Sep 17, 2009
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I found this video deeply disturbing and disappointing. I love the gospel, and to see it obscured by a former ETS president and the author of an excellent commentary on Galatians—of all books—was a painful frustration. In the discussion, held before an audience at Wheaton College, Timothy George, a Southern Baptist ecumenist, talks with Frances Beckwith, the ETS president who reverted to Roman Catholism three years ago.
In Galatians 2, Paul describes how he opposed Peter (yes, that Peter) publicly when merely by neglecting to eat with Gentiles he denied the universal scope of the gospel. What if Peter got on stage at the Jerusalem Council and had a friendly chat with a prominent Judaizer—being careful to emphasize all of the areas of agreement they share and chiding Paul for not maximizing those agreements? It’s safe to say that Paul’s reaction would be even more intense.
Of what were the Judaizers guilty? That’s a debated issue, but Paul’s comments in Galatians 2 happen to be the only place where the word Joudaize (ἰουδαΐζειν) is used in the NT. And in that context, their sins sound equivalent to that of Rome: they were adding accretions to the gospel. As George himself once said to Father Richard John Neuhaus, “You have the gospel with a surcharge.”
The gospel will cost you everything (Mt. 13:44-45) and nothing (Eph. 2:8–9); but it comes with no human-devised surcharge. No sacraments, no magisterium, no human intermediaries of any sort. Evangelicals and Catholics cannot get Together until these surcharges are dropped.
George wrote in his New American Commentary volume on Galatians,
No one should appeal to Paul’s example here as a pretext for disrupting the peace of any congregation or denomination over trivial theological issues or personality quirks. But neither should anyone take comfort in Peter’s dissembling action when we are really confronted with a situation that calls for a clear, uncompromising stand for the faith once delivered. (p. 179)
The current day calls for a clear, uncompromising stand on the faith that many evangelicals have lost and that the Catholic Church has overcharged for.
Sep 16, 2009
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This book is just full of bons mots:
The Greeks were right. Live in fear of a grinding end and a dank hereafter. Unless you know a bigger God, or better yet, are related to Him by blood.
—N. D. Wilson, Notes from the Tilt-A-Whirl
Sep 15, 2009
Posted | 2 comments
The Father of lights gave a good gift to me this past weekend, a retreat to the Wilds with most of my fellow BJU Seminary students.
I enjoyed the preaching, the God-honoring music, the many discussions with individual professors, the conversations with other students, the faculty testimonies, and even the Q&A session (something I often find myself dreading in similar gatherings).
Dr. Hankins, president of the Seminary, did a fine job of corralling the Q&A, trying to keep it on track while letting students speak and ask plenty of questions of their teachers. Not an easy task! The discussion focused on some difficult areas of Christian worship practice.
As the discussion progressed, I became increasingly convinced that we all could have gotten some good help from theologian John Frame.
Frame looks at all ethical questions from three perspectives, because ethics for him comprises three elements: a person applying a norm to a situation.
So, like my other reader, let’s say you’re asking, “Should I have Christian ska in my church worship? CCM Magazine said in 1999 that it’s pretty cool.” Let’s just ask one diagnostic question in each of the three categories to help us find an answer:
- Person: Does it violate your conscience?
- Norm: What does Scripture say about the purpose of church music?
- Situation: What does ska communicate in the culture(s) of the people in my church?
Remember, that’s just one question for each category. We could and should ask many others. Do I have a history of being defiled by non-Christian ska? What are the norms built into the creation of the human ear (i.e., is there a decibel limit I should probably impose in our church)? What do my elders think about Christian ska?
And, as Frame often points out, the categories tend to collapse into each other. The real reason I knew to ask about conscience is that Scripture tells me it’s important (Rom. 14:23). And I certainly can’t read the norm in Scripture independently from my cultural situation.
I stood up during the Q&A and asked a question focusing on the third category: “Would you agree that music is partially culturally relative—that is, appropriate church music in Botswana will sound different from that of Kazakhstan? If you do agree, how do you select which music in our culture is appropriate for worship?”
I think the answer is complicated by the fact that our “situation” includes, rightfully, a long Western tradition of church music and a shorter tradition of evangelical music. The very culture of the US has been influenced by the church, broadly speaking. This is not true of other world cultures.
What do you think?
Sep 11, 2009
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In another vain attempt to stoke controversy and therefore grow my blog readership beyond you two, I’ve provoked my good friend Brian Collins to bring our long-standing fight into public view, into a blog boxing match as it were. The fight could be summarized in a few ways: print vs. pixels, analog vs. digital, Gutenberg vs. Gates (no, Jobs!).
To introduce this series of pugilistic blog jabs, I’m going to merely list some of the facts. I’ll ask Brian to do the same on his blog.
In this corner, I’m the guy who’s invested a lot of money into electronic books:
I also have BibleWorks 7 (which, full disclosure, I got for free in order to teach seminars on it—though I purchased version 5 in 2002). I purchased two modules for BibleWorks, however:
I’ve also laid out a bit of cash ($40?) for a pretty good collection of quality books in WordSearch format—which I subsequently copied into Word documents and put on my Kindle 2 so I could ditch WordSearch.
In fact, the Kindle might as well go in this list, because I spent $359 for the privilege of reading my electronic books in a convenient format.
And I should note that I got better prices on a lot of these than you can right now because 1) I bought some on pre-publication status; 2) I had an education discount for the Logos Gold package; and 3) I buy many things from a shady-looking man in the back of a van in an Internet alley (namely Rejoice Christian Software—who knows what kind of extortion he’s guilty of to get those prices!).
However, let me state here categorically that I refuse, as a matter of principle, to pay Logos $60 for their Mac engine. That’s beyond the pale.
Grand Total!
So, including the electronic resources that I traded my print copies for, I have spent approximately $3,602 on electronic books since 2002. That’s $514 a year, though a small amount of it came from gifts. And, of course, I spent a good deal of money on print books during that time, as well. That’s on a BJU GA and then staff salary—which I make no complaints about, because look what I managed to get out of it, largely by not going to McDonald’s! The Lord has been generous to me, and I thank Him.
I have reasons why I elected to make this outlay. I’ll get into those after Brian lists off his electronic purchases.
I threw the first punch. Now, my own face is ready.
Sep 11, 2009
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Welcome back to Free Cartoon Friday!
Check back each week for a free cartoon I failed to sell to Christian pastors’ magazines in 2005!
Click image for full size.
Any real cartoonists out there who are willing to put my ideas in more appealing visual form and sell them?
Sep 11, 2009
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This opportunity from Logos is worth your time if you’re in seminary.
Sep 9, 2009
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We have arrived, it seems, at a moment in our history when the most vigorous and coherent counterculture around is the one constructed by conservative Christians.
…
It is conservative Christians… who, more self-consciously than any other large social group, buck mainstream notions of what constitutes a fulfilled life.
[From A Mighty Fortress]
So says the New York Times in an often sneering, sometimes wistful, and quite lengthy 2000 article. And the article’s main attraction is the large home-schooling family headed by BJU’s Thursday chapel speaker, Steve Scheibner.
I feel sad for reporter Margaret Talbot, who couldn’t help mocking the Scheibner’s retreat from pop culture—and couldn’t help admiring it.
This is an instance where the Times liberal bias rides right on the surface. And that makes the reporter’s attraction to the Scheibners even more fascinating.
I look forward to hearing Pastor Scheibner, now a church-planter in Maine, in chapel tomorrow.
Sep 9, 2009
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Real stars are illegal in most states. You have to get them on the reservation.
—N. D. Wilson, Notes from the Tilt-A-Whirl
Sep 8, 2009
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Ernst-August Gutt, an author recommended to me by David Bell, has changed my wavering opinion on whether or not Bible translations should translate metaphors. You really need to read Gutt’s whole—relatively brief—discussion to follow this, but try anyway:
It is often claimed that a metaphor is a formal device that serves to embellish text. We are also told that it usually has one basic point of similarity that constitutes the meaning of the metaphor and that can be expressed in nonfigurative language. On the basis of this claim we, as translators, are encouraged to replace a metaphor by plain-language expressions if the metaphor is not readily understood.
In fact… metaphors are not formal devices with an embellishing function; rather, they are needed to get the communicator’s intended meaning across. In fact, they may be the only way in which she [throughout his book, "she" is a communicator and "he" is an audience] can fulfil her intention of communicating additional weaker implications. (p. 51)
Gutt goes on to deny that metaphors necessarily have only one point of similarity with reality.
An Example from Work
An example from Gutt will make his statements clearer. Say you have a boss named Bill who’s a 1) ruthless 2) bully 3) surrounded by administrative assistants who enforce his will throughout the department.
You may comment at some point, “Bill is a gangster.” You do so not because you want to clearly state propositions 1), 2), and 3), but because you want to imply them, you want to leave the door open for people to make what they will of your statement—within the constraints set by context. That’s metaphor at work. It makes language rich by opening up subtle possibilities of communication, “weak implications” instead of strong ones, as Gutt puts it.
An Example from Dating
Another of Gutt’s examples will still perhaps help. Brian wants to ask Joy on a date, but he’s not sure she’s open to the possibility. So he says to her, “I hear they built a new section of Cleveland Park.” Joy could draw from that statement that Brian wants to make conversation, that he’s curious to know what others think about Greenville County’s fiscal choices, or that he wants to visit that part of the park with her on a romantic walk. Brian purposefully (ah, that Brian!) made various implications possible rather than stating directly what his intentions were. That’s what metaphor does, Gutt says.
Applying Gutt to Translation
Unless a metaphor is utterly opaque (i.e., no one will figure out what it means if you translate it straightforwardly) and there are no contemporary equivalents in the receptor language, I’m inclined to think now that a metaphor should be left alone in Scripture and not put in plain language. So if God inspired Amos to write, “I gave you cleanness of teeth in all your cities,” He left some possibilities of interpretation—various implications—open. Most interpreters understand Amos’ metaphor as talking about famine: you have clean teeth when you don’t get to eat anything. But translators shouldn’t come along and try to smooth out the difficult metaphor by saying something like, “He gave you famine in all your cities.” It removes beauty, yes; but, more importantly, following Gutt, it doesn’t communicate quite what God meant. It narrows the possibilities too much.
As with all ideas like this, I’ll attempt to keep it in mind and test it as I read Scripture in the future.
Sep 7, 2009
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I went to the Bob Jones University Faculty/Staff opening meeting this year with real excitement, more than ever in the nine times I’ve gone.
Yes, heavy hors d’oeuvres were on their way, including my annual shrimp dosage. But somehow I felt that something even better would happen.
It did. Stephen Jones, president of BJU and a sincerely godly man, made “Living in Light of the Gospel” the theme for the year. Last year’s theme put feet to the truth. This year’s theme gives the feet the energy they need to move.
I’m excited about this theme because gospel-centeredness is, in my estimation, another way of saying God-centeredness. Gospel-driven sanctification is a way of orienting our focus on the resources available to us in divine grace.
Pastors who focus on duty to the exclusion of grace can create pathologies in people. I’ve seen it. Pastors who focus on grace to the exclusion of obedience… Well, I’m too young to have seen that, but equal pathologies are likely possible. I believe both sides fail to understand that grace brings with it a regenerating power. God’s grace forgives, but it also renovates—and it will not fail to do either.
“Putting Feet to the Truth” and “Living in Light of the Gospel” are two complementary themes.
Here are a few articles on gospel-centeredness that in general look helpful.
Sep 7, 2009
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If you, like me, have been looking for a thoughtful, definitive article on the health care crisis, I highly recommend this lengthy piece in the Atlantic.
I just finished it, and I found it incredibly sane. The writer, a Democrat, had a perspective that I felt put government and the free-market in their proper places.
I’m no expert on politics or any political battles outside the (moral-religious) culture wars. I admit I struggle to know which voices to listen to when it comes to issues like health care. I feel as if I’ve got people on either side of me screeching at me to listen to them and not to the others.
This author doesn’t screech or blame any vast conspiracies on the left or the right. He simply explains why the profit motive has acted with completely predictable logic.
Sep 4, 2009
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Neil Postman: New technologies increase our options, but they just as frequently decrease our options.
Postman recommends that we ask this question about any given technology: What is the problem to which this technology is the solution?
Sep 4, 2009
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Welcome back to Free Cartoon Friday!
Check back each week for a free cartoon I failed to sell to Christian pastors’ magazines in 2005!
Click image for full size.
Any real cartoonists out there who are willing to put my ideas in more appealing visual form and sell them?
Sep 3, 2009
Posted | 4 comments
I can hardly put Gregory Wills’ history of Southern Seminary down, and I’m willing to call it a must-read for conservative evangelical and fundamentalist seminarians.
It was thrilling to read of Boyce and Broadus’ doctrinal rigor and foresight, and it’s been deeply saddening to read how quickly all their life-spending labors were co-opted by the “mediating” theology of E. Y. Mullins. How different our whole country might be if the SBTS founders’ vision and doctrine had maintained control at their institution!
I thought this little paragraph about Mullins, who began his tenure right at the turn of the twentieth century, was telling and tragic:
Southern Baptists relinquished Calvinism in the early twentieth century due largely to the influence of pragmatism, experiential theology, and a growing emphasis on the priority of individual freedom. E. Y. Mullins provided leadership in all three areas. (p. 240)
Wherever you stand on Calvinism, lovers of the gospel will agree that when it went out the SBTS back window into the bluegrass, a lot of good things went with it.
Incidentally, the way Wills tells the story, the conservatives lost the presidency to Mullins in part because of the sinful vanity of Boyce and Broadus’ successor, William H. Whitsitt. Personal sin led to institutional downfall.
Sep 2, 2009
Posted | 3 comments
Don Johnson, a Canadian pastor and father (and father-in-law, respectively) of my good friends Duncan and Meg Johnson, offered a response to my last post on love, a post in which I argued that love is not an action:
I have defined agape love as an act of the will for a long time. I haven’t done a comprehensive study for a while, but tonight took a quick look at the verbs agapaw and philew in the NT. Agapaw appears as an imperative 10 times in the NT. Philew never appears as an imperative. I don’t recall if there are any other synonyms used in the NT.
In any case, it appears that agapaw, at least, is addressed to the will and is something the will can do, whereas philew is not.
While I wouldn’t want to say that there is no emotional component to agapaw, I have always contended that its first component is the decision of the will without regard for any response in return. I think the usage in Scripture bears that out.
This is an argument worth a separate post, and any father (or even in-law!) of Duncan or Meg gets special treatment on my blog. So here we go!
Boiling Down the Arguments
Boiling down Mr. Johnson’s argument, I think I could state it fairly this way:
ἀγαπάω (agapao) is a matter first of the will, not the emotions (though these are not necessarily excluded), because ἀγαπάω is commanded while φιλέω (fileo) is not.
Fair? This is, of course, a quite common argument.
But there is an unstated assumption involved in it, namely that emotions can’t be commanded. This, then, usually combines with a further unstated theological assumption: it’s unjust for God to command people to do what they cannot do.
Still fair? These, of course, are quite common arguments in their own right.
A Respectful Response
God does, of course, command emotions: Rejoice evermore; rejoice in the Lord; weep with those who weep, et multi cetera.
But the real sticking point is probably whether or not God can command people to do things they can’t do. This question gets us into much deeper theological waters which I won’t wade into here (though my pastor recently did, and I agree with him!). I just want to point out the unstated assumptions in Mr. Johnson’s argument. We all have unstated assumptions, βλογάπη included, so this alone is not a criticism.
The waters I am willing to wade into here are the facts Pastor Johnson presents. Though completely true as far as they go, they call for more examination. Yes, ἀγαπάω is commanded while φιλέω is not.
But several forms of φιλέω are commanded of Christians:
- There are noun combining forms using φιλέω that believers are told to have:
- “Let brotherly love (φιλαδελφία; philadelphia) continue” (Heb. 13:1).
- “Train the young women to love their husbands (φιλάνδρους; philandrous) and children (φιλοτέκνους; philoteknous) (Titus 2:4).”
- Not all commands are grammatical imperatives. There are clearly laudable instances of φιλέω which we are meant to emulate, and which are therefore in a definite sense “commanded”:
- Jesus’ love for Lazarus (Jn 11:3, 36)
- The disciples’ love for Jesus (Mt 10:37; Jn 16:27)
- God’s love for His Son (Jn 5:20)
- God’s love for us (Jn 16:27).
- Cf. 1Co 16:22 “If anyone has no love for (φιλεῖ; philei) the Lord, let him be accursed.”
When I began personal Bible study in earnest in the late 90s I came across Psalm 112:1, “Blessed is the man who fears the Lord, who greatly delights in his commandments!” I wanted to be blessed, so I figured I should find out what His commandments were. I literally started marking them, page after page. But I soon found out that God doesn’t always state our duties in the form of commands. Narratives, psalms, even Pauline prose introduce all sorts of duties (and graces) without using the imperative mood.
We have a duty to show φιλέω love as well as ἀγάπη love, and let me now suggest what I hope to prove in another post: the two are generally the same thing. Greek words are only confusing the discussion.
Sep 1, 2009
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If you’re in the Greenville, SC area, you need to check out the show that’s currently up in the Sargent Art Building. It has to be my favorite of all the dozens I’ve seen there over the years. My old calligraphy teacher, Mrs. Kathy Bell (wife of Bob Bell, my Hebrew teacher, and mother of David Bell, my Freshman English teacher), has produced God-glorifyingly creative, beautiful, skillful pieces that were a thrill to experience. Her work is classic without being stodgy, and it was a trip to see her stuff from the 60s!
Sep 1, 2009
Posted | 2 comments
The much-maligned TNIV will be no more. A newly revised NIV will come out in 2011, the 400th anniversary of the release of the KJV. I did not realize that the NIV had not been updated since I was in preschool.
The NIV is the most popular Bible translation in English, and it is always worth checking during Bible study because its somewhat more interpretive renderings do—despite what I grew up hearing—come from a basically conservative evangelical background.
For example, the spokesman for the translators in the press releases is Douglas Moo, who happens to be the author of what many conservatives have hailed as the best exegetical commentary on Romans. I was reading that very volume this morning, and though I happened to slightly disagree with Moo’s take on ἀγάπη in Rom. 12:9, it is an excellent, doctrinally sound volume.
A Brief Anecdote
When I was 18 years old in 1999 I wanted to know the Bible better. So I bought a Comparative Study Bible, a parallel Bible including 1) my beloved KJV, 2) the kind-of-weird Amplified Bible, 3) the new-to-me NASB, and 4) the NIV. At first I was literally (and dynamically) afraid to read the NIV column. I had been conditioned against it. But as I read it and compared it over and over again to the NASB and the KJV, I gradually came to a recognition of its character: it’s just smoother.
Where the NASB encounters a difficult phrase, it repeats it literally, sometimes resulting in Greeklish or Engrew. When the NIV hits that same phrase, it gives a slightly interpretive translation that makes total sense in the English you and I speak. The NIV’s interpretation may be one I end up disagreeing with, but never in my experience was it heretical or impossible.* I, for one, find it helpful to read a smooth translation along with my more wooden ones.
Pros and Cons
Here are two examples:
1 Peter 1:6
- NASB In this you greatly rejoice, even though now for a little while, if necessary, you have been distressed by various trials.
- NIV In this you greatly rejoice, though now for a little while you may have had to suffer grief in all kinds of trials.
Jeremiah 17:16
- NASB But as for me, I have not hurried away from being a shepherd after You, Nor have I longed for the woeful day; You Yourself know that the utterance of my lips Was in Your presence.
- NIV I have not run away from being your shepherd; you know I have not desired the day of despair. What passes my lips is open before you.
However, some inspired ambiguity may be left out in the process, and even NIV-based commentary series like the EBC regularly disagree with its renderings.
Here are two examples—out of dozens I could have given from my BibleWorks notes—of renderings that unnecessarily limit interpretive possibilities**:
1 Thessalonians 4:4
- NASB …that each of you know how to possess his own vessel in sanctification and honor.
- NIV …that each of you should learn to control his own body in a way that is holy and honorable.
2 Thessalonians 3:6
- NASB Keep away from every brother who leads an unruly life and not according to the tradition which you received from us.
- NIV Keep away from every brother who is idle and does not live according to the teaching you received from us.
In each of these cases the NIV’s rendering is far from heresy but slips too far into interpretation. So using other sound, conservative translations is also necessary. We English-speaking Christians have the privilege, not the curse, of having multiple good Bible translations. I encourage people, even and especially those who don’t know Greek or Hebrew, to familiarize themselves with the nature and purpose of those translations and then use them.
The Committee on Bible Translation, the group which does the translating work, is open to suggestions from scholars and laypeople. If you have a problem with the NIV’s treatment of a particular passage, write your Christian brothers a courteous note and make your best case.
*The one exception I can think of is the NIV’s—I think—impossible rendering of 1 Cor 7:36–38. But the ESV adopts the same interpretation.
**Interestingly, the ESV, my translation of choice, follows the NIV’s example in both of these passages.
Sep 1, 2009
Posted | 3 comments
First Corinthians 13:4–7 is a list of fifteen specific actions that love performs on behalf of other believers. That should immediately dispel the notion that love is primarily a feeling or an emotion. Although true love will carry emotion with it sometimes, feeling is not a necessary ingredient of love, nor is it the basis. Therefore, biblical love is not a feeling: it’s an action.1
A blog named after love has a duty to define love correctly. Or at least, this blog-named-after-love does. The above statement, which I got out of a high school Bible textbook, is not the definition this blog will put forward. Instead it’s a good example of why the meaning of love has become a (the?) major theological theme of this blog.
Let’s examine the author’s claim that the Love Chapter should dispel the very notions I’ve tried to promote on βλογάπη.
Most simply, I would argue that the passage he cites makes it clear that love is not an action. Take it away, D. A. Carson:
Though some have attempted to strip God’s love of affective content, making it no more than willed commitment to the other’s good, the philology does not support this view, nor does 1 Corinthians 13, where the apostle insists it is possible to deploy the most stupendous altruism without love.2
Remember that part of the passage?
If I give away all I have, and if I deliver up my body to be burned, but have not love, I gain nothing. (ESV)
Giving away all you have and delivering your body to be burned are actions, good actions, good actions that can be performed without love. So love must be something different from apparently good actions. Love, Paul is saying, is the one righteous motivator for actions, the only motivation that makes actions count as “good.”
Even if 1 Corinthians 13 made love an action, several of the verbs Paul uses to describe love are emotions: love rejoices (2x) and hopes.
I think that the author of the comment at the top of this post knew better than to banish emotion from love, because he followed up his comment with this: “As we examine each of these actions [in 1 Cor. 13], we need to humbly inspect our own hearts to see if we truly love other members of Christ’s church.” If love were an action, we wouldn’t need to inspect our hearts. If we were performing the action, we’d know—no cardiogram necessary.
Love may not be “a feeling,” full stop. But it’s something internal. It’s, as Edwards would say, an inclination of the soul. It’s a delight and a pleasure. It’s a bent. It’s a fruit of the Spirit’s work in the Christian. It’s a lot of things, but it’s not an action.
I hope I’ve undispelled a notion for you today. May God help you and me love Him with all our hearts. It will require His power.
_________________
1. Don’t ask.
2. “God’s Love and God’s Sovereignty,” Bibliotheca Sacra 156: 623 (July 1999), p. 259.
Aug 31, 2009
Posted | 0 comments
Theology, tech, theology tech.
Aug 31, 2009
Posted | 1 comment
I agree with this guy. If you are wondering which Bible software to buy, his advice will help.
I’ll add one other thing: if you like keyboard shortcuts and overall computer quickness, BibleWorks beats Logos.
Ok, one more thing: I have BibleWorks and Logos, and I don’t feel I wasted my money. I buy BibleWorks for the searching and original language tools; I get Logos for the commentaries, books, journals, and reference works. Admittedly, there’s some overlap in the capabilities of the two programs, but each one does its thing so well that they’re both always running on my computer.
HT: Dustin Battles
