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Here is a digest of Christian comment from an evangelical perspective.

Some of the material posted here is based on preaching or teaching I have done as a Reader at Holy Trinity Church, Norwich.  Other stuff is related to my study of Scripture or my reading of Christian writers old and new.

A sort of ‘map’ of some of my interests and concerns can be found here.

My Bible Study Notes represent an on-going project to compile verse-by-verse comments on the Bible.

Jonathan Mason

Biblical Inspiration: What’s Wrong With An Incarnational Model?

Many evangelicals have had a habit of drawing a parallel between the divine and human aspects of Scripture and the divine and human natures of Christ.

This matter is discussed by A.T.B. McGowan, in his book The Divine Spiration of Scripture (Apollos, 2007, pp119-121).  McGowan cites Peter Enns’ book Inspiration and Incarnation as attempting to solve some of the issues facing evangelicals with regard to various issues raised by Old Testament scholarship by appeal to an incarnational model of biblical inspiration.

One of the problems with an incarnational model are, according to McGowan, is that it not taught in Scripture itself.  Another, more fundamental, problem is that only God is divine and therefore only God can have a divine nature.  Of course, the Scriptures have divine characteristics, but they cannot have a divine nature.

John Webster puts it well:-

Like any extension of the notion of incarnation (in ecclesiology or ethics, for example), the result can be Christologically disastrous, in that it may threaten the uniqueness of the Word’s becoming flesh by making ‘incarnation’ a general principle or characteristic of divine action in, through or under creaturely reality.  But the Word made flesh and the scriptural word are in no wya equivalent realities.  Moveover, the application of an analogy from the hypostatic union can scarecely avoid divnising the Bible by claiming some sort of ontological identity between the biblical texts and the self-communication of God.

Goldilocks and the Moon

Further to my entry on the ‘Goldilocks Effect’ - the idea that the universe is ‘just right’ for the emergence of human life, I’ve been thinking about one aspect of this richly variegated theme.

At first sight, the earth’s near neighbour, the moon, seems to have no drastic effect on life here on earth.  True, it affects ocean tides and offers a bit of light to see things by at night, but, it seems, little more than that.

A closer look at the moon does not seem any more promising.  For all man’s desire to visit it, it is an entirely dead place – airless, colourless, waterless, lifeless.  Its very surface is relic of the early days of the solar system, still bearing the pockmarks of an early onslaught of metororites.  It is a 4-billion-year-old fossil.

The Dream of Nebuchadnezzar – a Sermon

Text: Daniel 2 [See here for the Bible Study Notes on this passage]

Once a year, in late October or early November, a very British event takes place in London: the State Opening of Parliament. Her Majesty the Queen is taken by horse-drawn carriage from Buckingham Palace to the Palace of Westminster and into the House of Lords. There she delivers her speech from the throne, informing the great and the good of her plans for her government and for her people.

Looking at that scene, with all its pomp and circumstance, you should have no trouble working out who is in charge. It’s the woman sitting on the throne with a crown on her head.

Quotes on Assurance

Assurance is glory in the bud, it is the suburbs of paradise. (Thomas Brooks)

Assurance is, as it were, the cream of faith. (William Gurnall)

Sin can never quite bereave a saint of his jewel, his grace; but it may steal away the key of the cabinet, his assurance. (William Jenkin)

A letter may be written, when it is not sealed; so grace may be written in the heart, and the Spirit may not set the seal of assurance to it. (Thomas Watson)

“Put Off – Put On”

Matthew Henry, the famous Bible commentator, once preached a series of sermons on sanctification.  In each sermon he would deal with a sin to be ‘mortified’, and then the corresponding grace to be cultivated.

Wright on Justification 12 – Romans 3:27-30

Continuing to summarise Bishop Tom Wright’s Justification: God’s Plan and Paul’s Vision.

Boasting, then, is excluded, Rom 3:27.  Israel could not boast of any superiority that might arise from Torah-keeping or from having a special place in God’s purposes.  No: Torah itself tells you of your own failures, and declares that your privileged place will be taken away and given to others.  Who now are God’s people? – those whose Torah-keeping consists of faith, those who are ‘the circumcised-in-heart’, Rom 2:25-29, ‘the Jew-in-secret’ people, 2:13-16, ‘the ones who do the Torah and thus have circumcision reckoned to them’, ‘the ones who do the Torah and so will be justified on the last day, even though they are Gentiles and don’t have the Torah as their ancestral possession’, 2:10, ‘the ones who through patience in well-doing seek for glory and honour and immortality’, 2:7.  God’s people are those who keep the Torah not by works but by faith.

Wright on Justification 11 – Romans 3:21-4:25

The reference to ‘a righteousness of God’ in Rom 3:21 must mean (says Tom Wright in section IV of his exegetical comments on Romans in Justification: God’s Plan and Paul’s Vision) ’God’s faithfulness to his covenant’.  This is demanded by the immediate context in Romans 2 and 3, by the Old Testament usage, and by the usage in the post-biblical second-Temple literature.  In particular, it is demanded by the emphatic references to God’s own righteousness in Rom 3:25f (a point blurred by those interpreters and translations that insist on rendering dikaiosyne as ‘justice’ in these verses’).

Wright on Justification 10 – Romans 3:1-8

Moving now to section 3 of Tom Wright’s exegetical comments on Romans in his book Paul: God’s Plan and Paul’s Vision.

Paul’s argument in Rom 2:17, 29 (’If you call yourself a Jew’) is more than an assertion that Jews, just as much as Gentiles, are sinful.  It is part of his account of the all-important covenant, God’s-plan-for-the-world-through-Israel.  And his assessment of the privileges of Judaism are sincere.  It follows that he is not talking primarily about the salvation of ‘the Jew’; he is talking about God’s plan for salvation coming through ‘the Jew’ (cf. Jn 4:22).  The point is not just that the Jews are part of the problem of sin, but that they are supposed to be the answer to that problem.  Cf. Gal 3:10-14.

The New Perspective on Paul: What is at stake?

Leaving aside for a moment my reading on this subject, I would like just to jot down here some of the questions and challenges posed by the New Perspective on Paul, especially in the version developed by Bishop N.T. (Tom) Wright.

1. Jesus and Paul.  Have we distorted the gospel by privileging the teaching of Paul above that of Jesus?
2. ‘Reformation spectacles’.  Do we tend to read Paul too much in the light of debates and doctrines formulated at the time of the Reformation, and too little in the light of 1st-century setting in which Paul (and Jesus himself, of course) lived and taught?
3. Grace.  Did Paul’s Jewish contemporaries (and Paul himself, prior to his Damascus Road experience) generally hope to be saved by grace, or by works?
4. ‘The works of the law’.  Does the expression ‘the works of the law’ in Paul’s writings refer more widely to any efforts to commend onself to God on the basis of keeping the law, or more narrowly to those practice that marked a person out as a Jew (Sabbath observance, food laws, circumcision and so on)?
5. Covenant.  Are we apt to view Paul’s writings (to the Romans, especially) as a repository of timeless truths, which we can mine Paul’s writings for proof texts that will support a previously-constructed system of theology, or are we prepared to  read him in the context of the ‘big picture’ – the overall covenant-focussed storyline - of the Bible?
6. ‘The righteousness of God’.  Does the expression ‘the righteousness of God’ in Paul’s writings primarily denote God’s just and holy character, or does it rather refer to God’s covenant faithfulness?
7. Exile.  Did Jewish people of Paul’s day tend to think of themselves as still awaiting deliverance from exile?
8. Sin.  Is ‘repentance’ to be thought of primarily as a turning from sin to Christ or is it to be thought of as ‘getting on board’ with God’s project to renew the world?
9. Atonement.  Is the cross-work of Jesus to be thought of principally as a work of substitution for the penalty of sin, or as a victory over the powers of evil (or neither, or both)?
10. Imputation.  Is a doctrine of ‘imputation of Christ’s righteousness’ taught by Paul, or is it a piece of theological fiction that dates back only as far as the Reformation?
11. Faith.  Does the expression ‘faith in Christ’ represent a satisfactory translation of the original Greek, or should the underlying phrase be rendered, ‘the faithfulness of Christ’?
12. Salvation.  Do we focus on the individual and other-worldly aspects of salvation (’going to heaven when I die’) to the detriment of the corporate and this-worldly aspects (membership of the people of God and the renewal of all things)?
13. Gospel.  Is ‘the gospel’ a scheme of salvation, or is it rather an announcement that Jesus, crucified and risen, is Messiah and Lord?
14. Justification.  Is ‘justification by grace through faith’ a doctrine that can do service for the whole scheme of salvation, or is it, more narrowly, the doctrine that declares that all who believe in Jesus are members of the covenant people of God?
15. Eschatology.  Does justification happen at the moment that a person believes in Christ, or is it a declaration that will be made at the last day (albeit brought forward into the present)?
16. Judgement.  Are those who believe in Jesus Christ justified now, by grace through faith, and if so does this not exclude any future judgment according to their works?
17. Ecclesiology.  Are Paul’s letters to Romans and Galatians more about ecclesiology (relationships within the Christian community – especially between Jewish and Gentile believers) than they are about soteriology (how people are saved)?

Wright on Romans in a Day

We’re about to embark on a series of sermons on Romans at my church.

For those who are interested in beginning to get to grips with a ‘New Perspective’ view of Romans, then I would warmly recommend N.T. (Tom) Wright’s series of three lectures that provide a rapid survey and a summary of preaching suggestions.  These were given in 2003, soon after the publication of his commentary on Romans in the  New Interpreter’s Bible series, and they helpfully draw on that commentary.

I think that these lectures do an effective job in highlighting the strengths of the New Perspective reading of Romans.  However, the listener will have to work out for his or her self whether there might be some aspects of Paul’s teaching that Wright over-states, and other aspects that he under-states.

Judgment According to Works?

The recent reading I’ve been doing on the doctrine of justification has thrown up this related question about the final judgment.

Are we warranted to say that we are justified by faith, but are judged by works?  The very idea seems to undermine the grace of God and to take away with one hand what has so freely been given with the other.

Notes on the Doctrine of Election

What followed formed the basis of a couple of recent small group studies.  I should point out that the choice of topic was theirs, not mine!

Eph 1:3-14  is a good place to start: Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us in the heavenly realms with every spiritual blessing in Christ. For he chose us in him before the creation of the world to be holy and blameless in his sight. In love he predestined us to be adopted as his sons through Jesus Christ, in accordance with his pleasure and will—to the praise of his glorious grace, which he has freely given us in the One he loves…he made known to us the mystery of his will according to his good pleasure, which he purposed in Christ, to be put into effect when the times will have reached their fulfilment—to bring all things in heaven and on earth together under one head, even Christ.  In him we were also chosen, having been predestined according to the plan of him who works out everything in conformity with the purpose of his will, in order that we, who were the first to hope in Christ, might be for the praise of his glory.

We see here repeated and joyful references to the purpose of God in ‘choosing’, ‘predestining’ from eternity those who in time would benefit from all the blessings of salvation.

Let’s begin to unpack the subject of divine election under a few headings.