Theology for the Masses

One of the things about the Christmas narratives in Matthew and Luke that has always baffled me has been the fulfillment passages where Matthew will say that event X fulfills prophecy A. But when I read prophecy A in its OT context it doesn’t make any sense. What Matthew records as the fulfillment isn’t what is being promised by the prophet. Last Christmas I covered Matthew’s use of Hosea 11:1 (see Part 1 and Part 2). This Christmas I want to cover Matthew’s use of Jeremiah 31:15 in Matthew 2:18. continue reading…

Having surveyed the story of God in the Bible, I began to work towards a definition of the gospel. Starting in the Old Testament and moving into the New Testament, I looked at how the Gospels and Acts looked at the gospel. Then we moved into Paul and how he looked at the gospel. Having done that and really tried to expound what I mean by the gospel, I want to conclude this series with a final post that simplifies the gospel definition and speak to the response of faith and repentance to the gospel. Hopefully this series has been helpful to those who have read it because it has been helpful to me in trying to re-articulate the gospel in light of my paradigm shift away from so much of the traditional Protestant justification = forgiveness of sin = gospel. Reading the story of Jesus by Matthew, Mark, Luke-Acts, and John has really altered the way I read the New Testament as a whole. Reading the story of Jesus against the backdrop of the story of Israel has changed how I read the Bible as a whole, God’s story of creation and redemption. continue reading…

In my previous post I defined the gospel in terms of how the Gospels and Acts looked at the gospel. That is to say, they viewed the gospel as God fulfilling his promises made to Israel to establish a new creation by his Spirit, ruled by his Servant-King from the house of David, ending Israel’s exile, and drawing the Gentiles out of their pagan darkness into the light of this new Israel in this new creation. God fulfilled these promises by raising up Jesus of Nazareth, who came and took dominion over the present evil age and creation, offered up his life as an atoning sacrifice for his people’s transgression, and was resurrected as the firstfruit of the new Spirit-wrought creation and the king over that new creation.

Now how does the Apostle Paul fit into this picture? When one reads his letters one does not see a lot of talk about a kingdom. He rarely speaks about Jesus earthly life and ministry, his teachings and healings that demonstrated him to be the Spirit-indwelt Servant-King from the stump of Jesse. Paul speaks minimally about the kingdom, though it is not absent from his theology. He talks about the gospel in terms of Jesus’ person, death and resurrection and their meaning. He is combating a certain form of Judaism that requires Gentiles to convert to Judaism to be accepted into the people of God. So how does his battle’s over the meaning of justification and the gospel fit into the picture seen in the gospels? continue reading…

Having examined both the Old Testament story, that serves as the background, and the story of Jesus of Nazareth, I feel it is time to begin to define the gospel, the εὐαγγέλιον. Within this framework that I established, I observed everywhere in the New Testament where εὐαγγέλιον or εὐαγγελίζω (“I bring good news”) appears. In the Gospels and Acts, the most common theme that was attached to “gospel” is that of “kingdom.” Paul attaches it to Jesus Messiah, both in Jesus’ person and work. In the Gospels and Acts, God’s fulfillment of the promises made about a Davidic Messiah as well as Jesus’ resurrection are also tied into the use of the term “gospel.” Paul most often seems to use “gospel” as a technical term more than anything, thus it is important to see this term as encompassing both Jesus’ person and work. The following is my attempt to define the gospel as the New Testament defines it. continue reading…

Four hundred years of history transpires between the last promises made by Yahweh to his people and Yahweh’s next move. Yahweh has promised to completely reverse the current world order that his people, Israel, are living in. No longer will they live on a planet that his hostile against them. No longer will the nations rule over them. No longer will they be a nation that is a point of laughter to their neighbors. No longer will they be ruled by a king who leads them astray from blessing and into curse. No longer will they disobey their covenant, and bring upon themselves the wrath of their God. God is going to recreate the world, raise up a Servant-King-Priest who will reign over Israel in this new earth. And Israel will be a light that will draw the Gentiles out of their pagan darkness and back to their Creator. Yahweh has promised and Yahweh is about to deliver. continue reading…

With the newly released Manhattan Declaration, from November 2009, comes a bit of controversy. The document in and of itself is controversial in what it asserts, namely the encouragement and engagement of civil disobedience to uphold certain principles. It is controversial because leaders in Protestant-Evangelicalism, Roman Catholicism, and Eastern Orthodoxy have signed this document and encourage others to do the same. It is also controversial because to get these groups together “the gospel of Jesus Messiah, the Son of God” (Mk 1:1) has not been clearly defined, thus other leaders–especially Evangelical–have refused to sign the document and encourage others to refuse to sign it as well.

In light of this and other considerations, I have decided to take an opportunity to present my definition of the gospel of Jesus Messiah. But to do that, I want to first tell the background story to the gospel. I feel that because the Bible is the story of God–both from and about–one needs to know the story before defining any single part of it, like the gospel. continue reading…

Christians have historically had problems figuring out how they should relate to the political establishments in which they resided. As seen in an earlier post, Christians have been too eager to align themselves with Liberal Democracies, especially the United States.  In Resident Aliens, Hauerwas and Willimon critique this notion, saying that instead of being Christianity Lite™, Liberal Democracies need war to justify and solidify identity:

“States, particularly liberal democracies are dependent upon war for moral coherence.” [1]

Damn, I think that’s true.  I had previously viewed governments as sometimes morally good, often morally evil, but most of all, morally neutral. And here was an explanation that the best of these governments have a vested interest in unjust violence [2] . [3] Their warning from history is particularly poignant:

“if Caesar can get Christians [in 30’s Germany] to swallow the ‘Ultimate Solution’ and Christians here to embrace the bomb, there is no limit to what we will not do for the modern world.” [4]

A Church that was nuked in Nagasaki.  Where do our allegiances lie?  With the USA, or with God Almighty?

1. Stanley Hauerwas and William H. Willimon, Resident Aliens: Life in the Christian Colony, 1st ed. (Abingdon Press, 1989), 35. [↩]
2. if violence is ever justified [↩]
3. Though, we should expect states to act selfishly. [↩]
4. Hauerwas and Willimon, Resident Aliens, 27. [↩]

This is what I have been reading lately:

Osborne, Grant R. The Hermeneutical Spiral: A Comprehensive Introduction to Biblical Interpretation. Rev Exp. IVP Academic, 2006.

I’ve had this book for a few years, it is really the best comprehensive work on hermeneutics around.  His Calvinism sometimes gets in the way, but astute readers will be able to ignore it.  I am working from this book in Parkade Baptist CYP’s current Sunday School series on Genre Hermeneutics.

Pierce, Ronald W., Rebecca Merrill Groothuis, and Gordon D. Fee. Discovering Biblical Equality: Complementarity Without Hierarchy. 2nd ed. InterVarsity Press, 2005.

This book is heralded as the egalitarian response to Piper and Gundem’s Recovering Biblical Manhood and Womanhood.  I have only had the chance to start a couple of the essays.  They have been pretty good so far.  I’ll talk about it more as I get more into it.

Piper, John. The Future of Justification: A Response to N. T. Wright. Crossway Books, 2007.

Disappointed.  All he did was convince me of Wright’s position.  Other people had built up Piper in my mind as some great exegete/theologian.  Not.the.case.

R, M. Daniel Carroll. Christians at the Border: Immigration, the Church, and the Bible. Baker Academic, 2008.

Reading this for one of my classes – looks to be good, but I am only a chapter or two into it.

Stowers, Stanley Kent. Letter Writing in Greco-Roman Antiquity. 1st ed. Westminster Press, 1986.

Every student of antiquity and of Paul needs to read this book.  Hands down one of the best books in the field.  I am re-reading it for my class on Letter hermeneutics this Sunday.

Wright, N. T. Justification: God’s Plan & Paul’s Vision. IVP Academic, 2009.

Dang.  I can’t talk too highly of this book so far.  I wonder how many critics of Wright will read this book.  If they read it without their systematic glasses on, they might just change their minds. 

The righteousness of God pertains primarily to his faithfulness to his convent with Abraham, not that he seeks his own glory above all else.

“The time is fulfilled and the kingdom of God is at hand” or “have faith in Jesus for the forgiveness of personal sins”?

I am starting to think more and more that the fundamental message of the Gospel is that the kingdom is come.  Personal salvation is a important component, but not the crux of the Gospel.

Agree?  Disagree?

In my quest to gain a whole-Bible understanding of justification I want to look at another psalm that utilizes righteousness/justification language, Psalm 82. I say whole-Bible because the Old Testament forms the background to and informs the New Testament’s understanding of justification. The theme of justification runs through the whole Bible and so I don’t want to isolate the New Testament from the Old Testament. There will be some differences between the two testaments but there will be commonality too. I go to Psalm 82 because it contains an appearance of the verbal form of sdq. continue reading…

The other psalm that I want to look at in regards to the background to justification in the NT, specifically Paul who articulated the doctrine more clearly than any other writer, is Psalm 98. This passage’s understanding of sdq is very influential upon Paul, particularly in Romans as we shall see momentarily. I have to thank Dr. Mark Siefrid for pointing me to this psalm in his book Christ Our Righteousness. I hope to show in this post that the righteousness language in the OT that forms a large part of the background of Paul’s framework is more complex than many in my own Reformed tradition often present it. continue reading…

To continue in a theme that has become very important to me, I want to look at a couple of psalms and how they understand righteousness and justice. The first text is Psalm 72, specifically Psalm 72:1-7, and I want to understand how this psalmist understands righteousness, the sdq word group. If one is to understand justification from a whole-Bible perspective, then seeing how the sdq word group, or righteousness-language, is employed is key. continue reading…

In this post I wish to look at the impact of Isaiah 53:11 and Romans 5:18-19 and how they influence justification. Romans 4:25 has been shown that Paul (or someone from whom Paul adapts a traditional Christological formula) does in fact read Isaiah 53:11 into his doctrine of justification in that the resurrection of the Righteous One, Jesus Messiah, effects justification for the people of God. This follows what was seen in Acts 13:38-39 and that Jesus being the Righteous One comes from being raised by the Spirit of God, vindicated or justified in that resurrection or by that resurrection. It does seem that Isaiah 53:11 is playing a very central role in how Paul understands our justification. continue reading…

Moving along in my dabbling in the justification passages in Paul and their relationship to Isaiah 53:11. In Acts 13:38-39, the resurrection of the crucified Jesus in an unstated way effected justification for “everyone who believes.” This parallels what was seen in Isaiah 53:11 where the “Righteous One, my [Yahweh's] servant will justify the many.” Isaiah 53:11 provided the conceptual framework for Paul to articulate justification as he did in Antioch Psidia, resurrection leads to justification. First Timothy 3:16 is another text that I’d likd to look at. Isaiah’s prophecy figures very prominently in Paul’s letter to young Timothy continue reading…