LINK: The Unbound Bible

The Unbound Bible at Biola
http://unbound.biola.edu/

Michael Spencer (The Internet Monk), "Seven Observations for Parents"

http://www.internetmonk.com/archive/seven-observations-for-parents-and-the-best-of-ims-parenting-posts

Seven Observations For Parents (And the Best of IM's Parenting Posts)

So in no particular order, here's some of my own observations on parenting that ought to be full blown IM posts. But my kids are grown. You people figure it out on your own. (jn)

1. You want to produce a happy, healthy, productive, well-balanced human being. If, in your urgency to produce a religious child, you produce a distorted child, you've not been a good parent. The end doesn't justify the means in Christian parenting.

Sometimes I hear things Christian parents do (hot sauce on the tongue was the last one) and I have to wonder at what point we gave ourselves permission to think like this. We aren't training dogs here. It's a whole different matter. This is someone made in God's image. There are no buttons and levers.

2. All sorts of things in parenting have no relationship whatsoever to any book you'll read or seminar you'll attend. Parenting isn't some mystery that can be taught be experts. When you hear an ad for someone telling you they can make your kid into a near perfect child if you'll only buy/attend their thing, you're being taken for a ride on your insecurities. Relax. (Go to Number 3)

You're going to mess up, screw up and make mistakes. Your family isn't going to be that !$#$! picture on your church web site. Look at families in the Bible, especially the Old Testament. Read what Jesus said about families. This is where sin shows up. It's where we fail and get forgiven. It's where we get to be human and hurtful, but still belong.

A family can't survive everything. There are limits, but determine that mistakes won't be covered up and real life will be the canvas on which this picture is painted.

3. Show up, be there, be present, don't leave, be predictable, be stable, be a presence. That's not all of parenting, but it's a lot. All kinds of people turned out really well, not because they were raised by little parenting geniuses, but because they were raised by people who were THERE in their lives. They came home. They made breakfast. They put them in bed. They didn't chase their own hobbies and dreams at the expense of their kids. They were just there, for the kids, on schedule, like rocks and mountains. They came up like the sun every morning. They may not have been interesting or overly gifted. They may have not been creative. They may have made thousands of mistakes, but they were THERE.

That is huge, people.

4. Turn off the damned television (and attendant electronic devices.) Yes, that's "damned" for those of you monitoring me for the local authorities. Spell it right. Turn the thing off and read to your kids. Get some animals. Ride bikes. Go hiking. Plant a garden. Buy a telescope. Get dolls. Get action figures. Go on weekend drives. Learn history. Go to ball games. Just decrease the television time.

I am NOT saying get rid of it. I think that's a mistake as well, but you have to understand that at this point every parent is going to be under assault to use television, DVDs, the internet, the ipod, the way to keep your kids out of your hair. And that's the problem. Not so much the content- which is an obvious problem- but the fact that I hear all kinds of parents basically say "Just get the kids watching something so we can do something else." You'll never totally avoid, this, but it's insidious, and it is part of a culture wide program to turn your kid into nothing more than one of those human batteries in the Matrix, otherwise known as a passive part of the consumer culture.

Resist the surrender to the culture on this one. Save your kids and yourself from its temptations. Use it to further your goals, not to do your job.

5. The family dinner table. At all costs. As much as possible. No matter what the resistance. No matter how much coordination it takes. It is, always was and always will be, the key to good family life. Talking around that table is very important. More important than church, I promise.

6. Consider seriously the wisdom of putting your children into a large church program that separates them from you into children's worship. I believe this is the worst thing evangelicals have done in the last 50 years. Other than a very modest extended session for very small children, you should be fearful of making your children the passive participants in programs that set them in front of big screens, DVDs, stages, etc. The demise of evangelicalism is the result of specialized programing. It has very limited usefulness.

7. Loving your children is not the same as you being happy. Loving your children will mean getting into places where you are unhappy, and then asking what does it mean to love that child.

Christian parents have a tendency to say that when they feel good about their child, then the child is being loved. Be careful of that road. Many Christian parents are willing to produce a child who is shallow, phony and manipulative towards them in order to get what they want from that child. Children will, as teenagers especially, give you what you want and buy into nothing you are selling. They will do this to survive having you as a parent. Then when they are away from you, they will sell that strategy and become whatever they really are, which may scare the _________ out of you.

You have to love the real child, and you need to get started with that as soon as possible. Your child's individuality is your business. It's your job to love them as a unique individual. A school or a church or a group of friends will never accept individuality in the same measure that you do. They can't. Life doesn't work that way.

But I am determined that even though I could name you a decent list of things that I wish were different about my children, I will NOT go there. I will love them as unique individuals, and I will be in their corner when NO ONE ELSE IS. I'm not talking about approving or endorsing. Not at all. If my children take a wrong road, I'll say so and I'll lament. But I will not give up on my child over a tattoo or smoking or a change of schools or a change of plans or even rejecting my politics or faith. Some of these things might devastate me, but this isn't about me being happy. It's about loving a person in the one role that God has given me.

Minimalist vs. Maximalist from the B-Hebrew list

http://lists.ibiblio.org/pipermail/b-hebrew/2006-June/028805.html

----- Original Message ----- 
 From: "JAMES CHRISTIAN READ" <JCR128 at student.apu.ac.uk>
To: <b-hebrew at lists.ibiblio.org>
  Sent: Friday, June 30, 2006 2:19 AM
Subject: [b-hebrew] minimalist/maximalist


> At the risk of sounding like the only ignorant one around
> here, what exactly is a minimalist or a maximalist?
  
Dear James,

In very broad terms, a minimalist is someone who thinks that the Bible is of 
minimal value in reconstructing the "real" history of Iron Age Israel, and 
that any "facts" stated by the Bible that are not specifically corroborated 
  by archaeological and/or epigraphic evidence should be considered suspect. 
This view is generally based on: a. the ideological/theological/literary 
character of the biblical text, b. the uncertainty about the process of 
  transmission of the text and its sources, and c. a view of the Bible as 
having been composed very late, making its preserving a lot of authentic 
information very unlikely.
In the same very broad terms, a maximalist is one who considers the Bible to 
  be of great value in reconstructing the "real" history of Iron Age Israel, 
basically that any "facts" stated by the Bible can be considered to 
represent "history", unless either very unlikely or unless specifically 
  disproved by archaeological and/or epigraphic evidence. This view is 
generally based on: a. the view that many of the books of the Bible were 
originally written much closer to the events that they describe, making it 
  more likely that they preserve real historical memories, b. a view that the 
biblical story, at least in general terms, is basically consistent with both 
the known outlines of the history and culture of the Ancient Near East and 
  of the archaeological evidence, and c. a view that the biblical story, at 
least in general terms, is also internally consistent and logical.
I do make a distinction between this type of "maximalist", who does 
  recognize that a lot of the details of biblical history are NOT corroborated 
by archaeological and/or epigraphic evidence and DOES recognize the 
ideological/theological/literary character of the biblical text, and what I 
  would call "fundamentalists", who, whether they admit it or not, base their 
belief in the historicity of the Bible on their religious faith.
Obviously, there is a lot of ground in between. The most extreme minimalists 
  claim that the Bible is a Hellenistic composition with (almost) no 
historical value, and that the entire "history" of Israel, from the 
patriarchs, through the exodus, the conquest, the monarchy and the exile and 
  restoration, never happened, at least not in any way close to the way the 
Bible describes it. The Bible is a Hellenistic-period Jewish manifesto, 
written in order to justify the Jews' conquest of "Palestine".
  Less extreme minimalists realize that a lot of what the Bible says about the 
later monarchy is corroborated by archaeological and epigraphic evidence, 
which shows that the writers, whatever their ideology might have been, did 
  make use of archival sources from the pre-exilic period. The descriptions of 
the "golden age" of Joshua, David and Solomon, however, are mostly myth.
The most extreme maximalists (remember, I'm not including 
  religiously-motivated fundamentalists) consider the patriarchal narratives, 
the exodus, the conquest and all the rest to be based on "historical 
memories", even if many of the specifics have become garbled. Less extreme, 
  is the view that the patriarchs and exodus, and maybe the conquest, are 
"foundation myths", but that the story of the foundation of the Israelite 
state, the united monarchy and later history, are indeed based on archival 
  sources and historical memories, all the while not ignoring the 
ideological/theological/literary character of the biblical text.

The "hot" debate between the two camps over the past few decades has been 
  the United Monarchy - history of myth? But this is largely a matter of fads. 
Often, the views which were once considered minimalist later become 
maximalist - then the pendulum swings back.

Hope that helped.
  
Yigal Levin

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TO DO: Google Reader

http://www.google.com/reader

LINK: Presbyterian/Reformed denominational stats

LINK: http://www.tateville.com/churches.html

What was wrong with Preaching in 1980... and Today

http://jamesdurham.wordpress.com/2008/10/11/what-is-wrong-with-preaching-today/

What is Wrong with Preaching Today?

In 1980 the President of Westminster Theological Seminary sent a letter to various senior pastors/theologians asking for their views on what were "ten serious failures of the Christian pulpit."  One of the respondents was John R. de Witt then of Reformed Theological Seminary, Jackson.  His response was also published in the Banner of Truth Magazine (210, March 1981).  A number of the points he raised are of vital importance and as relevant today as they were in 1980.

De Witt's first observation is that "the pre-eminent failing in the evangelical pulpit is a misunderstanding of the nature of preaching."  His point here is that many preachers fail to recognise that the preacher is not to speak his own words - in the act of preaching he stands as an ambassador of Christ and should be speaking Christ's words.  De Witt explains, "If we regard the sermon as the vehicle through which the Lord Jesus himself speaks - if, that is today, we hold that preaching in the biblical sense of the word is the principal means by which God addresses himself to sinners - this conviction cannot help but exercise a transforming influence on what we who are ministers do in the pulpit, and on how we do it."  To me Dr de Witt's observation here strikes a real cord.

De Witt's second point is that he had observed "a want [lack] of ministerial earnestness"  Few preached "as never sure to preach again, and as a dying man to dying men."  The causes he identified were a false view that everyone in the congregation is saved, a failure to hold together "in tension" the truths of divine sovereignty and human responsibility, and the influence of the spirit of the age "with its tendency to undervalue the awful consequences of sin and impenitence."  Again, I can only say that De Witt's observation is true.

The fourth point De Witt covers (I'm not going through each of his points) is a lack of "warm, pointed, applicatory preaching" perhaps due to an over emphasis on the redemptive-historical approach to scripture [not the principle itself].  Again as someone who has spent a lot of time reading old Reformed/Puritan sermons one of the main differences that jumps out at you is the sheer volume of application relative to modern sermons.  Good, helpful, edifying application is hard work, much harder than giving a "lecture" but it is surely central to any biblical conception of preaching.

Related to the area of application De Witt's seventh point is that "in many Reformed churches preaching is insufficiently direct."  Perhaps, de Witt posits, this is due to ministers assuming everyone before them is saved and therefore don't need the direct preaching of the gospel.  For de Witt this is simply wrong.  "The gospel should be preached regularly to every congregation.  Covenant children must be told what their own covenant position means for them … They have to know they dare not take their position for granted.  Those born in Christian families are to come to Christ.  My own great homiletics teacher, Dr Henry Blast, used to tell us that we were to assume nothing with respect to the spiritual situation in our congregations.  And the longer I live and the more I preach the greater is the degree of my agreement with him."

De Witt's eleventh point (yes he overran!) is the demise of the "prophetic element in preaching."  By this he meant the demise of the authority of the pulpit.  He stated "I grow weary as I think about the number of times, for example, when I have heard a minister beginning his sermon by saying there was something he wanted to 'share' with us from the Word of God.  I believe that the word 'share' in this context is singularly inappropriate."  Instead of sharing "The minister must come from God, bearing God's message, speaking God's Word, standing in a sense even in God's place, addressing us with that which in no way rests on his own authority.  The minister is a herald, and his sermon is that Word which he speaks in behalf of the One who sent him.  That, after all, is the meaning of the word 'to preach'.  The relational, psycologizing, soul-bearing so-called preaching of the present time is in no way reflective of the biblical concept of the sermon."

De Witt also highlights helpfully the need to pay attention to the form or aesthetic quality of the sermon, the importance of appropriate illustrations, how the general decay in classical learning is harming the pulpit, how congregations often push ministers to spend their time on other things detracting from the great work of preaching, and the necessity of a minister to be godly.  All helpful but I don't have time to comment on them here.

So it suffices to say that I think de Witt is substantially correct in his analysis.  And if anything I would imagine in the intervening 30 years things have got worse not better.  But there is no cause for despair - there are still many who are workmen who have no need to be ashamed, who rightly divide the word of truth.  And the Lord of the harvest is able to send many more into his harvest field.

How to Learn Biblical Hebrew

http://awilum.com/?page_id=693
Prepared by Charles Halton

How to Learn Hebrew

How to Have a Successful First Semester

1. Have a good attitude.

a. Learning Hebrew can be hard at times, but it is rewarding—find joy in your studies.
b. You are fluent in at least one language already. Therefore you have proven that you have the ability to learn languages—no excuses.

2. Do not fall behind in your studies.

a. At the pace that first year Hebrew moves, if you fall behind it will be hard to catch back up again.
b. Learn the vocabulary of each chapter well—it will bite you later if you don't.
c. Learn everything thoroughly unless I specifically tell you otherwise.

3. Studying consistently is much better than studying in large blocs once or twice a week.

a. Pick a specific time and place each and every day (besides Sundays) that is specifically designated as your Hebrew study time and place. Design your schedule around this time, not the other way around.

Ideal Study Sequence While at Seminary

1. First Semester—Alphabet, nouns, strong verbs, preliminary syntax, vocab.
2. Second Semester—Weak verbs, intermediate syntax, simple readings, vocab.
3. Rapid Reading—Read Hebrew narrative, nail down vocab.
4. Hebrew Composition—English to Hebrew, accents, advanced syntax, vocab.
5. Narrative Exegesis
6. Poetry Exegesis

How to Prepare for a Lifetime of Studying the Old Testament in Hebrew

1. Learn Hebrew vocabulary well. It will be very frustrating and you will likely give up if you don't. Recommended resource: George M. Landes, Building Your Biblical Hebrew Vocabulary, Atlanta: Society of Biblical Literature.
2. Get to the point while you are at Seminary where you do your daily devotional reading in Hebrew.
3. Do not read the Bible out of BibleWorks. Only use it when you are stuck and don't know how to read a specific word or phrase or when you are doing searches.
4. Read a Hebrew grammar once every year.
5. Read Hebrew in a group. Get to know at least one person, possibly another pastor in the area, who is willing to meet with you weekly or biweekly to read Hebrew together.
6. Preach half of your sermons and teach half of your lessons out of the Old Testament. Prepare your sermons and lessons from the Hebrew text.
7. Complete your study of the text before you look at commentaries or helps.
8. Understand why a translation(s) rendered your passage of study the way it did.
9. Use solid commentaries that deal with the Hebrew text. Eschew preaching commentaries for textual study.
10. Follow at least one high-level academic journal that includes Old Testament studies. Get a subscription or find a local library that carries them. For examples see the links to journals on awilum.com.

Michael Spencer, "God Doesn't Offer Explanations" [Beware asking "Why?"]

http://jesusshaped.wordpress.com/2008/10/05/god-doesnt-offer-explanations/

God doesn't offer explanations

October 5, 2008 by Michael

The problem with theological types- like yours truly- is they think that God has explained himself. In the Bible. In Jonathan Edwards. In the Lutheran Confessions. In the CRCC. In the latest Piper book. In the ESV Study Bible notes. Somewhere.

The fact is God doesn't explain himself.

Romans isn't God explaining himself in your life. There's some "big picture" stuff there, and you'll do much better if you realize that "big picture" explanations are what God is interested in. But if you want explanations for why you have no friends, or why you seem to fail the harder you work or why your daughter became a Hindu, you aren't going to get those explanations.

And you must especially beware of people who pretend to have explanations for you. Churches are full of these people, usually at the pulpit end or in the academic section. They have a favorite book or a DVD presentation that gets right to the explanation for your family's troubles or your business failure, and what you should do now.

It's a lot of hogwash. The Bible is what God is going to tell us about his interaction with this world leading up to and into Jesus. It's a very subjective kind of book, with much more to say about the experiences we have than the answers we need.

In fact, Jesus explains one parable, and actually makes a lot of demands. Job repeatedly wants an explanation, but he's not going to get one other than "Where were you? Were you there?" (Very Ken Hamm.)

The answers we give each other suck. The answers in the Bible are big, generic and can't be fit into the map of your life as specifically as you want. God wants us to trust who he is, what he's done for us in Jesus and what he promises to finish doing. Along the way, he has some good advice and specific commands, but not many answers to the mysteries of life that torment us.

Believe in the God of the Bible, and have lots of questions of "Why?"…..You're probably going to get tired of hearing things like "Everything God does he does for our good" or "God allows evil so that good will come from it." God's not sitting in a booth playing fortune teller or shrink for a nickle.

He's God. His goal is that we trust him, and live the best lives we can based on that trust. A significant part of that kind of life is moving past the "Whys."

In the TBS movie "Abraham," God tells Abraham to sacrifice his son. Abraham goes out and screams "Why?"

In the Bible, that never happens. Maybe it did, but the Bible never mentions it. Hebrews says Abraham took Isaac to be sacrificed convinced by God's previous promise that he and the boy would, somehow, return.

Abraham took that all the way, never pausing to say "Why?" along the way. When Isaac asked where was the sacrifice, Abraham didn't get smart and say "Good question." He said "God will provide a lamb."

God doesn't give explanations very often. He's working for a bigger result- faith and trust in who he is and what he's done for us- and will do- in Jesus.

That's the life. I need to get busy living it, because every moment I'm shouting "Why?" I"m wasting my breath.

The New Perspective on Paul

The New Perspective on Paul is, in my opinion, a very difficult issue to get a handle on. To study this issue it is necessary to become familiar with the alien world of academic New Testament studies, which can be like learning a foreign language. To understand where the New Perspective came from, it is necessary also to gain some understanding of the history of New Testament studies over the last century. Moreover, there is not just one New Perspective, but there are various schools of thought under the umbrella of the term "New Perspective."

 

Below are links to some articles that I feel provide a fairly decent, basic understanding of the New Perspective, first in its own terms, and then from a Reformed Perspective.

 

Mark Mattison, a proponent of the New Perspective on Paul, has written an essay summarizing the New Perspective, which can be found at http://www.thepaulpage.com/Summary.html. It is helpful to read the position of a proponent in their own words, instead of merely learning about a position as you read a criticism of it. Mattison runs "The Paul Page" where the summary is found. It is a very helpful website that is something of a clearinghouse for any and all items related to the New Perspective, both for and against. Indeed, if you find an article somewhere that is not listed on the website, e-mail Mattison, and he'll add a link.

 

Kim Riddlebarger's essay "Reformed Confessionalism and the New Perspective on Paul" is helpful. Riddlebarger is a professor of Theology at Westminster Seminary in California, and he also helps pastor the church which Michael Horton serves at:

http://kimriddlebarger.squarespace.com/theological-essays/New%20Perspective%20on%20Paul%20revised%202006.pdf.

 

Doug Green, an Old Testament professor at Westminster Theological Seminary in Philadelphia, wrote a balanced essay that discusses both pros and cons of the New Perspective as articulated by N.T. Wright: http://www.ntwrightpage.com/Green_Westminster_Seminary_Perspective.pdf.

 

There is, of course, the PCA Study Committee report on the Federal Vision controversy and the New Perspective, which can be found at www.pcahistory.org/pca/07-fvreport.pdf. Unfortunately, the simple fact that this report covers both the Federal Vision controversy and the New Perspective may make it seem that the two are related, which I don't think is true at all. Nevertheless, this report gives the guidelines for how these issues are to be understood in the PCA.

John Adams quotes

From http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/John_Adams

• Let the human mind loose. It must be loose. It will be loose. Superstition and dogmatism cannot confine it.
• Let us tenderly and kindly cherish therefore, the means of knowledge. Let us dare to read, think, speak, and write.
• Let every sluice of knowledge be opened and set a-flowing.

Books to Read

Herman Ridderbos, "Paul: An Outline of His Thought". Essential Reformed reading and a classic text on Paul's biblical theology highly regarded outside of Reformed circles. It is a gold mine.

 

Herman Bavinck, "Reformed Dogmatics, volume 1: Prolegomena". Essential Reformed reading, a truly monumental work. All four volumes have recently been translated into English. Bavinck was a Dutch Reformed theologian who died in the 1920's.

 

N.T. Wright, "The New Testament and the People of God." This is the first volume of his five or six volume New Testament Theology, three volumes of which have been published.

 

John Frame, "The Doctrine of the Knowledge of God". This is the first volume of his systematic theology, titled "A Theology of Lordship," on the topic of epistemology from a Reformed perspective.

 

Vern Pothress, "The Shadow of Christ in the Law of Moses". An important work from a WTS-Pa professor on the relationship between Christ and the Mosaic Law.

 

Karl Barth, "Dogmatics in Outline". A short book containing lectures that Barth delivered in the framework of the Apostle's Creed. I'd like to read this or his "Evangelical Theology" before beginning to read his massive "Church Dogmatics." There's also a Barth reader published by Fortress Press in the "Making of Modern Theology" series.

 

Augustine, "City of God" and "The Trinity". Important classic works.

 

Soren Kierkegaard, "The Essential Kierkegaard". A reader of selections from Kierkegaard's works, compiled by the editors who translated most of his works into English.

 

Gregory of Nazianzus, "The Theological Orations." In the Library of Christian Classics volume on "The Christology of the Later Fathers".

 

Robert Letham, "The Holy Trinity." Recent Reformed work on the Trinity, partially as a response to Robert Reymond's Systematic Theology. Discusses history (ancient and modern), scripture, and worship.

 

Craig Blomberg, "The Historical Reliability of the Gospels." Important scholarly work on the reliability of the Gospels from an evangelical perspective.

 

Eugene Peterson, "Christ Plays in Ten Thousand Places." First volume of his multivolume "Conversation in Spiritual Theology.".

 

Frederick Copleston, "History of Philosophy," volume one of nine. It covers the origins of philosophy in Greece through Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle and a bit past them.

 

Jaroslav Pelican, "Credo: Histoical & Theological Guide to Creeds & Confessions". His magnum opus. Also, his five volume "History of the Development of Doctrine" is pretty important too.

 

Michael Horton, "God of Promise". Recent, short book on covenant theology.

 

Kevin Vanhooser, "First Theology." A collection of his stimulating writings on the topic of theological interpretation.

 

George Ladd, "A Theology of the New Testament" and Donald Guthrie, "New Testament Theology." Both are classic NT Theologies written in recent decades from an evangelical perspective.

 

Brevard Childs, "A Biblical Theology of the Old & New Testaments." Magnum opus of the founder of canon criticism.

 

Hans-Georg Gadamer, "Truth & Method". Massive work on hermeneutics.

 

Brian Gerrish, "Grace & Gratitude: The Eucharistic Theology of John Calvin." Important recent work on Calvin, in which he argues that all of Calvin's theology has a eucharistic shape, in which God as our Father is feeding us unto eternal life.

 

Ronald Numbers, "The Creationists: The Evolution of Scientific Creationism". Scholarly historical overview of creation science and young earth creastionism arguing that it has its origins in a Seventh Day Adventist approach to literal seven-day creationism. The author is an agnostic.

 

George Caird, "The Language & Imagery of the Bible". Highly regarded work on biblical interpretation and exegesis, focusing on linguistic issues related to interpretation.

 

H. Oliphant Old, "The Shaping of the Reformed Baptismal Rite in the 16th Century". Important work on, well, the development of 16th century Reformed Baptismal rites by a (the?) leading Reformed liturgical scholar.

 

H. Oliphant Old, "The Patristic Roots of Reformed Worship." The title says it all, by a (the?) leading Reformed liturgical scholar.

 

Thomas Oden, "Classical Pastoral Care". Four short volumes on various topics related to pastoral care in the early church, such as preparation for ministry, word & sacrament, crisis ministry, pastoring, etc.

 

Emmanual Tov, "Textual Criticism of the Hebrew Bible." THE book on the text of the Hebrew Bible.

 

Geerhardus Vos, "The Pauline Eschatology." The sequel to his "Biblical Theology."

 

 

R. Scott Clark, "Was There An Apostolic Hermeneutic And Can We Imitate It?"

http://heidelblog.wordpress.com/2008/09/19/was-there-an-apostolic-hermeneutic-and-can-we-imitate-it/

Was There An Apostolic Hermeneutic And Can We Imitate It?

September 19, 2008 in Biblical Exposition, Reforming Evangelicalism, contemporary evangelicalism, eschatology, hermeneutics | Tags: biblical interpretation, covenant theology, dispensationalism, hermeneutics |

Yes and yes. No, it's not in the Scofield Reference or Ryrie Study Bibles.

It seems that some of our dispensational friends have yet to read the memo. See this example sent to me a by a friend. This writer, whom I do not know, claims that folk such as we talk about the apostolic hermeneutic and claim to be able to replicate it but never say what it is.

One throws up one's hands in amazement and wonder.

It's isn't that complicated. Pay close attention here: The Apostolic hermeneutic is to see Christ at the center of all of Scripture. We're not reading him into Scripture. We're refusing to read him out of it. There, I said it. That's what it is. Perhaps the reason our dispensational friends cannot see it is because they are blinded by their rationalism. They know a priori what the organizing principle of Scripture must be and it isn't God the Son, it's national Israel. "What my net can't catch must not be butterflies." Do they ever stop to think that the trouble could be their net? Does it ever trouble them that any system that leads to the conclusion that one day the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world (John 1:29, 36), who is presently ruling the nations (Acts 2:36; Rev 5:12-13) is going to sit on a throne in Jerusalem to watch sinful human priests slaughter lambs? Does it trouble them that, effectively, they agree with the Pharisees? I'm pretty sure I remember J. Dwight Pentecost saying that the Pharisees had the right hermeneutic but they came to the wrong conclusions. Really? Is that what Jesus said about them? "You guys are really close to getting it right if you would just tweak this one little detail?" I think not.

Just so no one thinks that I'm pulling hermeneutical rabbits out of exegetical hats:

"Let all the house of Israel therefore know for certain that God has made him both Lord and Christ, this Jesus whom you crucified."

"Worthy is the Lamb who was slain, to receive power and wealth and wisdom and might and honor and glory and blessing!" And I heard every creature in heaven and on earth and under the earth and in the sea, and all that is in them, saying, "To him who sits on the throne and to the Lamb be blessing and honor and glory and might forever and ever!" (ESV)

"For all the promises of God find their Yes in him. That is why it is through him that we utter our Amen to God for his glory" (2 Cor 1:20).

"For Abraham saw my day and rejoiced" (John 8:56).

Yes, Reformed folk (and others) have been reading the bible like this for a very long time. The earliest post-apostolic Christians, in contrast to the Jewish critics of the Christian faith, read the Bible to teach a unity of salvation organized around Jesus Christ. The entire medieval church read the Bible this way as did the Reformation and post-Reformation churches.

There were exceptions, however. In the patristic period the Marcionites radically divided Scripture and set the "Old Testament" god against the NT "God." In the medieval church the Albigenses did something similar as did the 16th-century Anabaptists (all of whom denied justification sola gratia, sola fide). Those groups all also had trouble with the humanity of Jesus. What ties those two things together? A Platonizing dualism that sets the material against the physical. This same tendency produces a similar hermeneutic among many American dispensationalists as well. This dualistic tendency explains why dispensationalists refer to the apostolic hermeneutic as "spiritualizing." Yes, rather, but not in the way they think. "Spiritual" in Paul's vocabulary does not mean "immaterial" but "of the Holy Spirit." The same Spirit who inspired Moses also inspired Paul. There is a "Spiritual" interpretation of Holy Scripture that focuses on the God-Man who entered history and around whom all of God's self-revelation is organized.

Where have Reformed folk specifically detailed, illustrated and practiced the apostolic hermeneutic? Here's a reading list:

E. P. Clowney, The Unfolding Mystery: Discovering Christ in the Old Testament 
Edmund P. Clowney, Preaching Christ From All of Scripture
Vern S. Poythress, The Shadow of Christ in the Law of Moses (Nashville: Wolgemuth & Hyatt, 1991).
Graeme Goldsworthy, Gospel-Centered Hermeneutics 
Geerhardus Vos, Biblical Theology .
Geerhardus Vos, Redemptive History and Biblical Interpretation 
Meredith Kline, Kingdom Prologue (PDF).

Here are some short popular attempts to mediate some of this stuff:

This Christian Life
The Israel of God
What Is the Bible All About?" (this link takes you to the MR page but the article is not online).

What method do we use? It's grammatical and historical! It reads the Old in the light of the new. It doesn't set up arbitrary a priori's about what can and can't be. We don't begin with an unstated premise, "All reasonable people know p." We don't think that any uninspired hermeneutic (system of interpretation) is superior to Paul's or James' or Peter's.

One need not be inspired to read the Bible the way the apostles did. I'm not even sure it's proper to say that their hermeneutic was inspired. We confess that Scripture is inspired, but was their way of reading Scripture inspired? I doubt it. As John Frame used to ask in class, were the apostolic grocery lists inspired? No. Can we observe how they read Scripture and imitate it? Yes.

One need not be inspired to see that when Ps 110 says, "Yahweh says to Adon, 'Sit at my right hand'" that David, whose bones are still in the ground, is not Adon! Jesus, who is ascended and ruling at the right hand of the Father, is Adon. There are two reasons one might not see this: 1) unbelief, as in the case of the Jews who rejected Jesus as Savior; 2) rationalism that says, "We know how the story turns out and this can't be the right ending! There has to be a restoration of the national people or it doesn't count. We want do-overs."

No Christian should find either one of those reasons compelling.

Update on Tuesday, September 25, 2007 at 01:21PM

Two items:

1) Paul Lamey at Expository Thoughts replies to my post. He complains about my rhetoric. Get in line buddy! I don't think he understood what I mean by rationalist. He says " I will also point out that many reformed interpreters have flattened the text and are quick to excuse elements of discontinuity." This is absolutely true. In over-reaction to dispensationalism, many Reformed folk have flattened out discontinuity between Moses and Christ.

That's not the issue here, however. The issue is whether it is possible to observe and follow the apostolic hermeneutic. The claim was that it either hasn't been done or it can't be done. In response I offer multiple concrete examples where it has been done and is being done.

Paul bristles at my characterization of his post as dispensationalist. Okay. Fine. "Evangelical." "Fundamentalist." Let's say "Bible Church." Indeed, there are nominally "Reformed" folk who would say something quite similar and be just as wrong and they don't represent the mainstream of the tradition.

He claims that there are dispensationalist interpreters who see Jesus at the center of Scripture. Fine. He doesn't cite any examples. Let's grant that the latest version of dispensationalism comes closer to an historic Christian hermeneutic, but they're still hoping not only for the conversion of Jews but the restoration of a national kingdom. Isn't this what John MacArthur said that Calvin would hold if he were alive today? Right.

Let me raise the stakes. He says, "Last time I checked, christology is a branch of systmematic theology and not a branch of hermeneutics but don't get everything bunched-up just yet." This is exactly what I'm talking about. This is what "evangelical" or "Bible church" folk don't understand. "Hermeneutics" is not a discipline that may be hermetically-sealed from "theology." This is where the "rationalism" creeps in. No one says, "Today I shall be a rationalist." What they do, however, is to set up an a priori whereby they establish what Paul or Peter can do and what we can't do when reading the Bible. Can a "Bible Church" hermeneutic do Galatians 4? I can. Why? Because I understand what Paul is doing their and, sola gratia I am learning, with the catholic church, to read the Bible the way Paul does. I don't think there's any way the typical "Bible church" hermeneutic can account for Gal 4.

I don't think there's anyway for the typical "Bible Church" hermeneutic to account for Gal 3 for that matter. Paul says that Moses works for Abraham and Abraham, as it were, works for Christ. That isn't the conclusion to which most "Bible Church" interpreters have come. Why not? Because they have a different hermeneutic than Paul. They don't really think that Moses was a temporary addition to the Abrahamic covenant. They think that the real action was in the Mosaic covenant, that Jesus came to re-establish it, and with the Jews having refused it, he's going to re-establish it the first chance he gets.

As Reformed folk read the Bible we not only see on occasional typology of Christ in the Hebrew scriptures we see the entirety of the Hebrew Scriptures as typological. The entire structure of it is typological. I really don't believe that they understand this. Yes, "Bible Church" types do typologies about the red thread and the like, but that's not really what I'm talking about.

The other thing I notice is that "Bible Church" interpreters do not give evidence of ever having read Vos or Clowney or any of the other titles that I mentioned. I say this on the basis of years of personal experience with folk in "Bible Churches." Typically they don't even know these works exist.

2) I omitted a text that I should have mentioned. My friend and colleague Dennis Johnson has just out a terrific new book: Him We Proclaim advocates the Christ-centered, redemptive-historical, missiologically-communicated, grace-grounded method of Bible interpretation that the apostles learned from Jesus and practiced in their Gospel proclamation. Moving beyond theory, it shows how apostolic preaching opens up various biblical texts: history, law, wisdom, psalm, prophecy, parable, doctrine, exhortation, and apocalyptic vision. Our Price: $17.36

R. Scott Clark, "Covenant Theology is Not Replacement Theology"

http://heidelblog.wordpress.com/2008/09/14/covenant-theology-is-not-replacement-theology/

Covenant Theology is Not Replacement Theology

September 14, 2008 in Covenant, Justification, Pastoral Ministry, I Get Questions, Reforming Evangelicalism, eschatology | Tags: covenant theology, dispenationalism, eschatology, replacement theology |

Recently I had a question asking whether "covenant theology" is so-called "replacement theology." Those dispensational critics of Reformed covenant theology who accuse it of teaching that the New Covenant church has "replaced" Israel do not understand historic Reformed covenant theology. They are imputing to Reformed theology a way of thinking about redemptive history that has more in common with dispensationalism than it does with Reformed theology.

First, the very category of "replacement" is foreign to Reformed theology because it assumes a dispensational, Israeleo-centric way of thinking. It assumes that the temporary, national people was, in fact, intended to be the permanent arrangement. Such a way of thinking is contrary to the promise in Gen 3:15. The promise was that there would be a Savior. The national people was only a means to that end, not an end in itself. According to Paul in Ephesians 2:11-22, in Christ the dividing wall has been destroyed. It cannot be rebuilt. The two peoples (Jews and Gentiles) have been made one in Christ. Among those who ae united to Christ by grace alone, through faith alone, there is no Jew, nor Gentile (Rom 10:12; Gal 3:28; Col 3:11). 

At least some forms of dispensationalism have suggested that God intended the national covenant with Israel to be permanent. According to Reformed theology, the Mosaic covenant was never intended to be permanent. According to Galatians 3 (and chapter 4), the Mosaic covenant was a codicil to the Abrahamic covenant. A codicil is added to an existing document. It doesn't replace the existing document. Dispensationalism reverses things. They make the Abrahamic covenant a codicil to the Mosaic. Hebrews 3 says that Moses was a worker in Jesus' house. Dispensationalism makes Jesus a worker in Moses' house.

Second, with respect to salvation, Reformed covenant theology does not juxtapose Israel and the church. For Reformed theology, the church has always been the Israel of God and the Israel of God has always been the church. Reformed covenant theology distinguishes the old and new covenants (2 Cor 3; Heb 7-10). It recognizes that the church was temporarily administered through a typological, national people, but the church has existed since Adam, Noah, Abraham, and it existed under Moses, David, and it exists under Christ. 

Third, the church has always been one, under various administrations, under types, shadows, and now under the reality in Christ, because the object of faith has always been one. Jesus the Messiah was the object of faith of the typological church (Heb 11; Luke 24; 2 Cor 3) and he remains the object of faith.

Fourth, despite the abrogation of the national covenant by the obedience, death, and resurrection of Christ (Col 2:14), the NT church has not "replaced" the Jews. Paul says that God "grafted" the Gentiles into the people of God. Grafting is not replacement, it is addition.

It has been widely held by Reformed theologians that there will be a great conversion of Jews. Some call this "anti-semitism." This isn't anti-semitism, it is Christianity. Jesus said, "I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me" (John 14:6). The alternative to Jesus' exclusivist claim is universalism which is nothing less than an assault on the person and finished work of Christ. Other Reformed writers understand the promises in Rom 11 to refer only to the salvation of all the elect (Rom 2:28) rather than to a future conversion of Jews. In any event, Reformed theology is not anti-semitic. We have always hoped and prayed for the salvation, in Christ, sola gratia et sola fide, of all of God's elect, Jew and Gentile alike.

Here are some resources for getting to covenant theology.

Here are Lig Duncan's lectures on covenant theology.

Noah and Covenant Theology.

LINK: Book of Common Prayer daily Lectionary Readings in ESV online

http://www.gnpcb.org/esv/devotions/bcp/

I cdnuolt blveiee taht I cluod aulaclty uesdnatnrd waht I was rdanieg

I cdnuolt blveiee taht I cluod aulaclty uesdnatnrd waht I was rdanieg The phaonmneal pweor of the hmuan mnid Aoccdrnig to a rscheearch at Cmabrigde Uinervtisy, it deosn't mttaer inwaht oredr the ltteers in a wrod are, the olny iprmoatnt tihng is taht the frist and lsat ltteer be in the rghit pclae. The rset can be a taotl mses and you can sitll raed it wouthit a porbelm. Tihs is bcuseae the huamn mnid deos not raed ervey lteter by istlef, but the wrod as a wlohe. Amzanig huh? yaeh and I awlyas thought slpeling was ipmorantt.


[My note: A good illustration of how the mind is active in interpreting something, to the point of being "transparent" to the reader. That is, the reader is amazed that they can read it; the mind is actively interpreting. The obvious misspellings make the reader aware of how much the mind is interpreting. How much more is the mind active in interpreting the biblical texts in ways that we are not aware of?]

Internet Monk Wonders about Where to Go for Spiritual Formation

http://www.internetmonk.com/archive/open-thread-so-where-does-a-baptist-go-for-spiritual-formation

John Frye on Our Reading the Bible and Others Reading Us

http://www.jesustheradicalpastor.com/the-b-i-b-l-e

The B-I-B-L-E. So?

Apr 1st, 2008 by John

"For every one man who reads the Bible, one hundred men will read you and me." D.L. Moody

Given the gender political incorrectness of Moody's statement, he still makes a startling observation: Christians not only have a Bible; they are the Bible to many people. Where would old D. L. get a thought like that?

You yourselves are our letter, written on our hearts, known and read by everybody. You show that you are a letter from Christ, the result of our ministry, written not with ink but with the Spirit of the living God, not on tablets of stone but on tablets of human hearts. 2 Corinthians 3:2-3

I've noticed two undeniable ways that the Bible is not given its rightful place in our lives and in the church at large. First, there are those who shout about inerrancy, authority, inspiration and they "battle for the Bible" in the public square. We must not remove the 10 Commandments from the courthouse lobby! What are the 10 Commandments? "Well, uh, uh, something about no other gods…uh, don't kill…y'know." Some claim to be all about protecting the Bible, but they hardly ever read it. Secondly, there are those who read it…diligently…so they can slice and dice it and so they can slice and dice anyone else who does not slice and dice the Bible the way they do. Oh, they know it all too well…as a weapon to blungeon those who disagree with them. "We have the BIBLICAL view of the end times." "We have the BIBLICAL view of baptism." "We have the BIBLICAL view of women in the church." "We have the BIBLICAL view of the atonement." And on it goes. The Bible is used to winnow out the chaff from the otherwise pure church (and usually the "pure church" is some little tiny theological ghetto of adherents). They are the contemporary version of the Essenes of Jesus' day; God's pets.

Another version of those who do read the Bible a lot is that group who read the Bible as a diversion from the Holy Spirit. It's much easier to have a relationship with a book, than with a Person, especially the third Person of the Trinity. Some say in effect, "No thank you. The B-I-B-L-E that's the book for me. Don't talk to me about a growing, intimate relationship with God the Spirit. The Spirit freaks me out. I'm told the Spirit can sneak up on you like the wind. He comes and goes at his own will. No thank you. I need to stay in control. I prefer the book."

Some have so divorced the Bible, the written Word, from Jesus Christ, the living Word, that some feel they have the right, even the duty to use the Bible in very unChristlike ways. And do they feel righteous when they do! They're daring! They're prophetic! They're powerful! They don't compromise! And every unbeliever in their sight runs for cover thinking, "If that is the kind of person the Bible produces, I'm outta here fast!"

One of the reasons I think Jesus made up and spun out compelling stories about the kingdom of God was that he was so sickened by the way the Bible was used in his day by the Bible experts and teachers of the Law. He saw how people were jaded by the oppressive use of Scripture. Scripture was turned into heavy weights to carry rather than a vital Story to live. So Jesus told stories about the big Story. The common people heard him gladly. They hung on his every word. It was the professional exegetes who really got snotty with farm-boy Jesus. Alas, there is nothing new under the sun.

By the way, John Wycliffe didn't give his life so that we could read a page in "Our Daily Bread." He died giving us for the first time in history the WHOLE Bible in the English language so we could read about and live the big Story. Wycliffe was so hated by many that after his death, his body was exhumed and burned because Wycliffe had been declared a heretic by those who wanted to keep the Bible in their control. I wonder if Wycliffe were alive today, would he think he had lived, labored and died in vain?

We not only have a Bible; we are the Bible. What are people reading?

Michael Spencer on the Word of the Cross

http://jesusshaped.wordpress.com/2008/08/25/verses-the-word-of-the-cross/

Verses: The Word of the Cross

August 25, 2008 by Michael

I Corinthians 1:

18 For the word of the cross is folly to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God. 19 For it is written,

"I will destroy the wisdom of the wise,
and the discernment of the discerning I will thwart."

20 Where is the one who is wise? Where is the scribe? Where is the debater of this age? Has not God made foolish the wisdom of the world? 21 For since, in the wisdom of God, the world did not know God through wisdom, it pleased God through the folly of what we preach to save those who believe. 22 For Jews demand signs and Greeks seek wisdom, 23 but we preach Christ crucified, a stumbling block to Jews and folly to Gentiles, 24 but to those who are called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God. 25 For the foolishness of God is wiser than men, and the weakness of God is stronger than men.

The cross is a word. It speaks.

That is why the communication God most values about the cross is the preaching and proclaiming of the Gospel in words.

The cross is, as Paul says elsewhere, an "appeal" from God to reconciliation. It is an announcement that contains an offer. It is a proclamation that has ultimate relevance. It is a word that divides the world into cross appreciators and cross enemies.

The word of the cross is foolishness to a religious world that demands God respond with a miracle when they pull the string. The God of the cross is not a performer. He is not a cosmic servant or entertainer there when religious people insist he show up and do what is necessary to convince the sleeping and the bored.

God has spoken his Word in Jesus, and we now speak that Word in the power of the Holy Spirit.

The word of the cross is foolishness to the wise of this age for whom God must present his case in order to win their approval. Because the cross does not play to the wisdom of the world or to the world's applause, it earns the contempt of those who demand intellectual fashionability for truth.

Do not miss this: God has purposely chosen to reveal himself in such a way that the demands of religion and worldly wisdom are utterly humiliated. The cross is the moment of contempt and degradation. There is no beauty about the cross that we would want to be associated with it. It cannot play on the world's stages or earn the admiration of the elites.

The wisdom of God is the God/man nailed to the tree, the sins of the world placed on the crucified one, the wrath of God poured out in the midst of the cruelty of human execution, the forgiveness of God a finished sacrifice that we neither deserve nor ask for.

The cross speaks of God, of his son, of his Gospel. To the ones who are being saved, it speaks the pearl of great price, the priceless treasure in a field, the one thing valuable. To the world, the cross speaks nothing but a fantasy.

There is no way to make the cross anything other than what it is. Every artistic portrayal of the cross must ask if it points beyond itself to the cross that saves, the cross where sin is condemned and the blood of the lamb purchases a people for God.

We live in a time when evangelicals and many protestants shun the cross for another Gospel. I thank God that so many of our Catholic brothers and sisters continue to value the cross. Even as we may disagree on its meaning, there is little doubt where one is more certain to hear the word of the cross these days. Luther and Calvin would be ashamed.

The word of the cross, proclaimed in scripture and placed at the center of a living faith, does what the cross does.

"If I am lifted up, I will draw all men to myself."

The word of the cross, if obscured, will be as powerful as ever, even in its humiliation at our hands.

The word of the cross is the power of God.

N.T. Wright on Jesus Studies from "The Meaning of Jesus: Two Visions"

N.T. Wright on Jesus Studies

From Marcus Borg & N.T. Wright, "The Meaning of Jesus: Two Visions"

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Part of the challenge of history comes from allowing suspicion a proper role. Suspicion, that is, of the texts themselves, of one's colleagues' readings, and particularly of one's own. However, a caution is necessary. The guild of New Testament studies has become so used to working with a hermeneutic of suspicion that we find ourselves trapped in our own subtleties. If two ancient writers agree about something, that proves one got it from the other. If they seem to disagree, that proves that one or both are wrong. If they say an event fulfilled biblical prophecy, they made it up to look like that. If an event or saying fits a writer's theological scheme, that writer invented it. If there are two accounts of similar events, they are a "doublet" (there was only one event); but if a singular event has anything odd about it, there must have been two events, which are now conflated. And so on. Anything to show how clever we are, how subtle, to have smoked out the reality behind the text. But, as any author who has watched her or his books being reviewed will know, such reconstruction again and again miss the point, often wildly. If we cannot get it right when we share a culture, a period, and a language, it is highly likely that many of our subtle reconstructions of ancient texts and histories are our own unhistorical fantasies, unrecognized only because the writers are long since dead and cannot answer back. Suspicion is all very well; there is also such a thing as a hermeneutic of paranoia. Somebody says something; they must have a motive; therefore they must have made it up. Just because we are rightly determined to avoid a hermeneutic of credulity, that does not mean there is no such thing as appropriate trust, or even readiness to suspend disbelief for a while, and see where that gets us. (pp. 17-18)

 

 

 

            Almost all scholars still believe that the earlier the material, the more likely it is to bring us into contact with historical bedrock. This assumption is by no means always justified, but let us remain with it for the moment. It at once opens us the long-standing problem about the sources that, whatever one's prejudices, are bound to play a large role at some point: the synoptic gospels (Matthew, Mark, and Luke).

            Further stages of investigation are frequently undertaken. Prior to the writing of the gospels and their sources, the material probably circulated in oral forms, which can be studied in terms of their likely settings. When the gospel writers used their sources, they can be presumed to have selected, adapted, and arranged the material.  A three-stage development can then be postulated: (1) the shaping of preliterary oral traditions; (2) the collection of oral traditions into literary sources; (3) the collection and editing of these literary sources into polished gospels. In case this were not already sufficiently complex, it is frequently supposed that we can and should also investigate further hypothetical stages of the history of Jesus traditions between these three.

            If all this worked, and if most scholars agreed about it, it would be fine. But it doesn't, and they don't, and it isn't. Despite frequent claims, a century of research has failed to reach anything like consensus on a single one of the stages in question, let alone on the hypothetical developments in between. Thus:

 

1. There are dozens of different proposals about how to analyze the forms of the early tradition and about what elements of the life of the early church they may reflect. None commands widespread agreement.

 

2. There are at least two widely held, variously developed, and mutually incompatible theories about the literary sources of the synoptic gospels: (a) The majority still hold that Mark was written first  and that behind the passages in which  Matthew and Like overlap with each other but not with Mark was a source that scholars call Q. A vocal minority within this majority claims to distinguish different stages in the development of Q; many others, though believing firmly in Q, offer radically different explanations of its origin or, alternatively (like Marcus [Borg]), regard all such further theories as at best unprovable. (b) A minority, however, hold that Matthew was written first and was used by both Mark and Luke (so that Q never existed). Further, several who agree with the majority on Marcan priority agree with the minority that the overall between non-Markan passages in Matthew and Luke is better explained by Luke's use of Matthew than by a common source.

 

3. Mutually incompatible theories abound as to where, when, and why the synoptic gospels came to final form. Since there is no agreement about sources, there is no agreement as to how and why the different evangelists used them. If, for instance, we believe that Matthew used Mark, we can discuss Matthew's theology on the basis of his editing of Mark. If we don't believe Matthew used Mark, we can't.

 

4. In the nature of he case, if there is no agreement about how the tradition developed in these major stages, there is no chance of agreement on possible levels or layers in between.

 

            One reason for the continuing impasse on these questions is that they are often addressed, and solutions to them proposed, with more than half an eye on the probable outcome for the supposedly second-order questions concerning Jesus. The Q theory came to birth as a part of a conservative response to radical nineteenth-century skepticism; it provided, so it was said, a reliable and early source for Jesus' sayings. Now, however, some who promote it do so in the hope that, by isolating a hypothetical "early Q", they may offer a radically alternative vision of Jesus and early Christianity to that which appears in the synoptic tradition as a whole. Similarly, Marcan priority has sometimes been used as a way of affirming that the early church preserved a memory of Jesus' career, at least in outline; Matthean priority is now sometimes presented as a way of ensuring the authority of sayings (parables, for instance) which might otherwise be suspect as occurring only in one source, and that a late one. And so on, and so on. (pp. 20-22)

 

John Frye on "The American Sound Byte Gospel" [4-step 'Gospel' presentations]

http://www.jesustheradicalpastor.com/the-american-sound-bite-gospel

The American Sound Byte Gospel

Aug 5th, 2008 by John

I am stunned that some Christians still defend a sound byte gospel. You know, the 4 steps, the "bridge over troubled waters" packaged presentation. Shrimpy little things. The wondrous, thunderous, mind-boggling, heart-stopping gospel of the Bible and of Jesus himself is horribly reduced to bumper sticker phrases.

With what other literature or great story do we do this? None to my knowledge. Imagine the classic story (and movie) of Ben Hur reduced to…

• Ben Hur accidently killed a Roman soldier.
• Ben Hur was a galley-slave.
• Ben Hur drove in a big chariot race and won.
• Ben Hur met Jesus at the Cross when his mother and sister were healed.

Wow. I really know the story now. Do YOU believe in Ben Hur?

How about Anne of Green Gables?

• Anne Shirley meets Marilla and Matthew.
• Anne worries over her freckles and dyes her hair green.
• Anne doesn't like the Pye children.
• Anne becomes a teacher and serves blind Marilla.

Doesn't that story just rock? Do YOU believe in Anne of Green Gables?

Or, even Pilgrim's Progress.

• Pilgrim goes on a journey.
• Pilgrim carries a sack of sin.
• Pilgrim meets a lot of interesting people.
• Pilgrim ends his quest and his sack of sin falls off.

Wow! Pilgrim gets saved! Do YOU believe in Pilgrim?

You think, "John, this is so silly." I agree. But the question remains: Why do we reduce "the greatest story ever told" and confidently act as if we've done something noble, even holy? This horrible reduction is actually stupifying. The sweeping, rumbling, massive saga of the Bible and the Spirit-energized, Jesus-intense Gospels get miniaturized to…

• God loves you.
• You are a sinner.
• Jesus died for you.
• Believe in Jesus now.

Hand me my microscope so I can see this "gospel." Wow. Do YOU believe in Jesus? If so, you get to go to heaven when you die.

A bumper sticker gospel creates sound bite believers who parrot things rather than live into the sweeping Story of God's amazing, amazing grace. A reduced Gospel has produced no-different-from-the-sound byte-culture Christians. When will we wake up?

Mark Dever, "Inerrancy of the Bible: An Annotated Bibliography"

http://sites.silaspartners.com/partner/Article_Display_Page/0,,PTID314526|CHID598014|CIID1552716,00.html

Inerrancy of the Bible: An Annotated Bibliography

By Mark Dever

            Behind the centrality of expositional preaching is the assumption of the authority and truthfulness of God's Word.  At a recent meeting with the pastoral assistants here at Capitol Hill Baptist Church, I gave a quick bibliography of the history of the controversy over inerrancy.  I thought it might be useful for you, too.  Many of these books will be well known to those of you who are my age and older, but many may not be known to those of you who are younger.  Here, then, are some resources for you about the matter of biblical inerrancy. 

            Of the making of books on inerrancy, there is no end.  Ours has not been the first generation to deal with the questions at the root of it, and, if the Lord tarries, ours will not be the last.  Though the discussion changes—now we've largely moved on to discussions of epistemology, hermenuetics, postmodernism and biblical theology—we continue to assume what we have learned, particularly in the massive amount of reflection that went on in the 20^th century among evangelicals about this issue.

            The roots of this discussion are, of course, ancient.  Passing by Psalm 119, Our Lord's use of scripture, early citations and the discussions of Aquinas and the Reformers, let's begin our modern bibliography with the work of Francis Turretin (1623-1687).  Turretin's work influenced generations of theologians and ministers both in Europe and North America.  The section on Scripture was translated, edited and printed by John W. Beardslee III (Baker, 1981).  This volume—in its Latin original—exercised great influence upon generations of evangelical ministers trained at Princeton and other evangelical institutions.

The Nineteenth Century

            The classic work on this in the first half of the 19^th century, which really acts as a backdrop to all the discussion to come was by L. Gaussen, professor of systematic theology in Geneva, Switzerland.  It was translated into English in 1841 as Theopneustia:  The Plenary Inspiration of the Holy Scriptures, and has been reprinted many times.  Additionally, Simon Greenleaf (1783-1853) , a celebrated professor of legal evidence at Harvard, had lectured on the reliability of the gospels.  These lectures were published posthumously as The Testimony of the Evangelists:  The Gospels Examined by the Rules of Evidence in 1874 and have been re-printed many times.  In some ways, the arguments here are the grandparents of those which have been recycled many times by people from the late Sir Norman Anderson to Josh McDowell and other apologists. 

            At the same time, on the other side of the Atlantic, the historian and archaeologist Sir William Ramsay was publishing a series of works which, among other things, established the historical veracity of the accounts of Luke and Paul in the New Testament.  Among this series of works are

            The Church in the Roman Empire before A.D. 170 (Hodder and Stoughton, 1894)

            St. Paul the Traveller and Roman Citizen (Hodder and Stoughton, 1895)

            Pauline and Other Studies in Early Church History (Hodder and Stoughton, 1906)

            The Cities of St. Paul (Hodder and Stoughton, 1907).
This series of volumes—10 in all—have often been reprinted, and they have continuing historical value.

Princeton & Westminster

            At the same time in the late 19^th century systematic theological reflection was represented by works from scholars at Princeton and Southern Baptist Theological Seminary.  In 1881, A. A. Hodge and B. B. Warfield co-wrote an influential article on Inspiration (later reprinted under the title Inspiration, with an introduction and appendices by Roger Nicole (Baker, 1979).   A few years later, Basil Manly, Jr., published his little volume The Bible Doctrine of Inspiration (A. C. Armstrong & Son, 1888).  This volume grew out of the controversies at Southern Seminary regarding the theological apostasy of an Old Testament professor there, C. H. Toy.

            Throughout his career at Princeton, B. B. Warfield published articles on the doctrines of the nature, inspiration and inerrancy of Scripture.  After his death, they were brought together in what has become perhaps the most influential book among conservative evangelicals on the topic—certainly the most often-cited:  B. B. Warfield, The Inspiration and Authority of the Bible (Presbyterian and Reformed, 1948).  The book is really a collection of articles by Warfield written in the late 19^th century.  These articles are often referenced, but too rarely read.  They are dismissed by caricatures when they are in fact models of careful exegetical work.  More could be said, but let me simply commend them to the reader.

            Of course, this issue was at the heart of the creation of Westminster Seminary from the orthodox remains of Princeton.  J. Gresham Machen argued out that Christianity and liberalism are really two different religions.  In 1923 he published these arguments as Christianity and Liberalism (reprinted by Eerdmans).  This argument would be picked up again by J. I. Packer forty years later in his "Fundamentalism" and the Word of God.  Bradley Longfield has provided an excellent historical overview of the Princeton struggle, with some reference to the theological issues in his book The Presbyterian Controversy:  Fundamentalists, Modernists & Moderates (Oxford, 1991).

Mid-Century America

            In the middle decades of the 20^th century, the battle for inerrancy seemed over in the mainline and irrelevant for the convinced conservatives, the evangelicals.  There were, nevertheless some more North American and British publications which continued to explore the issues.

            On the North American side, a colloquium of the faculty at Westminster Seminary published its papers in a volume entitled The Infallible Word, edited by Ned Stonehouse and Paul Woolley (Westminster Theological Seminary, 1946).  Undertaken to celebrate the tercentennary of the Westminster Confession of Faith, this was the first of many edited collections of essays on the topic to be forthcoming over the next forty years.  The Westminster faculty continued to be helpful.  Ned Stonehouse encouraged Norval Geldenhuys, a South African minister, to publish Supreme Authority (1953).  In 1957, Westminster Professor of Old Testament E. J. Young published his quite substantial volume, Thy Word is Truth (Eerdmans, 1957), perhaps the most significant work on the topic to that date by an evangelical in the 20^th century.  Also in 1957, R. Larid Harris published his careful work on the Inspirtation and Canonicity of the Bible (reprinted as Inspiration and Canonicity of the Scriptures, 1995).   In 1958 Carl F. H. Henry, the editor of the new magazine, Christianity Today edited a large collection of essays, Revelation and the Bible, (Baker [US]; Tyndale [UK] 1958), in which many of the leading evangelicals of the day summarized Christian teaching.  Henry's wide scope was a foreshadowing of what was to come from him later.

British Resources

            In the United Kingdom, other resources were coming to help with the inerrancy controversy.  In 1958, J. I. Packer published "Fundamentalism" and the Word of God (IVCF, 1958) in response to high churchman Gabriel Hebert's Fundamentalism and the Church of God, and to liberal criticism of the recent Billy Graham crusades in Cambridge and London.  Packer's concise summaries and arguments were powerful and influential.  He immediately became something of a spokesman for the conservative evangelicals in the Church of England and beyond.  His book used some of the same arguments as Machen's earlier volume, but somewhat refined—less polemic, more taxonomy.  In 1965 the Evangelical Fellowship in the Anglican Communion published another work of Packer's, even more focused on Scripture, called God Speaks to Man.   It was expanded and reissued by IVP in 1979 as God Has Spoken, and then published by Baker in 1988 (this time including the Chicago Statements) and came out in a third edition with a new foreword in 1993.  It is an excellent introduction to the whole discussion.  In 1976, the Australian New Testament scholar, Leon Morris, published a book (Hodder & Stoughton, UK; Eerdmans, USA) in the "I Believe" series, I Believe in Revelation.  Morris had decades earlier established his controversial and scholarly credentials with his defense of the idea of propitiation in the atonement over against C. H. Dodd's work.   And in 1978 Brian Edwards, a free church pastor, brought out a popular volume called Nothing but the Truth.  This was expanded and reissued in 1993 (Evangelical Press).

            On a more academic level (largely ignored in this article) our British friends were making further contributions to maintaining the inerrancy of Scripture.  F. F. Bruce had first written The New Testament Documents: Are They Reliable? in 1943 (IVP).  The book has gone through numerous editions and some expansion since then, never going out of print or losing its concise usefulness.  These are 120 pages worth reading.  In the same "reliability" genre, though out of chronological order, let me simply mention a couple of other books:  Craig Blomberg, The Historical Reliability of the Gospels (IVP, 1987) with a foreword by F. F. Bruce, and Walter Kaiser's The Old Testament Documents:  Are They Reliable and Relevant? (IVP, 2001).   F. F. Bruce's contributions to the field of New Testament studies are many, but for the purposes of this topic, the one other book you should be aware of is his book The Canon of Scripture (Chapter House, 1988).

            Two stalwarts in the academic trenches that were helpful to evangelical students from their publication in the 1960's until the present day were more technical introductions that helped students to sort through knotty questions of dating and authorship.  They were the introductions written by Donald Guthrie and R. K. Harrison.  Throughout the 1960's the Anglican clergyman Donald Guthrie was teaching at London Bible College and publishing his introductions to various portions of the New Testament.  They were finally brought together and published as one volume in 1970 (IVP) and have remained in print since then, with a final, fourth revised edition appearing in 1990.  And in 1969, Professor R. K. Harrison of Wycliffe College, University of Toronto, Canada, published his magnum opus, Introduction to the Old Testament (Eerdmans, 1969).

The Change at Fuller

            All of this academic work took place against the background of shifting currents inside evangelicalism.  The most significant change was the dropping in the early 1960's of Fuller Theological Seminary's commitment to the inerrancy of the Bible.  George Marsden has given us a clear history of this in his book Reforming Fundamentalism:  Fuller Seminary and the New Evangelicalism (Eerdmans, 1987).  This, read in conjunction with Longfield, makes particularly interesting reading.

            The late 1960's and 1970's found evangelicalism digesting the changes that were happening.  Clark Pinnock, a young Canadian professor at New Orleans Baptist Theological Seminary stoutly defended inerrancy.  He had studied with F. F. Bruce, and in 1966 gave the Tyndale Lecture in Biblical Theology which was published the next year as A Defense of Biblical Infallibility (Presbyterian and Reformed, 1967).  For the next few years, Pinnock continued to ably defend this view.  He did so most extensively in his book Biblical Revelation:  The Foundation of Christian Theology (Moody, 1971; reissued with introduction by J. I. Packer, Presbyterian and Reformed, 1985). Throughout this period, Francis Schaeffer was exercising a strong influence on the rising generation of evangelicals.  Many of his works presumed the importance of inerrancy.  A good example of this would be in his little 1968 IVP book, Escape from Reason. 

            By 1973 more conservative evangelicals were understanding that significant shifts were underway and were wanting to respond to them.  Popular teacher R. C. Sproul assembled a group of conservative leaders—John Frame, John Gerstner, John Warwick Montgomery, J. I. Packer, Clark Pinnock—to frame "The Ligonier Statement" affirming biblical inerrancy.  They presented papers and published them in an informative volume, John Warwick Montgomery, ed., God's Inerrant Word (Bethany Fellowship, 1974).  (Pinnock, of course, would later disown this position in his book, The Scripture Principle, [Harper & Row, 1984]).

Lindsell v. Rogers & McKim

            "The book that rocked the evangelical world" as its been called (by its own publisher) was published in 1976.  That year Harold Lindsell, part of the losing faculty at Fuller ten years earlier, published his expose of the theological slippage on the issue of inerrancy.  He named names.  The book—The Battle for the Bible (Zondervan, 1976)—is a must-read for understanding the whole controversy over inerrancy.  He pinpointed problems in the Lutheran Church—Missouri Synod, in the Southern Baptist Convention, and in Fuller Theological Seminary, among others.  To some the book was infamous; to others it was a clarion call to action.  To it, more than any other, we probably owe the torrent of literature on the topic that was about to be written.  (Francis Schaeffer did publish a rather similar, though more wide-ranging critique, The Great Evangelical Disaster [Crossway, 1984].)  In 1979, Lindsell published a follow-up, The Bible in the Balance (Zondervan, 1979), updating the various criticisms and observations he had made. 

            One thing Lindsell's Battle for the Bible did was to stir up open opposition among evangelicals to inerrancy.  The leader of these was perhaps Jack Rogers (still active in the PCUSA).  In 1977, Rogers edited a volume, published by Word, called Biblical Authority in which he got various leading and respected evangelicals to question the clarity of Lindsell's vision.  He and Donald McKim then followed up two years later with what has become the Bible of the anti-inerrantists—Jack Rogers and Donald McKim's The Authority and Interpretation of the Bible:  An Historical Approach (Harper and Row, 1979), in which they suggest that the history of the church revealed that the current conservative evangelical position on the inerrancy of the Bible was an historical novelty and simply a rationalist philosophical position wrongly obtruded on believers.  Warfield was their chief bogeyman and old Princeton their chief target.

            Rogers' and McKim's work was subjected to a number of critical reviews, none more searching than John Woodbridge's Biblical Authority:  A Critique of the Rogers/McKim Proposal (Zondervan, 1982).  If you haven't read them, suffice it to say that Woodbridge, a more careful historian than Rogers and McKim, absolutely disassembles their thesis.  Woodbridge's book, however, is rarely read by non-evangelicals and so has not served to stop the myth that Rogers and McKim have rather successfully sold to an uncritical audience that wants to agree with them.

The ICBI and its Progeny

            One of the unwitting results of Lindsell's book, along with Rogers and McKim's thesis, was to galvanize conservative evangelicals into reflection and writing.  And so the International Council on Biblical Inerrancy was formed and operated from 1977 to 1987.  The plan, all along, was to have a limited life, so as not to form another institution which could go astray.  It's purpose was to hold conferences and publish books to the end of championing the traditional position on the inerrancy of Scripture.  And their efforts—and those of their friends at the time—have left us one of the richest stores of literature on inerrancy.  Here is an incomplete list, but perhaps comprising the most important productions of the period:

            James Montgomery Boice, ed., The Foundations of Biblical Authority (Zondervan, 1978).  This was the first of the ICBI productions.  It was quickly followed by a booklet published by ICBI, James Montgomery Boice, Does Inerrancy Matter? (1979).

            Earl Radmacher, ed., Can We Trust the Bible? (Tyndale House, 1979).  This was the second collaborative ICBI production.  It was the companion piece to Boice's Foundations of Biblical Authority.  Boice's edited volume had presented six position papers from the October 1978 ICBI Chicago Summit; Radmacher's now presented six sermons from that same conference.

            Norman Geisler, ed., Inerrancy (Zondervan, 1980).  Another ICBI production, the collection of some of the papers from their first "summit", the conference which produced the Chicago Statement on Biblical Inerrancy.  R. C. Sproul produced a brief commentary on the Chicago Statement, Explaining Inerrancy (ICBC, 1980).

            Roger Nicole and J. Ramsey Michaels, eds., Inerrancy and Common Sense (Baker, 1980).  This was a festschrift in honor of Harold John Ockenga, and served as a manifesto that the Gordon-Conwell faculty (which its authors mainly were) were supporters of inerrancy.

            D. A. Carson and John D. Woodbridge, eds., Scripture and Truth (Zondervan, 1983).  This may be the best in all this series of edited volumes, it's papers seeming to break through to a longer and somewhat more formidable level of scholarship.  That's a good thing!

            Ronald Youngblood, ed., Evangelicals and Inerrancy (Nelson, 1984).  This is a highly interesting selection of articles published in the Journal of the Evangelical Theological Society in the previous 30 years on the topic of inerrancy.

            Earl Radmacker and Robert Preus, eds., Hermeneutics, Inerrancy and the Bible (Zondervan, 1984).  This was the collection of papers from the second ICBI summit.  This is one of the best of all of these collections.

            John Hannah, ed., Inerrancy and the Church (Moody, 1984).  This is another ICBI production, this time focusing on the history of the church's discussion of the issue.

            D. A. Carson and John Woodbridge, eds., Hermeutics, Authority and Canon (Zondervan, 1986).  This is a companion volume to the other Carson and Woodbridge volume, again not an official ICBI product, but sympathetic and with papers of a high academic quality.  The final chapter in this volume is an excellent essay on the canon by David Dunbar.

            Kenneth Kantzer, ed., Applying the Scriptures (Zondervan, 1987).  This is the series of papers from the third and final ICBI summit.

            Harvie Conn, ed., Inerrancy and Hermeneutic (Baker, 1988).  This is a good collection of papers from the faculty of Westminster Theological Seminary.

            Kenneth Kantzer and Carl F. H. Henry, eds., Evanglelical Affirmations (Zondervan, 1990).  These are papers from a conference not primarily on inerrancy, but it is interesting to see how the topic continues to be worked out in the papers of David Wells and others.

            It should be mentioned during all this time that individual authors were also putting out volumes on the topic of the Bible and its inerrant nature.  J. I. Packer in 1980 brought out a series of his articles on the topic, under the title Beyond the Battle for the Bible (Crossway).  Ronald Nash did a fine little piece of popularized systematic theology on the issue, The Word of God and the Mind of Man (Zondervan, 1982).  James Montgomery Boice published addresses he had given at ICBI conferences in a 1984 volume entitled Standing on the Rock:  Upholding Biblical Authority in a Secular Age (Baker 1984; 2^nd ed Kregel 1994).

            Most notable of all was Carl F. H. Henry's 6-volume series God, Revelation and Authority (Word 1976-1983; rpt. Crossway, 1999).   As we near twenty years from Henry's completion of his massive work, it looks clearly dated, but arguably even more important.  Philosophical issues of epistemology and meaning have dominated the discussions during the intervening years, discussions which Henry was already engaging at a high level.  More recently, David Wells' No Place for Truth, or Whatever Happened to Evangelical Theology (Eerdmans, 1993), does some of the same kind of work in a more applied and contemporary manner.  The implications of inerrancy and truthfulness are carefully considered and well-illustrated.

The Southern Baptists

            Though some of the authors just mentioned are Southern Baptists (e.g., Carl Henry, Ronald Nash, Roger Nicole), I want to give special attention to what was happening among them.  Lindsell targeted the Southern Baptist Convention especially with one chapter in his Battle for the Bible, but all he did was help to ignite a controversy that had been going publicly, though intermittently, since the early 1960's.  W. A. Criswell's Why I Preach That the Bible is Literally True (Broadman, 1969) was The text about the whole issue for many Baptists.  In 1980, Russ Bush and Tom Nettles, at the time both professors at Southwestern Seminary, did some historical excavations among Baptist theologians of the past and produced their own, denomination-specific rebuttal of Rogers and McKim.  No suggestion that inerrancy was alien to the Baptist tradition could well survive this 400-plus-page survey—Baptists and the Bible, (Moody, 1980). 

            As the ICBI wound down, the heat was boiling in the SBC.  In 1987, Duane Garrett and Richard Melick, Jr., edited Authority and Interpretation:  A Baptist Perspective (Baker, 1987).  Official denominational authorities produced an ICBI-like conference at Ridgecrest, called "The Conference on Biblical Inerrancy."  In many ways, this was a command performance by many of the main "northern evangelicals" with responses by a liberal, and also by a conservative Southern Baptist leader.  The speakers included historian Mark Noll, Lutheran theologian Robert Preus, and many others, including J. I. Packer, Kenneth Kantzer, Millard Erickson and Clark Pinnock.  The papers were published as The Proceedings of the Conference on Biblical Inerrancy 1987 (Broadman, 1987).  No editor is listed.  The papers are of varying quality, of course, but of great interest historically.  An odd combination of an historical and theological collection of essays is Beyond the Impasse?  Scripture, Interpretation & Theology in Baptist Life, edited by Robison B. James and David S. Dockery (Broadman, 1992).  A number of the leading figures on both sides of the controversy contributed essays to this volume.

            On a purely historical note, the pointed question of inerrancy raised the even larger question of Baptist identity.  It was all part of the struggle going on to define the denomination and its agencies.  One piece done so early that it became a part of the struggle was Nancy Ammerman's Baptist Battles (Rutgers, 1990).  This is the work that demonstrated (to those still doubting it) that the struggle in the SBC was not just about power—but it was, as the conservatives had maintained—about theology.  David Dockery edited an interesting volume, Southern Baptists and American Evangelicals (Broadman & Holman, 1993), which show the depth of the questions that the inerrancy controversy had raised.  Two notable recent recountings of the struggles are Paul Pressler's A Hill on Which to Die (Broadman & Holman, 1999) and Jerry Sutton's The Baptist Reformation (Broadman & Holman, 2000).

That's not all folks . . . .

            Many other books could be mentioned.  Let me simply give you one more related category.  Questions of inerrancy often arise from particular difficulties that seem to arise from reading—something that seems hard to understand, or even a discrepancy.  There is a genre of books which deal with just such passages in the Bible.  A few of them are John W. Haley, Alleged Discrepancies of the Bible (1874; rpt. Baker, 1977); Gleason Archer, Encyclopedia of Bible Difficulties (Zondervan, 1982); Norman Geisler and Thomas Howe, When Critics Ask:  A Popular Handbook on Bible Difficulties (Victor, 1992); Walter C. Kaiser, Jr., and others, Hard Sayings of the Bible (IVP, 1996).  Too, a number of Josh McDowell's books would fit in this category.

            There have also been fresh efforts to examine and consider the sufficiency of Scripture.  Noel Weeks wrote The Sufficiency of Scripture (Banner of Truth, 1988).  Don Kistler has edited Sola Scriptura!  The Protestant Position on the Bible (1995) with contributions by Robert Godfrey, Sinclair Ferguson, John MacArthur and others.  Keith A. Mathison has written The Shape of Sola Scriptura (Canon Press, 2001).  David King and William Webster have collaborated to produce, Holy Scripture:  The Ground and Pillar of Our Faith (3 vols., 2001), a careful look at biblical and historical evidence for the sufficiency of Scripture.  And an excellent new British initiative has just resulted in the publication of Paul Helm & Carl Trueman, eds., The Trustworthiness of God:  Perspectives on the nature of Scripture (IVP, 2002).

            Three very different books remain to be mentioned.  One book which is not written by an evangelical Christian, but which has proved to be good medicine when first encountering various literary criticisms is Frederick C. Crews, The Pooh Perplex (E. P. Dutton, 1965).  In this book, Crews carefully, sarcastically and humorously "proves" that the Winnie the Pooh stories actually have multiple authors.  There could hardly be a more enjoyable send-up and devastating critique of many kinds of literary criticism, not to mention an expose of the arbitrariness of any such studies "assured results."

            One particularly important area of controversy about inerrancy has been the renewed controversies surrounding the life of Jesus.  Legions of books have been published about this.  Perhaps the best one volume to get to introduce the whole topic is a volume composed, in part, of a debate between William Lane Craig and John Dominic Crossan.  It is called Will the Real Jesus Please Stand Up? ed., Paul Copan (Baker, 1998).  It is engaging, sharp, makes reference to other contemporary literature, and is presented with additional sections which help the reader with particular concerns.

            I've saved the best for last.  If I could just recommend one book on the inerrancy of the Bible it would undoubtedly be this one—John Wenham, Christ and the Bible (Tyndale Press, 1972 [UK]; IVP, 1973 [US]).  Wenham's book has been through three editions and makes the simple point that our trust in Scripture is to be a part of our following Christ, because that is the way that He treated Scripture—as true, and therefore authoritative.  (Robert Lightner, a professor of Systematic Theology at Dallas Seminary published a similar book a few years later, A Biblical Case for Total Inerrancy:  How Jesus Viewed the Old Testament [Kregel, 1978].)  Wenham had first put these ideas in print with a little Tyndale pamphlet in 1953 called Our Lord's View of the Old Testament.   In Christ and the Bible, Wenham, who taught Greek for many years at Oxford, an Anglican evangelical, has done us all a great service in providing us with a book which understands that we do not come by our adherence to Scripture fundamentally from the inductive resolutions of discrepancies, but from the teaching of the Lord Jesus.  Only because of the Living Word may we finally know to trust the Written Word.  May God use these resources of those who've gone before us to equip and encourage us in so trusting.

 

 

[BOXED BRIEF SUGGESTION]

            To get up to speed on this issue, and to help you with your ministry, consider the following recommendations.

            MUST READ: Wenham

            SHOULD READ: Warfield, Packer's "Fundamentalism" and the Word of God, Lindsell, any one of the edited volumes of your choosing!