Mar 24, 2009
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Do you find yourself baffled by the Old Testament? You want to apply it to your life, but many passages seem impenetrable and the lessons you hear drawn from others just don’t ring true?
One idea I was taught in seminary that has begun to yield some rich results for me is that of biblical theology (BT)—or I could also say worldview. That’s because a rounded BT itself constitutes a worldview (see Wolters
, 9). It answers the questions of why we’re all here and where we’re all going.
One of the most basic ideas of a Christian worldview, and one of the ideas that holds a sound BT together from Eden to New Earth, is that God’s original purpose for mankind was not revoked after the fall. God revealed that design in the programmatic passage of Genesis 1:
Then God said, “Let us make man in our image, after our likeness. And let them have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over the livestock and over all the earth and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth.”
So God created man in his own image,
in the image of God he created him;
male and female he created them.
And God blessed them. And God said to them, “Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth and subdue it and have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over every living thing that moves on the earth.”
What does BT draw from this passage for a Christian worldview?
- God wanted man to image Him—something that is and isn’t happening in every one of us. It is happening, because all men are created in God’s image whether they believe in the God of that image or not (Gen. 9:6; Jas. 3:9). It isn’t happening to a full degree because only in Christ can we better approximate that image (Col. 3:10; Eph. 4:24).
- God wanted man to have dominion over all animals and over all the earth. That includes domains of culture: economics, politics, art.
- God wanted man to produce many offspring, filling the earth.
- God wanted man to “subdue” the earth, a word most commonly used to refer to enslaving or subjugating.
- God wanted man to have dominion, something only God, the sovereign, can bestow.
Now to my title. Let’s connect this passage to the famous programmatic statement God gave Israel in Exodus 19:4–6:
You yourselves have seen what I did to the Egyptians, and how I bore you on eagles’ wings and brought you to myself. Now therefore, if you will indeed obey my voice and keep my covenant, you shall be my treasured possession among all peoples, for all the earth is mine; and you shall be to me a kingdom of priests and a holy nation.
Now read this statement in light of Genesis 1 and God’s original purpose for man. God intended Israel to be “priests”; that is, they were supposed to mediate God’s presence to other nations. They were supposed to image God, as Genesis 1 commanded, to the heathen. Israel was (and is) all part of God’s plan, revealed right after the fall, to redeem the world. (A friend of mine wrote his dissertation on this topic.)
When you read the Bible, can you trace threads like these from beginning to end? If not, vast portions of the Old Testament will not make sense to you. You will be tempted to moralize—to command obedience without grace. You will be tempted to spiritualize—to invest insignificant details (like David’s five smooth stones) with spiritual meaning. To understand the OT rightly, you have to keep the whole story in mind.
Mar 21, 2009
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I just got this e-mail from my friend Jonathan Bolin, a Ph.D. student and teacher at Piedmont Baptist College and Graduate School. I asked him if I could share it with my blog readers (watch for his own blog coming out soon, perhaps!):
I got my copy of Logos for Mac. I told you I’d let you know what I thought.
Positives:
- Much faster than Logos for Windows (both in starting up and in searching)
- Ease in accessing resources (don’t have to start up Parallels)
- Ease in searching
Negatives:
Several key features upon which I am dependent are not included in this build. Among others:
- ability to write notes on particular passages of the Bible
- prayer list/Bible reading schedule
- visual mark ups
I’m still a huge Logos fan, but am a little disappointed with the Mac version.
I’m still running Logos in Parallels. Until BibleWorks puts out a Mac version (which doesn’t seem likely!) it’s easier for me to just keep my two major Bible software programs in Windows. I also can’t bring myself to pay for the Mac engine. Sorry, Logos! I too am still a huge fan!
Mar 20, 2009
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I saved up for my Kindle for a good while, and I was very excited to receive it! I have not been disappointed. Here are a few of the major benefits:
- The Kindle has made available to me texts that hitherto had been locked onto my computer. It’s just not convenient to take my laptop to bed with me—or to church, or to the Bi-Lo parking lot, or to a boring meeting. But now the articles and book chapters and whole books that lay dormant on my hard drive are getting read.
- The Kindle has also made classic public domain texts available to me. It’s easy and free to put any text from Project Gutenberg on the Kindle.
- The Kindle screen really is easier on the eyes than an LCD. While the Kindle’s contrast isn’t quite like paper—unless you’re in direct sunlight, in which case it looks great—it isn’t shining light at me and annoying my eyes. I’ve found that most people assume Kindle still has an LCD screen. They’re intrigued when I explain the difference of E-Ink technology.
- I love the fact that any text I highlight is copied automatically into a central text file, MyClippings.txt. That fits my reading and note-taking style perfectly.
- I have a dictionary and a free wireless connection to Wikipedia on a mobile device.
- I have a free wireless connection to any Internet site that displays well on the Kindle, helpful in a pinch for checking maps or looking up some other time-sensitive information.
- Text-to-speech is a pretty neat way of getting some “reading” done when my eyes are otherwise occupied. If I’m reading along in the early morning and then need to stop to get ready for the day, I can plug the Kindle into my bathroom speaker (neatly tucked away where guests can’t see it!) and listen to a few pages while I’m shaving.
- I enjoy getting free sample chapters from any book in the Kindle store. Just now I’ve been reading Team of Rivals: The Political Genius of Abraham Lincoln.
- My wife likes it!
I do have a few suggestions for improvements—improvements which a firmware update and other software fixes could easily solve.
- I wish Amazon’s print prices were made clear in the Kindle store. The Reason for God is $15.70 in analog form and $14.13 in digital. Preach the Word: Essays in Honor of R. Kent Hughes is $14.96 vs. $7.99. I’d like to know that from within the Kindle store to make a more informed purchase. So far I haven’t purchased any electronic books for the Kindle; I haven’t been able to decide to jump on that wagon. I want my family and future students to browse my shelves, and I want to be able to lend books out and even leave them to my kids when I leave this world. I’m still thinking. But saving eight bucks on a book I want is a good way to persuade me to go Kindle!
- I read theological scholarship, so Unicode for Greek and Hebrew is a must. I’m told the Kindle doesn’t have it, but I haven’t confirmed this, I confess!
- I was one of the first to download the free English Standard Version Bible offered by Crossway, and the Kindle would be well served to include ways to navigate Bibles more quickly. I’m uncertain why I can’t simply type in a reference and have the Kindle go there.
- As I add books and articles to my collection, it is going to become more important that I be able to organize my Kindle documents into folders. That functionality is not available.
- The Kindle would be more valuable to me if it came with e-book organizing and converting software. Calibre is fine, but I’m pretty computer savvy and I confess I do not find it easy to use. Amazon could make even more money by producing the e-book reader freeware and tying it into their Kindle store. Then anyone with a computer could buy their e-books.
- I love the screensavers that come up—pictures of authors and book-related stuff. But I confess I’d rather be able to pick up my Kindle, begin reading right where I last was, and simultaneously turn the unit back on. At least I’d like to have the option. (Note: I recently downloaded a small hack that let me use my own pictures for the Kindle screensavers, and I scored a few points with my lovely wife!)
- I wish I could get to the top of each menu from the bottom by simply clicking down. That is, that the cursor would cycle continually through the list if you held it down, rather than stopping at either end.
Mar 17, 2009
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To persons who claim that their understanding of Scripture comes from God alone and not from mere humans, Augustine replies that God didn’t teach them the letters of the alphabet.
—Alan Jacobs, A Theology of Reading: The Hermeneutics of Love
Mar 16, 2009
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What’s going to happen now that the internet has blown the old financial model which kept newspapers afloat for so long? An interesting essay by Clay Shirky suggests what I, too, think is the right answer:
I don’t know. Nobody knows. We’re collectively living through 1500, when it’s easier to see what’s broken than what will replace it. The internet turns 40 this fall. Access by the general public is less than half that age…. We just got here. Even the revolutionaries can’t predict what will happen.
But with the death of newspapers comes the death of a Kabul bureau, the death of so much important news—right? No, says Shirky. And here’s where he helped me:
Society doesn’t need newspapers. What we need is journalism. For a century, the imperatives to strengthen journalism and to strengthen newspapers have been so tightly wound as to be indistinguishable. That’s been a fine accident to have, but when that accident stops, as it is stopping before our eyes, we’re going to need lots of other ways to strengthen journalism instead.
It will be interesting to see what will happen.
HT: Alan Jacobs
