Practical Theology

It Is Finished

April 10, 2009 by Andy Naselli

That’s what Jesus said on the cross some 1,980 years ago.

That’s why “Holy Week” pictures like these are so sad.

Comment 66 is mine:

Thanks for the quality photos. As usual, they are first-class. I profit immensely from looking at the photos posted here each week.

The actions captured in these photos, however, simultaneously sadden and infuriate me. This is not pure Christianity as found in the Old and New Testaments. These are warped traditions that have turned the good news about Jesus Christ on its head.

For an explanation of why Jesus died (and why acts like self-inflicted wounds are not only unnecessary but actually offensive to God), see John Piper’s book The Passion of Jesus Christ: Fifty Reasons Why He Came to Die. Free PDF here.

Doug Moo on Theological Humility

April 4, 2009 by Andy Naselli

This is convicting. Maintaining the kind of theological humility that Moo describes below is no easy task. It’s like walking on an extremely narrow path with steep drop-offs on both sides.

On the one hand, theologians can be overly confident about their positions. They can even become pugnacious and arrogantly close-minded.
On the other hand, they can be insufficiently confident about their positions (e.g., epistemological pseudo-humility). They can be noncommittal and even become compromisingly ecumenical.

What follows is from the “contemporary significance” section of Doug Moo’s comments on Romans 11:33–36 in Romans (NIVAC; Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2000), pp. 391–92:

Theological humility. To my mortification and my family’s delight, I received in the mail just this week an invitation to join the American Association of Retired Persons (AARP). [Moo was born in 1950.] I have reached a point of life in which I find myself prefacing many things I say with “at my age.” Undoubtedly, as my children insist, some of the sentences that follow reflect hardening of the arteries or irrational fear of anything new. But a few of these statements, I trust, reflect some wisdom that the perspective of age has inculcated. [Read more…] about Doug Moo on Theological Humility

Six Personalities That Deflect God’s Word

March 21, 2009 by Andy Naselli

Here’s how D. A. Carson introduces Peter Adam‘s Hearing God’s Words: Exploring Biblical Spirituality (ed. D. A. Carson; New Studies in Biblical Theology 16; Downers Grove: IVP, 2004) in the series preface (pp. 9–10):

In recent decades the notion of ‘spirituality’ has become astonishingly plastic. People judge themselves to be ‘spiritual’ if they have some aesthetic sense, or if they are not philosophical materialists, or if they have adopted a pantheistic view of reality, or if they feel helped or reinvigorated by the ‘vibrations’ of crystals. Even within a broadly Christian heritage, many writers appeal to ‘spiritual disciplines’ that are utterly divorced from the gospel and detached from the teaching of Scripture. Against the backdrop of these cultural developments, Dr Peter Adam encourages clear thinking: he traces the notion of spirituality through some of the turning points of Scripture, and finally grounds it in the gospel of Jesus Christ and its full-blown application to our lives. By appealing both to the Bible and to influential voices in the history of the church (notably John Calvin), Dr Adam manages to combine biblical theology and historical theology in an admirable synthesis. His academic training, years of pastoral ministry, and now principalship of a theological college, ensure that this book simultaneously informs the mind, warms the heart, and strengthens the will. And from the vantage of three decades of personal friendship, I gratefully attest that what Dr Adam writes, he also lives.

Adam asks, “What devices do we use to hear God’s Word today and yet avoid its intended impact?” He answers, “We can best answer this in terms of different types of personality” (p. 171). (In the following quotation, I’ve replaced bullet points with numbers [pp. 171–72]). [Read more…] about Six Personalities That Deflect God’s Word

Seven Synthesizing Conclusions about Ethnicity

March 21, 2009 by Andy Naselli

Here’s how D. A. Carson introduces J. Daniel Hays’s From Every People and Nation: A Biblical Theology of Race (ed. D. A. Carson; New Studies in Biblical Theology 14; Downers Grove: IVP, 2003) in the series preface (pp. 9–10):

This volume combines fine technical scholarship on complex matters of history and race with a prophetic call to Christians to abjure racism. On the one hand, it traces out much of what the Bible says about the diversity of races and cultures, against the background of Ancient Near Eastern social history (its treatment of the ‘curse of Ham’ is particularly penetrating and convincing); on the other, it exposes some of the glib, unbiblical, and frankly immoral stances that not only characterize a fair bit of Western scholarship, but continue to surface in our attitudes and relationships. Dr J. Daniel Hays is able simultaneously to make us long for the new heaven and the new earth, when men and women from every tongue and tribe and people and nation will gather around the One who sits on the throne and around the Lamb, and to cause us to blush with shame when we recognize afresh that the church of Jesus Christ is to be already an outpost of that consummated kingdom in this fallen world. This book deserves the widest circulation and the most thoughtful reading, for it corrects erroneous scholarship while calling Christians to reform sinful attitudes. If the book is sometimes intense, it is because the problems it addresses are not trivial.

Hays concludes with seven “main synthesizing conclusions” that summarize the book (pp. 201–5): [Read more…] about Seven Synthesizing Conclusions about Ethnicity

Christopher Ash on Christianity and Sexuality

March 16, 2009 by Andy Naselli

The sixth CCI esssay is now available: Christopher Ash, “Christianity and Sexuality” (PDF | HTML). (All CCI essays are now available in both PDF and HTML format.)

Christopher Ash is Director of the Cornhill Training Course for the Proclamation Trust in London. He studied theology at Oxford University, where he was awarded the University Prize. He is the author of several books including Marriage: Sex in the Service of God (Leicester: IVP, 2003) and Married for God: Making Your Marriage the Best It Can Be (Leicester: IVP, 2007).

Here’s an outline of his 34-page essay: [Read more…] about Christopher Ash on Christianity and Sexuality

You can’t take it with you, but you can send it on ahead

March 8, 2009 by Andy Naselli

That’s the thesis of Randy Alcorn’s The Treasure Principle: Unlocking the Secret of Joyful Giving (Sisters, OR: Multnomah, 2001).

Also available are an audio book, study guide, and DVD presentation:

The Treasure Principle is a short, pocket-size book (122 pp.) that one can easily read in one sitting. It’s very edifying.

Summary

Alcorn calls this “the treasure principle”: “You can’t take it with you, but you can send it on ahead.”

He supports this with six “treasure principle keys”:

“God owns everything. I’m His money manager.”
“My heart always goes where I put God’s money.”
“Heaven, not earth, is my home.”
“I should live not for the dot [life on earth] but for the line [eternity in heaven].”
“Giving is the only antidote to materialism.”
“God prospers me not to raise my standard of living, but to raise my standard of giving.”

Highlights

Two portions are especially memorable.

Biblical Parenting Conference with Tedd Tripp

March 7, 2009 by Andy Naselli

This week I profited from listening to a series that has been in my MP3 queue for months: a biblical parenting conference with Tedd Tripp from September 19-20, 2008 (see the audio and video below). Particularly memorable is one of Tripp’s illustrations in session 4: tying good apples to a bad apple tree is as profitable as behavior modification that doesn’t deal with heart issues.

Tedd Tripp has authored the following books (and corresponding media):