20 Monday Dec 2010
Tags
I know it’s been a really long time since I blogged about Walther…and I still have my bookmark in Law & Gospel to resume blogging at a later date, but I was reading some things tonight which really struck me on the nature of preaching about faith.
Melanchthon is credited by Walther as being “the father of synergism (that is, synergism within the Lutheran church)” (pg. 289-290, Concordia Pub., 2010 ed.). He quotes Melanchthon and then offers his rebuttal: Continue reading
15 Wednesday Dec 2010
Posted in Book Discussion, Theology
Tags
books, confession, Gospel, Law, leadership, purity, Randy Alcorn, repentance, Scripture, sexual sin, theology
What should pastors do to keep their noses clean…or, as we say in the Christian world, themselves pure? Randy Alcorn has an article which has been highly distributed over the years which I would like to comment on.
In 1989, the book Sins of the Body was published in The Leadership Library, edited by Terry Muck. It featured articles written by a wide variety of Christian authors. The article which shares the same name as this blog post, was written by Randy Alcorn. Christianity Today has the article available on its website here. Recently, some folks asked me what I thought of Randy Alcorn. It’s been a significant amount of time since I’ve read a book by him, but I wanted to sketch out the apprehension I have for Alcorn using this article as a foil.
My operating assumption is that Randy Alcorn doesn’t understand law and gospel properly and therefore gives rather toxic advice. Alcorn offers himself as the example instead of Christ and in doing so, contributes to the problem.
08 Monday Nov 2010
Posted in Book Discussion, Personal, Theology
Tags
Gerhard Forde, Gospel, justification, Lutheranism, Reformed Theology, repentance, sanctification, Scripture, sexual sin, theology
For my Spiritual and Ministry Formation class, we’re assigned blog summaries in which we interact with material assigned the previous week. This week’s assignment was to read the Lutheran view of Sanctification as discussed in Christian Spirituality: Five Views of Sanctification, edited by Donald Alexander, published by IVP. The Lutheran view was articulated by Gerhard Forde. I figured I’d share my assignment on my blog.
Dr. Forde begins his discussion of sanctification as “the art of getting used to the unconditional justification wrought by the grace of God for Jesus’ sake. It is what happens when we are grasped by the fact that God alone justifies.” In other words, Dr. Forde asserts that sanctification is the natural byproduct of justification and thus, all of it is indeed brought about by none other than the Christ who bought us. Many people view sanctification as the “getting down to business” of the Christian life. It’s what we bring to the table after Christ saves us and is (so it is thought, anyway) the way we stay in God’s good graces. This is, Dr. Forde asserts, “entirely false. According to Scripture, God is always the acting subject, even in sanctification. ”
Repeatedly, Dr. Forde calls attention to the dangers of speaking of sanctification. All the discussion appeals to the old man, he says, becoming a verbal exercise which sounds very impressive, but lacking the necessary foundation of love which the old man is completely incapable of laying himself.
Sanctification, as well as justification, is rooted in the unconditional promise of God. This is something the old man does not know how to handle because “as old beings, we simply cannot understand or cope with the unconditional promise of justification pronounced in the name of Jesus. What we don’t see is that what the unconditional promose is calling forth is a new being. The justification of God promised in Jesus is not an ‘offer’ made to us as old beings; [instead,] it is our end, our death.”
Are you putting YOUR old man to death?
19 Tuesday Oct 2010
Tags
insecurity, loneliness, prayer, preaching, psalms, relationships, Scripture, sexual sin, worship
Psalm 88
I Cry Out Day and Night Before You
A Song. A Psalm of the Sons of Korah. To the choirmaster: according to Mahalath Leannoth. A Maskil of Heman the Ezrahite.
1O LORD, God of my salvation;
I cry out day and night before you.
2Let my prayer come before you;
incline your ear to my cry!
3For my soul is full of troubles,
and my life draws near to Sheol.
4I am counted among those who go down to the pit;
I am a man who has no strength,
5like one set loose among the dead,
like the slain that lie in the grave,
like those whom you remember no more,
for they are cut off from your hand.
Psalm 88 has long been one of my two favorite psalms of lament. The other, a close second, is Psalm 13.
Today’s lament really started in earnest yesterday afternoon. I was driving away from school and there was a runner with an amazing body standing at the intersection that I didn’t just lust over…I was full-on envious.
Then this morning, I saw two or three guys who I find myself being very intimidated by at chapel. They seem very articulate and talented and like they’ll be good pastors. And they’re all really attractive on top of all of that. And they wear that attractiveness like it doesn’t really matter to them…they could take or leave it.
Oh, to be that bold. To have the security to hold one’s looks loosely in one’s hand like they seem to…it’s a pretty impossible task. How many idols have I just rattled off? Probably five or six.
I just feel very alone; I couldn’t really concentrate in Sermon Preparation & Delivery today…I sort of phased in and out on what the sub would say (though he had excellent things to say, and the stuff I did hear seemed very insightful). If there’s one class I never check out of, it’s Prep and Del. But I just couldn’t focus.
I unfriended someone on Facebook this morning. The past few times I’ve gone to his page to see what he’s up to, he and his cute boyfriend are all over the place. The guy himself looks like a model. I get that life isn’t fair…but like Calvin (of Calvin and Hobbes fame), I ask, “but why can’t it ever be unfair in my favor?”
18 Monday Oct 2010
Jay Sklar, a professor at Covenant Theological Seminary, has a little ritual in his classes. In his class greeting, he and the class say,
Sklar: Shalom, class.
Class: Shalom, Jay.
Start with the Text…
…not with the commentary.
Context…
…is king.
I once sat in a church where, at the beginning of the sermon, the pastor told his congregation that he’d consulted 20 different commentaries, 13 of which validated his interpretation of the text. Aside from that being only slightly extreme, I think this pastor missed the point entirely of using commentaries. He seemed to have started with his own presupposition first and then ran a tally count of people who agreed with him, going to the text last.
Bryan Chapell, former pres. of CTS
Bryan Chapell, in his book, Christ-Centered Preaching, pg. 74, makes the following assertion:
You must think through what Scripture says in order to be able to expound adequately and apply meaningfully what commentators say. No commentator has room to write down all the implications, insights and truths given in a text. no distant educator or long-dead scholar knows your situation or your congregation’s concerns. It is not wise habitually to run to commentaries as the first step of sermon preparation, lest your thoughts start running in a groove carved by one not in touch with what you need to address.
29 Wednesday Sep 2010
Posted in Theology
Tags
Calvinism, false teaching, fanatics, Gospel, Holy Spirit, preaching, rant, Reformed Theology, Scripture, theology
The Holy Spirit said *what* to him??
Lately, some folks have been totally taken over by frenzy. They put down their Bibles and want to reach out to God in another way. These guys criticize others who preach from the Bible, saying that we’re “just following the dead letter of the law.” Here’s what I want to ask them: where do they get this Spirit that shows so much contempt for biblical teaching as being so low and childish? If they want to tell me that it’s the Spirit of Christ, I’d tell them they’re being ridiculous!
None of the apostles or early church-goers were ever taught to hold the Bible in such contempt…not by the Holy Spirit. Instead, they had great respect for it…dare I even use the very old-fashioned word ‘reverence’? The Holy Spirit taught of His ruling over His people when he spoke through Isaiah, after all: “My Spirit is upon you, and my words that I have put in your mouth, shall not depart out of your mouth, or out of the mouth of your offspring…forevermore” (59:21). This is the way the Church is happy: by being ruled over by the Spirit of God in his Word!
04 Saturday Sep 2010
Posted in Personal
Tags
books, C. F. W. Walther, Calvinism, discussion, false teaching, friendship, Gospel, Law, Lutheranism, Oneness Pentecostalism, Reformed Theology, Scripture, seminary, theology, witnessing, work
Last night, I was working at the store and a Oneness Pentecostal guy came in. I told him I had relatives that had gone to ABI (Apostolic Bridal Bible Institute) and instantly he wanted to talk, which was cool.
It was a fascinating discussion. We talked about imputed righteousness, eschatology, holy living, the marks of a true Christian…all in the space of one hour. I was in it more to hear how he heard my questions and how I might ask them better of someone I’m trying to share the gospel with, so it was a fruitful time.
I didn’t have the heart to tell him, however, that not only was I not baptized “in Jesus’ Name,” but that I’ve never spoken in tongues. He did get to the point however, where he would refer to himself and me in terms I’d relate to “the invisible Church.” He put a high premium on inspiration (his own) through sermon prep and even at one point claimed to have seen the backside of God in a dream.
16 Monday Aug 2010
Posted in Theology
Quoting from the Fjords of Zion blog:
08/13/2010 by Haydn
Wow… I never thought I was dangerous until this week. I threaten Christendom itself and the heart of Biblical interpretation. I was told this yesterday by someone commenting on a comment that I made this week about the Bible. My comment was that it isn’t necessary for people to read the Scriptures in order to be close to God; reading Scripture is a good thing, but it isn’t necessary for people loving God more or understanding His love better. The person responding to me said:
So Scripture is a box. Now we ask, is this how Paul or Peter talks about Scripture?
08 Sunday Aug 2010
Posted in Theology
Brandon Mouser has a great post on his blog and I wanted to continue to interact by posting this reply…it got a little long for a combox:
Basically, what I would point to is the idea that Scripture claims for itself the idea of being “theopneustos,” or “breathed out by God.” Bart Ehrman and others have erroneously postulated that thiswould have to mean that God dictated the Scriptures, much like many non-Christian sects claim their Scriptures were written. Instead, it points to divine agency being played out in the words used by human beings. This sort of inspiration is unique to the Scriptures, though the norm amongst biblical authors in the writings which were recognized by the Church as being authoritative.
04 Wednesday Aug 2010
Posted in Book Discussion, Scripture, Theology
Tags
books, C. F. W. Walther, false teaching, Gospel, Law, preaching, Reformed Theology, Scripture, theology
In part 6 of my ongoing series on C. F. W. Walther’s Law and Gospel: How to Read and Apply the Bible, I said:
…if the only teaching applied to people is the Law, then they despair, die and perish in their sin. More on this in a future post…
Here is that future post.
This statement is one side of a coin. Some people grow up, live and die under all-law preaching and never have this melt-down I’ve described, or better put, never realize that this is what’s ticking under their hood.
The other alternative is for a person to be crushed under the weight of the fact that they don’t love the Lord with all of who they are…and to not let themselves off the hook because they realize that they do not keep the law perfectly.
Obey! No exceptions! This is the demand of the Law.
Teaching people that “it takes more than faith to really please God” is, in reality, extremely cruel. To those who are convinced of their own righteousness, it pushes them on in their odious good works. Telling the ones who despair of their sin such a thing drives them further and further away from the Gospel…that Christ has obeyed perfectly in their place all that the law demands.
