Andy Naselli

Thoughts on Theology

Six Personalities That Deflect God’s Word

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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

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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

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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

Romans: A Rubik’s Cube or Fire Alarm?

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“The message of Romans is not just apostolic instruction: it is prophetic outcry and warning. The problem is that it comes dressed in such symmetry, profundity, and intellectual elegance. It has become a Rubik’s Cube for erstwhile expositors instead of a fire alarm to rouse God’s people from their lethargy and shallowness.”

— Robert W. Yarbrough, “The Theology of Romans in Future Tense,” The Southern Baptist Journal of Theology 11:3 (2007): 57.

Quoting to Borrow Language and Ethos: An Illustration of How the NT Sometimes Uses the OT

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Here’s an easy-to-understand illustration from Douglas J. Moo‘s Encountering the Book of Romans: A Theological Survey (Grand Rapids: Baker, 2002). It’s entitled “The Many Uses of Quotations” (p. 161):

We have encountered several places in Romans where Paul does not seem to apply the Old Testament in quite the way the original Old Testament context would seem to validate. This creates a theological problem. How can a New Testament writer use the Old Testament to claim that something is true when the Old Testament does not even teach what he claims it does? Such a procedure would be like our trying to prove a doctrine from a text that we have misunderstood. Understandably, we would convince few people. Answers to this problem, which theologians have discussed for years, are not simple. In fact, each of the texts has to be taken on its own, because they present different kinds of problems. But one part of the solution is to recognize that New Testament writers sometimes use the Old Testament not to prove a point but to borrow its language and ethos. An illustration will make the point.

When I was young, and my sons were even younger, we often played basketball out on the driveway together. Then I, and they, grew. I became weaker and slower; they became bigger, stronger, and faster. Foolishly, I kept trying to compete. One day, I was playing one-on-one with my third son, Lukas. He had grown to about six feet six inches and 240 pounds, and was a very strong, highly skilled basketball player. I warned him, “Watch out, Luke, I’m going to take the ball to the basket on you!” He shot back, “Go ahead, Dad, make my day.” He was “quoting” the lines of the character Dirty Harry from the movie starring Clint Eastwood. Eastwood, portraying a cop, uses these words to dare a criminal to draw his gun on him. Luke did not have a gun; he was not threatening to shoot me. He did not intend to quote the author’s “original intention,” nor did I think that he was doing so. The language was a striking way of making a point: if I was foolish enough to try to take the ball to the basket on Luke, I could very well suffer the violence that Dirty Harry’s bad guy suffered in the movie. The quotation worked because we both knew the movie; it therefore communicated the point very well. So Paul and other New Testament writers often use Old Testament language. They know that their readers will understand it, and the application of the language often helps them to perceive a situation in a new light. Thus, in Romans 10:18, for instance, Paul quotes Psalm 19:4 not because he thinks that this text speaks directly about the preaching of the gospel to Israel; rather, he quotes it because the words would awaken echoes in his readers’ minds that would lend force to his assertion.

Related: See G. K. Beale and D. A. Carson, eds., “Introduction,” in Commentary on the New Testament Use of the Old Testament (Grand Rapids: Baker, 2007), pp. xxiv–xxvi. (Cf. my post on this volume.)

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

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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”:

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

Highlights

Two portions are especially memorable.

[Read more…] about You can’t take it with you, but you can send it on ahead

A Test Case for How to Put the Bible Together: Baptism

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Christians disagree—sometimes sharply—on how themes unfold in the OT and NT. Here are a few examples:

  1. the old covenant and new covenant
  2. law and grace
  3. Israel and the church
  4. promise and fulfillment
  5. type and antitype
  6. the Sabbath and Lord’s day
  7. circumcision and baptism

People cannot study such issues in an isolated way without raising larger biblical and theological structural issues. The hermeneutical spiral is complicated, and the way people approach such issues reveals how they put the Bible together. That’s why, upon the recent recommendations of some friends, I spent several hours this afternoon carefully reading the following essay:

BaptismStephen J. Wellum. “Baptism and the Relationship Between the Covenants.” Pages 97–161 in Believer’s Baptism: Sign of the New Covenant in Christ. Edited by Thomas R. Schreiner and Shawn D. Wright. NAC Studies in Bible and Theology. Broadman & Holman: Nashville, 2006.

(Note the free PDF.)

This essay by Wellum, who is “neither Dispensational nor Covenantal (in the paedobaptist sense of the term)” (p. 123n44), is a fine example of what it looks like to approach an issue like baptism responsibly in light of Bible’s storyline.

What follows is an outline of Wellum’s essay with quotations from the introduction and conclusion. (I’ve added the numbering.) [Read more…] about A Test Case for How to Put the Bible Together: Baptism