Threads from Henry's Web

Tag: Christianity

  • Quote of the Day: God’s Word and Our Words

    Creation: The Christian DoctrineI’m working on editing Creation: the Christian Doctrine by Edward W. H. Vick. It’s quite an enjoyable task. I regularly learn new things while reading Dr. Vick’s work. In this case he’s talking about knowledge of God. He has already contrasted this with knowledge of the natural universe. We, as finite creatures, cannot by normal means understand the transcendent. Only as God acts and reveals himself can we attain such knowledge.

    It is because God has expressed himself and continues to express himself that God is known. A clear distinction is to be made between the divine reality, the form by which God is expressed, and the knowledge human beings acquire of him.

    …

    So we, the human creatures, cannot by observation, sensation
    and deduction, arrive at a knowledge of God. We use such methods in our successful search for knowledge within the cosmos, but they are not the ways that we can come to a knowledge of God. But as God reveals himself and the Word is grasped, the human can understand the expression by which the revelation is made possible and expressed. We never transcend the limitations of our language, even in speaking of the revealing act of God. We are creatures and our language is anthropomorphic. But that does not mean that there are not poorer and better ways of using our language! The very use of language should remind us that God is transcendent.
    He is Creator. We are creatures. Without the Word, we would know nothing of the transcendent God.

    (Creation: The Christian Doctrine, pp. 54-55, forthcoming from Energion Publications.)

    Vick develops these ideas further in his earlier books History and Christian Faith (distributed by Energion) and From Inspiration to Understanding: Reading the Bible Seriously and Faithfully.

  • What Makes a Doctrine (of Creation) Christian?

    I put “of creation” in parentheses, because the question might be answered in similar ways for other doctrines. What follows is a short quote from a book, Creation: The Christian Doctrine by Edward W. H. Vick, my company is about to release. I’m doing a number of “final” things on it right now. This caught my eye.

    The Christian doctrine of creation is not simply an explanation of the origin of the universe. It holds that God is transcendent and free, that the creatures are contingent and free, that the ongoing world of history and events in the world are purposive, that within that human history the purpose of creation is being revealed, that the Redeemer is the Creator. It also teaches that the creation reaches its fulfilment at the end, at the eschaton.

    All statements of faith are statements about God and his activity.

    Christian statements about God are at the same time statements about Jesus Christ.

    The Christian doctrine of creation results from addressing these questions: What is the meaning and significance of Christian faith? How are we to understand that faith? What is entailed in the fellowship with God that constitutes Christian faith?

    Note that Dr. Vick continues in great detail. The whole book is a bit over 130 pages (it may vary by a page or two once formatting is complete), and is intended as a companion volume to Creation in Scripture by Herold Weiss.

    What do you think?

  • Seasons of the Church Year

    I grew up in a Christian group that did not follow the Christian liturgical calendar. There were many arguments presented for this, including the pagan backgrounds of some holidays. I’m not going to discuss that issue except to say that I care very little about the background of the day. What I care about is what we do with it now! I’m more concerned with the commercialism we’ve brought into Christmas since it became a Christian holiday than I am with any pagan backgrounds.

    Another argument, however, was that we should be celebrating these things year round. We should always be celebrating the birth of Christ. We should always be celebrating the atonement and the resurrection.

    That argument sounds pious and good at first glance, but it doesn’t match my experience. I do not detract from my celebration of all of God’s works year round by having a special commemoration at one time (or period) during the Christian year. Rather, I enhance that awareness by giving special time to meditation on one or another topic.

    Since I became a member of a United Methodist congregation nearly 18 years ago, these seasons have become very important to me. So there will be special things I do during Lent (no, I’m not going to announce these on my blog), and there will be special things I do for Easter.

    There is an additional reason I appreciate these seasons. I know I’m remembering these critical events in the history of my faith along with millions of other Christians at the same time. There’s a connection there, and I like to feel it.

    So I have become very much attached to the seasons of the church year. This won’t prevent my enjoying a Christmas song during the summer, nor will it keep me from mentioning the cross in the fall. But it will bring these events back to my mind in a special way according to the church seasons.

  • Self-Quote of the Day

    Is this a new high (or low) in narcissism?

    I’m always interested to see what others quote of what I say. I must confess that normally things I write that impress me don’t impress others (at least based on the number of views), while often something I bat off in a couple of minutes and then forget about draws attention draws in multiples of the views and gets links and retweets.

    In any case, nearly two years ago I wrote a post for my wife’s devotional list, and today she reposted it. It included a paragraph I want to quote:

    … First, the Holy Spirit enabled the disciples to challenge their world. They didn’t call for some little decision, such as going to church once a week, or attending a small group. They called on people to be transformed, and then to transform the world. Second, the power of the preaching involved both the Holy Spirit and the personal testimony of the disciples. They talked about what they knew and what they had witnessed (emphasis mine, but added today).

    I’m wondering if I live up to that. No, that’s not quite it. I’m pretty certain I don’t, but I’d like to.

    What about you?

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  • Beware the Cult of the Speaker

    Dave Black warns us today against the cult of the speaker. (With permission I’ve extracted the relevant portion as a post at JesusParadigm.com since Dave’s blog doesn’t allow linking to a specific post.)

    Considering what we’ve heard recently about megachurches creating satellite campuses that receive the message from the senior pastor on the main campus via video. It’s not my intent here to point to any particular speaker as an example of being a celebrity preacher or of participating the cult of the speaker. Those of us without the temptation of multi-site ministry or television opportunities can be just as much tempted to pride, arrogance, or any of the myriad of other temptations that come with celebrity.

    Dave’s post brought to my mind a concern I’ve had with many churches. I was a member of one church that had somewhere in the neighborhood of 10% of the average Sunday attendance in the lay speaker program. That’s a wonderful thing. But how often did any of these lay speakers speak? Not very frequently.

    Now as we were constantly reminded in lay speaking classes, preaching on Sunday is not the only place in which we could serve. But in the same way I would remind pastors that preaching on Sunday is not the only way they can serve their congregations.

    This was brought forcefully to mind a few years back when I invited a pastor to speak at a conference. He eventually had to back out because an emergency came up that kept him out of his pulpit for one week. He told me that he had a covenant with the congregation to be in the pulpit 50 out of 52 Sundays.

    While I commend that pastor for being faithful to his word and for putting his beliefs into practice, I don’t think having “the pastor” or “the senior pastor” speak every Sunday is necessarily a good thing. It’s possible that other people in the congregation have something valid to contribute as well. But much more importantly, if we don’t learn to speak about the gospel in church, where will we learn?

    If we want lay speakers (speaking “Methodist”) to learn how to speak, where could it be better to do this than at their home congregation? I know there are concerns about the quality of the preaching and the theological/doctrinal accuracy of the message. But one of the things a pastor could do would be to spend the time he or she might spend in sermon preparation helping a lay speaker prepare a sermon.

    Then what about the substantial number of members of any church who are neither called nor equipped to present a sermon? There are many varieties of sharing, including testimonies. We have this kind of thing in the church from time to time, but why is it so rare?

    I recall testimonies about the ministries of the church given over a period of four weeks. These were excellent. They gave me a better idea of what certain church ministries were accomplishing. It was great to hear from the people involved.

    Recently we had a youth Sunday. We have one of those a year. Why is it just once a year? The young man who brought the message did an excellent job. I could stand to hear him more often.

    We have many members who feel very inadequate to talk about their faith. Does not the example set by the Sunday service suggest that it requires a trained professional to present the Christian message? Does that example not encourage people to think that what they need to refer their friends and acquaintances to the pastor if they are to have a conversation about faith?

    At my home church (First UMC, Pensacola), we are blessed with an excellent pastoral staff. I very much appreciate their ministry in preaching. But I wonder just how much that ministry might be expanded if more time were spent training members of the congregation to share in everything from a one minute testimony to a full sermon.

    We often wonder why people tend to become pew sitters rather than becoming active. But isn’t the example of Sunday morning a suggestion that this is precisely the proper role for the “ordinary” church member? I think it’s worth considering.

     

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  • Book Note: Turning to God

    I asked my pastor for a good book on the basics of Christian conversion and he handed me William Barclay’s little book Turning to God.

    It’s a small book, with just 103 pages of reasonable size text. It’s not complex. The vocabulary is straightforward. I wouldn’t recommend it for speed reading, but you don’t need any strong theological background to follow the discussion.

    Barclay works from the conversion stories and evangelistic methods presented in the book of Acts to develop both an understanding of what conversion means and the approaches to evangelization that will produce conversion.

    This is an exceptionally good book. It appears to be out of print, but there are quite a number of used copies available online.

    I give this a definite five bright stars!

  • Jesus vs. Religion – Really?

    There’s a video that’s been making the rounds of the Christian blogs, in which pits Jesus against religion. Here it is:

     

    There have been a number of posts that are critical of it as well, including a good one by John Byron, and a longer, but still interesting one at The American Jesus.

    Another blogger I follow regularly, T. Michael Holcomb, has also created a video response, which is worth watching, though he gets into some more serious theological terminology:

     

    I think that both the original video and the responses have some important things to say. But we do have a problem here, and it’s one of equivocation. We’re not keeping a consistent definition of religion. One responder notes that Jesus objected to legalism, not religion, but to the speaker in the video, legalism is inherent in religion.

    I have little to add to the posts and videos I have linked. There is good religion and not-so-good religion. We should remember that the religion Jesus objected to (and did so as a Jew speaking of his own religion), was one God instituted in Hebrew scriptures. He opposed corruptions of it, such as legalism, but never said it was bad by nature.

    At the same time, those very corruptions of religion, including legalism and the elevation of earthly authorities above God, are diseases that are rampant in American Christianity.

    The institutional church needs to hear this and take action. If they can …

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  • Christians Behaving Vilely (Rhode Island Edition)

    43 “You have heard the law that says, ‘Love your neighbor’ and hate your enemy. 44 But I say, love your enemies Pray for those who persecute you! 45 In that way, you will be acting as true children of your Father in heaven. For he gives his sunlight to both the evil and the good, and he sends rain on the just and the unjust alike. (Matthew 5:43-45, NLT)

    It appears that this message has not reached many Christians responding to a court order to remove a Christian banner from a Rhode Island high school. There have been treats against the 17 year old student who was the plaintiff. To get some of the tone of the remarks that aren’t legally “threats,” you might read this article. Ed Brayton at Dispatches from the Culture Wars has collected some comments from Twitter (language warning!) in a post titled Crank Up the Christian Hatred.

    What I find even more disturbing is the number of people who are willing to provide some sort of justification for this type of behavior. Again, you’ll find them in the comments with comments such as “What did you expect?” Well, since I have followed church/state cases for years, including one just in the next county, I unfortunately expect Christians to behave very badly, to yell, scream, whine, defy the law, threaten, and resort to vile language in response to being denied some public stage. But in another sense, I expect better.

    And don’t get me wrong based on the text I quoted at the start. These Christians are not experiencing persecution. While they may no longer have a religious banner in their high school, a public place, they doubtless have plenty of churches where they can express their viewpoints, not to mention Twitter and the comments sections of their newspapers, where they can make incredibly unchristian comments while others say, “It’s just natural,” or something of the sort.

    Jesus said to respond in a loving and kind manner when you are persecuted. There’s an Iranian pastor on death row because he will not deny Christ. He’s being persecuted. A young woman was given 40 lashes for converting to Christianity in the Sudan. She is persecuted.

    But pampered Americans who have to pray in their homes, their churches, in restaurants, on the sidewalks, and in many, many non-governmentally sponsored events? Oh the deprivation! Oh the sorrow! Doubtless God will no longer hear us.

    And there are easy targets to blame. Atheists. See how you can make an epithet out of it? So now we talk about how much we hate them because they did what? Because they limited very slightly the places where we can proclaim our message. We don’t get the government’s authority behind our religion? How will the gospel ever survive without the backing of Uncle Sam?

    In a general sense it’s pathetic. The persecuted majority. I’d be laughing if it didn’t make me so furious. But that’s just as an American citizen.

    As a Christian myself, it makes me deeply ashamed and embarrassed. Here we have a perfect opportunity to model the behavior that Jesus commanded. We could be right up front and say, “We don’t want to use the power of the government to pursue our agenda in any case. The gospel doesn’t need a captive audience guaranteed by the power of the police (the public school classroom and facilities). Christians should be defending Jessica Ahlquist. They should be happy that she’s thinking enough about faith to take a courageous stand as she has done.

    And no Christian should excuse the behavior of those who threaten or revile any group of people, in this case atheists and the ACLU (convenient cultural tags for those who don’t go along with our “Christian” culture). We should make it clear that this kind of behavior is not acceptable. Note here that by “revile” I don’t mean “say they’re wrong.” I’m very clearly saying the people who made these comments are wrong. I think they should repent. I don’t think they should be subject to threats of violence, or obscenities, and what’s more I don’t hate them. Their behavior infuriates me. I hope they repent. I call on them to repent.

    I’ve used the word “Christian” for people who behave this way simply because that is what they claim to be. I don’t believe in trying to make non-Christians figure out who the “true” Christians are. God gets to judge that. But there is nothing “Christian” or “Christ-like” about this behavior.

    There are those who call people “Christians in name only” because of doctrinal beliefs. Well, people who behave in the way demonstrated on Twitter and the newspaper comments section are Christians in name only, much more so than anyone who denies some doctrine. There is nothing Christ-like whatsoever about their behavior.

    And those Christians among us who realize this should proclaim it.

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  • Peter Enns on Evolution and Evangelicals

    Peter Enns has a good post on what we should expect to learn from the Bible, especially Genesis 1 & 2, regarding origins. Good, as far as it goes. The problem that I see is that too few interpreters are going all the way. He has a new book out on the topic, Evolution of Adam, The: What the Bible Does and Doesn’t Say about Human Origins which is available for pre-order on Amazon.com.

    We need to hear a bit more talking about how one deals with sin and atonement in the context of evolutionary creationism. Perhaps he goes a bit further on that in his book, which I definitely intend to read.

    I’m also editing two manuscripts on creation for my company, Energion Publications. Both will be released before summer. The first is on creation in Scripture, while the second deals with creation as a Christian doctrine. I plan to provide some quotes as work progresses.

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  • Of Virgin Births and Whale’s Bellies

    Allan Bevere asks an interesting question today on his blog: Just how important is the doctrine of the virgin birth to you? He titles the post Must One Believe in the Virgin Birth to Be a Christian?

    I tend to annoy people on both sides of the spectrum (belief in miracles spectrum, of course) because despite the word “liberal” in the subtitle of this blog I do, in fact, believe in the virgin birth as an event that happened in history, but at the same time, I’m not concerned with whether others believe it or not. Allan cites Albert Mohler, who believes it is necessary to accept the virgin birth in order to be a Christian.

    Allan also stomps on one annoying tendency, the way in which some liberals tend to pounce on conservatives as less intellectual because of their beliefs. If one accepts miracles, one is less sophisticated. But I think it is only fair to point out the opposite fault in Mohler’s article, the tendency to regard liberals as less devout because of the things they don’t believe in.

    Nicholas Kristof pointed to his grandfather as a “devout” Presbyterian elder who believed that the Virgin Birth is a “pious legend.” Follow his example, Kristof encourages, and join the modern age. But we must face the hard fact that Kristof’s grandfather denied the faith. This is a very strange and perverse definition of “devout.”

    This is a conservative’s way of belittling an opponent, just as “intellectually unsophisticated” is the liberal’s approach. I must, however, point out that neither side is above using the other’s ammunition, and that both sides have those who avoid either fault.

    In support of my belief in the virgin birth, I will be very brief. I’ve already accepted the bodily resurrection, so the virgin birth hardly seems like an issue to me. At the same time, and more importantly, I accept the incarnation as both true and as the most central doctrine of Christianity, and if I can accept that infinite God can become a human being, the idea that this might be accomplished through a virgin birth again seems pretty trivial.

    In support of my belief that the virgin birth is not essential, I will again cite the doctrine of the incarnation. I believe the incarnation is absolutely critical. It’s quite possible, however, to see the virgin birth as a metaphorical statement of that doctrine, or perhaps more precisely an expression of part of the meaning of that doctrine. I don’t even claim to have any details in mind on how the virgin birth might occur. Did God create a new baby in the womb? Did God adjust the DNA? So despite believing in a virgin birth as a historical event, I don’t have a clue as to how it happened. Thus in teaching it, I probably say almost the same things as would someone who believed it was purely metaphor.

    And that brings me to whale’s bellies. On The Jesus Creed we have Scot McKnight getting involved in the question of the historicity of the book of Jonah. (I’ll leave you to follow the further links there.) A miracle of preserving someone’s life for three days inside a sea creature of some sort, whether a whale or something else, is again trivial alongside the incarnation and the resurrection. But I don’t believe the book of Jonah is historical. Why? I think there’s very good evidence in the text that we’re reading fiction designed to make some very specific points to an audience in a different time and place than the one in which the story is set. I don’t have a problem with the miracle. Were I convinced that Jonah was history, nothing else in my belief system would have to change. God could manage the whale’s belly thing. I just happen to believe God did not do so. But if you want to accuse me of being intellectually unsophisticated, go ahead. Because I am intellectually unsophisticated enough to believe the miracle is possible.

    Then there’s the question of Jesus’ use of the three days motif from Jonah. I will simply comment that I know one can refer to a fictional story in this fashion because I have done it myself. I’ve used a fictional story to illustrate a real event and it has generally worked just fine. Occasionally fine, fact-oriented, 21st century folks get upset with me about it, but I tell them to chill.

    I want to respond also to the first comment on McKnight’s article, which is from Joe Carter. Here he wonders how we might distinguish when Jesus is using supernatural power and when he’s using the knowledge of his culture. I’d make two points. 1) If Jesus didn’t use the knowledge of his culture, could he really have been said to have lived as a human? Would not constant supernatural knowledge make him not quite truly human? 2) Is this not the common problem in reading scripture? We distinguish the cultural background from the message all the time in case after case. Surely it is not that difficult in most cases, and in many cases where it is difficult, it is not all that important.

     

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