Each of the men in the poll has made significant contributions to the study of the historical Jesus:

These days I’m liking both Johnson and Dunn.

Interesting interview with Wright on Justification, the New Perspective, Roman Catholicism in lieu of Rome’s invitation to Anglican priests.

Via: Jeff Bruce.
File Under: “I’m on sabbatical writing Volume IV of my big series, on Paul”. Woot.

(There is a caveat at the end.)

Of all the things that I do not understand in the Bible,

these verses about women top my list.

Oh, I know how some interpret them,

but I don’t feel resolution in my heart.

Historically and culturally, they make a little more sense in the time that they were written.  And I know the Bible wasn’t written to us today, but written for us as followers of Jesus so how they are being interpreted by many parts of the Church makes no sense to me.

• “A man is the image and glory of God; but the woman is the glory of man.” (1 Cor. 11:7) -- Inferior to men?
• “Husbands, in the same way be considerate as you live with your wives, and treat them with respect as the weaker partner” (1 Peter 3:7)  – Weaker than men?
• “As in all the congregations of the saints, women should remain silent in the churches.” (1 Cor. 14:34)  -- Silent?
• “I do not permit a woman to teach or to have authority over a man.” (1 Tim. 2:12-14) — Should women not have authority over men?
• If a woman does not cover her head, she should have her hair cut off.” (1 Cor. 11:6)  Must we cut our hair off if we don’t cover it?  I just added this one to poke at the cultural differences.
  

This is just a sampling ….  Those verses exist in the New Testament books of the Bible and they are up for great debate.  Some people even believe in picking and choosing, some of them are to be followed but not others, which is really silly.  But I don’t want to debate. 

I would like to share some of my feelings about this, because I have thought about this for some time.

The Church does not seem to believe in women.  This undermines our voice in relationships with men as well as in our churches. Underlying these ideas [which say women are subject to men when it comes to the leadership of a church] seems to be these messages sometimes bravely said  out loud and most of the time very subliminally communicated:

• the belief that women are somehow not quite able to interpret God’s Word,
• or gain the wisdom needed to lead the church,
• and definitely don’t have the Godly authority necessary to speak and teach (except to each other and children).
• Lastly women are not allowed, by edict of scripture, to be elders of the church.  This job trusted to males only.

They do this, because of some of the NT scriptures and yet there are many stories in the Bible of Jesus lifting women up and giving them a voice.

I have thought about two, one being in the Old Testament, Ruth  the Moabite and the other is the five women that visited the tomb of Jesus, four of whom were Mary Magdalene, Mary the mother of James, Salome and Joanna.  The other is not named.

Ruth the Moabite

There is a story told in the Bible of a woman who led had great influence over a man named Boaz.  Her name was Ruth. a Gentile, an outsider, crop picker  in the fields near  Bethlehem, and she was a follower of Yahweh. Out of her experiences in life grew a perspective and heart that she turned into a strong voice.  Boaz listened to this poor, foreign female as she reinterpreted the Jewish law for him.  Boaz  was a Jewish landowner who strictly obeyed the Mosaic gleaning laws.  But if you were poor and hungry, I would bet the gleaning practices and interpretations would look very different to you than if you were a land owner.   The letter of the law said, “Let them glean” and in doing so you are being generous.  The spirit of the law Ruth said was “Feed them.”  And, Ruth’s perspective opened up a scenario Boaz hadn’t even considered.  And he fed them.

What does it mean as a woman to have a Voice in the church?  It isn’t just about the authority of eldership, it is more subliminal and it is frustrating and difficult.  I have spend years and years of sitting, thinking, stewing, praying, studying, learning, crying, hurting, and wondering.

Ruth seemed to offer Boaz a missing perspective, a compassionate perspective.  Boaz followed the letter of the law, and Ruth followed the heart of the law leading God’s people to sacrifice for the good others.  And I wonder, how many times a female perspective might have changed the Church, might have changed my church, if women were enriching the highest leadership conversations, the Biblical understanding, and the richness of creative perspective and ideas .

When it comes to my church, there are those that would argue that women are in every level of the church, except Elders and ordained ministers.  And that is true. They would say that some day things might change and even go so far as to say, “What I personally believe is women should be elders.”   And I want to push back and say … how long do I have to wait?  If something is true then let’s be the prophetic voices for our generation of women who are at some point going to reject the form of Christianity that excludes them. Your exclusion of me, relegating me to pour the communion wine but not serve it, reminds me each time it happens what- you- really- think- of- me.

No, I will not impulsively or unthinkingly walk away from the church.  No, not today.  But I will reconsider how I hear and interpret your teachings in light of what I know you think of me.

The 12 and the five.

I leave you today with this reminder of the twelve disciples and how they served Jesus in the end.  It was the women who were full of faith — Mary Magdalene, Mary the mother of James, Salome and Joanna and one unnamed.

Among the many things that need to be said about the gospels is that we gain nothing by ignoring the fact that Jesus chose twelve male apostles. There were no doubt all kinds of reasons for this within both the symbolic world in which he was operating and the practical and cultural world within which they would have to live and work. But every time this point is made – and in my experience it is made quite frequently – we have to comment on how interesting it is that there comes a time in the story when the disciples all forsake Jesus and run away; and at that point, long before the rehabilitation of Peter and the others, it is the women who come first to the tomb, who are the first to see the risen Jesus, and are the first to be entrusted with the news that he has been raised from the dead. This is of incalculable significance. Mary Magdalene and the others are the apostles to the apostles.  [By NT Wright.]

I believe.

I believe that all people are equal before God and in Christ.  I am coming to understand that I will be held responsible for NOT using my gifts and NOT obeying my calling, as will everyone. I believe God freely calls believers to roles and ministries without regard to class, gender, or race and that the body of Christ, in gender, in race, in culture is beautiful when we are all serving.

I must remember it was the women who were full of faith.  And as I sit in the pew and consider what the Church is saying to women and I’m thinking to myself “let’s just get on with it.” Perhaps I will.  I might just get on with the service to the poor, the widow and the prisoner and find some place where my Voice is considered with mutual affection and attention.  Listen, there is so much about this that I don’t get.  So much about the Church that I don’t understand.  But I can’t believe that a loving God would give me, and half the church, these abilities and talents and ways of thinking that are up to a point appropriate. The glass ceiling of the Church (and my church) seems to be eldership and ordination.

The Voice inside that draws me to stories like this and makes me wonder and question what I am hearing, could it be the voice of God?  Am I supposed to feel this disconnect?  Am I supposed to feel the strength of conviction that I do, that I am doing what needs to be done; to think, and write, and grapple with and yes, gripe at times.  Am I a Voice that needs to be heard?

What do you believe?

*** the caveat ***

Of course I know that there are denominations that are more welcoming to women.  And there are days that I wonder what I’m doing.  But I am not only at this church for me, I have children who are coming to the age of influence and decision and will need the voices of youth leaders.  Tom and I felt, at one point, that we were supposed to go here.  (Mostly Tom but still…) because we both needed to be challenged, to have soul-changing business done in our hearts and that happens for us weekly.  And I believe that my quite, droning voice will some day make some difference.  Some day, some how.    And, quite honestly I have run from opportunities at this church because of my painful departure from InterVarsity and a doubt in myself that I had anything to offer because of that experience.  It’s taken me years to sort this out.  Frankly I was only coming to an understanding of this as I spoke up for Asian Americans and women in the Deadly Viper fracus, that I heard my own Voice and woke up.

I read a lot of stuff, blogs and articles and at some point today I did read an article on this website about Women in Leadership where I was reminded of the story of Ruth and the idea of her using her voice with Boaz.  I got that tie-in from the article but I can’t credit it because I can’t find it.  Apologies to the author.

I think Bishop Wright makes a good point for us to consider in the age in which we live. For the advantages that the online community does give, we must not neglect the real community around us – the one of our churches as well as in our neighborhoods.

What do you think of his thoughts?

For the last number of days I have been in New Orleans for the annual meeting of the Society of Biblical Literature (SBL).  I have literally been surrounded by the top biblical scholars in the world.  The people attending have been quite diverse.  There are many professors, authors, students, Catholic priests, Orthodox priests, Jewish scholars, Christians, atheists and agnostics.  I had a chance to meet some authors that I have respected and appreciated for some time, including Darrell Bock and Ben Witherington III.  I also had a chance to meet Elaine Pagels, who participated in the Unmasking the Pagan Christ documentary.  Although I would disagree about many things with Elaine, I did appreciate her knowledge of Gnostic texts and enjoyed the workshops that she participated in.  Other scholars I had a chance to hear included James Crossley, Adela Yarbro Collins, Joel Marcus, James Dunn, Karen King, Marvin Meyer and Birger Pearson.  It was quite interesting even when I did not always agree with the presenter.  It was a helpful experience in helping to boil down the topic of my doctoral dissertation.  Speaking of which, I was able to meet my doctoral supervisor, Gerhard van den Heever, for the first time.  I am looking forward to getting on with my research and getting my topic nailed down.  The highlight of the time was the opportunity to hear N.T. Wright speak on justification.  I was already excited to come to SBL without knowing that Wright would be here.  When I discovered that Wright would indeed be speaking, I was very happy.  Wright spoked to a full house on his book Justification.  He was a pleasure to hear and he could have spoke for another hour without ever causing me to lose attention.  Wright is an amazing speaker, scholar and Christian leader.  I love the way he combines academics and relevance for the church and I want to build my own scholarship on that same model.  I appreciated his honesty in sharing his own journey of wrestling with issues of justification and Paul’s attitude toward the Law.  Wright was also clear about his own commitment and appreciation of reformed theology, even though some of his harshest critics, such as John Piper, come from a strong Calvinist position.  Overall, it has been a great time at SBL.  I picked up lots of good books, heard many great lectures and have learned a lot.  Having said that, I am also looking forward to seeing my family tonight.

God intends to put the world to rights; he has dramatically launched this project through Jesus. Those who belong to Jesus are called, here and now, in the power of the Spirit, to be agents of that putting-to-rights purpose. N.T. Wright

Unknown artist. If anyone knows who did this let me know.

One of the most prolific and influential theological writers right now is a guy called N. T. Wright, Bishop of Durham in England.

 What makes Wright so interesting is that he’s not obviously a “hero” or a “villain”, sometimes he’s more like one, sometimes he’s more like the other. He has some really helpful things to say about Jesus, some helpful correctives on Paul, some very unhelpful views – in my opinion – on justification and imputation and some extraordinarily good stuff on the resurrection.

 Here is a quote from the Times of London Easter Sunday opinion piece that Wright wrote (yes, that just happened) earlier this year. The whole article is worth checking out:

“But ‘resurrection’ to 1st-century Jews wasn’t about ‘going to Heaven’: it was about the physically dead being physically alive again. Some Jews (not all) believed that God would do this for all people in the end. Nobody, including Jesus’s followers, was expecting one person to be bodily raised from the dead in the middle of history. The stories of the Resurrection are certainly not ‘wish-fulfilments’ or the result of what dodgy social science calls ‘cognitive dissonance’. First-century Jews who followed would-be messiahs knew that if your leader got killed by the authorities, it meant you had backed the wrong man. You then had a choice: give up the revolution or get yourself a new leader. Going around saying that he’d been raised from the dead wasn’t an option.

 Unless he had been.”

 -          NT Wright

The November 2009 issue of Themelios features yet another review of N.T. Wright’s Justification: Paul’s Vision and God’s Plan, this time by one David Mathis.

David Mathis calls N.T. Wright’s exegesis into question:

Exegesis has two different flavors for Wright and Piper. Piper wrestles word by word, proposition by proposition, and then paragraph by paragraph. Wright moves much quicker through large chunks of Paul’s thought, refers frequently to whole chapters and paragraphs, and quotes phrases (often as technical terms) seemingly removed from their immediate context. It is surprising that Wright would remind us that “the text is the text” (p. 249) when he has dealt so little with the actual biblical text in its context. For this reason, Wright’s exegetical chapters are a serious disappointment as his exegesis proves to be a kind of hovering above the text—rarely, if ever, landing, while supplying his own meaning for a phrase here and there that contributes to a coherent whole but neglects to explain the connections between Paul’s propositions and paragraphs. Does Wright not see that the discussion cannot go forward if he will not convincingly engage Paul on Paul’s own terms but instead keeps the text at arm’s length?  Read entire review…

What good is there to “a word for word, proposition for proposition” treatment of a text but the larger story is lost? 

The proper approach seems to be: if necessary, “a word for word, proposition for proposition” but only as understood in the larger story.

Mr. Mathis even charges Wright with “misunderstanding his critics.”  It seems more to me that when one takes this “word for word, proposition for propositon, paragraph for paragraph” approach to exegesis it is at the expense of the larger story. 

In so doing, not only is N.T. Wright woefully misunderstood but Paul the apostle as well.

I’m sure Mr. David Mathis wouldn’t like his words to be picked apart without first understanding his story, the proper context of his words.

The other night at church, someone asked, “Hey Eric, what are you reading?” This is always a very complicated question for me to answer, because I’m using churning through 6 or 7 books at a time, but I thought I’d take a few minutes here and outline the major “pillars” of my reading universe. These are the people that simultaneously, form, shake, and enhance my ministry, my world view, and my creative spirit. There are numerous other authors, of course, but these are my “mainstays”.

So over the next few days/weeks, I’ll outline who these folks are — to me, at least — and why they matter. In short, they are:

• Eugene Peterson
• NT Wright
• Brennan Manning
• Flannery O’Connor
• Cormac McCarthy

Let’s start with Eugene Peterson. He’s the guy who wrote The Message. When I began my vocational ministry “career” someone — quite randomly — threw his book called Working the Angles: The Shape of Pastoral Ministry at me, and I through myself into the book with the enthusiasm of someone who’d thought they had the whole world figured out (I was soon to find otherwise). I suppose the next thing I read by him was his translation/paraphrase of the Bible, The Message, then after that I devoured 5 or 6 more of his, including Five Smooth Stones and Christ Plays in Ten Thousand Places.

I’ll be honest: sometimes, I have no idea what Peterson is trying to say, and even when I do “get” him, the result can at times be a bit, “meh.” But what sings through, much of the time, is the voice of a poet and pastor, who at times just nails the balance of rigorous intellectual pursuit with the gentle voice of an artist-pastor. Peterson was the guy who showed me that you did not have to be a “Type A”, CEO-type in order to be a leader in the contemporary USAmerican church. He also reminds me that “pastoring” comes from a long tradition, with deep wells. We don’t need to “invent” discipleship for people. In so many ways, the same words and disciplines that worked for people in the 13th century still work today.

Worldviews . . . are like the foundations of a house: vital, but invisible. They are that through which, not at which, a society or an individual normally looks; they form the grid according to which humans organize reality, not bits of reality that offer themselves for organization. They are not usually called up to consciousness or discussion unless they are challenged or flouted fairly explicitly

NT Wright

Back in April of 2003 I was able to attend an all day seminar with N.T. Wright on the resurrection. He had just published his massive book defending the resurrection of Jesus and was lecturing on that subject. I took notes on the occasion and I don’t believe I put them up on my blog, so here they are, six years later.

About thirty folks met at First Presbyterian (PCUSA) church in Boise on Monday with N. T. Wright. We were seated on the platform of the church under an enormous cross with Dr. Wright seated at a desk with a few books in front of him. I noticed the Septuagint and his new book amongst others. He
lectured from 9 am to 3 pm with a break for lunch basically covering the material from The Resurrection of the Son of God and doing a Q and A every hour.

I talked to Wright beforehand and he said the next major book in the series would be on Paul. He is also working on Galatians and Philippians and does not know when he is working what article will go in which book. He mentioned that it will be more difficult to work as the Bishop of Durham, but that he is looking forward to doing pastoral work again. He said one of the problems of being at Westminster is that you are always just dealing with the next 500 tourists and that he looks forward to having an actual congregation. He mentioned Paul’s pastoral inspiration, how he founded churches and wrote at the same time. He also made an aside about how pretentious it is to be enthroned physically at Durham, but he has to sort of go along with it all.

He critiqued the modern, fuzzy notions of heaven and life after death, and made a point of calling the resurrection the real goal, which is “life after life after death.” He dealt extensively with what was expected in the hereafter in pagan literature and then in the Jewish world. He said that the early Christian belief was originally close to the position of the Pharisees within Judaism, but with key mutations, six of which follow:

1. No spectrum of differing beliefs about the resurrection. All Christians believed in the resurrection with the exception of Gnostics who came later.
2. Periphery to Center. The belief was peripheral in Judaism, but became absolutely central in Christianity.
3. Transformation. In Judaism there was not an expectation of transformed physicality—i.e. a new body that was the same, but on a higher level. But in Christianity, this was the expectation (I Cor 15).
4. 2 moments of resurrection. Jesus first, everyone else second. This was not known in Judaism.
5. Different metaphorical use of the word. In Judaism res. could stand for national restoration as in Ezekiel, but in Christianity this meaning ends and it is used of things like baptism (Rom 7) and holiness (Col 3).
6. Resurrection of the Messiah. Jews did not expect the Messiah to rise again, because they did not expect him to die.

Wright had a lot of positive things to say about Polkinghorne’s work on the new creation as Polkinghorne is coming from a scientific background and so has a lot of insight into such things.

Wright called Rev. 21-22 the ultimate answer to Gnosticism. He said that of all the modern writers he read in researching the new book, C.S. Lewis’ chapter on the resurrection in “Miracles” was the best he came across (I read it today, it is good).

On the subject of hell and damnation, Wright said that it is not only possible but also certain that some reject God and say no to Christ. He said that we should all want to be Universalists in the sense that we don’t want to see anyone go to hell but that we should realize that we cannot. He said that worship is the chief thing that humans do and that those who continue to worship something other than God may in some sense cease to bear God’s image and ultimately become what Wright called “ex-human.” Just as the redeemed will be human on a higher level, the damned will be “beyond hope, beyond pity” so that the saints in the new creation will be able to experience joy without regret for those who are lost.

I had Dr. Wright sign my copy of the new book and out of curiosity asked him if he had met Martyn Lloyd-Jones at some point. It turns out that indeed he had back in the 70’s. He said he reviewed a couple of the Romans series that Jones had put out. Though he did not agree with Lloyd-Jones conclusions at all points, he had immense respect for the man and the devotion and time he had put into the book of Romans. He said Lloyd-Jones was deeply suspicious of him because he was an Anglican, but that he had been over to Lloyd-Jones for lunch. He remarked that the movement at Westminster Tabernacle that was so energetic in the 50’s and 60’s was not meeting the current climate of London intellectually.

Writing a few years ago, James Jordan discussed the theme of exile in the Bible. His thoughts follow:

Someone asked about the reservations some of us have about Wright’s exile-theology. Here are a few thoughts:
1. The Ur-exile was from the Garden of Eden. From that perspective, all of Old Creation history takes place in exile, until Jesus. Thus, Wright is surely correct to make exile a large category. (I dealt with this to some extent in my monograph *Sabbath Breaking and the Death Penalty,* where I showed that under the Old Creation, humanity was EXCLUDED from sabbath, and that this explains much of what the Law required regarding the sabbath day observances.)
2. Within this large Exile, there are sub-exiles and also times of return and establishment in semi-Edens or proto-New Creations. Descent into Egypt is a kind of exile, and Joshua’s conquest a return from exile. But then notice that in 1 Samuel 1-4 the Ark “Himself” goes into exile into Philistia (related to Egypt according to Genesis 10), defeats their gods, and then returns, eventually to be enthroned in Solomon’s Temple.
3. It’s been a while since I read/perused Wright’s works on the gospels, but he seems to argue that the Jews never REALLY came back from the Babylonian exile. I don’t think this is correct, and have the following observations:
3a. The books of Daniel, Ezekiel, and Zechariah redefine the “land of God” as the Oikumene, within which a much smaller “holy land” is the center (much smaller than what Israel inhabited in the former days, from Joshua to Zedekiah). In Daniel 8, the leaders of the Oikumene are sheep and goats, members of this new larger flock. There is a whole shift in the definition of the “land” here that very few have noticed.
3b. After the first Babel, God gave a land to Abraham. This begins an historical arc that continues until the Babylonian exile in the days of Jeremiah, etc. There is a new land given, and a new historical arc begun, when God confuses the tongues (reading) of the second Babel in
Daniel 5. This new land is not the land promised to Abraham as concerns its boundaries, but is the double land of the Oikumene and the Holy Land within it. To wit:
3c. The release of the Jews from Babylon by Cyrus is not to go back into the land promised by Abraham, whose boundaries are no longer relevant. It is a double release. On the one hand, some go back into what is now called the Holy Land and Holy City (new terms in this new Restoration Covenant era). On the other hand, some are spread out as the “four winds of heaven” within the Oikumene to serve as witnesses. This is a double return, though a “spiritual” return rather than a geographical movement. The greater spiritual power and glories of this new age are described in Zecharia 1-6 and Ezekiel 40-48.
3d. There was a great apostasy from this calling to bear witness in the days of Antiochus IV Epiphanes, described/prophesied in Daniel 11. The priests of Jerusalem desired to remake the Holy City into a Greek city, with olympic-style games and all the rest. They tossed out the
Zadokite High Priest Onias III (committing the “abomination that causes desolation”), and took over the city. When Antiochus determined to enforce the Hellenization of Jerusalem, and provoked the Maccabees to revolt, he was only doing what he thought the leaders of the Jews wanted him to do — and in fact what the DID want him to do.
3e. This fall of the Restoration Covenant ushers in a new spiritual exile. It is not a geographical exile, but a spiritual one. The Maccabees did not reinstall the Zadokite line as High Priests, but took it over for themselves. There was never a true and valid HP in Judaism again (until Jesus, who was more than Aaron of course). There were valid priests for the offerings of the altar and holy place, but no valid HP for the Day of Covering in the Most Holy. (Jesus never attends the Day of Covering in the gospels.)
3f. Understood this way, Wright’s thesis can be reestablished on even firmer and stronger grounds. They were indeed in exile, an even worse exile than ever before. They were not dominated by Babylonians, but by demons, as we see from the gospels — the demons
apparently house in the synagogues!
3g. As for later Jewish literature, it seems that Jewish nationalists rejected their call to be a nation of prophets within God’s Oikumene, and considered that the Oikumene was a place of exile, and that someday they would have a Davidic nation of their own again. This was simple unbelief, and a rejection of their wonderful high calling to serve in God’s Oikumene. To the extent that Wright may agree with this woeful opinion, he would be in error.
4. In conclusion, the real failure is not with Wright, who is after all a NT theologian and specialist. The failure is on the part of the OT theologians he is reading, who utterly fail to deal with the distinctive qualities and glories of the post-exilic Restoration covenant and the new
larger and greater “land” of the Oikumene. By and large, the “post-exilic” time of the Old Creation is viewed as some kind of amorphous appendage to OT history. Not so. It is the first phase of the New Covenant, and a time of greater spiritual glory than ever before.

In Wright’s commentary on Romans, he says:

Foreknowledge is a form of love or grace; to speak thus is to speak of God’s reaching out, in advance of anything the person may do or think, to reveal love and to solicit an answering love, to reveal a particular purpose and to call forth obedience to it…More particularly, this foreknowledge produces God’s foreordaining purpose…What we have here, rather, is an expression, as in 1:1, of God’s action in setting people apart for a particular purpose, a purpose in which their cooperation, their loving response to love, their obedient response to the personal call, is itself all-important. This is not to deny the mystery of grace, the free initiative of God, and the clear divine sovereignty that is after all the major theme of this entire passage, here brought to a glorious climax. But it is to deny the common misconception, based on a two-dimensional rather than a three-dimensional understanding of how God’s actions and human actions relate to each other, that sees something done by God as something not done by humans, and vice versa….Woe betide theology if discussions of grace take their coloring from the mechanistic or technological age where all actions are conceived as though performed by a set of machines. God’s foreknowledge and foreordination, setting people apart in advance for particular purposes, are not equal and opposite to human desires, longings, self-questionings, obedience, and above all love. You do not take away from the one by adding to the other….Christian faith, ultimately irreducible to any analogy, and certainly not reducible to terms of “yet another odd paradox,” involves wholeheartedly and responsibly answering the call of sovereign love, gratitude, and obedience that come from the depths of one’s own being and are simultaneously experienced as a response to sovereignty, a compulsion even, to which the closest parallel remains that of the highest love. (on Rom 8.18-30)

He affirms predestination, but seeks to guard from an overly-deterministic mindset – something where I believe the Reformers agree with him, despite perceptions to the contrary.

In a footnote of his Romans commentary, Wright comments on Douglas Moo’s recent commentary which adopts the standard view of predestination in Romans and says:

…Moo allows his discussion to be overshadowed by the anachronistic debates between Calvinism and Arminianism…

Some of his comments:

“Paul is not, then, producing an abstract essay on the way in which God always works with individuals, or for that matter with nations and races. This is specifically the story of Israel, the chosen people; it is the unique story of how the creator has worked with the covenant people, to bring about the purpose for which the covenant was made in the first place. It is the story, in other words, whose climax and goal is the Messiah;
…These sections tell the story of Israel’s patriarchal foundation (vv. 6-13), then of the exodus (vv. 14-18), and then of God’s judgment that led to exile and, through it, to the fulfillment of God’s worldwide promise to Abraham (vv. 19-24).
9:11-12. The second explanation occupies center stage in this brief telling of the Jacob/Esau story: it cannot be that God’s selection of Jacob had anything to do with Jacob’s merits, since the promise was made before he and his brother were born. God’s choice has nothing to do with merit observed.
Nor (to meet the objection of a latter theology) could it have been foreseen, and hence explained in terms of God’s knowing how the brothers were going to turn out; Jacob’s behavior as a young adult, cheating and twisting this way and that, would scarcely have earned him favor with an impartial deity. The point is, though, that Paul is not here discussing what an abstract, impartial deity would or should have done; he is discussing the long purposes of God for Israel, and through Israel for the world. Central to those purposes is the principle that all must be of grace, “not of works, but of the one who calls.”
Paul is not, then, using the example of Pharaoh to explain that God has the right to show mercy, or to harden someone’s heart, out of mere caprice. Nor is it simply that God has the right to do this sort of thing when someone is standing in the way of the glorious purpose that has been promised. The sense of this passage (9:17-28) is gained from its place within the larger story line from 9:6-10:21–that is, as part of the story of Israel itself, told to explain what is now happening to Paul’s “kinsfolk according to the flesh.”
As in the parable of the sheep and the goats, there is an imbalance between what is said about the “vessels of wrath” and what is said about the “vessels of mercy” (Matt 25:34, 41). The former are “fitted for destruction,” leaving it at least ambiguous whether they have done this to themselves by their impenitence or whether God has somehow been involved in the process. The latter, though, have been “prepared for glory” by God himself.
“It isn’t a matter of willing, or running, but of God’s mercy” (v. 16); that text alone, even without its context, can bring solace to a troubled and anxious heart. That, indeed, is part of the point of expounding God’s sovereignty: not to terrify us with the sense of an unknowable and possibly capricious deity, but to assure us that the God of creation, the God we know in Jesus Christ, overflows with mercy, and that even negative judgments have mercy in view all along, if only people will have the humility and faith to find it where it has been placed. To be able to rest in the sovereign mercy of God revealed in Jesus Christ is one of the most valuable aspects of the Christian’s calling.”

I talk about postmodernism frequently. It irritates my wife, my friends, and my co-workers (especially this one[1]) to no end. It seems that some people find it confusing, pointless, frustrating, or ridiculous. Fortunately for me, I have one friend who thoroughly enjoys my theo-philosophical rants and ravings nearly as much as I enjoy listening to myself rant and rave. His name is Andrew, and he is wonderful. Sometimes, we drive all over town in his fancy-pants Mustang talking about ridiculous ideas and doctrines that are absolutely unimportant. He’s been known to say incredibly profound things (“I don’t know, man; some human beings are outrageous.”) and to clickity-clack in my Chair of Pretention. Unfortunately, I don’t get to see Andrew all that often.

Recently, Andrew and I decided that we would taxonomize ourselves because labels always help make things easier. So, I am happy to announce that Andrew and I are “reasonable irrationalists.” See, I’m tired of people assuming that my explorations into postmodernism lead me to nihilism or the abandonment of logic altogether. Those accusations just aren’t true (Get it?)! Some people want to call a postmodernism like the one that I describe as “post-postmodern”[2]. Brian McLaren, though not a “scholar,” per se, has responded to such ideas:

Those who speak of post-postmodernism are, I think, assuming that postmodern means only this early negative phase. I’d rather refer to this early negative phase of postmodern culture as “the early negative phase of postmodern culture.” That will save having to add a lot of posts as new phases come along.[3]

For McLaren, this early negativity is not postmodern but “antimodern”[4]. Instead, actual postmodernism is “a synthesis of faith and reason”[5]. I couldn’t agree more with McLaren’s explanation. These post-postmodernisms are “enough to make a person go postal”[6].

If postmodernism is about pluralism, then it would be unfaithful to a postmodern attitude to absolutely reject all other worldviews. Instead, every absolutist approach is questioned, even the absolutely postmodern! The beauty is that in the tension is life; paradox is the only truly consistent, postmodern ethos. To be postmodern is to embrace both logic and mysticism.

So, Andrew and I are reasonable irrationalists. We enjoy our heady, logical, reasoned philosophical and theological ramble-fests, and yet such verbose maundering is absolutely meaningless without lived experiences that are beyond words. This is why I love what John Caputo says about the “event” so much.

The event can never be held captive by any particular instance of the event, never reduced to any present form or instantiation. It would be the height of injustice, not to say of arrogance, to say that justice is finally realized in some existing form, in some present person or state. The unconditional event is only conditionally realized in any time or place, in any word or proposition or discursive formation, in any ontic realization or actualization. The irreducible event is what reduces us to tears, to prayers and tears, for its coming. The event is what destabilizes all such relatively stable structures as attempt to house it, making them restless with the future, teeming with hope and promise, even as it is in virtue of the event that things are haunted by the past, made an occasion of dangerous memories, which are no less unnerving and destabilizing. The eternal truth of the event is its nomadism, its restless journey across barren deserts, or perhaps its venturing upon uncharted seas, in any case, its discontent with more sedimented, sedentary formations, even as the ancient charge that is laid upon us by the nomad is hospitality, to throw wide the door of welcome to its coming. Not only to welcoming its coming but to pray and weep over its arrival[7].

So, when I say postmodern on this blog, I do not mean the absolute rejection of reason or logic, the necessary descent into nihilism, or the welcome embrace of relativism and the dismissal of ethics or morality. I mean the reasonable irrationalism that my friend Andrew embodies.

———
[1]Lindsey switched over to WordPress. Make sure you update your feeds.
[2]N.T. Wright, “The Resurrection and the Postmodern Dilemma,” http://www.ntwrightpage.com/Wright_Resurrection_Postmodern.htm, (accessed on November 11, 2009). N.T. Wright suggests that Christians are responsible for developing this “post-postmodern world.”
[3]Tony Campolo and Brian McLaren, Adventures in Missing the Point (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2003), 277.
[4]Ibid., 278.
[5]Ibid.
[6]Ibid., 276.
[7]John D. Caputo and Gianni Vattimo, After the Death of God, ed. by Jeffrey W. Robbins (New York: Columbia University Press, 2007), 55.

How about one more video for your Saturday night…one which also continues the hell dialogue.

The major difference between this view of hell and the “medieval view” (as Wright argues), is one of relationship.  The, what might be considered, traditional view of hell which many of us who grew up in church were taught, was a picture of a mean God who will send you to burn forever if you don’t make the right choice. So many, then, “followed God” out of, not love, but fear of hell.  They don’t love God and never did, they merely want to secure a nice eternity – how American.  It had nothing to do with relationship. It had nothing to do with abandoning our self, our desires, our comfort and following Christ as the crucified Lord and Savior.  It had to do with a nice mansion in the sky.

On the other hand, a more Biblical understanding of the Gospel drives us to love God, not out of fear of hell but out of…well…love for God.  A pastor I recently met in Waldorf said, “We all say ‘I love God because___’.  It’s only when God takes away all of those ‘becauses’ that we simply begin to love him, period. We don’t love him because____; we just love him.”

Thoughts?

(HT: Sean)

I have been thrust into a study of the final judgment. It started when I read a post over at Bring the Books: If You Are Late to the Discussion. It is a summary, taken from Christianity Today, of John Piper and N.T. Wright’s views of justification. My study began when I commented that, given Piper’s view, he was the exact wrong person to be defending justification against Wright – and my comment was met with strong criticism. Here is Piper’s view:

Piper: Present justification is based on the substitutionary work of Christ alone, enjoyed in union with him through faith alone. Future justification is the open confirmation and declaration that in Christ Jesus we are perfectly blameless before God. This final judgment accords with our works. That is, the fruit of the Holy Spirit in our lives will be brought forward as the evidence and confirmation of true faith and union with Christ. Without that validating transformation, there will be no future salvation.

I do not believe Piper’s view is biblical. There is no “future” justification in addition to “present” justification. They are the same. In the words of Robert Reymond: “Justification possesses an eschatological dimension, for it amounts to the divine verdict of the Eschaton being brought forward into the present time and rendered here and now concerning the believing sinner.” (A New Systematic Theology of the Christian Faith, p743).

Piper cannot consistently believe the above statement and also believe that there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus (Rom 8:1) because he believes our salvation must await validation, determined by our works, on the last day.

Another consequence of Piper’s view is that he must deny justification by faith alone. I understand that he does not believe he denies it and in fact has written a whole book on it, and I thank God for that, but that just means he is inconsistent. Given that “present” justification is different from “future” justification, we can say that “present” justification does not matter because it does not determine who is going to heaven to spend eternity in paradise with God and who is going to hell to burn forever. “Future” justification is what determines our fate, and thus, “future” justification is what matters.

That being said, Piper does not believe that faith alone determines our “future” justification (keep in mind there is actually no difference between “future” and “present” justification). He believes that both our faith and our works determine our “future” justification. Granted, he does not view them equally – he believes in a sort of chain where our works connect us to saving faith which then connects us to Christ’s righteousness. But that means that it is not faith alone that unites us with Christ. Both our faith and our works play a determining role. Thus both our faith and our works are the instrumental causes of our justification.

You may say that’s unfair, that my logic must be wrong, that there’s no way Piper believes that. Well, let me offer some biblical support for Piper’s view. James says: “You see that a person is justified by works and not by faith alone” (2:24). Clear enough, and if there’s any chance I have any Roman Catholics reading this, I’m sure you’re shouting “I told you so” from the rooftop.

But Brandon, you may object, James is not talking about the same thing as Paul. James is talking about our justification before men, about evidence that we look at to estimate if someone is justified. We can’t look into someone else’s heart to see if their faith is genuine. To us, faith is invisible, so we must look at the fruit of faith. I agree! But Piper does not. Piper does not believe James is talking about how we view each other here and now. No, Piper believes James is talking about the final judgment:

Several times Paul listed certain kinds of deeds and said, “those who practice such things shall not inherit the kingdom of God” (Galatians 5:21; 1 Corinthians 6:9-10). In other words, when these deeds are exposed at the judgment as a person’s way of life, they will be the evidence that their faith is dead and he will not be saved. As James said, “Faith without works is dead” (James 2:26). That is what will be shown at the judgment. (Future Grace, p366, emphasis added)

He also says:

How then can I say that the judgment of believers will not only be the public declaration of our differing rewards in the kingdom of God, according to our deeds, but will also be the public declaration of our salvation – our entering the kingdom – according to our deeds? The answer is that our deeds will be the public evidence brought forth in Christ’s courtroom to demonstrate that our faith is real. And our deeds will be the public evidence brought fourth to demonstrate the varying measures of our obedience of faith. In other words, salvation is by grace through faith, and rewards are by grace through faith, but the evidence of invisible faith in the judgment hall of Christ will be a transformed life. (Future Grace, p364)

So Piper necessarily denies justification by faith alone, as James makes very, very plain. Yet Paul disagrees: “For we hold that one is justified by faith apart from works of the law.”

If you disagree with the conclusion, I would honestly love to hear why, because I cannot come to any other conclusion. (If you do comment, please do not simply list quotes of Piper affirming “present” justification through faith alone – please actually demonstrate how the points above do not lead to the necessary conclusion).

Update:

R.S. Clark recently taught on the invalidity of a “two-stage justification.” Expostion of the Nine Points (pt 9)-A Two Stage Justification?

I asked him how his teaching relates to Piper:

As to Piper, he’s just flat wrong and he needs to repudiate this teaching. It’s contrary to the Reformation, to the Reformed confessions, and to the gospel.

For Further Reading:

• Mark Seifrid: Piper Nearly Tridentine on Justification
• John Gill: The Necessity of Good Work Unto Salvation Considered
• J.V. Fesko: Paul on Justification and the Final Judgment
• Rick Phillips: Five Arguments Against a Future Justification According to Works
• Rick Phillips: Judgment of Believers in the Westminster Standards

Peter M. Lopez, one of my blogging buddies, posted back on the Nov. 4: When You Die, Where Will You Go? Are Your Sure?—a post that has generated not a few interesting comments.

A number of suggestions have been offered by various commenters:

1. Soul Sleep,
2. Soul Rest,
3. Paradise/Abraham’s Bosom
4. Immediately to Heaven
5. Immediately Before the Great White Throne Judgment (Rev. 20)
6. Conscious State vs Unconscious state
7. An Intermediate State

Even N.T. Wright’s Surprised by Hope was tossed into the discussion as a recommended read on the issues being raised (I’ll second that).

But I think a simple Pauline eschatology provides the answer:

⁶ So we are always confident, even though we know that as long as we live in these bodies we are not at home with the Lord. ⁷ For we live by believing and not by seeing. ⁸ Yes, we are fully confident, and we would rather be away from these earthly bodies, for then we will be at home with the Lord. (2 Cor. 5:6-8, NLT, emphasis mine; see Phil. 1:20-24)

Yes, no rigorous course in eschatology is needed.  No reading of charts and the like.  Just read Paul the Apostle.

Or C.S. Lewis’s The Great Divorce.

Galatians 1:6-9, “I marvel that you are turning away so soon from Him who called you in the grace of Christ, to a different gospel, which is not another; but there are some who trouble you and want to pervert the gospel of Christ. But even if we, or an angel from heaven, preach any other gospel to you than what we have preached to you, let him be accursed. As we have said before, so now I say again, if anyone preaches any other gospel to you than what you have received, let him be accursed.”

It is a tragedy when those who claim the name of Christ are being duped by the myriads of false teachers who have no desire for truth. An even greater tragedy occurs when false professors and/or their false teachings begin to be endorsed by well-respected ministers of the gospel. However, the greatest tragedy is when well-respected ministers of the gospel not only endorse false teaching and heresy but then allow it to be preached as truth in the midst of those sheep whom they have been supposedly called upon to protect. The man in question is none other than John Piper, pastor of Bethlehem Baptist Church in Minnesota.

Before we continue, I want to make it very clear that this is not a private issue, but one that is well out in the open. The false teaching and endorsing of such teachings and heresies is well-documented. This is an open matter and is being addressed accordingly based on the commands we find in Scripture.

I am under no delusions that this will NOT be a popular post with some. However, Defending Contending believes we can no longer be honoring to Christ and His Word if we merely overlook what is happening within the ranks of evangelicalism simply because of who the pastor might or might not be, or how popular he appears to be.

With that in mind, let’s continue by looking briefly at two heresies taking over at an alarming rate. Both of these doctrines are pushing the ranks of the uninformed back towards the open, welcoming arms of Rome again. Sadly, these doctrines are even being embraced or unknowingly being endorsed by even very conservative Baptist churches.

First – Federal Vision in a nutshell believes that when a person unites with the visible local church that the individual becomes one with Christ. Federalists also teach that when an unbeliever partakes of communion (the Lord’s Table) that they are actually feeding upon Christ. Further, they teach that being baptized is the means whereby a person becomes one with Christ. For further information, I would highly recommend this article at The Banner of Truth Trust. FV has been rejected outright by many mainline Reformed denominations.

Second – The New Perspective on Paul (or NPP) believes that Judaism was actually a religion of grace. They teach that salvation is possible by the keeping of the law. They also teach that the righteousness of God is actually referring to His faithfulness and that it has nothing to do with the truth that the righteousness of Christ is imputed to the new believer. N.T. Wright is abundantly clear about what he means and what he stands for when he declares that justification is about the mark of what a person already is, and is not about the means whereby one is justified with God. A quote from N.T. Wright, “In theology, therefore, justification is not the means whereby it becomes possible to declare someone in the right. It is simply that declaration itself. It is not how someone becomes a Christian, but simply the declaration that someone is a Christian. It is not the exercise of mercy, but the just declaration concerning one who has already received mercy. This is a crucial distinction, without which it is impossible to understand the biblical material.” For further reading go to this article at Theopedia

Let’s makes this very clear! Federal Vision and the New Perspective on Paul are both heresies that lead back to Rome! Those who teach these are leading people deliberately astray and must be classified as heretics at worst and in need of repentance at best for their false teachings. Both of these teachings are nothing more than a rehash of Roman Catholic doctrine which has damned millions to hell.

Now that the reader understands a little more of the heresies defined above, we move back to John Piper’s progressive downhill slide which looks like this –

1) Mixing oxymorons for many years such as “Christian hedonism”
2) Openly endorsing Mark Driscoll (the vulgar, sewer-mouthed talker) with no known retractions
3) Blasphemously claiming the Lord of Glory was damned upon the cross
4) Openly endorsing the Federal Vision heresy as proclaimed by men like Douglas Wilson, and clearly indicating that Douglas Wilson is NOT preaching another or false gospel
5) Openly endorsing the New Perspective on Paul heresy as proclaimed by men like N.T. Wright, and clearly stating that N.T. Wright is also NOT preaching another or false gospel, but that the NPP is merely a “confusing gospel!

** Edit Note ** Points 4 & 5 have numerous proofs, but here is a video clip from The Resurgence.

“No wonder, for even Satan disguises himself as an angel of light. Therefore it is not surprising if his servants also disguise themselves as servants of righteousness, whose end will be according to their deeds.” (2 Cor. 11:14-15)

John Piper is leading many astray by his open endorsements of these men as mentioned above. His own theology comes into question when he publishes questionable material on his site about the doctrine of justification which you can still find on his site at Desiring God – I am firmly convinced that John Piper has slid this view under the noses of evangelicals who have missed the error of a justification that is NOT by faith alone. For more information on this issue and the problems with a recent work entitled Future Grace, you can visit Trinity Foundation.

While we at DefCon have respected John Piper as a man of God in the past, we believe we can no longer endorse any teachings by Piper. Our prayer is that God will bring Piper to a point where he will see the error of his teaching before it is too late and repent. We pray that God will also open the eyes of all those who blindly follow a man who is openly endorsing heresies as being merely a “confusing” gospel. “Confusing” gospels are no true gospels of the Lord Jesus Christ. They damn the souls of men to a Christ-less eternity in hell forever.

The Scriptures exhort us to openly exhort and rebuke those who cause divisions within the faith once delivered to the saints. John Piper is and continues to do this by his strange brand of heterodoxy which has sucked in the unlearned and learned alike. May we ever be alert to the apostasy that the apostle Paul warned will appear in the latter days. It will come from within the midst of what seems to be truth, but it will be mixed with poison. Pastors and their people will swallow it, and before they realize it is too late will be overcome.

Grieving over further apostasy,

The Desert Pastor