Bound or Unbound

Schools of systematic theology develop out of a felt need to explain difficult or unclear passages of scripture. As much as we might try to avoid systems — and I certainly do — the necessity of finding a coherent set of overarching principles within which we may evaluate the meaning of any individual text eventually asserts itself. Even refusing to interpret becomes its own sort of interpretation, or at very least a comment on the significance of what God has said. So we try to explain the text without explaining it away.

What then should we do when our systematic theology collides with both observable reality and, more importantly, the scriptures?

Anonymous Asks (408)

“Why are missionaries obsessed with getting everybody else to go to the ends of the earth with the gospel?”

If you’ve never had a missionary to another country visit your local church while on furlough, let me tell you what to expect. You will not get a nice little forty-minute message from scripture. You will definitely not get deep exposition that will help you to grow in Christ. You’ll get a rousing, urgent call to join the missionary out in the world somewhere preaching the gospel to the lost.

If you’re like me, you’ll end the meeting feeling slightly guilty and a little annoyed. I guess I’m saying I can relate to this question, and maybe you can too.

Baal Worship and Howard Cosell

In 1931, an excavator named Claude Schaeffer on a dig in Ras Shamra, Syria came across three clay tablets in the ruins of a house belonging to a high priest of the god Baal that have come to be referred to as the Krt Epic or the The Epic of Kret. (Without any vowels in the original languages, it’s hard to be consistent in the transliteration of some ancient Eastern names.)

If you were to cherry-pick a few couplets from the Krt tablets you might observe that they bear a passing similarity to the language of the Psalms.

Somebody Else’s Mail (7)

Psalm 3 is a little piece of history.

The superscript over it reads, “A Psalm of David, when he fled from Absalom his son.” It takes us back to chapters 15 through 19 of 2 Samuel, which describe Absalom’s conspiracy against his father. The scripture says he “stole the hearts of the men of Israel”. An attractive, charismatic young man, Absalom pretended to care about the people of God and to offer them something his father could not, and large numbers of Israelites followed him in rebelling against David and driving the king from his palace in Jerusalem to exile across the Jordan River.

Absalom’s conspiracy ultimately failed. God delivered David, and if we read Psalm 3 with those events in the back of our minds, we see its words harmonizing with the history in Samuel.

Too Hot to Handle: Coalition of the Unwilling

In which our regular writers toss around subjects a little more volatile than usual.

The Gospel Coalition is an evangelical colossus, with close to 8,000 affiliated congregations across the U.S., 65 million annual website pageviews, regular live events, a full slate of in-house blogs and other media promoting its theological checklist.

Tom: But one very slightly unsettling feature of TGC’s ministry, Immanuel Can, is that they seem to have little interest in engaging in the exchange of ideas, as this Jonathan Merritt article very effectively documents.

You’re quite familiar with TGC. What do they stand for?

The Giving and Taking of the Spirit

Today I want to do a short follow-up from last week’s post, which was about bad songs that conservative evangelical congregations are singing these days.

My particular concern in that one was the really atrocious doctrine of the Holy Spirit that they seem to be teaching in song. I pointed out some of the raw falsehoods that are being sung passionately by those of us who really ought to know better: and I said that the victims of our error include all untaught believers and our own children, as well as the Spirit of God himself, concerning whom these songs promote raw falsehoods.

I ended with a passionate plea for us to stop.

And I really hope somebody is listening.

Jesus and Orthodoxy

One of the minor themes that has caught my attention throughout my latest pass through scripture in my morning readings is the orthodoxy of our Lord’s teaching during his time in the public eye. Most of the subjects he referenced came directly out of the Law, Psalms, Prophets and wisdom literature with which the Jews were extremely familiar, and his take on these subjects was entirely in harmony with all the writers of the Old Testament from one end to another.

Now, it is certainly true that he reframed these ancient concepts in new ways appropriate to his own generation, but he never left himself open to the charge of preaching heresy. His doctrine was in every respect firmly moored to the scripture that he himself insisted cannot be broken.

Six Days

“Six days you shall labor, and do all your work …”

There’s much discussion in Western economies among secularists, and more recently among believers, about eliminating employment altogether for the vast majority of the population. You have almost surely read something to that effect in the last little while. Futurists tell us it’s all but inevitable.

The prospect of a labor-less future for humanity has Elon Musk speculating about governments providing “universal high income” payments to compensate their voters for the unemployment they expect AI to cause.

For unbelievers, any “universal” income, feeble or otherwise, is a sort of holy grail.

Anonymous Asks (407)

“What is the ‘marvelous light’ 1 Peter 2:9 refers to?”

Light is frequently a metaphor for truth, revelation or understanding, not just in the Bible but everywhere in Western literature and beyond. In English, we refer to becoming “enlightened”, meaning we have somehow received a more accurate way of looking at something we formerly did not comprehend. There is even a period in Western history we call the Enlightenment or Age of Reason.

Did this usage originate in the Bible? Perhaps. Many metaphors did.

Off the Leash

When a man cannot stop talking, something is terribly wrong. That is especially true among the people of God, where self-control should be at a premium.

Scripture is consistent from beginning to end in warning about the hazards of uncurated communication. Most recently, Ecclesiastes reminded me, “Be not rash with your mouth, nor let your heart be hasty to utter a word before God, for God is in heaven and you are on earth. Therefore let your words be few.”

In that case, I believe Solomon was concerned about rash vows rather than babbling in worship, petition or confession. Nevertheless, caution in the presence of the Almighty is always prudent.

Somebody Else’s Mail (6)

The word Selah appears in the Old Testament a total of 74 times, primarily in the Psalms, but also a few times in the prophecy of Habakkuk. If that seems odd, you may want to read this post and possibly this one. Hebrew scholars entertain the possibility that in the midst of his prophetic utterances, Habakkuk quoted something constructed very much like a traditional Hebrew psalm (though not one preserved in the Psalter). If that is in fact the case, it should not surprise us to find the prophet using the language of a psalmist. Selah is one of those words peculiar to Psalms.

We are about to encounter it for the first time in Psalm 3.

Too Hot to Handle: Unpardon Me

In which our regular writers toss around subjects a little more volatile than usual.

Matthew, Mark and Luke all make reference to a sin that will, in Matthew’s words “not be forgiven”. Mark calls it an “eternal sin”.

The reference has been a source of distress down through the centuries to Christians who fear they may have committed it and be irreversibly destined for perdition.

Tom: Personally, Immanuel Can, I’ve always thought the unpardonable sin was lazy exegesis, but I haven’t got much scripture to back me up there.

Immanuel Can: Lazy exegesis? Bad, yes, but probably pardonable if you repent. Now, being a Pittsburgh Steelers fan … that’s a whole different category: expect perdition.

Honoring the Spirit

The congregation I was in last weekend was singing this new song:

“Holy Spirit, come invade us now
 We are your church
 We need your power …”

Eh?

These people believe the Spirit of God is outside of believers, and has to be called on to “invade”? They think the church of God does not actually have the Spirit of God already?

Surely not! But why were they singing such nonsense?

Semi-Random Musings (49)

We evangelicals love to use words long past their best-before date. Perhaps the reading material we share in common influences us to sound alike, or maybe we hear other people using a word and pick it up by osmosis.

Here’s one I’d be very happy never to hear again: winsome. It’s not in any translation of the Bible I’ve ever owned, and I’m pretty sure we don’t need it to be.

Have you ever heard anyone but a Christian say it? I certainly have not.