman Catholic Church system, facing the hostility of his family in doing so, and then trained to serve the British forces as a military chaplain.
Very much an Evangelist, this young man saw countless men come to Christ while serving in France and Belgium. For an eighteen month period, the numbers of soldiers he saw professing faith in Christ numbered in the hundreds every week.
One day, this young man was preaching in the city of York, and his eyes fixed on a certain young lady – the lady in our story. The two began to court each other and married soon after.
Years of married life passed and the hope of having a child grew stronger and stronger. How they wanted a child! Yet time was marching on.
Seventeen years of marriage came and went and no child was forthcoming. Just when it looked like all hope was gone, the young lady became pregnant. What joy must have filled the home with this dramatic news!
Two weeks before due date, the baby was coming. Complications ensued, with the afterbirth coming first, and the mother losing a great deal of blood. The mother was not doing at all well and the little baby was fighting for its life. Once born, the little one was whisked away into an oxygen tent where every gasping breath was a severe struggle.
Years later, the father wrote the following words: “I remember when I was called to the hospital where my son lay near to death. When he saw me, he reached out desperately towards me. I could do nothing. He was in an oxygen tent. The doctor gave me a knowing and sympathizing look and shook her head. The lad was dying.”
He continued, “I found a corner where I prayed. I thanked God for the joy that boy had brought into my life, for the privilege of having responsibility for his welfare, be it but for a short while. I told God how much that child meant to me and added, ‘but really he belonged to You all the time. Lord I commend him to your safe keeping. He means more than life to me Lord, but though You take him, I’ll love You still and will praise You all my days. That, I learned many years later, was a sacrifice of praise.’” Continue reading
Know Your Adversary – the Flesh
Embracing Mystery
Believing the whole Bible, with all of its varied pieces, is not a small or simple thing. A theology that makes sense of all of Scripture will require a great deal of mystery. Are we willing to admit that the Bible can say two things that seem to our minds to be contradictory and, in the end, not contradict each other after all?
Transubstantiation in the Early Church
it ought to be stated at the outset that Scripture must be our final authority in the determination of sound doctrine and right practice.
The word “eucharist” means “thanksgiving” and was an early Christian way of referring to the celebration of the Lord’s Table. Believers in the early centuries of church history regularly celebrated the Lord’s Table as a way to commemorate the death of Christ. The Lord Himself commanded this observance on the night before His death. As the apostle Paul recorded in 1 Corinthians 11:23–26Open in Logos Bible Software (if available):
For I received from the Lord that which I also delivered to you, that the Lord Jesus in the night in which He was betrayed took bread; and when He had given thanks, He broke it and said, “This is My body, which is for you; do this in remembrance of Me.” In the same way He took the cup also after supper, saying, “This cup is the new covenant in My blood; do this, as often as you drink it, in remembrance of Me.” For as often as you eat this bread and drink the cup, you proclaim the Lord’s death until He comes.
In discussing the Lord’s Table from the perspective of church history, at least two important questions arise. First, did the early church believe that the elements (the bread and the cup) were actually and literally transformed into the physical body and blood of Christ? In other words, did they articulate the doctrine of transubstantiation as modern Roman Catholics do? Second, did early Christians view the eucharist as a propitiatory sacrifice? Or put another way, did they view it in the terms articulated by the sixteenth-century Council of Trent?
In today’s post, we will address the first of those two questions.
Did the Early Church Fathers Hold to Transubstantiation?
Transubstantiation is the Roman Catholic teaching that in the eucharist, the bread and the cup are transformed into the literal body and blood of Christ. Here are several quotes from the church fathers, often cited by Roman Catholics, in defense of their claim that the early church embraced transubstantiation. Continue reading