Threads from Henry's Web

Author: henry

  • A Practical Application of Grace Before Law

    In an earlier post on salvation I mentioned that I would try to expand on some of the points I had only briefly mentioned. I have followed up with an extract from my earlier essay A Fruitful Faith. I encountered an excellent example of the grace before law principle in my devotions the other day to which I’d like to call attention.

    (Those who want to complain about the grace before law pattern based on passages such as Romans 5:20, I’ll simply note that the perspective there is a bit different. Wesleyans will probably recognize discussion of varieties of prevenient grace.)

    The first verse I noted was a turning point in the speech of Moses to the Israelites in Deuteronomy:

    (1) And now, Israel, listen to the statutes and judgments that I am teaching you to follow, so that you may live, and may enter and possess the land that YHWH, the God of your fathers, is giving to you. — Deuteronomy 4:1

    The reason this verse caught my attention is that Moses has just completed a review of the way in which Israel was rescued and what God has done for them. Having recited God’s prior actions, he then turns to the teaching of commands. The right to give the commands and the reason to hear them is rooted in God’s saving activity–the grace that was given before the law. (An extension of this principle is that God’s grace is truly undeserved, that is it comes before anyone has done anything to deserve it.)

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  • A Fruitful Faith

    As I mentioned in a prior post on salvation, I plan to make a few more comments over the next few months filling out my views. In support of some future posts, I want to post an extract from a previous essay, A Fruitful Faith. You can read the remainder of that essay by following the link, but this essay describes the pattern, to which I will refer multiple times in future posts.

    There are many views in Christianity on the details of salvation and the various terms, events or processes that go into it. I would like to survey some Biblical material which I believe suggests that one always becomes right with God through a relationship mediated by faith, i.e. by the grace of God, but that the faith must always be a faith that bears fruit. No simple set of words, no transaction, no non-productive faith will do. A few of the texts that I will quote go a little farther than that, but I am interested right now in a broad survey rather than the details.

    Let me clarify some terminology. The word “salvation” can refer in scripture to redeeming someone from the rule of evil, to a process of spiritual healing and growth, and also to the final entry into the kingdom of God. Looking at texts from this perspective would constitute another essay. I will simply assume it here. Second, I will use the term “Old Testament” for the Hebrew scriptures for the most part, because I am looking at that body of literature from a primarily Christian point of view.

    I will proceed in seven parts (this extract includes only the first section):

    1. The original pattern from creation through the end of the flood
    2. The pattern of the Exodus
    3. Messianic prophecy and the new covenant
    4. Jesus
    5. Paul and fruit
    6. General Epistles
    7. Revelation and the coming kingdom

    (Since each of these is a rather large topic I’m simply going to outline the main points. This is a topic in which I believe one can say that the notion of salvation by a non-producing faith is unscriptural because it goes against the grain of all of scripture.)

    1. The pattern

    The “sin” pattern starts in Genesis 3 or 4, but can be most clearly seen, I believe, in the contrast between Genesis 1:31 (God saw everything that he had made, and behold it was very good!) and Genesis 6:5, (God saw . . . that the pattern of the intentions of his [man’s] heart was only evil continually.) Here we see the simple statement of the state of the world. It is good to recall that we are reading a story here with the moral points made through narrative. If we grant the situation as described in the story, the world is already in serious trouble before God brings on the flood. The focus in this story from the teller’s point of view is not the destruction of the rest of the world, but rather the saving of the eight people.

    Note here that the problem is not that everyone is running around bothered by guilt. It is also not that they are afraid of death and of hell fire. Rather it is that the entire tendency of their thinking is evil. Thus an atonement that simply removed guilt would not meet the need. An atonement that left their thinking in the same state in which it was before would not be a response to the problem indicated.

    This establishes the pattern that I believe is frequently seen in scripture, in particular in narrative form, which follows through all discussions of salvation–grace comes before law and instruction. Let’s look at that pattern as it occurs following the flood. Recall that for the eight people described here, they have just survived a harrowing experience–they have experienced a form of salvation from the situation.

    1. God blessed Noah and his sons, and said to them, “Be fruitful and multiply, and fill the earth.
    2. The fear and dread of you shall rest on every animal of the earth, and on every bird of the air, on everything that creeps on the ground, and on all the fish of the sea; into your hand they are delivered.
    3. Every moving thing that lives shall be food for you; and just as I gave you the green plants, I give you everything.
    4. Only, you shall not eat flesh with its life, that is, its blood.
    5. For your own lifeblood I will surely require a reckoning: from every animal I will require it and from human beings, each one for the blood of another, I will require a reckoning for human life.
    6. Whoever sheds the blood of a human,
    by a human shall that person’s blood be shed;
    for in his own image
    God made humankind.
    7. And you, be fruitful and multiply, abound on the earth and multiply in it”
    (Genesis 9:1-7 NRSV).

    First, there is a blessing which is the result of a rescue, then there is instruction. We will see the pattern repeated further on in the same chapter.

    The same pattern occurs with Abraham who is called out without any particular request of good action recorded on his part, but who simply believes God. But his belief also results in action (Genesis 12:1-4; Genesis 15:6). One might even say that, beyond simply accepting that what God said was true, he put it into action–he put his trust in God. God’s act of rescue occurs first, followed by God’s promise of blessing, followed by the obedience of the person.

    Read more . . .

  • Inerrancy and Liberal-Conservative Dialogue

    In a comment at , Adrian Warnock says the following:

    Dr Grudem has expressed regret for the use of the word “blasphemy”, and as far as the quote from his systematic theology goes you have to understand that his aim is explicitly to build a theology based on the assumption that the bible is inerrant – I am not too sure how you think a liberal theology would help in that aim…

    (See also Dr. Grudem’s retraction of his agreement to the use of the word blasphemy.)

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  • Critical Thinking and the Attack on Judge Jones

    In my Bible Translations FAQ, I respond to a common question about Bible translation and about the NIV in particular. Let me quote my basic response first, and then I’ll discuss why I’m bringing this up now. No, this is not a post about Bible translation, though I’m going to use a translation issue as an illustration.

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  • NASB to NASB95 in Isaiah 27

    In my materials for my Bible Translation Selection Tool, I only have one entry for the New American Standard Version even though that version was revised in 1995. The major change was the removal of archaic language in prayer–no more thee’s and thou’s. A few other changes were made.

    In preparing an entry on exegesis of Isaiah 27 I noticed some differences between the two editions. There are three changes for the NASB95, and one phrase that it seems odd was not changed.

    Here are the four items:

    Verse NASB NASB95
    3 Lest anyone damage it, So that no one will damage it,
    The change is minor, but perhaps it makes God’s activity in guarding the vineyard more positive. I’m not sure if modern readers would hear any difference unless it was pointed out to them.
    8 Thou didst content with them by banishing them, You contended with them by banishing them,
    Changes language that addresses God to modern forms.
    12 It will come about in that day, that the LORD will start His threshing

    		In that day the LORD will start His threshing
    This is what I would call a “student exercise” type of change. This translates a common Hebrew idiom often translated “It came to pass” or just “It happened” but when translated into modern English it is more of a form of punctuation. Generally modern translators count on English punctuation to translate this idea adequately. Thus it has been removed.
    13 It will come about also in that day, It will come about also in that day
    This is the non-change that I noted. Verses 12 and 13 start identically in Hebrew. I’m uncertain why one was changed to a more natural English rendering, while the other was not.

    The changes here are not terribly significant, but this little review will give you an idea of the extent, or lack of it, of the changes to the NASB95.

  • Idolatry and Male Representation

    The new, young associate pastor was praying, and in her prayer she referred to God as “Father-Mother God.” Silence settled over the congregation as mental gasps replaced “Amens.” The associate pastor had transgressed the unofficial line. You can represent God as vengeful or loving, gentle or angry, gracious or demanding, present or distant, but don’t you ever present God as male and female.

    I was preparing a communion service with a slightly non-traditional text. Someone reading the material brought a portion of it to me. Was I sure I wanted to use this passage? Wasn’t it feminized? My text had crossed the line. I can represent God as just about anything, but never use feminine language. The feminized language in question? ” . . . gather us under your wing as a hen gathers her chicks . . .” (Matthew 23:37; Luke 13:34).

    We constantly use images for God, mental images, yes, but images nonetheless. And there is nothing wrong with mental images, provided you don’t cast them in stone–real stone or mental stone. The Bible uses plenty of images of God, including the feminine image of divine wisdom as used in Proverbs.

    The problem comes in when you fix the images in place so that they become your picture of God instead of allowing God to constantly interact with you, shatter your images, and grow you up. As I previously commented on this:

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  • Agreeing with Wayne Grudem on Something

    Well, I wasn’t sure it would happen, but it has. I agree with a portion of Dr. Wayne Grudem’s comments in the seventh part of Adrian Warnock’s interview with him, Things We Can Agree to Disagree About?

    Of course, he reaffirms the key points on which I disagree profoundly, namely that making penal substitutionary atonement the key meaning of the atonement is the heart of the gospel or that male authority is somehow a substantial part of the gospel message. Nonetheless, I take it as a good thing that he sees the fairly clear (in my opinion) meaning of 1 Corinthians 13:10, which does not mean that miraculous gifts cease in the church at some artificial point prior to the realizaiton of the kingdom.

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  • ID = Intense Desperation?

    Or perhaps it had set in a long time ago. I hadn’t really meant to comment on the current uproar about the Discovery Institute’s apparent “discovery” that part of Judge Jones’s ruling in the Dover case came “almost verbatim” from the propose findings of fact from the plaintiff’s attorneys. I’m not an attorney, and I hardly consider myself qualified to discuss that. But I can read, and I can see what’s similar and what’s not, and I can smell desperation.

    As a non-lawyer, some interesting questions come to mind.

    1. Did it take them this long to compare the proposed findings of fact with the final decision?
    2. What were they doing in the meantime, counting the pixels in each letter?
    3. Is there possibly some reason to conclude that other tactics having failed, this is a desperate attempt to catch the unwary by making claims that sound terrible, but that the average person doesn’t actually understand?
    4. Does anybody other than me find the combination of citing percentages in tenths of a percent (90.9%) with a phrase like “virtually verbatim” (see Discovery institute quote here and the original press release source below) to be a troubling case of using math to imply greater exactness than one’s data actually supports? OK, that one may seem more obscure, but it will be understood as 90.9% identical by many readers, and the one thing DI has is good media manipulators.

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  • Christianity vs Paulianity

    Dave Warnock has made an interesting discovery while looking at the interview with Wayne Grudem that Adrian Warnock is publishing on his blog (#6 entry). Jesus has been almost totally left out of the argument.

    I commented on the type of view of scripture that seems to lead to this previously, and in my recent post on deciding who is saved I note that one of the problems I see with current evangelical views on atonement, and particularly on putting penal substitutionary atonement front and center, is that it puts the material out of order.

    In the history of salvation, Jesus came first, and then Paul interpreted him. While the gospels are generally dated after the letters of Paul (though this can be contested), the oral traditions of Jesus on which Christianity first rode forth into the world obviously predate anything Paul wrote. Many modern Christians seem like art critics who, instead of actually looking at a painting, read from a description while the painting itself is readily available. The direction of study should start with Jesus, and who he is, and then read Paul where he fits in, which is in applying the message of Jesus to a broader community. In particular, the kingdom parables say some fairly definitive things about the kingdom, which we often permit theology to override.

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  • Response on United Methodist Apportionments

    Some time ago I posted an entry that dealt broadly with apportionments and accountability in churches. A very good friend of mine, Dr. Bob McKibben, author of Holy Smoke! Unholy Fire!, which I publish, wrote me an impassioned and information filled e-mail in response. Some of the contents of that e-mail were not appropriate to post publicly, but I asked Bob to edit it, and he was willing.

    Bob is pastor of Pine Forest United Methodist Church, in the Pensacola District of the Alabama-West Florida Conference of the United Methodist Church.

    I have now persuaded him to become an occasional contributor to the Pacesetters Bible School news blog, and as his first posting we will have Inspired and Empowered – Apportionments and Connectionalism. I’m posting a link here because I’m hooked into the Methodist blogosphere, while Pacesetters Bible School, as an interdenominational organization, is not so linked.

    Head over there and check it out. Please comment there.