Threads from Henry's Web

Author: henry

  • Brian Fulthorp

    . . . joins the fun.

  • On a Soterian Gospel

    “Some folks have reshaped the Bible and the gospel so that it is driven by the plan for personal salvation. The Greek word for salvation is soteria so it is accurate to refer to such thinkers as soterians and their gospel as the soterian gospel.” Thus Scot McKnight begins his discussion of salvation and judgment and the focus on personal salvation.

    I agree with him on the nature of the salvation described in the Bible, and the way it has been twisted, especially in American Christianity. We have created a gospel that is well designed to  mesh with our self-centeredness. The gospel becomes so personal that we don’t really care what happens to others, as long as we can be sure we’re “saved.”

    I suspect this is one of the reasons that we find so many American churches proclaiming a theology that would seem to imply missions, but at the same time not really being involved personally or financially with missions. In mainline denominations, such as my own, I think we’re much more susceptible to a complacency because we look at the judgment scenes and we decide that we’re not so bad. Both of these views fail because the concern is solely with ourselves. If we’re doing OK, even if we measure how ‘OK’ we are by our activities in service to those less fortunate, then we tend to neglect the Gospel Commission.

    And that leads to one text McKnight cites in the post I linked that I think may be easily misconstrued, Matthew 25:31-46. We frequently take this as a parable intended to answer the question “What happens at the judgment?”. I think it is actually a parable against complacency. Notice that nobody is actually right about their standing with God in this parable. All are surprised. I’d tie it most closely with Matthew 7:21-23. Just because you proclaim, just because you think you have it nailed down, doesn’t mean that you’re right with God. That is something God gets to judge.

    Now on first glance, one might think this points more to “social gospel” people, who think they’re doing what they should, when actually neglecting so much. A little bit of charity goes a long ways in salving one’s conscience, but God’s call is not to a little bit of charity. God’s call is to being a different type of person, the type of person who is focused on helping those in need, both spiritual and physical. And there’s no reason to neglect either. A church spending 5% of its budget on missions and outreach might be able to pat itself on its collective back and note that it’s doing better than other mainline denominations. But will that meet the standard?

    And to those whose focus is on theological correctness as the standard for salvation, where’s the difference? There are works of the hands and works of the intellect. The way I hear salvation described by some, one would think that it’s based on one’s intellectual understanding of complex doctrines. If you don’t understand imputation, let’s say, you might not be saved.

    But the sheep and the goats points against us finding ways to guarantee our own, separate salvation, and calls us to look to community. That says that the real question is whether God has worked and is working in us, and not whether we have correctly understood or carried out some program.

     

    Related articles
    Enhanced by Zemanta

  • My Desk

    My desk at studySince I got started with some personal notes yesterday, perhaps I’m now in the groove, or is it a rut?

    Those who know me quickly become aware that I work best just short of chaos. Well, some would actually claim that I cross over into chaos. The fact is that an excessively organized workspace (in appearance) makes me twitch. On the other hand, there is a point that gets beyond my toleration, and that is usually when all my flat surfaces get covered.

    I frequently take in dead computers, or even reasonably functioning machines that are just too old for their owners. Recently, I received a huge number from a client of my computer business and so for a period of time I had more than 20 computers, eight printers, and innumerable accessories from Computer for Top of the Bottom Ministrycables to mice. The machines took up all my flat space, not to mention all my floor space. I actually have two workstations (monitors, keyboards, network connection available) but of course there was much more than would fit in and around them.

    I have finally gotten far enough through the process of dividing what can be salvaged from what will be recycled, and I recovered my desk (picture at top left). From all of this, I managed to salvage three working systems that I will deliver to Top of the Bottom Ministry, an inner city ministry here in Pensacola. They’re just Windows XP systems with 512 MB each, but they will be useful where they are going. In addition, I rescued five printers out of the mess, so those will head out soon as well. Then will come the day when I load the rest into my van and haul it all off to recycling.

    Oh, and the picture at the bottom right is one of the machines at a workstation being prepared for its new home.

    Both pictures were taken with my Palm Pixi.

     

  • Fun (or Weird) Facts about Me

    Well, since Dave started it, and everybody else is doing it, I thought I’d provide a few facts about myself. I’m following Dave’s list except where it’s inapplicable

    • My favorite food is … broccoli. Really. The only way you can make me avoid it is by overcooking it.
    • I cannot stomach … okra.
    • My favorite TV show is … The Inspector Lynley Mysteries.
    • In my spare time I … read, light reading being science fiction, fantasy, and mysteries.
    • One word used to describe me when growing up … extreme introvert.
    • One word used to describe me today … active.
    • If I had a million dollars I’d … so many needs could be fulfilled, I couldn’t even list them. I get requests every day.
    • I send this many emails each day … 25-30 (should be more!).
    • Being a publisher/editor is … challenging.
    • My favorite book that I’ve written is … When People Speak for God.
    • My (earthly) hero is … my uncle Don Neufeld who got me started in biblical languages.
    • My favorite theologian is … Paul Tillich, even though I often disagree; I steal his vocabulary all the time.
    • I went to high school at … I’m a high school drop out.
    • My favorite spot on earth is … Sacajawea Peak, Wallowa Mountains, Oregon. I’ve only been there once.
    • If I wasn’t a publisher I would be… a teacher (if I could keep the job!).
    • My favorite Bible verse is … Jeremiah 18 (really).
    • My favorite pet is … currently I have only one, our cat, Cheena, but my favorite pet of all time was my goat Carroway, part of my herd of four when I was 12.
    • My favorite commentary on Leviticus is by … Jacob Milgrom.
    • I am embarrassed that I … can’t keep appointments straight.
    • I used to teach at … Country Garden School (elementary), while I was a college student.
    • I was a substitute teacher …  for a full two weeks for first graders in their first two weeks of the year–never again!.
    • Jody and I honeymooned in … North Carolina.
    • Our first mission trip together was to … eastern Hungary, serving children from the Ukraine.
    • My first mission trip ever … was on foot (cargo on two mules!) in the mountains of Chiapas, Mexico when I was 8 years old. My job was to carry out the garbage and sweep floors for the medical team.
    • My first journal article appeared in … no journal articles. My first paid publication was an article in The Traveler’s Journal, regarding role playing. It’s even online now. (There’s nothing academic about it!)
    • I was once asked to … become the theological librarian for a seminary.
    • After completing my MA in Religion (concentrating in Biblical Languages), and one quarter post masters I … joined the U. S. Air Force.
    • Before I joined the Air Force, I lived … three countries, 5 states and 16 houses/apartments (that I remember)
    • In the Air Force … I was stationed at only one base for nine years after completing training.
    • Once they get to know me, most people are surprised that … I play war games, but am abysmal at chess.
    • Most people don’t know that I … really enjoy tinkering with old computer hardware and just about any electronic equipment. If I didn’t have work to do, I’d rather tinker than have working equipment.
    • I have never been in … Australia. And I want to go.
    • The number of states in the U.S. I’ve been in is … 42.
    • While in high school I made … spent all my time reading and traveling around Guyana, South America. Thus I have 2 1/2 credits by correspondence, and eventually took a GED.

    OK, that’s probably TMI. 🙂

  • Review: Learning God’s Story of Grace

    I have posted a review of this little book on my Participatory Bible Study Blog.

  • Book Review: Learning God’s Story of Grace

    A great deal of the Bible comes to us in the form of stories, and even the parts filled with propositions have their background in the story of God’s action in history. I believe this is central to the way we should read and apply scripture, and thus I am delighted to have the opportunity to review the book Learning God’s Story of Grace by Elizabeth Reynolds Turnage.

    But first, disclosures. Elizabeth took both Greek and Hebrew from me, and the publisher provided me with a free review copy of the book. I want to thank both author and publisher for this opportunity.

    Including front and back matter, this book is just 128 pages. It’s spiral bound, which is helpful in a book which is likely to be used as a workbook. It is divided into seven lessons plus an epilogue. Each lesson (except for one) is divided into activities for five days. I might have preferred a few more notes on working as a group, which is clearly the place to use this material. Nonetheless, readers should have no problem either leading or participating in a small group using this study.

    The approach begins with engaging a passage of scripture (you can find the details on page 14), and ends with living and then praying the story, thus making it part of your life. From my own experience with small groups, this latter part will be the most challenging as people often shy away from directly moving to action and prayer from what they learn in scripture. Combining both living and praying drives the student to truly make the scripture story part of his or her own life.

    The first lesson uses Psalm 78. I must admit that using that Psalm gives any work on Bible study bonus points. Following that Elizabeth takes on the creation story, but not in the way you might expect. She bypasses all the debates we may have about technical details and brings the story right into our lives. This theme runs through the rest of the book, tying creation with the new creation. I’m reading two manuscripts on creation for my own company, both to be released next year, and each of those authors emphasizes that for a doctrine of creation to be truly Christian it must be Christ-centered, and join creation and new creation.

    At the same time as she leads students through an approach to Bible study, Elizabeth also leads them through the overarching story of scripture, the story that contains all the rest of our stories.

    I believe that any Bible student, Sunday School class, or small group would benefit from this study. Much of it is extremely simple in its intellectual content, and rightly so, but at the same time it is very challenging as a spiritual discipline. It is so easy to become very educated on complex details of theology without making it part of one’s own life. This book provides an antidote to that problem.

    I enthusiastically recommend this little book to those who want to let God’s Word change their lives.

     

  • Careful Where You Point Your Bible

    At the beginning of the month I wrote a post about pointing texts at yourself first. I think it’s important to do so both in order to avoid misinterpretation or unbalanced emphasis, but also because in communicating the message you will do better in expressing something that has convicted you first. The temptation, of course, is to major on the texts that don’t get under my own skin, but which tell other people what they need to change. But I think that’s a dangerous course of action.

    Coincidentally, I received some e-mails shortly after I posted that. The person in question was not responding to my post, but rather to my position on Bible versions (he is KJV-Only) and on the creation/evolution controversy (he’s a young earth creationist). Though I do reserve the right to post e-mails that are sent to me, I’m going to leave this individual anonymous.

    We went through one exchange of e-mails, i.e. he e-mailed me to tell me I was wrong, though providing nothing but his own statements to back that up, and then I responded to that e-mail. I mentioned that I would normally carry on a private correspondence on a topic such as this only through one exchange, but that I’d be delighted to carry on the discussion in public. That’s my policy when someone’s question isn’t personal or at least unique. I also gave a few references dealing with why I hold the positions I do, though again, these are all available through my various web sites.

    Having engaged in all of several paragraphs of communication, he then quoted 2 Peter 3:3-7 at me (and I use the preposition deliberately) and extracted from it the following terms:

    “there shall come … scoffers … willingly …ignorant” (I couldn’t say it any better.)

    Now admittedly my views on creation and evolution are somewhat controversial, but being called “willingly ignorant” by a KJV-Only advocate is, shall we say, special.

    And herewith ends another example of how not to communicate!

  • The Top of a Reading List

    Dave Black is offering a workshop on Dec. 4, 2011, and he’s posted a reading list on his blog. I extracted the list and posted it on The Jesus Paradigm, since Dave’s blog doesn’t allow for linking to a specific post.

    Why am I making a point of a reading list? There are a number of very good things to read on that list, but that’s not it. It’s because of the first item: The Book of Acts. I commend Dave for putting it at the top of the list because that’s precisely where it should be on this topic.

    I recall a few years ago when I was teaching a class about how to study the Bible that I offered a reading list that involved about 200 pages from various non-biblical sources and the book of Joshua. The book of Joshua is 20 or so pages, depending on your particular edition. In any case, it’s substantially less reading than the 200 pages.

    I got not a single complaint or even a moan regarding the 200 pages, but someone immediately said, “Do we have to read the whole book of Joshua?”

    We’ve become less tolerant of just reading or hearing the Bible. Scripture readings are abbreviated. I encounter some surprise when I suggest it would be a good idea to read all four passages of the lectionary (many of which are already trimmed) during worship. I’m told people won’t tolerate it. (Churches who don’t use the lectionary might consider other readings.)

    In general, however, we’d rather hear people talk about the Bible rather than read or hear it ourselves. We’d rather read hundreds of pages of someone else talking about the Bible, than spend the time getting fully acquainted with it ourselves. I think this is tragic.

    (I know that some people question the value of public reading in the modern world, but I think there is still value in hearing scripture read in public worship. I’ll discuss it some other time.)

    Our tendency is to read the Bible in bits and pieces and learn the context from other people who say they know. The only way to truly know the context is to read the material for yourself and to do so as a whole, by which I mean whole section, whole book, whole testament, and even whole Bible.

    I don’t mean to minimize the importance of what we can learn from other Bible students, but in order to make judgments about what is valid and what is not, one has to be familiar with the text as a whole.

  • Atheist Holiday Ads and Christian Freedom

    The Christian Post reports that the American Humanist Association has some holiday ads out. These ads have messages such as “Bias against atheists is naughty, not nice.” Such a message seems pretty straightforward to me.

    But the Christian Post writer chose to quote Matthew D. Staver:

    Mathew D. Staver, founder and chairman of the Liberty Counsel, said that the campaign was a crass attempt at restricting the religious freedom of Christians passionate about Christmas. As the birthdate of Christianity, he said no other holiday deserved more public worship.

    Now as a Christian, I’m fully in tune with the idea of being passionate about Christmas and in worshiping on this holiday. That is my choice as a Christian. In addition, there are a number of things I like to do about Christmas to make it more a matter of worship and less a matter of commercialism. This includes paying close attention to the advent season and the worship involved, and in also following the season, always noting that Christmas, as a liturgical season, begins and does not end on Christmas day.

    But all of that is my choice. I can be passionate about what I want to do. Nobody else can prevent me from worshiping during the Christmas season. Nobody can prevent me from being passionate about the incarnation during this season.

    But the incarnation does suggest something else to me. It suggests that I shouldn’t want to try to exclude others. The incarnation represents the greatest inclusion, or gap crossing, in religious thought. Infinite God reaches across the gulf to the finite, us, and draws us in.

    So should we, as does Mr. Staver, complain that our freedom is being limited or that these ads prevent us from passionately celebrating our own holiday? Or perhaps we should see this as an opportunity to treat people in a respectful way ourselves.

    They aren’t hurting Christians in any way by disagreeing with us. That’s their choice. Complaining about it just suggests that in this country we have a majority (Christians) who are so thin skinned that they can’t tolerate a very small minority asking for a little respect.

    And that’s pathetic.

     

    Enhanced by Zemanta

  • Through Difficulties to Ministry

    Shauna Hyde is one of the authors at Energion Publications, so I admit to bias, but I really did like this write-up in the Charleston (WV) Gazette-Mail. Her book, Victim No More! is mentioned in the article.

    I’m often critical of newspaper articles, not so much for being negative, but for being shallow. I think this one is pretty good.

     

    Enhanced by Zemanta