sunestauromai - living the crucified life

2008-08-25T12:24:00.002-05:00

I keep this blog open mainly comment on blogger blogs;

but I converted over to Wordpress and am now at

http://sunestauromai.wordpress.com

Surprise!

2008-04-28T12:00:00.001-05:00

Welp, I guess I'll be over here now.

Come on over and let me know what you think.

-Brian

RBL additions

2008-04-23T16:50:00.003-05:00

Here are acouple of the more interesting RBL additions for your consideration:

Joseph A. Fitzmyer
The One Who Is to Come
Reviewed by Jeffrey L. Staley
another good book on Jesus and various messianic expectations of his arrival.

Claus Wilcke
Early Ancient Near Eastern Law: A History of Its Beginnings: The Early
Dynastic and Sargonic Periods
Reviewed by Michael S. Moore
This is good for better understanding the law sections of the Pentetuch.

Hillary Rodrigues and Thomas A. Robinson
World Religions: A Guide to the Essentials
Reviewed by Joseph Matos
(might be a college level book, but it never hurts to have a decent reference book for world religions - this might be a good one).

Is Evangelical theology, Pauline theology?

2008-04-21T18:32:00.004-05:00

Robert Menzies in his book Spirit and Power, co-authored with his father William Menzies, discusses an issue in hermeneutics - the role of narrative in forming theology. Typically, in the past narrative has been mostly viewed as historical and not theological - that instead narrative provides the historical basis for theological formulations. However, in time biblical scholars have come to see what most of the rest of us probably already knew, that narrative is often both historical and theological, history but with a purpose. Interestingly, many have been okay with this in regards to the Old Testament narratives, but when it comes to the book of Acts they break the rules and insist that it is only a historical account of the early church. They contradict themselves.

Anyways all that to highlight an interesting point he makes when interacting with a claim Gordon Fee makes in his book, How to Read the Bible for all its Worth where he states: "unless the Scriptures explicitly tell us we must do something, what is narrated or described can never function in a normative way." (this is footnoted from pg 97 of the 1981 edition - I have no idea if this was changed in response to Menzies or not). So Menzies goes on to respond with a barrage of questions,

"Today, for many, it is difficult to imagine how such a restrictive approach came to be axiomatic for Evangelical interpretation. After all, doesn't this principle sound very much like a canon within a canon? Doesn't much of the theology of the Old Testament come to us in the form of narrative? Didn't Jesus himself often teach by relating stories or parables? Doesn't such a theory tend to reduce the Gospels and Acts (as well as other narrative portions of Scripture) to a mere appendage to didactic portions of Scripture, particularly Paul's letters? (Perhaps this explains the overwhelmingly Pauline character of much of Evangelical theology. When all is said and done, has not Evangelical theology tended to be Pauline theology?) In any event, even the most casual reader cannot help feeling the tension with 2 Timothy 3:16. "All Scripture is God-breathed and is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting, and training in righteousness" (pg. 38-39).

So the question becomes, is Evangelical theology indeed, Pauline theology? What do you make of this quote?

If Gordon Fee was a Pastor

2008-04-21T18:10:00.003-05:00

In his book, Paul, the Spirit, and the People of God, Fee recalls a time when during a coffee hour at Regent College, one of his students asked, "If you were to return to the pastoral ministry, what would you do [meaning, How would you go about it? What would you emphasize?]?" Gordon Fee's answer was without hesitation:

No matter how long it might take, I would set about with a single passion to help a local body of believers recapture the New Testament church's understanding of itself as an eschatological community pg49.

If we could do that here, that would be completely amazing!

by the way, Nick will probably want to move this to the top of his list when he realizes there is a chapter called 'The Spirit and the Trinity' - a topic not often explored in Trinitarian discussions.

searching books

2008-04-20T09:35:00.002-05:00

This will sound a bit dunce, but I am just now figuring out how to search books on Amazon... so with that I have been enjoying searching through Harold W. Hoehner's Ephesians: An Exegetical Commentary. One problem, if the wifey figures this out...no more book (or commentary) buying! :( (or it will be harder to convince (or justify to) her of such.

on learning the biblical languages

2008-04-19T23:19:00.007-05:00

Eric Sowell over at Archaic Christianity has a couple of really good post on learning the biblical languages.

Should you learn Greek or Hebrew? Here is a key quote that is important to take in:

Let me make this very clear, though it should be obvious to everyone. Learning a foreign language well is a time-consuming process. There is no getting around that. There is no fast-track to learning a language in two weeks. There is no surgery for language gain. There are no pills you can take that will make it quick and painless. I think it is worth it, but you need to be ready for the amount it work it will take.

Do you "know" Greek or Hebrew? Here is a significant quote to consider:

However, we all need to be humble when it comes to what we think we know about the original languages. We should think of ourself rightly, accurately. We shouldn't teach with bravado from a text, disagree with the translations and say "but they're wrong because the original says x" and whatnot, unless we are really good at the language. It's kind of hard to measure that, but I'll give you a hint. If you've only studied the language for a couple of years, you're not. If you took classes in it and have been studying it off and on for a decade or so, you are probably not really good at it. When will you get there? Well, it takes a lot of time and effort. For some it takes more than others. What you need to be is very humble about it until you've spent a long time in the language.

Check it out. Let me know what you think!

J.I. Packer on Pentecostalism

2008-04-19T08:34:00.006-05:00

In the Easter edition of Today's Pentecostal Evangel, and weekly publication of the Assemblies of God there is a conversation with J.I. Packer eminent theologian and professor emeritus at Regent College. I post a portion of the conversation below:

tpe: Why is Pentecostalism growing around the world?

PACKER: The Pentecostal emphasis on life in the Spirit, which became a big thing at the turn of the 20th century, was absolutely right. It was an emphasis that hadn't been fully grasped by other evangelicals for a long time. The up-front quest for fellowship with God that grabbed the whole of the heart and therefore had emotional overtones and the openness to a recurrence of some of the signs of the Kingdom was right. In the early 20th century evangelicals didn't accept Pentecostals, and Pentecostals found themselves tempted to say, "We're the only fully fashioned Christians in the world today." Only during the last 50 years has real partnership and mutual respect become reality.

It's simply a marvelous work of God that when the Pentecostal version of the gospel has been preached all around the world for the past half-century there has been a tremendous harvest. It's a wonderful work in our time, which we can set against the decline of Christianity in North America and Western Europe. Most notably in Africa and Asia, Christianity has been roaring ahead through the Pentecostal version of the Christian message and life in the Spirit. I celebrate it and thank God for it. There have been older evangelicals who have set themselves against distinctive Pentecostal emphases as if there's something wrong with it. I have not lined up with those folk and indeed have argued that their attitude is mistaken.

Thanks for the plug, Dr. Packer!

new blogroll additions

2008-04-19T08:23:00.003-05:00

Along with nearly everyone else in the universe I added Nathan Stitt to my blog roll - unlike me where I kind of just do my own thing - Nathan's figured out a niche for the moment that people like: NT Greek (for now at least).

I followed his lead too and added "Roger Mugs" (he really doesn't want folks in his church knowing he blogs (I guess that could cause a boatload of problems). So he writes under a pseudonym (a good one at that). He is a pastor and attends RTS so he has some interesting posts and things to say!

Peace!

This is for Nick

2008-04-18T17:04:00.002-05:00

This is for Nick: 25 worst rappers of all time. Any disagreements?

Why study the nature and implications of the Trinity

2008-04-18T16:09:00.005-05:00

It is a key essential doctrine of the historic Christian faith - salvation lies on its assertion. Learning more of the doctrine helps us learn more of the God who is indeed Trinity.

I can teach us about:

The oneness and unity of God (with implications for unity in the Church).
The diversity of God (with implications for diversity in the Church).
The holiness, jealousy, and wrath of God.
The Lordship and Divinity of Jesus Christ.
The deity and work of the the Holy Spirit.
The role of the Father, Son, and Spirit in the life of the believer and the Church.
The Nature the Church (reflects the nature of the Trinity)
The mission of the Church (reflects the mission of the Trinity)
Love (as the essence of who God is).
Community (Trinity as ultimate model of community).
Relationships (God is relational, so are we).
Mutual submission (reflects the inner dynamic of the Trinity).
Interdependence (reflects the inner dynamic of the Trinity).
The Nature of Marriage (reflects the intimacy within the Trinity).
Etc, etc, etc.

Really, the list can go on and on.

Really now, why study and read up on the Trinity!? Indeed!

Update: Professor John Stackhouse of Regent College has some thoughts on the implications of the Trinity for the gender debate....which is, not a lot. (HT to Bryan L).

George O. Wood: on Seminary

2008-04-17T12:32:00.006-05:00

Last weekend the Assemblies of God Seminary had their annual "seminary day" (lots of seminaries having them right now). George O. Wood, the General Superintendent of the Assemblies of God spoke to the potential students about making a decision to attend seminary - he talks about general aspects of decision making and the will of God and ties it into deciding to attend Seminary. Listening to it, it gave me encouragement that I did. I am so glad I did. Some of us in Pentecostal circles need that encouragement as seminary is still often somewhat frowned upon among Pentecostals.

A great quote (very roughly prarphrased) "those who have overwhelming manifestations or supernatural callings - often suffer more in the long run..." (it's pastoral caution against the tendency toward over emotionalism). He advocates seeking God in prayer and fasting seeking his direction in worship (Acts 13:1) over seeking some overemotional experience. It's very solid pastoral advice and direction.

Also, he makes some insider jokes about Springfield, MO being the "Holy City" and the "City of the Millennium" because SGF is the headquarters for the AG in the US. His office is not even a 5 minute drive down the road from the Seminary.

Here is the link (mp3 file). It's really good stuff. Let me know what you think.

Ephesians 1:7

2008-04-16T20:18:00.002-05:00

I have a question on Ephesians 1:7 - It says in the Greek "en hoe exomen..." I notice most translations (andyou) put "In Christ" or "In him." Isn't "hoe" a relative pronoun? So could (or should) we say "in whom we have redemption..."? I notice the same phrase "en hoe..." in verses 11 and 13. Why not just leave it "in whom"?

(sorry, no Greek fonts, just approx transliterations...)

I emailed Mike about this but figured I'd just put it up on the blog and open it up.

New RBL additions

2008-04-16T18:01:00.004-05:00

The following are some of the more interesting additions to the Review of Biblical Literature Website:

John Barton
The Nature of Biblical Criticism
Reviewed by James D. G. Dunn

Tremper Longman III
Proverbs
Reviewed by Timothy J. Sandoval

A. Andrew Das
Solving the Romans Debate
Reviewed by Don Garlington, and David J. Downs

James M. Robinson
Jesus: According to the Earliest Witness
Reviewed by Robert A. Derrenbacker Jr.

OT Theology, what to do?

2008-04-16T16:04:00.003-05:00

Okay, so I shared with my family that I would like a copy of Gerhard von Rad's Old Testament Theology and knew it would help that CBD has it on sale for $9.99. I do not know if it has been ordered yet or not. BUT, Chris Tilling keeps jawing about how wonderful and categorically imperative it is one go out right now and purchase John Goldengay's (so far) 2 volume Old (First) Testament Theology; Israel's Gospel and Israel's Faith. One is old, the other is newer. Even so, there is also Waltke's new OT Theology that seems like a must read (or even a must have).

So, what do I do? Tell the fam not to get von Rad and get me one of Goldingay's volumes or just skip all that and go with Waltlke? Perhaps let von Rad come and get Waltke too? I really don't need (or have room for) a shelf full of OT Theology books but one or two might be useful...

Oh, what to do??!!

ESV Study Bible

2008-04-15T18:01:00.009-05:00

Following Nathan Stitt's lead - the ESV website has announced its long awaited "study Bible" will be out in October - Nathan listed one set of features. Here is another:

The ESV Bible text is set in highly readable 9-point type, in a single-column, book-text format.
Section summaries are highlighted for easy location throughout the notes. Summaries provide an overview of each main section and correspond to the outline shown in the introduction for each book.
Over 200 full-color maps printed throughout make events and places in the Bible come to life.
Over 25,000 notes focus especially on understanding the Bible text and providing answers to frequently raised issues. Words from the Bible text are printed in bold for easy reference.
Over 80,000 cross-references provide easy access to key words, passages, and themes throughout the Bible.
Numerous diagrams bring fresh understanding to key places and events in the Bible, based on the best, most recent historical and archaeological research.
Over 200 charts provide concise, “at a glance” summaries of important themes and teaching.

I was happy to see my preaching professor, Doug Oss, is listed as contributing notes to 2 Peter and Jude!

I will say it definitely looks to be a "study" Bible and probably not one to take to church - it also looks as though the notes and articles will be very conservative and reformed in bent, based on the contributors listed. This doesn't have to be bad per se, just something to be aware of.

I am also pretty sure Nick will get a review copy for free! (anyone want to bet on it?).

Books on the Holy Spirit (and related issues):

2008-04-15T11:57:00.008-05:00

The following is a list of books I have related to the person and work of the Holy Spirit and related issues:

Stanley M. Horton's What the Bible Says about the Holy Spirit (Gospel Publishing House, Revised edition, 2005). An overview of the Holy Spirit from Genesis to Revelation with some practical and pastoral teaching on the role of the Spirit in the life of the believer and the church.

Wilf Hildebrandt's An Old Testament Theology of the Spirit of God (Hendrickson 1995). Here Hildebrandt explores every occurance of the Hebrew word for spirit "ruach" in the Old Testament. (A sort of OT version of Fee's GEP but shorter and less massive).

A Reader on the Holy Spirit: Anointing Equipping and Empowering for Service (ICFG, 1993). This is a compendium of articles on various issues related to the Holy Spirit by various folks in the Foursquare Church.

Gordon Fee's God's Empowering Presence: The Holy Spirit in the Letters of Paul (Hendrickson, 1994). The standard scholarly work on the Person and work of the Holy Spirit in Paul.

Gordon Fee's Paul, the Spirit and the People of God, (Hendrickson, 1996). An abridged and slightly modified version of GEP. Simply a must have for every Christian. Really, reading this book will challenge and probably change how you view what "church" is all about.

Gary Burge's The Anointed Community: The Holy Spirit in the Johannine Tradition (Eerdmans, 1987). More or less Gary Burge's doctoral dissertation in published format. Issues regarding a Johannine community aside (cf. Bauckham) it is a solid work on the role of the Spirit in John's writings.

Robert P. Menzies, Empowered for Witness: The Spirit in Luke-Acts (Sheffield Academic Press, 1991). I have a slightly different copy than the one linked and at a substantially cheaper cost from when Debbie and I were at the Asia Pacific Theological Seminary in Baguio City in the Philippines in 2005. This is a published version of Menzies' doctoral dissertation and is a quite scholarly approach to the Spirit in Luke Acts. If I thought I could, I would love to go back and complete a ThM in Pentecostal/Charismatic Studies at APTS!

William W. and Robert P. Menzies' Spirit and Power: Foundations of Pentecostal Experience (A call to Evangelical Dialogue) (Zondervan, 2000). This is a toned down variation of Roberts more scholarly approach in Empowered for Witness and probably a good place to star for those wanting to review and critique a theology of the Pentecostal Experience (basically it is a defense of IPE doctrine).

Roger Stronstad, The Charismatic Theology of St. Luke (Hendrickson, 1984). This is Strontads Masters Thesis. While it is a bit dated but still a solid presentation of the Holy Spirit in the Lukan Narratives. This would be good to get with Menzies' Spirit and Power book.

Blaine Charette, Restoring Presence: The Spirit in Matthew's Gospel (Sheffied Academic Press, 2000). Charette here presents one of the few (if not the only) solid case for a Matthean Pnumatology (theology of the Spirit).

Craig S. Keener's The Spirit in Gospels and Acts: Divine Purity and Power (Hendrickson, 1997). This has to be Kenner at his best regarding the background views of the Spirit in the Gospels and Acts - he focuses primarily on Jewish sources for a background context of the Spirit and how the early church viewed the work of the Spirit in the life of the believer and the church.

Craig S. Keener's Gift and Giver: The Holy Spirit for Today (Baker Academic, 2001). This would be good for anyone who wants to know more about who the Holy Spirit is and how he works in our lives. It is less scholarly (more pastoral) and geared to the average Christian interested in learning more about the Holy Spirit. I am not even sure this would be an expressly Pentecostal book but good for all Christians.

Craig S. Keener's 3 Crucial Questions About the Holy Spirit (Baker, 1996). This deals with three specific questions: What is the Baptism in the Holy Spirit? How important are Spiritual Gifts today? How can we recognize the Spirit. Some of this may be repeated in Gift and Giver but I think it might be worth looking into.

David Lim's Spiritual Gifts: A Fresh Look (Gospel Publishing House, 1998). This is a more traditional AG view of Spiritual Gifts and their role in church. Still interesting nonetheless. It should absolutely be coupled with Kenneth Berding's What Are Spiritual Gifts?: Rethinking the Conventional View (Kregel Publications, 2006). This work opens up the idea of Spiritual Ministries as opposed to "gifts".

Frank D. Macchia's Baptized in the Spirit: A Global Pentecostal Theology (Zondervan, 2006). This is a systematic theology of the Holy Spirit.

Richard Gaffin, et al, Are Miraculous Gifts for Today? 4 Views (Zondervan, 1996). Gives for view for and against miraculous gifts.

Jack S. Deere's Surprised by the Power of the Spirit (Zondervan, 1996). This gives Deere's won account of his experience of the Holy Spirit in his life even while a professor at the infamous cessationist school Dallas Theological Seminary, form which he was promptly fired one it became known he received the Baptism of the Spirit.

Think I have enough books on the person and work of the Holy Spirit yet?

Did Jesus' earthly father die early or no?

2008-04-14T12:24:00.006-05:00

Mike Halcomb over on his blog Pisteuomen presents a very intriguing possibility that Jesus' earthly father did not die early but was in fact Joseph of Arimathea.

I personally have never heard this before - have you? what do you think of it?

Mike summarizes A.J. Fejfar noting that Joseph and Jesus, as "tektons" were apparently charged by the people of Nazareth with "penury" (hording wealth?) and so Joseph changed his name and location.

Questions:
If this were the case would not the folks of Nazareth known still who Joseph was and that Mary was his wife and Jesus his son? Or would changing his identity have him presumed dead to the folks in Nazareth and no one would realize he was the same person as before? Or was Arimathea far enough away from Nazareth to remain unknown?

I am curious too as to any possible implications for Catholic theology and their argument of perpetual virginity of Mary? (maybe their is no connection?).

New book on Revelation 19

2008-04-14T11:35:00.007-05:00

There is a new book out on Revelation 19 - Revelation 19 in Historical and Mythological Context (Peter Lang Publishing, 2008) - it is a dissertation by one of my professors from AGTS, David A. Thomas (PhD from SBTS) visiting professor of missions theology and lead astor of the Orange County Worship Center, in Santa Ana, CA.

Book Description (cut and pasted from the Amazon website):

Revelation 19:11–21 is a passage rich in symbol and allusion, much of which proves elusive for interpreters restricting themselves to Old Testament references. However, when Greco-Roman history and mythology are examined, new possibilities are discovered. Revelation 19 in Historical and Mythological Context analyzes the Roman triumph and the Parthian threat as sources for the colorful imagery in Revelation 19, ultimately exploring the Nero redivivus myth as the nexus between the two and a key for unlocking the passage. Paradox and parody are important themes in this technical though theological study of the climax to the drama that is the Apocalypse.

Review Comment (cut and pasted from the Amazon website)

"David Andrew Thomas’s work is fascinating, well-organized, well-researched, and well-argued. It brings new light to some old puzzles on a passage to which commentators (including myself) have often given insufficient attention. Thomas deeply explores proposed backgrounds of Revelation’s imagery, providing further investigation for some and completely new ground for others. By avoiding the fallacy of unnecessary either-ors he achieves a new synthesis that many students of Revelation will find intriguing." Craig Keener, Palmer Theological Seminary, Wynnewood, Pennsylvania

Yeah, it is pricey - all dissertation publications typically are - still I think it will blow your socks off!

mini-missions convention

2008-04-13T16:57:00.004-05:00

We had a missionary family from AGWM come and spend a couple of days with us - they minister in Madrid, Spain focusing primarily on street evangelism - it is working there quite well. They pretty much use the same method as one sees at The Way of the Master (The Use of the Law in Evangelism). I like the method and have used it myself from time to time - given the circumstances it can be quite effective. They are a great family and it was a blessing to have them here. Please consider lifting Joy up in prayer as they discovered she has breast cancer. There is a website: Kilometer Cero that tells a bit more about what they do.

Who killed Goliath?

2008-04-11T15:52:00.003-05:00

The editors of The New Oxford Annotated Bible Third Edition (p312-313) in discussing the historicity of the Historical books of the Old Testament note that we can still somewhat know the basic sense of the historical periods that they cover but that each text needs to be weighed individually in terms of its date of composition and its likely goals. In this they accept the veracity of the "dry notice in 1 Kings 14:25-26" noting it may come from an archival source. However, in contrast, they assert:

there are good reasons to be suspicious of the historicity of the long, detailed, and embellished story of David slaying Goliath in 1 Samuel 17; this story uses late biblical Hebrew language, comes from a different source that the surrounding material in Samuel, and i structured like a fairy tale, in that the poor, short, unexpected hero gets to marry the tall king's daughter by killing the giant who had vilified God. Additionally, 2 Samuel 21:19 reads, "Then there was another battle with the Philistines at Gob; and Elhanan son of Jaare-oregim, the Bethlehemite, killed Goliath the Gittite, the shaft of whose spear was like a weaver's beam." It is much more likely that a short tradition in which Goliath is killed by a relatively unknown figure (Elhanan) would be the source for the long elaborate tale attributing the same event to the well known David, rather than vice versa. Thus, the modern historian must subject each text in these Historical books to the type of internal analysis used on nonbiblical historical texts when external information bearing on the text is lacking.

So the question in my mind becomes "who then, killed Goliath?" If not David, why attribute the event to him instead of Elhanan? Does the writer use the event to thrust David into the limelight as God's chosen King?

How do you feel about the possibility that David may have not actually killed Goliath, that the whole story is in fact embellished and fictional?

What say you?

do I have a terrible attitude?

2008-04-10T13:51:00.002-05:00

Jim West noted the passing of David Noel Freedman - an eminent and erudite Biblical Scholar. I noted in the comment:

It is indeed sad that David Freedman has gone on to be with the Lord, yet joyful that he has received his eternal promotion! - I am glad he leaves behind an amazing legacy and lots of books and articles for the rest of us to continue on with.

Well, then the following comment says:

"Terribile auditu…"

How so? He lived a long and rich life and has a rich legacy of biblical scholarship in the Christian community. Now he is with the Lord he loved. Is this not the goal of the Christian life? Correct me if I am wrong.

Seminary Meme

2008-04-10T12:46:00.004-05:00

Yvette tagged me with a Seminary Meme. If I answer the questions I have a chance to get a hundred bucks in free books. Now who could say no to that?

This Seminary Meme is part of a competition sponsored by [the] Going to Seminary [blog] and Eisenbrauns. If you’d like to be entered, simply answer the 7 questions below and tag 5 other people. You’ll also need to post this paragraph (links included) with your answers as the links will be tracked back to your blog and will count as your “entry” into the competition. On April 30th, 2008, one blogger will be selected at random to win a $100 gift certificate to the Eisenbrauns online bookstore.

Where do you attend seminary? The Assemblies of God Theological Seminary in Springfield, MO.

What class do you think has most impacted your spiritual life? A class called The Spiritual Formation of the Minister. It may seem basic but too many seminary students get really caught up in the academics of seminary life and forget to nurture their own souls - I have this problem too. The Spiritual Formation class provided needed grounding to be sure I don't run myself into the ground spiritually.

What seminary professor has been the most influential while in seminary? Without a doubt, Benny C. Aker, now professor emeritus of New Testament. Why? Mostly because of his kind heart and gentle spirit -but most of all because I learned from him about the nature of theology and the role it plays in a persons life and in the life of the Church. He also taught me its okay to question certain doctrines and their formulations - if there is a better way, go with that one. Also, I really connected with David A. Thomas, visiting professor of mission theology and got two A+'s from him! He taught me much about the power of prayer, fasting, and Bible reading in relation to ministry and biblical studies! If one want's to really experience God's power, prayer, fasting, and Bible reading are key!

What is the greatest challenge you’ve faced in seminary? Getting started, but one I got going I really enjoyed it, had it not been for graduation, I would have kept going! ;)

What has been the greatest reward you’ve experienced in seminary? Learning it is fully possible to be a biblical scholar and also a Pentecostal (typically viewed as an oxymoron in Pentecostal circles).

What are your plans after seminary? Well, I am doing it now, living out a missionary pastor calling right next to one of the greatest of Seven Natural Wonders in the World! The South Rim of the Grand Canyon. I eventually want to pursue doctoral work and teach while still pastoring or doing missions.

How many times have you been asked question #6? Not too often as I am in it now. Though I remember constant discussions in seminary about if I wanted to do doctoral work - on prof just assumed I would by saying "you want to get your doctorate don't you?"

Tags: Lee, Josh, Glen, and a couple others who have probably already been tagged.

Sorry Nick, I guess you don't qualify!! ;)

OT Theology

2008-04-10T12:23:00.004-05:00

Welp, I put in for a b-day request (which means it's likely a sure thing-especially since it is a whopping NINE BUCKS!!) for Gerhard von Rad's Old Testament Theology One Volume Hardcover edition put out by Prince Press which is on sale over at CBD.com. Hey, it's HUGE (992 pgs), but its his two volumes put together for a whopping NINE BUCKS!! (I often worry and wonder why something like this is going for so cheap - cheaper isn't always better but... I can't afford the two volume edition of which each goes for roughly $40 Bucks a pop). I don't have an OT Theology and sadly (sort of) I did not take such in seminary (though I did take three Hebrew Exegesis courses (each in the three parts of the Hebrew Bible) and got some theology through those courses)). I will probably want to get Waltke's OT theology and then I'll have a somewhat balanced set (older and newer - there have been some advanced in OT Studies so newer works can be helpful - though not always). Did I say this book is a whopping NINE BUCKS!!??

consider reading Francis Schaeffer

2008-04-08T22:22:00.004-05:00

I think Doug Groothuis offer some really good advice about reading the works of Francis A. Schaeffer. It would probably be good to start with the trilogy offered by Amazon. It'll help round out your reading in Biblical Studies. Most people don't realize he was addressing issues of post-modernism long before others were - he was a bit ahead of his time.

My "Jesus books"

2008-04-07T13:01:00.007-05:00

The following are books I have that in one way or another focus on the person and work Jesus Christ:

Jurgen Moltmann's The Way of Jesus Christ: Christology in Messianic Dimensions (Augsburg Fortress Publishers; 1st Fortress Press ed edition, 1993).

Donald G. Bloesch's Jesus Christ: Savior and Lord (Christian Foundations Series) (IVP: 1997).

Richard Bauckham's Jesus and the Eyewitnesses: The Gospels as Eyewitness Testimony, (Eerdmans, 2006). This is more about the Gospels, but still about Jesus.

John Stott's The Cross of Christ (IVP, 1986).

__________. The Incomparable Christ, (IVP, 2004).

Luke Timothy Johnson's The Real Jesus: The Misguided Quest for the Historical Jesus and the Truth of the Traditional Gospels, (HarperOne, 1997).

______________________. Living Jesus: Learning the Heart of the Gospel, (HarperOne, 2000).

Michael Green's Who is this Jesus? (Oliver Nelson, 1992). (I have an older edition).

Philip Yancey's The Jesus I Never Knew (Zondervan, 1995).

So, as you can see, my list is not extensive and rather conservative (with the exception of Moltmann).

Correction: Johnson isn't really a conservative or too overly liberal - but sure does slam the Jesus Seminar and hits a home run with Living Jesus!

OT > NT or NT > OT?

2008-04-06T23:36:00.002-05:00

One thing I was trying to ask in my post on Job do you work to understand the New Testament in light of the Old Testament or is their new understanding of the Old Testament in light of the New Testament? Perhaps it's a both/and?

As I see it, the cross of Christ and his resurrection changed everything, ever-y-thing (think of Woody's head spinning in Toy Story when he confronted Sid). So, I think our reading of the Old Testament is going to be influenced by the work of Christ on the cross and his rising from the dead - I mean this is what totally changed Paul from Saul, what changed Paul from a Pharisee to Missionary/Ambassador for Christ - the cross and resurrection. It shifted how he understood the OT, it shifted his focus from the Law to Grace. A case in point is with the issue of "ha-satan" in Job - while perhaps in its context it may have not meant the devil per se, theological development over time and the New Testament re-interpretation of the Old Testament allows us to see that "ha-satan" is in fact Satan, the accuser of the brethren. Thanks to Peter for his input.

What say you?

Top Ten Books on my Shelf(s)

2008-04-06T12:30:00.005-05:00

In no particular order:

1: Stanley Grenz' Theology for the Community of God, (Eerdmans 2000). Even though he does not agree with Pentecostalism and says so in this book, the rest of it is really good and his strongest contribution, in my opinion, is implications of the Trinity for the Community of Faith.

2. Gordon Fee's God's Empowering Presence: the Holy Spirit in the Letters of Paul, (Hendrickson, 1994). This is hands down the best book on Pauls views and understanding of the Holy Spirit.

3. George Eldon Ladd's A Theology of the New Testament, Revised Ed, (Hendrickson, 1993). It might be a bit dated now, but is still considered a top level NT Theology. I'd like to complement it eventually with I. Howard Marshall's NT Theology.

4. Luke Timothy Johnson's The Writings of the New Testament: An Interpretation, (Augsburg Fortress Publishers; Pap/Cdr edition, 2002). Johnson takes a more thematic approach in this NT intro and makes and awesome complement to the more standard or technical NT Intro such as R. Brown or Carson Moo Morris.

5. Richard Bauckham's Jesus and the Eyewitnesses: The Gospels as Eyewitness Testimony, (Eerdmans, 2006). The best out on Jesus and its fun to listen to everyone scrambling for cover as their anonymous communities theories of the Gospels comes crashing down.

6. John Stott's The Cross of Christ, IVP, 1986. I have to confess, most of what John Stott writes just makes my heart sing. What else could be better than reading on the cross?

7. Arthur Glasser's Announcing the Kingdom: The Story of Gods Mission in the Bible, (Baker Academic, 2003). This is a great overview of the Bible from the viewpoint of salvation history and the role of God's mission in the Bible.

8. F.F. Bruce's Paul, Apostle of the Heart Set Free, (Eerdmans, 2000). Who else better to read on Paul than Bruce? This more or less follows from Paul's conversion to the end. Still a standard on Paul.

9. C. S. Lewis' Mere Christianity, (Touchstone Books edition, 1996). Couldn't leave this one out - Lewis what not a theologian but seemed to "get it" better than most theologians in in my opinion.

10. Dietrich Bonhoeffer's The Cost of Discipleship, (Touchstone; 1 edition, 1995). This is the classic on discipleship to Jesus and should be read regularly in my estimation.

Comments?

"Moses" died...

2008-04-06T00:12:00.002-05:00

Actor Charlton Heston dies at 84.

Heston lent his strong presence to some of the most acclaimed and successful films of the midcentury. "Ben-Hur" won 11 Academy Awards, tying it for the record with the more recent "Titanic" (1997) and "The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King" (2003). Heston's other hits include: "The Ten Commandments," "El Cid," "55 Days at Peking," "Planet of the Apes" and "Earthquake."

He liked the cite the number of historical figures he had portrayed:

Andrew Jackson ("The President's Lady," "The Buccaneer"), Moses ("The Ten Commandments"), title role of "El Cid," John the Baptist ("The Greatest Story Ever Told"), Michelangelo ("The Agony and the Ecstasy"), General Gordon ("Khartoum"), Marc Antony ("Julius Caesar," "Antony and Cleopatra"), Cardinal Richelieu ("The Three Musketeers"), Henry VIII ("The Prince and the Pauper").

Need Help

2008-04-05T17:58:00.003-05:00

Would anyone out there happen to have Peter Enns' NIV Application Commentary on Exodus who would be willing to scan and send me a few of the more pertinent pages on Exodus 20:1-17? If possible, send it asap. You can email me at brianfulthorp at yahoo dot com. Thanks for the consideration.

Is the Devil in the book of Job?

2008-04-04T17:57:00.004-05:00

For the longest time many have believed that God may have "allowed" "Satan" (aka: the Devil) to test Job as seen in the first couple chapters of Job. However, Tyler Williams posted a blog on what the word "satan" in Job actually means back in March - I just learned of it the other day through Chris Heard's site. Tyler Williams has a good argument - the term "satan" (a transliteration of the Hebrew) does not refer to that creature often known as "the devil" (formerly known as "Lucifer" and seen in the Revelation, as "the Dragon"). HEre is a key Quote to consider:

In the prose prologue to the book of Job we are introduced to “the satan” (‏השטן‎) who is among the “sons of Elohim” (‏בני האלהים‎) (1:6). It is pretty clear that this passage isn’t referring to “Satan” (i.e., the king of demons) since the Hebrew noun “satan” has a definite article. The biblical text refers to “the satan”, not “Satan.” Personal names in Hebrew (as in English) do not take the definite article. I don’t go around referring to myself as “The Tyler” — and if I did, people would think I was weirder than they already think I am.....Now don’t get me wrong, I am not saying that the figure of “the satan” in the book of Job is not sinister; he does question the motives behind Job’s fear of Yahweh, but he is not the “Satan” found in the New Testament.

One issue that is interesting is how to view the Old Testament - many want to let it speak for itself and say "in context" such and such. Yet we see in the NT, nearly every Gospel writer, Paul and the rest put forth Jewish or Hebrew exegesis of the Old Testament - some seemingly take things out of context and apply them to Jesus for various theological reasons - or at least it is a part of their exegetical method. Interestingly there are some OT folks who might disagree with Paul's interpretation of certain OT texts that he looks at in the light of Christ. One of my NT profs from seminary told me about an OT guy he listened to embarassingly disagree with Paul!

So what do you think? Could "‏השטן‎" refer to the devil or some other angelic being? Does the context support one or the other?

Missions again

2008-04-04T15:50:00.003-05:00

A few posts back I talked about different things I think about missions. One particular part of missions I want to highlight is the term "unreached," what it means and what it does not mean. The term unreached is a missiological term missionaries have been working to define and clarify so that it is very specific. It is a technical term that has been hammered out so to speak and refers to a rather specific situation. Unfortunately, it has become a bit of a buzz word in the American Church not unlike the term "missional" has been in danger of becoming, if it isn't already.

Here is a rather unfortunate example where the term "unreached" is misapplied and used as a buzz word that sadly and unnecessarily ends up pitting home missions against world missions. (Let me know what you think, and if you agree.)

So what does the term "unreached" mean? To what context/situations does it apply?

To start, "unreached" refers to a very specific socio-cultural (even linguistically unique) situation. It has to do with the idea of a specific group of people who have very little to no access to the story of Jesus such that there are very very few to no near neighbor witnesses who can relate to them the message of the Christian gospel. It also refers to a situation where a specific people group has no indigenous community of believing Christians with adequate numbers and resources to evangelize it own people.

So then what is a "people group"? It refers to a specific group of people who have their own socio-cultural-linguistic distinctives such that they differ from another group and barriers of misunderstanding can exist. If you go to the Joshua Project website, you see that they also note that they quote the 1982 Lausanne Committee Chicago meeting's definition of a people group which reads, "For evangelization purposes, a people group is the largest group within which the Gospel can spread as a church planting movement without encountering barriers of understanding or acceptance."

So, if you browsed the article linked and looked over the Joshua Project website you'll probably notice that unwed moms, teenagers, addicts, disillusioned college kids, homeless people, divorced or single parents, etc, do not fit the specific missiological classification of an "unreached" people group.

Would you agree?

One book only

2008-04-04T07:59:00.008-05:00

I got tagged by Bryan a couple days ago to do what Drew prefers to call an “autobiographical widget™”.

Books are scarce in the world. They are illegal in some provinces. They are not easily replaced if not impossible to replace if lost in many if not most circumstances. If you can replace a book or buy one it is usually through the black market at astronomical costs that you cannot afford. Yet you have been able to maintain one of the best collections in the world. If your entire library was about to burn up (think of the firefighters in Fahrenheit 451 invading your home) and you could only have one* book to take with you other than the bible, what would that be and why?

Simple Rules
Answer the question. Offer one quote that resonates with you. Tag five people whose response is of genuine interest to you and inform him or her that they have been tagged. Cheers!

*And it cannot be an entire series of something, that’s cheating.

Okay, it has taken me a couple days to think about this because I have several books I really like. But if pressed to the wall and forced to make a decision I would probably take Richard Bauckham's Jesus and the Eyewitnesses. (Well, I'd really press hard to bargain for two and hope I could get John Stott's The Cross of Christ as well because much of what Stott writes just really sits well with me). But I have been "discovering" Bauckham's work and I like much of what I have been finding. I have yet to get more of his stuff. Right now I have his WBC commentary on 2 Peter/Jude, Jesus and the Eyewitnesses, and The Testimony of the Beloved Disciple. All of these have been really good so far. I want to get the new one he edited The Gospel of John in Christian Theology, and an older one on the Theology of Revelation, which is probably a must for the study of the Revelation.

Why Jesus and the Eyewitnesses? I like Gospel studies and I like works on the central figure of our faith: Jesus. The whole idea of anonymous communities composing the Gospels hasn't really sat well with me and I had concerns about it. Well, in reading Bauckham we see the house of cards fall, we see the end of an era and really, the end of a particular school of discipline within NT Studies - that of discussion the features, attributes, and the like of anonymous communities or even the supposed Johannine community.

Here is a quote that sits well with me:

There are difficulties, of course, in the fact that these four accounts of Jesus differ, but there is no doubt that the Jesus of the church's faith through the centuries has been a Jesus found in these Gospels. That means that Christian faith has trusted these texts. Christian faith has trusted that in these texts we encounter the real Jesus, and it is hard to see how Christian faith and theology can work with a radically distrusting attitude to the Gospels (p2).... What is in question is whether the reconstruction of a Jesus other than the Jesus of the Gospels, the attempt, in other words, to do all over again what the Evangelists did, though with different methods, critical historical methods, can ever provide the kind of access to the reality of Jesus that Christian faith and theology have always trusted we have in the Gospels. By comparison with the Gospels, any Jesus reconstructed by the quest cannot fail to be reductionist from the perspective of Christian faith and theology (p4) [Italics mine].

This is a slam dunk quote in my opinion. In fact when I read it, I could hear various folks scattering across the floor ducking their heads as their house of cards came collapsing down on top of them. I hope they make it out okay.

I am late on this so no tags.

Missions Question of the Day

2008-04-03T17:27:00.000-05:00

Who was the first missionary?

Pentecostal/Charismatic Quote of the Day

2008-03-31T22:04:00.002-05:00

"The experience of the Holy Spirit is so important to me. I am not a Christian because of good arguments, I am because of an experience of God, multiple experiences, and the arguments help give rationality and coherence to those experiences. As I learn more and more every year I find that my knowledge does not sustain my faith. My experience of God does. The presence of the Holy Spirit is what keeps me going." -Bryan L.

Heaven, again

2008-03-29T07:35:00.002-05:00

So then, what exactly is "Heaven"? in the biblical sense?

Again, is N.T. Wright? There is no locale to which one can refer to as "heaven."

No Heaven?

2008-03-28T15:49:00.008-05:00

So, Is NT Wright? That "heaven" is not our home?

I admit I am not a big fan of the Bishop of Durham, he can be interesting but when reading him I constantly feel like he is trying to avoid something, not sure what it is just yet.

Here is a key quote from the CT article linked above (really an excerpt from a book):

The traditional picture of people going to either heaven or hell as a one-stage, postmortem journey represents a serious distortion and diminution of the Christian hope. Bodily resurrection is not just one odd bit of that hope. It is the element that gives shape and meaning to the rest of the story of God's ultimate purposes. If we squeeze it to the margins, as many have done by implication, or indeed, if we leave it out altogether, as some have done quite explicitly, we don't just lose an extra feature, like buying a car that happens not to have electrically operated mirrors. We lose the central engine, which drives it and gives every other component its reason for working. [Italics mine]

Is it just me or it this a non-sequitur? (something that doesn't follow). How does the hope of heaven diminish the reality of the resurrection? It also seems like he is building a strawman argument because those who long for heaven do not downplay the hope of resurrection nor think they won't be . Its a both and. I understand he has a problem with people saying we'll be with God in heaven forever and that he is saying to be in heaven is to be with God - not in a particular location per se. Fine. However, all I see him doing is trying to redefine the terms and this really just confuses people rather than bring clarity, in my opinion.

Please feel free to dialogue with me about this. But to me this is one of the things NT Wright does best: build houses of cards with non-sequitors and straw man arguments.

What say you?

Spirit Baptism vs Fruit of the Spirit

2008-03-27T17:02:00.002-05:00

This is a comment I put up on a Christian forum in a discussion regarding the gift of tongues.

just in case it needs clarification - it was not necessary for Jesus to speak in tongues and besides, nobody did before Pentecost (at least not in the sense we see it in Acts 2. Of course there was prophetic/spirit inspired speech in Judaism and acts of esoteric speech in other religions prior to Pentecost, but something new happened at the Pentecost event) - at Pentecost a new age of the Spirit was begun and as Jesus said at the end of Mark - with the coming of the Spirit, people will speak in new tongues, cast out demons (notice no one could but Jesus prior to Pentecost) lay hands on the sick and see healing, etc. When Jesus said the disciples would do greater works than he did, it was a reference to Pentecost and that "greater" meant not more miraculous but greater in extent, or in terms of geography since Jesus came to seek and save that which was lost in Israel. We, the people of God are to do greater works than Jesus in seeing God's salvation to the ends of the earth.

I disagree with the notion that tongues makes one more spiritual than another who may not yet speak/pray in tongues. Evidence of one's spiritual maturity is not tongues (or the lack thereof) but rather evidence of the fruit of the Spirit (Gal 5:22-23).

Also, there is no direct correlation between spiritual ministries (or gifts) and the fruit of the Spirit, per se. Certainly the fruit may be affected by one's reception of Spirit Baptism (as in possibly somewhat accelerating their development, with the right heart and attitude of humility and repentance before God) but not the other way around. Spirit Baptism is charismatic empowerment for witness to Jesus in he world in both word and deed. The fruit of the Spirit indicate one's spiritual maturity in Christ and takes time and effort (continual submission to the Spirit) to develop in the heart and life of the believer.

This is why I believe we often see so much disconnect between those folks who may have the Baptism of the Spirit (as seen in Acts 2:4ff) yet display little evidence of the fruit of the Spirit (spiritual maturity) and those who have great spiritual maturity (fruit of the Spirit) and yet may not have the Baptism of the Spirit (Acts 2:4ff).

Again, tongues are not an indicator of spiritual maturity but rather the fruit of the Spirit (Gal 5:22-23).

I do agree with Ezra [username on the forum], love is key. This is why the "love" chapter (13) is put in between 12 and 14. Without love, the gifts most likely won't be used and applied properly in a congregational setting. Love is to be at the heart of functioning in Spiritual ministries (or gifts). I use the term "ministries" because they are to empower and build up others, not exalt the self, which tends to happen when we use the term "gifts", it puts the focus on the individual instead of the congregation.

Hope this helps.

Feel free to comment, I am still in process with all this in terms of trying to explain it in a way that is true to the Bible.

2 Timothy 2:19-24 (NRSV)

2008-03-27T13:05:00.006-05:00

Read the passage below out loud. Let me know if you had to read a portion of it (or two) over again and which part. I want to see if I am not alone on tripping over a phrase (or two) in this passage. How might you smooth it out a little more?

Thanks,

(19) I hope in the Lord to send Timothy to you soon, so that I may be cheered by news of you. (20) I have no one like him who will be genuinely concerned for your welfare. (21) All of them are seeking their own interests, not those of Jesus Christ. (22) But Timothy's worth you know, how like a son with a father he as served with me in the work of the gospel. (23) I hope therefore to send him as soon as I see how things go with me; (24) and I trust in the Lord that I will also come soon.

EJ Interview with George O. Wood pt3

2008-03-25T18:54:00.003-05:00

George O. Wood, General Superintendent of the Assemblies of God in America on defending the Pentecostal experience:

I learned from an incredible, stellar faculty composed of the luminaries of the evangelical world at the time: George Eldon Ladd, author of Jesus and the Kingdom; Geoffrey W. Bromiley, the church historian; Wilbur M. Smith; Everett F. Harrison; Edward John Carnell. These people were just phenomenal.

I learned from these professors, but I also learned to rebut the criticism that Pentecostals base their theology on their experience. It happened this way. In my first year I took a class with Gleason L. Archer, a Harvard intellectual who had written an introduction to the Old Testament. Archer knew about 20 ancient languages, such as Sumerian and Akkadian. I had Hebrew and Old Testament with him.

In an orientation class, a different professor came each week for 2 hours and allowed us to ask questions. Some of the students got into a question and answer debate with Archer on what the phrase “husband of one wife” in 1 Timothy 3:2,12 and Titus 1:6 meant.

Archer adamantly said, “husband of one wife means that the elder or the ordained minister can only have one wife in a lifetime. If your spouse dies and you remarry, you are disqualified from that role.” I thought, I’ve never heard that before; that’s extreme.

In my second year of seminary, Archer’s wife died. In my third year, he remarried. He dressed differently, acted like he was 30 years younger than he was, and changed his view on the text 180 degrees. I said to myself, Here is one of the most educated men in the evangelical world, and his experience has helped condition his theology.

There is danger in letting your experience shape your theology. But at the same time, what we as Pentecostals have done — when we have had an experience — is look in Scripture to see if there is any warrant for it. I think that is the key test. If there is no warrant in Scripture for the experience, then we need to question the experience or, at least, not make it universal. We need to regard it as we would Peter’s shadow — a unique event — because other people are not having the same phenomenon. But we can look at our Pentecostal experience and see that it is rooted in Scripture.

Many incidents occurred at Fuller that helped me see this. In fact, Richard Mouw, president of Fuller Seminary, wrote a congratulatory note when I was elected general superintendent. I wrote back and expressed deep appreciation for the role Fuller played in my life and ministry.

It is always ironic to me that when discussing issues surrounding the Pentecostal experience with non-pentecostals that what I call the "e" word (experience) is always either downplayed or flat out not allowed, yet how many have had experiences with God that solidify their faith and or relationship with God or as Dr Archer had, he thought one way and then after an experience of losing his wife and getting remarried, changed his theology based on an experience? Yet Pentecostals are not allowed to factor in experience into Pentecostal Theology regarding the Baptism of the Holy Spirit as seen in Acts 2:4 and also the exercise of Spiritual Ministries (aka: Gifts)? How does that work?

If you want to read the interview more in full check it out at the Enrichment Journal Online here.

Feel free to let me know what you think.

EJ Interview with George O. Wood pt2

2008-03-25T18:46:00.003-05:00

George O. Wood. General Superintendent of the Assemblies of God in America on "the call":

When I was pastoring, I invited Morris Williams to hold a missions convention. He was field director (now called regional director) for Africa. I respected Williams. He had a sterling record as a missionary. I took him to lunch after Sunday morning service. I asked, “Brother Williams, how did you receive your call?”

He said, “George, I never had a call. I read in the Gospels where Jesus was taking volunteers, and I up and volunteered.”

I had never heard anyone give that explanation before. It challenged me. Since then I have studied the call in Scripture. I now realize there is a continuum on the call — everything from the divine voice to William’s volunteering. Certainly, God equipped Williams with the gifts and graces for his calling. God also granted me the desire of my heart. I wanted to be a minister.

When we talk about the call to ministry we need to be careful not to project that everyone is called the same way. God uses a variety of ways to put us where He wants us. For me, it was a quiet desire that began to well up in my heart. From that time on, I was on the trajectory to go into the ministry. The only other occupation I ever considered was law and politics.

When I was a junior in college I had an offer to be an intern in a congressional office. I came to a crisis at that point. I had to make a decision whether to accept that opportunity or continue toward ministry.

I like this comment because it is how things have been for me as well - I have never had this explicit "call from God" at the altar kind of experience. For me it has been more of a process of understanding my own personality, desires, values, and giftings. When I put two and two together going into the ministry be it pastoring or missions, it just made the most sense to me and it is a good fit. So if you are out there and think you have to have some awe inspiring divine call to go into the ministry then be free of that and follow God in whatever way you feel him leading you! Yes, there can be the awe inspiring divine call from God but it is not that way for all people all the time and I think that has kept some people from following the Lord in they way they sense his leading.

peace

EJ Interview with George O. Wood pt1

2008-03-25T18:17:00.004-05:00

George O. Wood, General Superintendent of the Assemblies of God in America on the value of ministerial education:

The experience I had at Fuller made me believe that ministers need to get as deep an education as possible. When I was a younger minister, Robert Frost, one of my spiritual mentors, prayed for me and the other students. He said, “Lord, help them lay foundations that are strong enough to bear the weight You will later place on them.”

A formal theological education helps ministers build strong foundations for life and helps them avoid burnout. The reason people get burned out in the ministry is they do not have sufficient intellectual and spiritual resources to draw on to sustain them.

I walked into a pastor’s office when I was a younger minister. I looked at his library. It contained only books that were titled, Simple Sermon Outlines,and they had cobwebs on them. Some were unused. I thought to myself, This congregation is not getting fed, because he is not being fed. He will not last. This pastorate will not last.

Many ministers cannot afford to continue a formal education. Often their time and resources go toward supporting their families. But with the Internet, libraries, and the many resources available for learning, ministers have opportunity to continue their personal study and educational advancement.

Continual learning is critical. As a pastor, I spent about 20 hours a week in study and message preparation. I do not know how a pastor can feed people if he is not spending substantive time in study. The seminary experience gave me the tools, resources, and life disciplines to continue learning throughout my ministry.

This is really good stuff. Too bad so many in the AG (and other Pentecostal or Charismatic groups) tend downplay education. Many believe all that is needed is "the anointing" and the Holy Spirit - but it hard for the Spirit to do much with someone who doesn't know anything...

Early Easter.

2008-03-24T09:37:00.002-05:00

Apparently, yesterday was the earliest Easter any of us will see in our lifetime.
I lifted this from the Biblical Studies e-list.
--------------

Easter 2008

A once in a lifetime experience !

Easter is always the 1st Sunday after the 1st full moon after March
20. This dating of Easter is based on the lunar calendar that Hebrew
people used to identify passover, which is why it moves around on our
Roman calendar.

This year is the earliest Easter any of us will ever see.

And only the most elderly of our population have ever seen it this
early (95 years old or above) And none of us have ever, or will
ever, see it a day earlier.

1) The next time Easter will be this early (March 23) will be the
year 2228 (220 years from now). The last time it was this early was
1913 (so if you're 95 or older, you are the only ones that were
around for that).

2) The next time it will be a day earlier, March 22, will be in the
year 2285 (277 years from now). The last time it was on March 22 was
1818. So, no one alive today has or will ever see it any earlier
than this year.

He is Risen!

2008-03-23T15:55:00.003-05:00

Luke 24:5-7 In their fright the women bowed down with their faces to the ground, but the men said to them, "Why do you look for the living among the dead? 6He is not here; he has risen! Remember how he told you, while he was still with you in Galilee: 'The Son of Man must be delivered into the hands of sinful men, be crucified and on the third day be raised again.'"

Were these women the world first Christian Missionaries?

9When they came back from the tomb, they told all these things to the Eleven and to all the others. 10It was Mary Magdalene, Joanna, Mary the mother of James, and the others with them who told this to the apostles.

Here is the point of Easter: Jesus is ALIVE! He is risen from the dead! And in him we can have new life! A Resurrection life!

May you be blessed this particular resurrection Sunday!

missions quote of the day.

2008-03-20T16:26:00.005-05:00

But things have changed. I have been in a missions convention where I was the only person who knew a foreign language, where I was the only field based worker, where I was the only person actually engaging lost people on a regular basis. During a year at one of our schools and in touring 10 of our colleges on a preaching and teaching tour sharing the vision for the least-reached in Asia Pacific I have not yet once been approached by a person of any age who says, “I want to go to a place and spend the rest of my life where the church does not exist and preach the Gospel and plant the church of Jesus Christ. People tell me they want to lead teams, that they want to travel to “lots of countries,” that they want to get a seminary degree and go teach somewhere, that they want to find a place that uses English to go pastor, that they want to travel and do crusades, or hold babies in an orphanage. The list goes on and on. These activities are not wrong in and of themselves. In the context of Assemblies of God missions we have always done these things, and for the most part they are good things. But at the same time we did not get to 50-plus million adherents world wide with a cross-cultural staff that saw any of these activities as the controlling center of what they were about. The center of our labors has always been evangelism, church planting, and the training of national ministers.

-Alan Johnson regarding the decline in emphasis on cross-cultural missions in the Assemblies of God in America. I think it could be applicable to more than just the Assemblies of God - I think emphasis on cross-cultural mission has been in decline in the American church at large.

Also, please know my post on missions is not targeted at those who cannot go or are unable to go.

If you want to see the rest of the paper go here.

missions? to whom?

2008-03-18T17:29:00.005-05:00

As I wrote in my past post, one problem facing the issue of Christian mission is, what is it? I noted a quote by Stephen Neill that "when everything is mission, nothing is mission." The point he is making here is that often times the concepts of mission and evangelism often get conflated such that there is no difference and it all becomes the same thing when they should not be considered the same.

To whom should missions be focused? Well, in my opinion, primarily to those people in the least reached people groups or iow those who have the least access to the gospel. Least access?

Are you familiar with the missiological concept of what is called the "10/40 Window"?

The "10/40 Window" is a term coined by Christian missionary strategist Luis Bush in 1989-1990 to refer those regions of the eastern hemisphere located between 10 and 40 degrees north of the equator, a general area that in 1990 was purported to have the highest level of socioeconomic challenges and least access to the Christian message and Christian resources on the planet {and often most resistant to the message of the Christian gospel]. The 10/40 Window concept highlights these three elements: an area of the world, with great poverty and low quality of life, combined with lack of access to Christian resources. The Window forms a band encompassing Saharan and Northern Africa, as well as almost all of Asia (West Asia, Central Asia, South Asia, East Asia and much of Southeast Asia). Roughly two-thirds of the world population lives in the 10/40 Window. The 10/40 Window is populated by people who are predominantly Muslim, Hindu, Buddhist, Animist, Jewish or Atheist. Many governments in the 10/40 Window are formally or informally opposed to Christian work of any kind within their borders.

I think however, that concepts of unreached people groups have expanded a bit and are not just limited to the 10/40 window. Many folks from various unreached people groups now live right here in the US and Canada and in large parts of Europe.

Here is a question to consider. How might Irem, a Turk, Ahmet, a Banjar and Tin Sau, a Bama be lost or "unreached" in way that "Lee" in Dallas, "Carlos" in Costa Rica, and "Hae Yung" in South Korea might be lost or "unreached." The first set of names are folks in a people group not a country per se. The issue is one of accessibility to the gospel message. Not all things are equal in our world. The idea of being unreached is a specific missiological concept that refers to a specific groups accessibility to the gospel message - unreached people groups not only don't have access to the gospel - they do not even have the potential to hear about the story of Jesus unless there is a near neighbor witness who can share it. While all people are equally lost theologically (eg. Rom 3:23) not all have equal access to the story of Jesus - so "Lee" in Dallas, "Carlos" in Costa Rica, and "Hae Yung" in South Korea are lost yet because there is significant Christian presence in their respective nations, they have greater accessibility to the gospel message. In case anyone wondered, South Korea has several of the largest churches in the world numbering well over 700,000 congregants. However, Irem, a Turk, Ahmet, a Banjar and Tin Sau, a Bama live among unreached people groups where there is no near neighbor witness to the gospel - even if they wanted to learn more of Jesus they most likely would not be able.

It is to these folks the priority of Christian missions should be focused - unreached people groups - people who are sociologically and culturally without Christian witness - though that is not the case presently. Presently, nearly 90% of Christian ministry/missions is targeted to the already reached and Christianized parts of the world - while those most in need of the gospel message go without.

what is missions?

2008-03-15T16:17:00.002-05:00

This can be a challenging question to answer - what is missions?

There are just so many different perceptions and ideas of what exactly entails Christian missions that few can come to a unified agreement as to how to define it. In fact, there is little to no real sense of clarity as to what is meant by missions and its practice cross-culturally. My friend Alan Johnson, a long time missionary to Southeast Asia, believes this lack of clarity is due to a variety of factors. One of the problems is that we have allowed the idea of missions to mean just about anything such that every person becomes a missionary (to their work, neighborhood, school, local club, stores, etc) - just about anywhere is now a "mission field" and any believer is a "missionary." What happens then is that, to quote Stephen Neill, "when everything is mission, nothing is mission." This then, had lead to general confusion at the local level as to what missions is and what it entails. I think this leads too, to general lack of financial support for cross-cultural missions work because many may not see the point.

My friend Alan Johnson says what has happened then is a "conflating of ideas regarding evangelistic outreach in a local church or movement context within its own sociocultural setting with missions. Thus, any kind of outreach at all becomes missions, with the deadening [or flattening] effect of equalizing all types of evangelism." Many folks think cross-cultural missions and local church or personal evangelism are the same thing, when they are not.

In and unpublished paper given at AGTS in 2006, Alan talked about this idea being "accompanied by concepts such as missions relating to the crossing of geographic borders, working with our own people in locations outside of our geopolitical borders, and where the term “missionary” is used, with the ubiquitous aphorism, 'everyone is a missionary.'"

He goes on to say "This results in people being sent outside of their country to preach the Gospel to their own people who are living abroad, while ignoring within their own borders those groups of different religious, social, and linguistic background who do not have church movements at all. It also devalues the cross-cultural worker because since we are all missionaries our field is wherever we live, thus giving all places equal priority no matter what the strength of the church is within that sociocultural setting. [brackets or italics mine]

It needs to be highlighted that there is a difference between geographical and socio-cultural borders. One is in regards to location. The other is in regards to cultural differences. These are vastly different. The question he is putting forth is doing "missions" work in a separate geographical location but among existing church structures and "missions" work among a completely different socio-cultural setting/location the same? He says no, they are not the same.

So back to the question, what is mission? Christian missions is that effort to proclaim the Christian gospel to people in those socio-cultural settings where the gospel has not only not been heard but where there is no means to hear the gospel message because no near Christian neighbor, with whom the non-christian person can hear and come to knowledge of Christ, exists.

So, is our workplace a mission field? No. Is our neighborhood a mission field? No. Unless our workplace or neighborhood is among non-Christians in a socio-cultural setting completely separate from our own, such as among Muslims in Dearborn or Khartoum, or Buddhists in Denver or Mongolia.

The emphasis here is on socio-cultural settings over geographical locations. There may be "missionaries" in Central America, Eastern Europe, or even South Asia but if they are teaching at a Bible school and/or working with existing church leaders then they may not really be missionaries but rather just Christian workers providing support in overseas contexts. True apostolic missions doesn't work among existing church structures but instead goes to settings where the church does not exist or is a very tiny minority.

This is still in progress for me so if you want to talk with me about it, please do.

missions

2008-03-14T16:24:00.003-05:00

I want to point everybody to my friend Eric's blog site where he links us to the website World Map - it is an excellent missiological tool and resource for intercessory prayer for world missions!

Do give it a look see!

I personally cannot think of a more important issue for the church than the task of world evangelization - it should be the primary focus of the church in my opinion. Everything we do should be motivated by missions - the desire to take God's salvation to the ends of the earth!

Some questions I have:

How can a truly biblical theology be anything less than a theology of missions?
How can a truly trinitarian theology be anything less than missions focused?
How can a truly systematic theology leave out the importance of missions?

Have you considered the fact of the 6 billion people in the earth - as much as 50-60% remain estranged from Christ?

Romans 10:14 "How, then, can they call on the one they have not believed in? And how can they believe in the one of whom they have not heard? And how can they hear without someone preaching to them?"

Isaiah 6:8 "Whom shall I send? And who will go for us?"

Pray about it.

random

2008-03-13T17:27:00.000-05:00

This video from comedy central is really wild! Just completely unbelievable really.

I am reading through one of John Stott's books The Incomparable Christ (IVP, 2001) and while it is a popular level book it it is a great read - to me at least. I was really happy when I read, "I am numbered among those who believe that Galatians was the first letter Paul wrote." Right on! I too am numbered among that crowed, as is one of my professors from seminary (most scholars contend the Thessalonian Correspondence was Paul's first). John Stott notes because of the issues Galatians deals with (Law (circumcision) and Grace (freedom)) it is interesting there is no mention of the Jerusalem Council - that circumcision was not necessary for Gentiles (among other issues) (Acts 15), which had Galatians been written after this event why would Paul not mention it for added authority? I would like to add too I think Paul passed through Galatians (I argue South Galatia) before he got to Thessalonica. It would make perfect sense that he would write to the Galatians first.

Maybe we're too mean?

2008-03-12T18:28:00.005-05:00

My last post asked if Christians are too nice when it comes to difference but perhaps I was wrong - maybe we are really too mean and too quick to condemn or over eager to point out false teachings - maybe we need more niceness or more grace?

One friend wrote me to say:

I think if a pastor or author is in question, we should discuss their ideas openly. If someone we are personally talking to has bad ideas, we should use grace if we correct them. Public individuals often stand for certain ideas and if we don't agree with their ideas, generally we'll ignore them completely and try to have others ignore them as well if possible. I think this is natural and expected. Some people I know quote Jerry Falwell and Pahttp://www.blogger.com/img/gl.link.gift Robertson as sources of what all Christians think. I try to tell them to not pay attention to these folks and realize that there is a diversity of voices about politics and many other issues among Christians if one looks hard enough.

then another friend, Sheryl, wrote and said:

The problem with Driscoll is that he tends to draw lines in the sand and seems to lack a lot of grace when he talks about people with whom he disagrees. He hangs out with the likes of John Piper, who tends to be the same way when discussing people with theological differences. The emerging/emergent "movement" is a varied one. To say that people and leaders within that "movement" have abandoned or are in the process of abandoning the historic Christian faith is a loaded statement. Some of it comes from ignorance (not knowing what the emergent movement is about or unwilling to investigate). This issue was a source of intense discussion at Jesus Creed a couple of weeks ago. Look for the post on "mapping" and read the comments.

I think the issue is that Christians are more often mean than nice. A primary issue is how we voice our disagreements. Is it vengeful? combative and argumentative? Are we seeking to "throw down" others with the belt of truth, intent on proving we are right? Does our discourse lack humility and grace? Do we need to be right and let everyone else know they're wrong? We can disagree with others theologically in a respectful, tactful, peaceful manner. And if we really think someone is in error, "throwing them down" like Driscoll, et.al., will not incline them to listen to one word we have to say.

Maybe this is true that Christians are rather too quick to point out differences and quick to draw a line in the sand as to who is right and who is wrong as though it were all black and white? I know many independent fundamentalists baptists tend to be this way - anything different than KJVO or literalistic interpretations of the Bible is oft to be condemned and labeled as false teaching. Some have whole lists of supposed "false teachers" many of whom pastor a church right down the street from themselves.

What say you?

are we too nice?

2008-03-10T13:07:00.003-05:00

Over at the AGTS Karoox blog there's been a discussion on the emerging church and if it is faithful the historic Christian faith or not - I agree with others that it depends - some yes, some no. I also agree that the term emergent is really hard to define.

The site provides a link to a lecture by Mark Driscoll that I think you may find interesting: http://www.karoox.com/convergent_mark_driscoll (it's about an hour and a half long or so).

Anyways, in the comments section one commenter noted his displeasure with all the name dropping by Mark Driscoll (he named names to identify were folks fall on the spectrum of supposed emergent teachings). Instead this commenter would prefer that Driscoll talk about the issues and not leave the people out of it.

He wrote:

One thing a did not appreciate in the podcast: I think it does more harm than good to name names and “throw down” like Driscoll did in the court of public opinion. In so doing lines are drawn in the sand and camps are formed. Why not just argue your point in opposition to a given opinion and keep it above the fray? When individuals like Driscoll and others get a big following they tend to draw these lines and make people choose imaginary sides. That is ridiculous and counterproductive. If they really want to discuss issues they feel are detrimental to the Kingdom then get together and have a debate. Attacking them from a distance is like trying to grasp a vapor. I also think it comes off looking like a straw-man jousting session.

Talk about the ideas. Not the people. I know it is a lot easier to attack personalities. It's also more entertaining. A modern day theological gladiator match. We have learned to be entertained over and over again by the bloody arena of political campaigns. But if we make it about people first and foremost, if or when we reject an idea we must by default reject the person. That begins to tread close to a sinful response. We are all God's children and thus deserve honor and respect presented in love. If we stick with challenging the ideas, thoughts and words and we can disagree agreeably while remaining a part of the body of Christ.

While I can understand where he is coming from, this is what I wrote back:

As to name dropping, well, I understand what Gary is saying, deal with issues and not people, however, too often the issues and the people are so intertwined it is hard to separate them. Even so, Paul seemed to have no problem name dropping if necessary. In 1 Timothy 1:19-20 he specifically pointed out that "Some have rejected these and so have shipwrecked their faith. Among them are Hymenaeus and Alexander, whom I have handed over to Satan to be taught not to blaspheme." That seems pretty harsh if you ask me, but it was necessary for Timothy's sake. In Philippians 3 he called the false teachers "dogs" (3:2).

I think if there are dangerous teachings going on then if necessary they need to be pointed out - obviously with grace and respect but again if necessary it needs to be done.

There wasn't a reply to my comment but I wonder about it - was Paul too easily angered and just shooting off his mouth when he called false teachers "dogs" (a term not unlike calling a Police Officer "pig" today)? In Galatians he wished the Judaizers would go all the way and emasculate themselves (Gal 5:12) Or did he know false teaching when he saw it and rightfully said those preaching a gospel different than his "eternally condemned"? (Gal 1:8-9). Was he going overboard when he went public in pointing out that Hymenaeus and Alexander had harmed him and shipwrecked their faith?

I am wondering if we have become so "nice" we can't take a stand when false teaching arises - as a Pastor people can and do get terribly offended when I say Mormons are not Christians - some people don't want to go that far. Or worse - certain sectors of the Charismatic movement teach really bad doctrine and have flat out abandoned the gospel - it is wrong to point out who? It is unethical or inappropriate? Unnecessary? Or should we just keep it quiet and not point out false teaching but just redirect people elsewhere?

What say you? Are we as Christians sometimes too nice?

Hebrews 13:20-21

2008-03-07T07:25:00.000-06:00

Hebrews 13:20-21 (New Living Translation)

20 Now may the God of peace—
who brought up from the dead our Lord Jesus,
the great Shepherd of the sheep,
and ratified an eternal covenant with his blood—
21 may he equip you with all you need
for doing his will.
May he produce in you,[a]
through the power of Jesus Christ,
every good thing that is pleasing to him.
All glory to him forever and ever! Amen.

Biblical Studies Blog Carnival XXVII

2008-03-03T20:07:00.001-06:00

The latest Biblical Studies Blog Carnival (XXVII) is up for those interested.

YWAM SBS Podcasts

2008-03-02T23:45:00.004-06:00

What?! The School of Biblical Studies (SBS) International is a segment of Youth With a Mission (YWAM). SBS is a 9 month Bible school program that centers on what is called Inductive Bible Study - an approach to study of the Bible using a more or less 3 step process of Observation, Interpretation, Application (emphasis on application). The idea is that one needs to know what the text says (observation) before one can know what it means (interpretation) and apply it to ones life (application) - with the end result being not just thorough knowledge of the Bible but also a transformed life devoted to Christ. Early on in the process each step is fairly segmented but as one becomes more familiar with the process the steps tend to blend in. In the school students devote nearly 50+ hours a week to personal study of the Bible with the goal of using the inductive method to study all 66 books of the Bible over the 9 month period (it's very intensive - each book is "studied" at least 5 times with different levels of reading) - don't worry - there are group sessions and lecture times - times for interaction and the like along with the private personal study and the results are quite orthodox.

So, The School of Biblical Studies International now has a website with various teachings on books of the Bible available for the listening public. There are a variety of Bible teachers up on the site. The main one I am familiar with is Ron Smith, the founder of the School of Biblical Studies. Ron has a masters from GCTS and has a ThD but I am not sure where from - he is quite an educated man and a solid Bible teacher - perhaps not as well known as such NT scholars and teachers as Gordon Fee or Bruce Waltke for example, but I think his teaching could very well rank up there with that level of biblical/theological scholarship. At least, that is my opinion.

Here is the link: SBS International Podcast.

Consider listening in on some and let me know what you think.

The main reason for this post is that I am a YWAM'er. Once a YWAM'er always a YWAM'er. I attended a Discipleship Training School (DTS) in 1994 at the base in Lakeside, Montana. So, I am a pro YWAM guy and support many aspects of the organization.

The Way of Jesus Christ - A Review

2008-03-01T22:44:00.001-06:00

Moltmann, Jürgen. The Way of Jesus Christ: Christology in Messianic Dimensions. Augsburg Fortress Publishers, 1993. 388 pgs.

The Way of Jesus Christ is a highly creative theological work by German scholar and theologian Jürgen Moltmann. In this work Moltmann seeks to present a messianic Christology that reflects a messianic faith. Additionally, he seeks to highlight the links between Judaism and Christianity from that perspective. At the same time, Moltmann blends in perspectives taken from Liberation and Feminists theologies with a few twists of Roman Catholic and Eastern Orthodox thought. All this blended together creates what Moltmann believes is an effective interpretation of the person and work of Jesus Christ.

There are many issues to consider in Moltmann's book. Early in the work, Moltmann expresses concerns regarding the nature of such creeds as Nicaea and Chalcedon. It seems that he respects the decisions of these councils but wants to somehow move beyond them. The title chosen for the work `The Way of Jesus Christ' elicits how he wants to portray Christ; "This shows that I am trying to think of Christ no longer statically, as one person in two natures or as a historical personality. I am trying to grasp him dynamically, in the forward movement of God's history with the world. What I wanted was not an eternal Christology for heaven, but a Christology for men and women who are on the way in the conflicts of history" (xii).

For the traditionalist, this may seem at first a bit threatening but the reader should be careful not to miss the broader issues Moltmann is discussing. In essence, he is seeking "a new interpretation of Christ which will be relevant for the present day" (xv). For Moltmann, this new interpretation seems to lie in an "eschatological framework of messianic hope and apocalyptic expectations" (xv). Because the subject can be complex he breaks it up by presenting what he sees as "the historical mission of Christ in the framework of the messianic hope in history; the sufferings of Christ against the horizon of apocalyptic expectation; and the resurrection of Christ in the light of eschatological vision of the new creation of all things" (xv).

In the first chapter, Moltmann discusses messianic perspectives from Jewish and Christian points of view. In discussing Jesus as the Messiah he notes Judaism's inability to accept Jesus as messiah due to its understanding of redemption. Quoting Martin Buber, "We know more deeply, more truly, that world history has not been turned upside down to its very foundations; that the world has not yet been redeemed. We sense its unredeemedness" (28). The Jewish people see redemption as the perfecting of creation and the ultimate fulfillment of the kingdom of God. Thus, for the Jews, when Messiah comes the world will be redeemed (29). Yet, Christians believe redemption is taking place in the spiritual realm and in what is invisible; that is, in the hearts of people. In an attempt to bring the two faiths together, Moltmann wants to recapture Jesus as messiah in an "eschatologically anticipatory and provisional way" (32-33) that reflects the whole of God's salvation both visibly and invisibly.

In discussing `the messianic mission of Christ,' (73) Moltmann presents some challenging views on the person of Jesus Christ. To understand these views it helps to keep in mind that Moltmann sees Christology as being found not in theological reflection per se, but rather in what he calls "Christo-praxis" (41). "Christo-praxis" is type of Christian ethic that involves a life of discipleship in which people learn who Jesus is through living with and among the poor, sick and oppressed (43). For Moltmann, the mission of Christ is a social mission (100). Jesus came "to bring good news to the poor; to bind up the brokenhearted, to proclaim liberty to the captives, and the opening of the prison to those who are bound; to proclaim the year of the LORD's favor" (Isa. 61:1-2). A life of discipleship according to Moltmann will reflect the life of Christ.

It seems then in light of Christo-praxis, Moltmann is not seeking to deal with issues surrounding the two natures of Christ, but rather issues surrounding why Christ came and what he set out to accomplish as Israel's Messiah. Whereas the traditionalist sees importance in the historicity of the major events of Christ's life such his virgin birth and resurrection from the dead, Moltmann seems more interested in seeking the higher meaning of these events in the light of the Jesus' messianic mission.

In considering the virgin birth Moltmann does not see it "as one of the pillars that sustains the New Testament faith in Christ" (79). Instead, Moltmann believes the importance of the virgin birth narratives lie not in the biological facts but in the confession of Jesus as messianic Son of God and "to point at the very beginning of his life to the divine origin of his person" (82). Thus, the overall purpose of the accounts of the virgin birth of Christ is not the historicity of the event but rather to show that Jesus is the divine Son of God and that in Jesus' becoming human the whole of humanity will be healed (85).

In considering the resurrection, Moltmann is less concerned with the historicity of the event and more concerned with its theological implications. Moltmann asserts the event of Christ's resurrection from the tomb is not historically ascertainable because there are no witnesses of him leaving the tomb (243). Moltmann interprets the resurrection as an eschatological event that represents the "creative act of God" (241) in restoring the creation to its original state. In placing hope in the resurrection one is placing hope in the future act of God in overcoming the problem of death in the world and the hope of a new creation in which death and mortality will be vanquished (214), and in the perspective of Judaism all things will be made new and the world will finally be redeemed.

There are many strong points in Moltmann's work `The Way of Jesus Christ.' However, there are weak points as well. For the traditionalist, the weak points lie in the unwillingness of Moltmann to anchor his theology in the historicity of the major events of Christ's life, e.g. the virgin birth, healings and miracles, and the resurrection. Moltmann's theology could be more readily welcomed, if from the start, he noted the presuppositions and intentions of his work. If one pays attention, it seems he is not concerned with historicity but with relevancy. But the danger with relevancy is that without historicity there is no solid ground on which to base one's theology, particularly Christology.

The strengths of Motlmann's theology lie in his highly creative blending of various theological viewpoints to come up with an effective and relevant theology on the person and work of Christ. By choosing not to begin with the framework the Nicaean or Chalcedonian creeds, but moving forward from them, he is forcing the traditionalist and liberal Christian alike to "think outside the box" in terms of what it means to be a Christian in today's post-modern, post-Christian world. His emphasis on the need for Christology to be reflected in "praxis" and discipleship highlights the need for Christians to come down from their intellectual platforms and get their hands dirty by making the gospel relevant and practical in the modern world. While controversial in many respects, Moltmann's work provides many challenges to the Church and will remain relevant for years to come.

Jesus the focus of Scripture?

2008-02-28T10:15:00.007-06:00

There was a discussion on the biblical studies list regarding the interplay between exegesis and theology that was quickly and decisively stamped out by the list owner/moderator. The list rules are that only issues related to biblical studies can be discussed but issues of faith and theology need to be left out - not that they are bad or inappropriate, just inappropriate for this list as with the insertion of faith and theology - the waters of biblical studies get muddy real fast. And probably, the calvinists would come in and take over like they do on other lists.

The discussion had surrounded what entails proper biblical exegesis - set faith aside and let the text speak for itself then let faith be shaped by exegetical study - other felt theology has to be a part of the process - others felt theology is shaped and responds to the process. One participant had outright called the intrusion of theology into biblical studies "nonsense."

Before I understood some of this, I wrote:

Here is the sad thing about "exegesis" - folks often (especially on this group list) exit Jesus right out of the discussion and consider him irrelevant. It is either the Christ of history or the Christ of faith - why is he not both/and?

It is sad that those who actually have the audacity to believe that Jesus Christ of Nazareth, the historical one, is also the Christ of faith, the Son of God, the King of Kings, the Lord of Lords, the Everlasting God, the Alpha and the Omega, the One who was dead and is alive forevermore - can't really participate in the list as for some on the list - believe disqualifies the argument and makes it nonsense.

When one asks what the Bible is all about - it is about Jesus Christ of Nazareth, who is, in the words of John R. W. Stott, the center of history, the focus of Scripture, and the heart of the Church's mission in the world.

But I guess that is all nonsense.

To this the list moderator/owner replied:

Because, Brian, one is a confession of faith and one is a historical datum. You and I and others may or may not hold to the one. The other, though, can be discussed here. There are lists elsewhere which do what you recommend. And they are free to do so. But here, for our purposes, faith claims have no privilege.

I know a number of persons who hold quite strong faith positions who participate regularly. They simply play by the rules.

If the Bible were only about Jesus, we would only adhere to the Gospels and a few other snippets in the NT. The OT would have to be utterly abandoned. In sum, then, what you commend to our adherence is marcionitism. And appealing to Stott as an authority not only doesn't work- it doesn't prove anything at all.

That last line hurt mainly because I think John Stott is a biblical scholar and theologian par exellance, and in my opinion, as an Anglical scholar, he far and away, outshines a certain Bishop of Durham. But according to the list owner/moderator an appeal to John R. W. Stott is a non-appeal and non-answer.

So, the appeal to John Stoot aside, is Jesus the focus of Scripture?

In reply to the list owner/moderator's last paragraph above I sent this:

I think the historical Jesus himself would disagree with this assertion. Luke shows us in his Gospel Jesus' discussion with two men on the road to Emmaus (one was named Cleopas) (Lk 24:13-27; esp v27) that in fact, "Moses and all the Prophets" (ie: the OT) point to the historical Jesus (from his birth to his death and resurrection, even his ascension). So, I think it is fair that in pursuing understanding of the historical Jesus one would indeed need to include large portions of the OT texts. Also note John 5:39 where Jesus says the Scriptures "bear witness about me" (ESV). These Scriptures are none other than the Hebrew Scriptures.

It did not make it onto the list -probably because by the time I sent the reply the topic was shut down.

Am I off? Is Jesus the focus of Scripture or is he not?

not a biblioblog

2008-02-28T09:17:00.003-06:00

I just wanted open with you so you all would know I fully recognized this is NOT a "biblioblog!" Well, we all knew that already! I just wanted to be clear about it - that I also don't intend to be one either. I plan to be more eclectic, covering issues in missions, general theology, pastoral ministry-theology, some biblical studies, books I read, and other miscellaneous events and topics. I know I said I don't really have a lot of time to blog but I would like to as able and may try to take some of Nick's advice. It seems he keeps the KISS principle: "Keep It Super Simple."

Hope this helps! Wahoo!! I am NOT a biblioblogger!! I am Free!!!

Pray for Somalia

2008-02-28T00:19:00.008-06:00

The afflicted and needy are seeking water, but there is none. And their tongue is parched with thirst; I, the LORD, will answer them myself. As God of Israel I will not forsake them. Isaiah 41:17

Consider praying for Somalia.

According to UN reports and Reuters' AlertNet, Somalia tops the list of forgotten and neglected world emergencies.

The group Doctors Without Borders says Somalia's society as totally fragmented.

According to the BBC, Somalia's capital is in ruins and under factional control.

It's government is a transitional national government but is presently considered [one of] the most lawless nations in the world.

All Somalis are Muslim and they are not open to Christianity - immediate death is the consequence for any conversion.

Less than 0.1% of ethnic Somalis are Christians (perhaps as many as 2000 in the whole world).

There is a significant Somali diaspora in Minnesota (some 30,000-50,000 live in and around the Twin Cities).

Consider praying for Somalia.

evangelism and theology

2008-02-26T14:40:00.003-06:00

Do they mix? Michael Green in his 1970 work Evangelism in the Early Church (Eerdmans, 1970, 2004) noted in his intro that typically an evangelist is not interested in theology and theologians are not interested in evangelism.

Green wants us to know he is committed to both, but I wonder about his assertion? I don't know too many evangelists who exemplify good theology or even show interest in larger theological issues - most of the time they are about Jesus and seeing people come to saving faith in his work on the cross - yet I haven't seen too many ivory tower theologians either out street preaching either. Often they might be more concerned with things like textual criticism, form criticism, source criticism, and other various criticisms along with correct doctrine and theology.

So, do they mix? What say you?

the cry of the soul

2008-02-23T21:49:00.008-06:00

Like others, I am reading more than one book at once. I just gave a quote from John Stott - we'll get back to that. The book I am reading at the moment is Dan Allender and Tremper Longman's The Cry of the Soul: How Our Emotions Reveal Our Deepest Questions About God (NavPress, 1994). I am just in the introduction. The premise is that

Every emotion, though horizontally provoked, nevertheless reflects something about the vertical dimension: our relationship with God. This book explores what difficult emotional struggles say about our relationship with God. And every emotion, including those we often view as negative, reveals something about the heart of God.

The are four core convictions that structure their approach to the book:

1) It is our conviction that emotions are not amoral- they vocalize the inner working of our souls and are as tainted as any other portion of our personality. Here they observe, "Part of understanding difficult emotions, however, is comprehending why we avoid them. The reason we don't want to feel is that feeling exposes the tragedy of our world and the darkness of our hearts. No wonder we don't want to feel: feelings expose the illusion that life is safe, good, and predictable.

2) The reason for looking inside is not to effect direct change of negative emotions to positive emotions. Instead, we are to listen to and ponder what we feel in order to be moved to the far deeper issue of what our hearts are doing with God and others. To accentuate this point they aver that "struggling with emotions is not a matter of solving problems with a little more information and practical knowhow. We are not machines that can be repaired through a series of steps - we are relational beings who are transformed by the mystery of relationship. We are radically disposed to idolatry, illusion-making, and attempts to secure our lives without bowing before God. Our core problem is not a lack of information - it is flight and rebellion. So what they are arguing is that instead of looking for answers that work, pursue relationship with God regardless of the outcome.

Going on they write: "Rather then focusing on trying to change our emotions, we are wiser first to listen to them. They tell us how we are dealing with a fallen world, hurtful people and a quizzical God who seldom seems to be or do what we expect of Him. Although emotions are generally aroused in a human context, they always reveal something about how we are dealing with [or relating to] God." To be certain, they are not encouraging any sort of excessive preoccupation with the self as this hinders true growth and change. Instead they encourage just enough honest inward examination to gain wisdom in determining what is going on with one's emotions and how one is relating to God.

3) Our guide for this pilgrimage of revelation is the Psalms. The authors argue here that no other portion of Scripture more poignantly exposes the inner world of our heart and more vividly reveals the emotional life of God than the Psalms. This will be interesting to see how the authors work this point. It has been my understanding that Psalms are more about the people praying them than they are about God - they reveal more what the pslamists think about God than what God thinks about the psalmists per se. I agree with Bonhoeffer that the Psalms are the prayer book of the Bible. Even so, they will focus primarily on what Walter Brueggemann has called "Psalms of disorientation" or Psalms of Lament. This type of Psalm, they write, "captures the struggle of the heart as the poet attempts to grasp the goodness of God in light of the heartache of life." At the same time, they "will allow the poetry of the Psalms to move us into the divine imagery used by the prophets, Paul, and Jesus Christ as we explore Scriptures invitation to taste the mystery of God's goodness."

4) All emotions, including the darker ones, give us a glimpse of the character of God. This is the heart of the book. Far more important than the way in which our most difficult emotions - anger, fear, jealousy, despair, shame, contempt, - uniquely reveal something about the heart of God. They are are quick to point out that the supposed "positive" emotions (joy, peace, pleasure, etc) also show us much about God. The reason for the focus on the more difficult emotions is to show that they can be more positive and necessary to life than most are prone to recognize. It is important to realize that God too feels these emotions (the darker ones) and they reveal something about who he is - but even more interestingly and gloriously (as they put it), each one points to the scandalous wonder of the cross of Christ. As we discover how they point to the cross, they will lead us to the worship of God!

emotional health

2008-02-22T07:35:00.002-06:00

Richard Rhodes briefly discussed Peter Scazzero's book The Emotionally Healthy Church over on the Better Bible's Blog (8/21/08). It is a good post.

Here is the question of the day:

Is it possible to be a spiritually mature person while remaining emotionally immature?

Yes or no? Why or why not?

If you haven't read the book, no peeking at the Amazon reviews just yet.

Let me know what you think.

on your mark

2008-02-21T10:14:00.002-06:00

The General Superintendent of the Assemblies of God George O. Wood is starting a new video series on the main AG website called "On your Mark!" Check it out and let me know what you think!

I think he is the best leader the AG has had since Carlson who pastored the movement through the Swaggart and Bakker scandals.

I must be an Ent

2008-02-20T11:37:00.002-06:00

I must be an Ent - the Ents are not hasty and take a long time to say anything worth saying (especially if it is in Old Entish).

Why do I say this? Well y'all seem to post so quickly that by the time I think of a response or want to write up on it, y'all have moved on and the topic is old already.

So, on the atonement - am sticking to my guns - I fully support PSA and don't think it is cosmic child abuse but a profound display of the mercy of God. Perhaps I may not know all the details but I do know - with the death of Christ on the cross sin is dealt with and the wrath of God is withheld for those who put their faith in Christ alone.

John R. W. Stott writes in his book "The Cross of Christ":

The essential background to the cross, therefore, is a balanced understanding of the gravity of sin and the majesty of God. If we diminish either, we thereby diminish the cross. If we reinterpret sin as a lapse instead of a rebellion, and God as indulgent instead of indignant, then naturally the cross appears superfluous. But to dethrone God and and enthrone ourselves not only dispenses with the cross; it also degrades both God and man. A biblical view of God and ourselves, however, that is, of our sin and of God's wrath, honours both. It honours human beings by affirming them as responsible for their own actions. It honours God by affirming him as having moral character.

To understand the reason for the cross then one must understand the gravity of sin and the majesty of God.

More to come!

bible meme

2008-02-20T11:24:00.003-06:00

Got tagged so here is the bible meme:

1. What translation of the Bible do you like best?

Though I don't us it that much - NRSV

2. Old or New Testament?

OT with a view of the NT

3. Favorite Book of the Bible?

Genesis; I&II Chronicles; Psalms; Isaiah; Amos;
John; Acts; Galatians; Ephesians; 1 John; Jude

4. Favorite Chapter?

Psalm 1; Isa 40; John 1, Romans 3; Ephesians 1

5. Favorite Verse? (feel free to explain yourself if you have to)

Phil 1:6 (the Lord fulfilled this promise when my brother died).

6. Bible character you think you’re most like?

Probably like the author of the fourth Gospel - I can be a good observer

7. One thing from the Bible that confuses you?

understanding some end-time issues

8. Moses or Paul?

Paul the missionary pastor.

9. A teaching from the Bible that you struggle with or don’t get?

still working on the prophetic books.

10. Coolest name in the Bible?

Mephibosheth.

aGts Preaching blog

2008-02-14T15:25:00.004-06:00

If you are into preaching consider visiting aGts' new blog for preaching called Karoox (a play of the Greek word for preaching). Looks like it is pretty good. Dr. Doug Oss, Director for the Cordas C. Burnett Center for Expository Preaching at aGts writes:

Thanks for stopping by our blog. We want to hear from you about preaching. At Karoox we believe the life of the church is largely shaped by preaching. So, we are passionate about it. This blog is dedicated to advancing biblical preaching for the church and for the world.

go over and take a look see! Let me know what you think!

The Wizard of Id on Voting

2008-02-13T19:29:00.002-06:00

any questions? ;)
.

crucifixion not that bad?!

2008-02-13T16:06:00.007-06:00

One Terry Eagleton, a professor of Cultural Theory at the University of Manchester, tries to claim that Jesus "got off pretty lightly" because it only took him three hours to die. Got off pretty lightly? It would seem that Professor Eagleton knows little of crucifixion. He adds that Jesus's scourging was a "blessing in disguise" because it hastened his death. In one talk, Professor Eagleton, one of the world's leading literary theorists baldly declared, "The Crucifixion of Jesus wasn't as bad as its been painted," he says. "All things considered, he got off pretty lightly." He goes on to say,

"If the New Testament account is to be believed it took him only three hours to die whereas a lot of those killed by this hideous mode of execution thrashed around on their crosses for days." He concludes his talk with an attack on contemporary Christianity, which he says has abandoned the poor and dispossessed in favour of the "rich and aggressive"

At the same time, he also attacks modern Christianity for siding with the rich and abandoning the poor the very thing Jesus tended to rebuke the Jewish leadership of doing (and his brother James too). He might be partly right here. In some respects the Church has abandoned the poor.

This quote was interesting: "It's horrified by the sight of a female breast but nothing like as horrified by the obscene inequalities between rich and poor. "By and large, it worships a god fashioned blasphemously in its own image and likeness."

However, he was slam-dunked by the Rt Rev N.T. Wright when he responded:

"It is all a bit tired, this rhetoric. It is all a bit sad. Of course, caricatures of Christianity are all over the place, but they do not reflect reality. He should get out more.

Ouch!

He then added: "Perhaps the professor might also like to get his facts straight. Jesus took six hours to die on the cross, not three."

Here is someone who might know something about the Bible, but not really know the Bible (or the one to whom it points).

Here is the article in the British Telegraph

Christian Ramadan?!

2008-02-13T15:09:00.004-06:00

What do you make if this?

Just how much Muslim influence is there in Europe? Dutch Catholics have decided that they need to re-name the Lent fast. So they've decided to name Lent the "Christian Ramadan." Wonder why have they felt the need to put Lent into Islamic terms? Because apparently young people in their country are more likely to know about Islam than Christianity.

So, the Catholic organizers hope that by linking the Muslim festival of Ramadan they can remind Christians of the "spirituality and sobriety" of Lent, for those Christians who may be less observant than Muslims.

What is this all about? What do you think is going on? Have the Moors really come back?

politics

2008-02-12T13:36:00.000-06:00

This would be interesting.

Are you all aware of the Fair Tax Plan? You should be.

Check out Neal Boortz for more info.

what say you?

tell the truth

2008-02-11T14:00:00.000-06:00

It pays to preach the truth. I noted in another post about how I am attempting to go through the Gospel of John on Sundays. In this passage John is highlighting Jesus as the divine Son of God who is in fact God. Jesus is God. It also highlights Jesus' role as the light of the world - being the true light which enlightens every man as to his or her need of redemption. One person in the congregation has a roommate who is wiccan and I had used that as an example of a false notion of light (there is some belief about light in the wiccan religion) - and that only Jesus is the true light and if Jesus is not the focus then it is false. Another attender had a problem with me talking about this because she was not certain of Jesus' divinity and felt all people are a part of the light, so and so on. Well, it payed for me to tell the truth and stick to my guns because this forced the truth into the light (ha!). The Lord began working in this gals life and she fortunately was honest enough to wrestle with it, but she had not come back to church. Soon my wife talked with her to see what was going on and the truth came to light! In the process of their conversations this gal came around and decided to give Jesus a chance! Since then, she has described herself as living life upside down! She has come to the saving knowledge of Jesus as Savior and Lord!

We fretted that maybe we were chasing people away, and all kinds of other outlandish ideas came to mind, but in the end we learned it pays to tell the truth!

It is not without its cost either however. Another gal has stopped talking to and or interacting with us at all because she is in cahoots about the divinity of Jesus Christ.

It pays to tell the truth!

co-pastoring.

2008-02-11T11:49:00.000-06:00

Robert asked about our experiences co-pastoring. To start off I should be clear that my wife Debbie and I are the only pastors of the church. We are not working with others (not that we don't want to but just to be clear that we are "the team" at the moment; she is one pastor, I am the other, thus we are "co-pastors")(I will not talk about the biblicality of women pastors - we are a part of the Assemblies of God and believe God is and EOE - Equal Opportunity Employer!). Also, to get technical, I am still in the licensing process and Debbie is fully ordained with the Assemblies of God. Thus, she is the "Senior" Pastor for technicalities sake - though we both share the general pastoral responsibilities (and really, the real "Senior Pastor" is the Lord Jesus! He alone is the True Shepherd of our congregation and we are simply his agents in administering his will and purposes for the congregation. No?). We would not be here if either us did not have the proper "papers" so to speak. We are a district church, meaning we are under the full authority and control of the district leadership - though we are given freedom to run the ministry as we are able, it's just any major issues and things need to go through the district leadership). We were not voted in but appointed as pastors by the District Superintendent. We did come visit the church and we each preached a service prior to appointment. We interacted with the people and made sure we got a feel for the environment and the congregation before we agreed to the appointment. We did not want to just be arbitrarily appointed but wanted to be sure the people liked us (more or less).

So, we are co-pastors. How does this work? What does it look like? Well, it isn't too complicated really. We go back and forth on preaching (me one service, her another, or me for a few services and her for a few, etc). We each "lead" different aspects of the service. I can't sing a tune to save my life so Debbie leads worship. We have a time of prayer and at different times either of us will lead the prayer time. We just go back and forth. It's not a big deal really. Then in terms of ministry Debbie focuses on the women and I focus on the men, so she has gals she is interacting with and talking to while have some guys I am working to connect with in different ways.

The dynamics of ministry here is much different really, than the average church (or so it seems). At the moment we have more people coming to our Thursday night Bible Study than are coming to the services on Sunday. Once the tourist season picks up, most of the morning services will focus on the tourists who come, the night service is more geared toward the locals and regular attenders.

So, that is how things are going so far. If you would, pray for us.

searches

2008-02-11T11:05:00.000-06:00

how do you look up searches to see who comes across one's blog?

Nighttime reading

2008-02-06T20:22:00.000-06:00

So Nick has his weird bathroom reading list.

I would like to ask what is on your night stand next to your bed? Do you read a few minutes before going to bed? If so what do you have?

For me books next to my bed tend to come and go. Right now I have Gary Burge's The Anointed Community: The Holy Spirit in the Johannine Tradition (Eerdmans, 1987).

Preaching Christ in a Pluralistic Society

2008-02-06T14:49:00.000-06:00

So, we are pastoring a small church in the Grand Canyon National Park. I guess it is not readily known that the religious environment of the GCNP is highly pluralistic.

There is a lot of New Age philosophy here along with some Wiccans, various Native spiritual traditions such as the Navajo, Hopi, Hualapai, Havasupai. There are the Mormons and Jehovah's Witnesses, etc.

Some might find it surprising but religious expression here is quite diverse. Part of it is the Canyon, part of it is Arizona. Sedona, which is about an hour from here, is the New Age capital of the world. Folks floc from all over to come to Sedona.

In the Canyon itself there are lots of "pyramid" shaped structures easily seen from the rim called "temples." Several have been named after various eastern deities. For example one is called the vishnu temple. Vishnu is a Hindu god that manifest's itself in multiple incarnations. So the religious environment here is quite eclectic.

I have been preaching through John 1 verse by verse and have already had one person walk out on my sermon talking about the necessity of believing Jesus is God and why. She was friendly to my wife but hasn't talked to her since and won't talk about what is going on.

Another person stopped coming when I was talking about Jesus as the true light and how, we, like John, must bear witness to the light since we are not the light but rather must give witness about the light. I noted there are false religions that claim humans are light and such like wiccans do as well as in New Age Philosophy (not really a religion more a philosophy as I understand it), Hinduism, etc. This person disagrees and thinks all people are a part of the light and didn't appreciate me pointing out the errors of wiccans and other religions - this person reads the bible but I guess doesn't believe all of it - just parts - this person also doesn't believe in hell. Something else is going on. We're still investigating.

But that is how things are here - a real anti-Christ type attitude that doesn't want to acknowledge Jesus as the only and true God. Obviously some of this is to be expected since we know not all will receive Jesus as the true and living God. It just seems that even some Christians are wrestling with this issue - are they then Christians?

My wife is struggling with feeling like we are pushing people away and wonders if I need to not to expositional preaching right now but try a different approach. Is expositional preaching best for more knowledgeable Christians - should it be used to develop more mature Christians or can it be used to cover the basics?

I started out here at the church talking about knowing God covering some of his attributes and explaining what it means to know God - then I we did Advent and now I was wanting to carry on and talk about knowing Jesus and then knowing the Spirit - it seemed like John would be a good choice for that especially since John 20:31 notes its evangelistic purpose. It is becoming more apparent to me, however, that John is not just for new Christians but also for more mature Christians since there is just so much going on in the text.

So far I have covered John 1:1-5; 1:6-8; and 1:9-13 and have hit some bumps along the way.

I am praying as to how to move forward. I am not being harsh it just might be people aren't ready to hear that yet? It's challenging.

Any thoughts?

nobody's perfect

2008-02-03T21:36:00.000-06:00

Welp, I guess the New England Patriots aren't perfect afterall....

NY Giants 17, New England 14

new mission statement

2008-02-02T01:23:00.000-06:00

Grand Canyon Assembly of God exists to help people
Discover God, Experience his Power, and Share his Love!
.

The Page 123 meme

2008-02-01T12:03:00.000-06:00

I got tagged twice to do this page 123 meme once by Bryan L and once by Nick.

The rules are as follows:

Pick up the nearest book of 123 pages or more. (No cheating!)
Find Page 123.
Find the first 5 sentences.
Post the next 3 sentences.
Tag 5 people.

too awkward to start where the rules say so I'll get close to it:

"What does it mean that Christ body is broken for us? When we receive the broken bread, it is as if we are saying: our old idolatrous self-understanding is broken. The old will, the old Adam, the old self-assertive orientation to life is dead. We are risen anew to participate in the wholeness of new life in Christ." Thomas C. Oden, Pastoral Theology: Essentials of Ministry (Harper One, 1983), 123.

I added the fourth sentence to complete the thought.

I tag Tim, Lou, Lee, most others have already been tagged...

Resources for Biblical Hebrew

2008-01-31T22:38:00.000-06:00

These are the tools and resources I have for the study of Biblical Hebrew (sadly nothing for Aramaic):

Waltke and O'Conner's An Introduction to Biblical Hebrew Syntax (Eisenbrauns, 1990). I call this thing the beast since it is so massive but it is simply a must have for even basic biblical Hebrew exegesis. It is basically the Hebrew version of Wallace's GGBB though with its own character.

Gesenius' Hebrew Grammar (GKC in most references) (Oxford University Press, USA; 2 edition, 1993). This has been the standard Hebrew Grammar for the last hundred years. Though a bit dated, still quite useful and necessary for finer Hebrew work.

(C. L Seow's A Grammar for Biblical Hebrew (Abingdon Press; Rev Sub edition, 1995). This is the grammar I learned from while at Fuller Seminary NW for a year. It is one among a plethora of Hebrew Grammars. One of the profs at Evangel and AGTS also uses it. It will get you both the basics and the more technical stuff. Somewhere out there is a companion work that has the answers to the sentences.

Pratico and Van Pelt's Basics of Biblical Hebrew: Grammar. I have the green hardcover edition (Zondervan 2001). This is in the line of Zondervans biblical languages works and Mounce is the Greek variation. Never hurts to have two grammars.

Van Pelt and Practico's The Vocabulary Guide to Biblical Hebrew (Zondervan, 2003). The vocabulary companion to BBH and quite useful.

Brown-Driver-Briggs Hebrew and English Lexicon (BDB) (Hendrickson, 1996). I have literally been from one end of this lexicon to the other and back when I took a Hebrew exegesis class on the Psalms at Fuller NW. Its quite outdated but nonetheless a necessary complement to HALOT and should not be overlooked.

Holladay's A Concise Hebrew and Aramaic Lexicon of the Old Testament: Based upon the Lexical Work of Ludwig Koehler and Walter Baumgartner. (Eerdmans, 1972). This is not a detailed lexicon but a shorter lexicon based on HALOT (mostly glosses not extended definitions for which you will have to look up HALOT for. Quite a useful little tool.

Ronald William's Hebrew Syntax: An Outline, 2nd ed. (University of Toronto Press, 1976, 2001 Reprint) This ha to be my most favorite possession! It is just a splendid little book outlining various parts of Hebrew Syntax. There is a 3rd edition out but I am not familiar with it. As Holliday is to HALOT, Williams is to Waltke-O'Conner (somewhat) you look up Williams for quick stuff and WC for more in-depth issues.

Armstrong, Busby, Carr's Reader's Hebrew-English Lexicon of the Old Testament, (Zondervan, 1989). This is the Hebrew counterpart to Kubo's Greek Reader. It does words less than 50 times but if you haven't kept up your vocab it is completely useless but if so, it will help you plough though large parts of the text fairly easily. For many it can be a crutch. it has been made obsolete with the upcoming Reader's Hebrew Bible which more or less does the same thing.

Ellis Brotzman's Old Testament Textual Criticism: A Practical Introduction it is a really good introduction to Hebrew textual criticism and to the BHS. I need to move up to Emmanuel Tov's Textual Criticism of the Hebrew Bible (Augsburg Fortress Publishers; 2 Revised edition 2001) - this is the scholar's standard for Biblical Hebrew Textual Criticism

Douglas Stuart's Old Testament Exegesis: A Handbook for Students and Pastors (WJK, 3 edition 2001) - the OT companion to Fee's NT Exegesis - this covers outlining, diagramming; resources for further study.

Robert Chisholm's From Exegesis to Exposition: A Practical Guide to Using Biblical Hebrew, (Baker Academic, 1999) - This is a really great source for in-depth and practical exposition of the Hebrew for preaching and teaching. In my opinion it is a must have and should not be overlooked when doing exegetical work for sermon or paper preparation. His grammar section is more a summary of WC than Williams.

Wigram's The Englishman's Hebrew Concordance of the Old Testament: Coded to Strong's concordance numbering system, (Hendrickson 1996). This is quite the sufficient Hebrew concordance but fortunately it gives the verses in English. If you want to go hard core get Evan-Shoshan's A New Concordance of the Bible: Thesaurus of the Language of the Bible Hebrew and Aramaic Roots, Words, Proper Names Phrases and Synonyms, "Kiryat Sefer" Publishing House Limited, 1985). As far as I know there is no English in Evan-Shoshan's concordance so knowledge of Hebrew will be a must. Indeed, it is the scholar's concordance.

Of course I have of BHS and Bible Works 7.0 with the BDAG/HALOT module and concordances and things which are helpful.

To my shame I did not take a class on Aramaic but here is the resource I would get to teach myself or use for reference since Aramaic is limited to parts of Daniel and a few other places in the OT: John's A Short Grammar of Biblical Aramaic (Andrews University Press Rev ed,1972). I won't get into all the stuff about the Gospels being written in Aramaic and such.

This about covers my resources for study in the biblical languages upon completion of an MDiv. Of course I need to get going on Theological German, French, Latin, Syriac, Coptic, Arabic, and so on...

blogging

2008-01-31T14:40:00.000-06:00

so, what did y'all do in life before blogging came along? how did we ever get along?

NT Greek Resources

2008-01-30T21:17:00.000-06:00

These are the books (tools) I have for the study of Koine (NT) Greek:

Bauer's A Greek-English Lexicon of the New Testament and Other Early Christian Literature (University Of Chicago Press; 3 Sub edition, 2001). I got it when it first came out and was less than $100 at the time (before ebay and things). It's the standard lexicon.

Machen's New Testament Greek for Beginners (Prentice Hall, 1923). If I taught Greek I might use this one, though I really like Black's too. I learned Greek from Machen and it is still my "baby Greek." I would say Machen's approach is more the "old style" but sometimes, older is better! Also, it has Greek to English and English to Greek sentences!

Black's Learn to Read New Testament Greek (1994 Expanded Edition) (will have to beg God for a way to convince my wife to let me purchase the recently updated edition when it comes out later this year - with the workbook). Black approaches Greek from a linguistic perspective.

Black's It's still Greek to Me: An Easy-to-Understand Guide to Intermediate Greek (Baker 1998). More of a quick reference guide than Wallace - though very useful and funny!

Wallace's Greek Grammar Beyond the Basics (Zondervan, 1997) (Green Cover). The standard Intermediate Grammar - no one should be without it - even if one does not always agree with his conclusions and slight tendency to over-categorize.

I need to get Blass-Debrunner-Funk (BDF) Greek Grammar of the New Testament and Other Early Christian Literature for serious grammar work. It is the Scholar's grammar.

Aland's The Text of the New Testament, Revised and Enlarged (Eerdmans 1995 Paperback edition translated by Erroll F. Rhodes). My prof at the time said this and Metzger's 3rd edition were pretty much on the same level but I think I would have preferred him for us to get Metzger's edition. This is thick heavy reading on textual criticism of the Greek NT.

Aland's Synopsis Quattuor Evangeliorum (Deutsche Bibelgesellschaft, 1996). A must for Gospel studies, especially the Greek edition - you simply cannot see the similarities and differences in the English edition. Also, consider Scot McKnight's, Interpreting the Synoptic Gospels (Guides to New Testament Exegesis) for a decent color coding system when working in the Synopsis.

Fee's New Testament Exegesis, 3rd edition (WJK 2002). A must have for basic Greek exegesis (so you don't exit Jesus from your exegesis!) Also good for diagramming and such.

Dean, Scott, and Sparks' Reading New Testament Greek: Complete Word Lists and Reader's Guide (Hendrickson, 1993). This is very useful for learning and building vocab.

Kubo's Reader's Greek-English Lexicon of the New Testament, (Zondervan, 1975) (got this when I audited a Greek class at Fuller NW before I followed the Lord to aGts). It hasn't been terribly useful for me though I suppose it has for some, it is still in print.

Bible Works 7.0, which has the BDAG/HALOT module, concordances, parsing tools and the like.

and of course the UBS 4th ed Greek NT and Nestle-Aland 27th ed Greek NT (one prof said the 25th is preferred) and Metzger's Textual Commentary on the Greek New Testament, 2nd ed.

I was a biblical languages major more than anything else - so more or less I would do theology and biblical studies through the languages. As you can clearly see, I have a spread of "crutches" and actual tools and resources... I don't use the crutches that much, honest! ;)

Next up is Hebrew tools I possess.

Think I have enough? ;) If you have any comments or suggestions for other tools, feel free to comment.

Harran

2008-01-29T21:09:00.000-06:00

Not sure if you all read the TNIV blog or not but I was looking over and the latest post by Rick Mansfield writes about the spelling changes made in the updated TNIV. This post is on the spelling differences between Abraham's brother Haran and the city Harran where Abraham heard God call him to the promised land. Well, that is all interesting but even more so is a comment he made regarding a Wikipedia article (Jim West's favorite reference resource! ;) ) and made this comment: he writes:

One final interesting tidbit about Harran. According to the Wikipedia article on Harran, legend has it that this is the location where Adam and Eve first stepped when they were first expelled from the Garden. Granted it's just legend, but isn't it fitting that it was in Harran where Abraham first heard his call from God to go to the promised land? From the point of expulsion and alienation from God, the journey began to enter into God's rest. I find this very appropriate--regardless of how one spells the location.

I cannot say much about this (as I knew nothing about it until now) but I did think it was quite interesting, quite interesting indeed!

What say you?

Review of The Competent Pastor pt1

2008-01-29T18:02:00.000-06:00

I have been reading through Ronald Sisk's recent work: The Competent Pastor: Skills and Self Knowledge for Serving Well (The Alban Institute, 2005) and have found it both challenging and useful.

Sisk seeks to answer two key questions: What does it mean to say a pastor is competent? How does a competent pastor function?

Sisk defines competence as “the ability to do what needs to be done.” He writes:

Sometimes that means understanding yourself and others. Sometimes it means getting some task completed in the church. Always it means keeping a realistic perspective on your own life as a human being, a Christian, and a minister - what works for you and what doesn't.

I appreciate this definition mostly for what it doesn't say than what it does say. Competence doesn't mean one has to be Rob Bell to be a good pastor. Instead, he is saying a good pastor is one who has a strong sense of self-awareness and self-understanding/knowledge. So long as a pastor has a solid sense of identity and calling he or she will serve well.

He then addresses the question of how does a competent pastor function?

A competent minister functions, then, by moving forward toward understanding, resolution, and self-fulfillment. She will be happy in her job or able to find out shy she is not happy, and will be capable of moving forward. He won’t get stuck. Or, at least, when he does get stuck, he’ll know some specific steps to take to get unstuck.

For Sisk, this is his job description in sum, to ensure that the graduates of the Seminary where he teaches as professor of homiletics and Christian ministry graduate at leas on track to becoming and functioning as competent pastors.

The first chapter deals with the role of family systems in being a pastor. Our family or origin is a significant factor in understanding how one functions in nearly any capacity – pastor or other. If a pastor is from a family that fought a lot and he or she hates confrontation and avoids conflict then it might explain why his or her church is out of control and run by one or two over controlling people. Does this mean this person should not be a pastor – Sisk would say no, it does not mean this person should not be a pastor. Instead, this is where understanding and awareness comes in. Is this person aware of the tendency to avoid conflict and that it is why the church is out of control? If not, then he or she will probably remain unable to move forward in ministry until he or she comes to awareness of the problem. Once aware, he or she can begin to move forward in resolving the issue of avoiding conflict and regaining control of the church.

Sisk is good to observe that many might try to explain the situation as related to sin and that the pastor needs to repent and change – well, it is not that easy. According to Sisk, in discrediting the power of the past folks often fail to deal adequately with the conjunction of emotional, behavioral, and spiritual factors in personal and or ministerial development. This risk is real regardless of one’s spiritual commitment and sincere desire to follow Christ. As a Pentecostal I want to affirm Sisk’s comment here and say a pastor can even be baptized with the Holy Spirit with the evidence of speaking in tongues and still risk not functioning well as a competent pastor due to the influence of family of origin issues on his or her life.

Competence has little to do with how spiritual one is or how sincere one is about that spirituality – it has to do with openness to self knowledge and a willingness to address areas of weakness. Now, this is where Craig Keener has a good point in that praying in tongues can help a person receive from the Holy Spirit wisdom and guidance a to areas in a person’s personal life that need addressing. Now the question would be is that person willing to obey the promptings of the Holy Spirit? I want to be careful here and not get off track – but I think a combination of understanding family systems and how they influence our lives and our ability to function and spending time in intense prayer with the Lord can bring a lot of growth in a persons ability to function well in ministry.

Will the move forward help the person I used as an example become perfect in dealing with conflict? Not necessarily – but it will help him or her be more aware of his or her personal feelings and responses in the midst of the situation so he or she can act accordingly. He or she will probably always have problems with conflict and or confrontation, but to function will he or she will need to maintain a level of self-awareness and understanding so as to work through these issues. This is how a competent pastor functions – doing what needs to be done so as to be effective in shepherding a church and leading it in the way the Lord has directed.

More to come. Feel free to comment.

a million

2008-01-29T17:42:00.000-06:00

how to make a million by age 65...

additions

2008-01-28T22:33:00.001-06:00

I am adding Celucien L. Joseph of Christ My Righteousness to my blogroll - he has good things to say.

Since I have become a pastor of a small church I have been doing to researching and have compiled my own "pastoral ministry bibliography" but it grows as I find new books or resources I want to add to it. Presently it is mostly books. So I am adding John Frye's Jesus the Pastor (Zondervan 2002). Here is a quote: "While we may lift Christ up as Savior, as we bow down to him as Lord, as we marvel at his offices of Prophet, Priest, and King, as we walk with him as Friend, we seem to ignore him as the supreme Senior Pastor." It is enough of a teaser that I have to read the rest of the book now! Ha!

If interested I will post my bibliography for al to see and use as a resource.

AGTS Spring Lectureship - Craig S. Keener

2008-01-28T15:34:00.000-06:00

The Assemblies of God Theological Seminary has posted Dr Craig S. Keener's lectures on New Testament Missiology on their website for all to hear. You can also hear the lectures via podcast.

A brilliant scholar and passionate evangelist, Dr. Craig S. Keener (M.Div. 1987; 2006 AGTS Alumnus of the Year) is one of the most prolific New Testament scholars today. He has written seven commentaries and six books including Gift and Giver (Baker Academic, 2001), Paul, Women and Wives: Marriage and Women’s Ministry in the Letters of Paul (Hendrickson, 1992), and Defending Black Faith (IVP, 1997). His 1995 publication of the IVP Bible Background Commentary: New Testament (IVP 1994) has sold over 350,000 copies in nine languages. He spoke at AGTS during the Spring Lectureship Series.

Dr. Craig S. Keener serves as professor of New Testament at Palmer Theological Seminary in Wynnewood, Pa. He earned his Ph.D. in New Testament and Christian Origins from Duke University in 1991. His passion for racial reconciliation is seen in his commitment to pastoral ministry in inner-city Philadelphia.

Good stuff! Let me know what you think!

BDAG

2008-01-26T19:49:00.001-06:00

Is BDAG infallible?

What say you?

coveting?

2008-01-26T15:56:00.000-06:00

I have a problem....I like trucks. Okay, I know I have a little Mazda B2300 SE that is a 4banger and paid off and will probably last a lifetime.... but still I really like the FORD F150!!

meanwhile...

Is Iran really the threat the President and Media says it is?

What do you think of Doug Pagitt's claims about "spreaching"?

shalom,

The Holy Spirit

2008-01-23T19:04:00.000-06:00

Bryan L has a post in which he argues for the tendency of those prescribing to calvinism to have a low view of the Holy Spirit in relation to their doctrine of the Perseverance of the Saints (P in the TULIP acronym, which describes the salvation process in calvinist theology).

I think he is right in many cases (there are some charismatic calvinists). He is arguing that the doctrine of the Perseverance of the Saints seems to not "really take into account the experience of the Holy Spirit in the believers’ lives as evidence of their salvation."

I would like to take it a step further if I may (at some risk), I think the same can generally be said of Evangelicalism at large - here it is dangerous to generalize because once you do - someone breaks the generalization. I think Evangelicalism tends to downplay the role of the Holy Spirit in the life of the believer. Why do I think this? Well, there are several reasons.

First off, open just about any Evangelical Systematic Theology book (with the exception of Grudem and maybe Grenz) and you find only short sections on the person and work of the Holy Spirit - Millard Erickson's Christian Theology has only 36 pages on the person and work of the Holy Spirit as compared to 181 pages related to Christ and 298 pages on Knowing God. Though this is only one example, I think it is fair to say that the Holy Spirit often gets the short end of the stick in much Evangelical theology.
Evangelicals have a problem with the role of "experience" in faith life and practice. The is probably largely due to the excesses of the Pentecostal/Charismatic/Third Wave/Apostolic movements - though I say more toward the excesses of Charismaticsand Third Wavers than the Pentecostals per se. For many evangelicals use of the "e" word (as I call it) is not valid in most conversations regarding receiving the Holy Spirit (otherwise they say that for Charismatics experience trumps scripture). Rightly so, many believe a new believer receives the Holy Spirit at salvation, but wrongly so, they insist that experience has little if any factor in the receiving of the Holy Spirit - so it is by faith and not by sight. Part of this lies in a cessationist point of view that what happened on the Day of Pentecost (Acts 2:4ff) was a transitional event and meant only for starting the church and ending with the last of the Apostles. In my opinion, I see no basis for this claim whatsoever, though Cessationist base this on their interpretation of "when perfection comes" in 1 Cor 13:10 (they see it as the Cannon of Scripture, I and others see it as related to the Parousia). This is pretty much a never ending debate.
Other Evangelicals may not be completely cessationist yet will want to know where the tongues of fire and the wind are if the event in Acts 2:1-4 is still normal or normative.
There is also the worry of being too over focused on emotionalism (media video footage never helps in this case) which is confused with experience. Emotionalism and experience are not synonyms. I think the claim to emotionalism is more rhetoric than fairness - how one responds to experience is going to be different for each person and is to be guided by Scripture.
Many evangelicals (and calvinists) will insist that the primary purpose of the Holy Spirit is to give witness to Christ - so a truly Spirit-filled person and assembly will be a Christ-centered - Christ exalting person/assembly. I agree with this completely. At the same time I believe the role of the Spirit in the life of the believer and the church is multi-faceted. He will teach us all things and remind us of Jesus' teachings (Jn 14:26); He will guide us into all truth (Jn 16:13); He will make Christ known to us (Jn 16: 14-15); he will tell us what to say when we are under pressure or when we are persecuted (Mk 13:11). Even so, there is also the issue of charismatic empowerment. The individual believer will receive power when the Holy Spirit comes on him or her - power for what? Power for witness to Jesus (in both word and deed) - this is the essence of Spirit Baptism (cf. Acts 1:8 realized in Acts 2:4ff). With this empowerment, I believe, comes the gifts of the Holy Spirit as seen in Romans 12:4-8, 1 Corinthians 12:8-11, and Ephesians 4:11 (these are offices but still gifts - "he gave some to be...").

I recognize I am not complete and may be inaccurate in my assessment but I think I am on the right track - both Reformed and Evangelical Theology, in general, tend to play down the role of the Holy Spirit in the life of the believer and the community of faith.

In Reformed Theology it is the Sovereignty of God. In Evangelical Theology it is the Supremacy of Christ. In Pentecostalism it is the Power of the Holy Spirit. I think each have their pluses and each have their own excesses. Instead of pitting them against each other I think there is plenty of room for blending all three in to a solid Biblical Theology of our Triune God.

However, the blending has yet to take place and is presenting many problems for Pentecostals because Evangelicalism has infused the movement and is causing much doubt and uncertainty in exactly who the Holy Spirit is and how he works in a person's life.

Please don't get me wrong, there many good and excellent aspects of Evangelical Theology - they are just weak on the person and work of the Holy Spirit and I think to a fault.

want to go to seminary?:

2008-01-22T09:03:00.000-06:00

check out an interesting website: goingtoseminary.com

let me know what you think. I think it has some good stuff, even though I already went...

A Reader's Hebrew Bible

2008-01-21T16:11:00.000-06:00

I know Mike alerted us to this a few days ago, however, I am excited about the new upcoming A Reader's Hebrew Bible being put out by Zondervan. I am certain it is not perfect and there will probably be lots of blogs offering way better critiques than I can offer when it comes out in May (I have plenty of my own criticisms of the Reader's Greek New Testament - primarily that they use a different text than the UBS4/NA27 and the italic font). Here is one review by bookseller James Spinti of Eisenbrauns to consider.

Here are the product details from the Zondervan Website:

Following in the footsteps of the popular A Reader’s Greek New Testament, A Reader’s Hebrew Bible includes features that make this a time-saver for studying the Hebrew and Aramaic Old Testament. It comes in Italian Duo-Tone™ binding—attractive, durable, and affordable.

Description:
Ideal for Hebrew students and pastors, A Reader’s Hebrew Bible saves time and effort in studying the Hebrew Old Testament. By eliminating the need to look up definitions, the footnotes allow the user to read the Hebrew and Aramaic text more quickly, focusing on parsing and grammatical issues. A Reader’s Hebrew Bible offers the following features: • Complete text of the Hebrew and Aramaic Bible using the Leningrad Codex (minus critical apparatus) • Shaded Hebrew names that occur less than 100 times • Footnoted definitions of all Hebrew words occurring 100 times or less (twenty-five or less for Aramaic words) • Context-specific glosses • Stem-specific glossed definitions for verb forms (Qal, Piel, Hiphil, and so forth) • Ketib/Qere readings both noted in the text and differentiated appropriately • Marker ribbon

Featuring a handsome Italian Duo-Tone™ binding, A Reader’s Hebrew Bible is a practical, attractive, and surprisingly affordable resource.

Book & Bible Cover Size: Large
Page Count: 1680[!!!]

Size: 7.2 wide x 9.9 high x 2.1 deep in. | 183 wide x 251 high x deep 53 mm
Weight: 3.28 lb | 1486 gms

Available: May, 2008
Publisher: Zondervan

The sample page too looks good and gives a fair example of what to expect! obviously it would be awkward to take this to church but nevertheless it could serve to help with working on one's reading of the Hebrew Bible.

This will definitely be at the top of the list for birthdays or other gift giving events!

Quote of the Day...

2008-01-20T23:11:00.002-06:00

"We are to comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable."

-George O. Wood, General Superintendent of the Assemblies of God

I love it!!
.

new book

2008-01-19T13:58:00.000-06:00

Kudos to Tom Vail (long time Canyon River Guide) for graciously sending me a copy of his book Grand Canyon: A Different View (Masterbooks, 2003)!! This is a really nice little book. Little meaning it isn't quite as big as what one thinks of a Coffee Table style book - it's dimensions are 10.1 x 8.1 x 0.4 inches and 103 pages. It is obvious this is a book that promotes a conservative young earth creationist view of the Canyon and creation in general. This is not bad, after all they do say it is an alternative view - and I think a fair and valid and much needed one to counter balance more naturalistic approaches. One may not agree with everything in the contributing articles but that if fine it is still a great book and beautiful one at that (the pictures are awesome!). Not a few of the contributors are PhD's in Geology, Paleontology, Physics, Geophysics, Space Physics, Biology, Biochemistry, Atmospheric Science, Mechanical Engineering, and the like - Ken Ham and John McArthur also offer some pastoral perspectives as well. Just thumbing through the book and glancing at some of the photos, I realize one has not "seen" the canyon until one has gone down into it and either gone on a rafting trip (with stops along the way) or spent some time hiking through it). It is truly one of the seven natural wonders of the world! and no wonder some 3-5 million people come through the gates every year!

blessings to you all.

Who (or what) made the Grand Canyon?

2008-01-12T16:47:00.000-06:00

Doug Chaplin over at MetaCatholic has a post about creationists. I have to be honest, until my wife and I came to the Grand Canyon to pastor a church (Doug may not be too keen about me since we pastor a pentecostal church) that I had not really thought too much about the issue of creationism or evolution. I think I had somewhat ambiguously settled on a sort of theistic evolution thinking while there was one major creation event (possibly the big bang) there are de nuevo (sp?) acts of creation taking place. I am not sure yet where I stand on issues of creation ex nilio(sp?) either. At present I I am thinking God created the Heavens and the Earth, there was the fall of Satan who then messed up the creation leading to a place of darkness that was formless and void, and then God's first act of redemption was "Let there be light" (see Allan Ross's Creation and Blessing: A Guide to the Exposition of Genesis for more).

Anywho, the question around here is often "What made the canyon?" The typical Park Guide will say, "I can give you the answer to that in four words, 'the river made it.'" My wife and I want to correct the fellow and say instead, "The Lord made it." However, as Doug's post and others out there might suggest, is this necessarily true? Maybe, maybe not. Maybe the river did make it. Maybe (like what happened at Mt St. Helens in Washington can show) it happened as a result of a catastrophic event such as the flood or something else and the Colorado (Red in Spanish) River has maintained it?

There is a man who runs a ministry here in the Canyon area called Canyon Ministries. He is an ardent creationist and young earth advocate (I suppose he is more about the young earth verse old earth debate than anything). A few years ago put out a coffee table type book on the Grand Canyon that has been (or was) quite controversial.

Grand Canyon, a Different View has awesome photos with pro-creationist articles spread throughout. It faced severe opposition from many an evolutionist and such that a group of scientist put out a letter asking the National Park Service to remove the book from its stores because it is misleading and does not discuss science but rather pushes religious views. I guess the NPS opted instead to put it over in the so-called "inspirational" section.

Moving on, there is a section on the Canyon Ministries website that offers "8 Grand Canyon Evidences" that "prove" the canyon did not form over thousands of years by erosion from the river but instead came about through a severe catastrophic event of biblical proportions such as the Noahic Flood (which obviously he argues for a global flood over a local flood). Each is listed as a factual statement when really they are in his words "very plausible explanations" of how the canyon came to be - again using the situation at Mt. St. Helens as an example. Incidently, there is a ministry similar to the Canyon Ministry located up near Mt St. Helens called Mt. St Helens Creation Information Center. Looking through some of these "statements of fact" I find myself not knowing enough about the issues to resist the seemingly compelling evidence. I realize all my quotation makrs probably show me being skeptical or wanting to appear so.

I think I will be needing to look into these issues more as I am sure I will be dealing with questions about such as a pastor of a church in the Grand Canyon National Park.

What suggested reading might y'all have that I consider as I ponder these matters?

At present I have Three Views on Creation and Evolution authored by J.P. Moreland, et.al (Zondervan, 1999) and Hugh Ross' The Genesis Question: Scientific Advances and the Accuracy of Genesis (NavPress, 2001).

Let me know what you think. Thanks.

John 1:1-5

2008-01-07T17:36:00.000-06:00

Okay, I realize this is a bit dated but really, if you preach or teach on any aspect of the Bible and want to be able to present a strong Biblical theology on just about whatever you are teaching.... you need this book! IVP's New Dictionary of Biblical Theology: Exploring the Unity & Diversity of Scripture edited by Brian S. Rosner, et al (IVP, 2000) has many times been a life saver for me. Even before I received a copy of Keener's commentary on John I have been thinking about either preaching through it or teaching through for a Bible study -

Last night I preached on John 1:1-5 (I have a sermon on John 1:1-18 but I wanted to go back and focus more on smaller parts of the lengthly narrative unit (1:1-18)). With the great help from the Dictionary of Biblical Theology (and the wonderful help of Bauckham's The Testimony of the Beloved Disciple (and of course Keener) was was able to put together these main points:

1) calling Jesus the Word of God defines his relationship to God (v1-2).
While Jesus is separate from the Father, he is essential to his very identity as God – because the Word was with God and was God – this one was in the beginning with God (v1-2). Jesus is not just the unique one-of-a-kind Son of God, his is God incarnate – his very being is tied into the essence and identity of God the Father.

2) calling Jesus the Word of God defines his relationship to creation (v3).
While Jesus was and is separate from God’s creative work, he was and is essential to the work of God in creation because “all things were made through [it] and apart from him nothing was made that was made.”

3) calling Jesus the Word of God defines his relationship to humanity (v4-5).
While Jesus was and is separate from humanity he is and was essential to its very existence since "in him is the life and the life was the light of men" – Jesus is the source of our lives – in him is the light and the life of men – through his presence in the world the darkness is dispelled and life is brought to humanity.

It was very helpful and while I know there is A LOT to talk about in the Prologue to the Fourth Gospel - these were the points I decided to focus on for now.

I have to run but I'll come back and share some more on this passage. Let me know what you think.

articles on the Holy Spirit

2008-01-06T15:24:00.000-06:00

If anyone is interested the Assemblies of God has a magazine called the Enrichment Journal (both in print and online). In the online version they have a series of articles archived on the Person and Work of the Holy Spirit that may be of interest to you.

If you read any of them, let me know what you think - I think they should be helpful for the most part.

Quote of the Day!

2008-01-04T20:25:00.000-06:00

I have been reading Greg Boyd's blog lately and came across this statement about politics. It is my quote of the day.

So, I'm guessing it will in the end be Huckabee against Obama. And, despite the conservative rally I think Obama will win, because I don't think Huckabee stands much of a chance. Obama will be our next president.

Or not.

And none of this matters much -- which is the main point for Kingdom people to remember. Whatever happens in this rat race, please don't let yourself get sucked in. Have you're opinions, make your guesses, vote if you want to. But always remember that the power that will ultimately conquer evil and save the world is not the power that flows from Caesar's throne. It's rather the power that flows from Calvary.

This bears repeating:

But always remember that the power that will ultimately conquer evil and save the world is not the power that flows from Caesar's throne. It's rather the power that flows from Calvary!!

This is awesome! It is so true - Christians can be involved in things politically and try as able to disciple the nations for Christ, but when it comes down to it - American politics matter little compared to the politics of the Kingdom of God - love that flows from Calvary! Political maneuvers cannot make the world a better place to live - only the power of God can do that - and it is made more effective when his people choose to live out Kingdom politics in the world!

Let me know what you think.

Can't believe it!

2008-01-03T22:53:00.000-06:00

I noted that I wished to get Craig Keener's commentary on John a few posts ago. Well, completely unexpectedly, a package showed up in my mail! I couldn't believe it! A friend of my wife and I and fellow seminarian graciously purchased the expensive two volume set and sent it to me! I could hardly believe the kindness, it blew me out of the water in a happy way! Oh man, did I say I could hardly believe it? I fully intend to return the favor with a very nice coffee table book on the Grand Canyon forthwith!

the New Year

2008-01-02T16:46:00.000-06:00

I'd like to jump on the band wagon and try as able to set some goals for the New Year. Like the rest of humanity, can't say for sure I have ever actually met any of my resolutions - but that does not mean we cannot at least try.

1) Read the Bible through at least once (may seem like and odd goal but when is the last time you read the Bible through? Exactly). How much more important is it for a fledgling pastor of a small church?

2) Become licensed with the Assemblies of God (well, I don't really have much choice on this though there are a couple "issues" I need to work through to be okay with signing the papers - which I will not go into here on this blog). We are only at this church because my wife is already fully ordained, so officially, she is the senior pastor of the church. I am not sure yet if I will go for ordination, it is just so expensive to maintain, and yes each pastor has to maintain his own ordination).

3) See progress in becoming a competent pastor. This is important because you would be surprised how many pastors are not competent nor well grounded in a strong sense of pastoral identity.

4) Gain consistency in personal spiritual growth and discipline. I learned in seminary that the spiritual formation of the minister is crucially important not just to the minister but also to those whom the minister "ministers." Effectiveness in our calling is related to our consistency in personal spiritual formation. If we are not prayed up, we dry up. I do not want to just "pray more" or "read my Bible more" but instead be consistent in pursuing those things that will allow for personal spiritual growth. This will be a challenge for me because since my daughter was born a year ago January 10th, I have found the battle for personal time with God nearly overwhelming (with me on the losing side).

5) Read many books (and finish them too!) I personally believe in the value of reading many books and that not just Christian books - in the words of Douglas Stuart, "The good exegete reads many books." I think too being widely read helps bring breadth and depth to ones understanding of the world and life (and to one's own personal growth and maturity, spiritually and emotionally) - and can assist in becoming a competent well-rounded person. Of course I too have many books I need to finish and others I want to read so hopefully I will make some headway on this, this year.

6) Like Bryan L, spend less time on the computer (which if not careful, easily wastes a lot of time) and more time with my baby girl and my beautiful wifey. I would like us to spend quality time together and see growth in our marriage as well. We are in a tough situation here in the canyon and above all else we need a strong healthy marriage to push through and see the church gain a strong presence in the Grand Canyon Village. Do pray for us, we need it. There is significant spiritual opposition to what we do here and we need the prayers of our fellow Christians to help sustain us and see us move forward in the Lord.

So, with that, I need to get off the computer and attend to my soon to be one year old daughter!

May you all have a blessed new year!

Christmas pt II

2007-12-28T00:41:00.000-06:00

My Family sort of had Christmas late this year (by a couple days) because my brother Keith and his wife Carol went to Mexico to visit Carol's side of the family a few days before coming to Seattle. So this morning was Christmastime part deux! When asked what I wanted for Christmas my reply was, "Well, I still don't have the extended edition of the Lord of the Rings..." Viola, what shows up under the tree? Why bless me! The Lord of the Rings - The Motion Picture Trilogy (Platinum Series Special Extended Edition)!!!

Okay, I know this isa bit dated, but still I have wanted this since it came out and still have not seen the extendd edition of ROTK, though I have seen the extended editions of FOTR and TT. I enjoy reading the story and watching the movies they are just really amazing stuff!!

ps, did anyone see the trailer for Prince Caspian and think ROTK? I could hardly believe it..

bless you all!