Sunday, 21 August 2011
Sinclair Ferguson's Sermons on Romans
Found this excellent resource. Sinclair Ferguson's Sermon series on Romans. http://ow.ly/68KoY
Thursday, 11 August 2011
Paul: Fresh Perspectives
Paul: Fresh Perspectives
N. T. Wright
SPCK 2005
Paul: Fresh Perspectives (hereafter "PFP") builds on and updates Wright's earlier work in What St Paul Really Said and the more technical The Climax of the Covenant by focusing on various aspects of the New Perspective on Paul (or "Fresh" Perspective as Wright prefers). However, PFP is very much an "interim report" as we still wait for volume four in his massive series Christian Origins and the Question of God which will deal with a lot of the same material in much greater detail and has the proposed title Paul and the Faithfulness of God. Each of the main chapters in PFP, which are around 20-30 pages, will, so I've heard, be expanded to up to 200 pages in Wrght's much anticipated yet delayed big book on Paul.
This earlier book from 2005 was based on a several series of lectures Wright gave and particularly on the Hulsean Lectures at Cambridge University.
Wright's is a grand theological vision in many ways which takes in God creating the world and then recreating or renewing the world through Christ and his people who are in him (en Christo = in Christ = "in the Messiah"). Wright deals with this in his chapters on "Creation and Covenant" and "Messiah and Apocalyptic". He then also argues that the Christian gospel is about much more than "fitting us for heaven, to live with thee there" as the children's carol puts it. It is about bringing the new creation to bear on this world as it is. For Wright, as I think for Jesus and Paul, the Gospel has a hard political edge to it. Wright deals with some of this in the chapter "Gospel and Empire".
In the second part of the book, Wright then turns to an analysis of how Paul built on Old Testament ideas to forge Christian theology and a Christian worldview. These three chapters are entitled "Reworking God" which is about how Paul incorporates a high Christology into the Jewish monotheism he grew up with , "Reworking God's People," about how God's covenant people Israel are redefined and rebuilt around Jesus the Messiah as the one faithful Israelite, and "Reimagining God's Future" concerning eschatology and Paul's doctrine of the Holy Spirit. The final chapter "Jesus, Paul and the Task of the Church" explores Paul's mission as an apostle to the Gentiles and tries to draw all the threads Wright has spun together in a conclusion.
This overview clearly demonstrates that Wright's project is much bigger than redefining "justification" though it is about that. Wright believes that justification is primarily about ecclesiology and only secondarily about soteriology (whereas traditional evangelical theology has seen justification as the other way round and perhaps hardly about ecclesiology at all).
This is such an interesting area of theological debate just now. It seems to me that there is no question that the implications of the doctrine of justification by faith alone are writ large in the New Testament. Almost every time justification is mentioned in the New Testament, it is mentioned in the context of Jew and Gentile Christians coming together to form one body, one church. On this I think Wright is largely correct. And it is an implication that much of the church has forgotten for too long.
In a similar way, Wright teaches that justification is first about covenant membership and then - because the covenant's purpose is to bring salvation to people - about individual salvation and the forgiveness of sins. Traditionally, it has been the other way round, that justification is first about salvation - right standing before a holy God - and then about covenant membership as an implication of having a new status of righteousness.
I wonder sometimes if it matters much which way round we view things as long as we teach that both exist and both are important and both have implications for how we "do church". My heart is still with the Old Perspective, but a renewed Old Perspective that takes a lot of New Perspective concerns on board.
That's to get away from this being a book review though. This book is worth reading, and stimulating in many ways. However it may fall between two stools between Wright's earlier work and the big book to come and so may have a limited readership for those reasons.
N. T. Wright
SPCK 2005
Paul: Fresh Perspectives (hereafter "PFP") builds on and updates Wright's earlier work in What St Paul Really Said and the more technical The Climax of the Covenant by focusing on various aspects of the New Perspective on Paul (or "Fresh" Perspective as Wright prefers). However, PFP is very much an "interim report" as we still wait for volume four in his massive series Christian Origins and the Question of God which will deal with a lot of the same material in much greater detail and has the proposed title Paul and the Faithfulness of God. Each of the main chapters in PFP, which are around 20-30 pages, will, so I've heard, be expanded to up to 200 pages in Wrght's much anticipated yet delayed big book on Paul.
This earlier book from 2005 was based on a several series of lectures Wright gave and particularly on the Hulsean Lectures at Cambridge University.
Wright's is a grand theological vision in many ways which takes in God creating the world and then recreating or renewing the world through Christ and his people who are in him (en Christo = in Christ = "in the Messiah"). Wright deals with this in his chapters on "Creation and Covenant" and "Messiah and Apocalyptic". He then also argues that the Christian gospel is about much more than "fitting us for heaven, to live with thee there" as the children's carol puts it. It is about bringing the new creation to bear on this world as it is. For Wright, as I think for Jesus and Paul, the Gospel has a hard political edge to it. Wright deals with some of this in the chapter "Gospel and Empire".
In the second part of the book, Wright then turns to an analysis of how Paul built on Old Testament ideas to forge Christian theology and a Christian worldview. These three chapters are entitled "Reworking God" which is about how Paul incorporates a high Christology into the Jewish monotheism he grew up with , "Reworking God's People," about how God's covenant people Israel are redefined and rebuilt around Jesus the Messiah as the one faithful Israelite, and "Reimagining God's Future" concerning eschatology and Paul's doctrine of the Holy Spirit. The final chapter "Jesus, Paul and the Task of the Church" explores Paul's mission as an apostle to the Gentiles and tries to draw all the threads Wright has spun together in a conclusion.
This overview clearly demonstrates that Wright's project is much bigger than redefining "justification" though it is about that. Wright believes that justification is primarily about ecclesiology and only secondarily about soteriology (whereas traditional evangelical theology has seen justification as the other way round and perhaps hardly about ecclesiology at all).
This is such an interesting area of theological debate just now. It seems to me that there is no question that the implications of the doctrine of justification by faith alone are writ large in the New Testament. Almost every time justification is mentioned in the New Testament, it is mentioned in the context of Jew and Gentile Christians coming together to form one body, one church. On this I think Wright is largely correct. And it is an implication that much of the church has forgotten for too long.
In a similar way, Wright teaches that justification is first about covenant membership and then - because the covenant's purpose is to bring salvation to people - about individual salvation and the forgiveness of sins. Traditionally, it has been the other way round, that justification is first about salvation - right standing before a holy God - and then about covenant membership as an implication of having a new status of righteousness.
I wonder sometimes if it matters much which way round we view things as long as we teach that both exist and both are important and both have implications for how we "do church". My heart is still with the Old Perspective, but a renewed Old Perspective that takes a lot of New Perspective concerns on board.
That's to get away from this being a book review though. This book is worth reading, and stimulating in many ways. However it may fall between two stools between Wright's earlier work and the big book to come and so may have a limited readership for those reasons.
Sunday, 7 August 2011
The Lost World of Genesis One
The Lost World of Genesis One
John H. Walton
Inter-Varsity Press 2009
John Walton is professor of Old Testament at Wheaton College, one of the leading Christian liberal arts colleges in the United States. He has written a number of books including a commentary on Genesis in the well-respected NIV Application Commentary series.
The Lost World of Genesis One is a controversial book, no doubt about that. If it's claims are correct, Christians have had one of our most central doctrines wrong for the best part of the last two thousand years.
Walton's argument is that our normal way of reading Genesis as an account of the material creation of the universe is wrong. According to Walton, Genesis One has nothing to say about what could broadly be called the scientific view of origins, or how matter came into existence, or how life came into existence. Instead, Walton says that Genesis One operates within a very different worldview. Walton says that Genesis One describes functional creation. It is about how God assigned functions to things that were already in material existence, and how God fits them into the created order he has created, which is focused on the practical matter of an environment suitable for human beings to inhabit and thrive in. To give just one example, how the sun was materially created is nothing to do with Genesis One, whereas the text teaches that God functionally assigned the sun to mark times and seasons and give light during the day.
Walton argues for his interpretation on the basis of comparisons with other ancient creation accounts, evidence of the worldview of people in Old Testament times, and analysis of the Hebrew text. He is adamant that it is anachronistic and invalid to read our modern concerns, with our modern worldview, back into the Genesis text.
Walton's argument is clearly laid out in 18 propositions (one per chapter) that link up and build on each other.
Walton's view seems to strike many similar notes to the framework hypothesis. In one of the chapters he points out that much of what he says could easily be incorporated into the framework view and I think this is correct. However, I still have a problem with Walton's central idea that Genesis One has nothing to do with material origins. I think the evidence he puts forward for this is not as convincing to me as it is to Walton himself. I'm no Old Testament professor of course, but I find it hard to jettison centuries of exegesis on the evidence he puts forward.
I remain more comfortable with the view I hold that Genesis One is a polemical, didactic and analogical framework. In other words, I still think Genesis is a literary account of material origins and their functionality, rather than a literal account of functionality only. This means that Walton has many useful things to say, but I cannot see this view being accepted in the mainstream of evangelicalism any time soon.
Tom Wright for Everyone
Tom Wright for Everyone
Stephen Kuhrt
SPCK 2011
This is a short but readable book on the theology of N. T. Wright and how it might influence the local church for the better, written by a Church of England vicar, Stephen Kuhrt. The chapters run as follows:
Chapter one outlines Tom Wright's career both as a New Testament scholar and as a churchman (Wright is an ordained Anglican minister and was until recently the Bishop of Durham).
Chapter two discusses a number of issues and problems facing the 21st century church that Kuhrt obviously sees Wright's theology as a possible way of addressing.
Chapter three is an excellent and accurate summary of Wright's theological distinctives. For anyone who is unfamiliar with Wright's work, this chapter should be required reading.
In chapters four, five and six, Kuhrt explores how Wright's theological approach might reinvigorate and renew the church's work in the fields of pastoral issues, mission and the church's life of fellowship and worship. The final chapter is a challenge to the church to engage with Wright and accept at least some of what he is teaching.
My own view of Tom Wright has always been, and remains, mixed. Much of his focus is different from what I would call mainstream evangelicalism which can tend towards pietism and individualism. Wright's insistence on the gospel's social, political and corporate demands would be a shot in the arm for many such churches. On the other hand, there are times where I feel strongly that although Wright is usually correct in his affirmations - for example that Paul's doctrine of justification by faith must have an impact on how we handle church membership and Christian unity and equality, he is sometimes wrong in his denials - that justification is not about a sinner's righteous standing before a holy God.
If we read Wright with this twofold approach - being slow to reject his affirmations and even slower to accept his denials - there is much in Wright's theology I agree with Kuhrt that we need to engage with and accept for the benefit of our churches.
For the record, I welcome Wright's emphasis on the covenant and the Jewish roots of Christianity, his insistence that the gospel has important social and political implications alongside teaching about personal salvation, his recognition that the resurrection is as important a doctrine in its own right as Christ's atoning death, his analysis that the Christus Victor theme is more important to the biblical authors than evangelicals have traditionally recognised, that eschatology is central to the apostles' message, and that the Christian hope is not "to die and go to heaven" but to have everlasting life in a new renewed creation on earth, and that the Gospel's message of the Kingdom and the Epistles' message of salvation are closely linked, and that justification was used by Paul as a doctrine to explain the breaking down of barriers between Jew and Gentile.
Kuhrt's book is a useful tool in this ongoing dialogue. I feel that Kuhrt is overly gushing in his praise of Wright and his acceptance of virtually every substantial point, hook, line and sinker. The few things where Kuhrt registers disagreement with his hero are few and very minor. My disagreements with Wright are much larger, but since there are also many points that Wright emphasises that I haven't found from any other source, and so I continue to think that Wright is well worth reading and learning from. I only wish he was better informed about Reformed theology. If he was, I think he would realise that the differences between him and us is neither as great as he thinks, nor as great as we tend to think.
Stephen Kuhrt
SPCK 2011
This is a short but readable book on the theology of N. T. Wright and how it might influence the local church for the better, written by a Church of England vicar, Stephen Kuhrt. The chapters run as follows:
Chapter one outlines Tom Wright's career both as a New Testament scholar and as a churchman (Wright is an ordained Anglican minister and was until recently the Bishop of Durham).
Chapter two discusses a number of issues and problems facing the 21st century church that Kuhrt obviously sees Wright's theology as a possible way of addressing.
Chapter three is an excellent and accurate summary of Wright's theological distinctives. For anyone who is unfamiliar with Wright's work, this chapter should be required reading.
In chapters four, five and six, Kuhrt explores how Wright's theological approach might reinvigorate and renew the church's work in the fields of pastoral issues, mission and the church's life of fellowship and worship. The final chapter is a challenge to the church to engage with Wright and accept at least some of what he is teaching.
My own view of Tom Wright has always been, and remains, mixed. Much of his focus is different from what I would call mainstream evangelicalism which can tend towards pietism and individualism. Wright's insistence on the gospel's social, political and corporate demands would be a shot in the arm for many such churches. On the other hand, there are times where I feel strongly that although Wright is usually correct in his affirmations - for example that Paul's doctrine of justification by faith must have an impact on how we handle church membership and Christian unity and equality, he is sometimes wrong in his denials - that justification is not about a sinner's righteous standing before a holy God.
If we read Wright with this twofold approach - being slow to reject his affirmations and even slower to accept his denials - there is much in Wright's theology I agree with Kuhrt that we need to engage with and accept for the benefit of our churches.
For the record, I welcome Wright's emphasis on the covenant and the Jewish roots of Christianity, his insistence that the gospel has important social and political implications alongside teaching about personal salvation, his recognition that the resurrection is as important a doctrine in its own right as Christ's atoning death, his analysis that the Christus Victor theme is more important to the biblical authors than evangelicals have traditionally recognised, that eschatology is central to the apostles' message, and that the Christian hope is not "to die and go to heaven" but to have everlasting life in a new renewed creation on earth, and that the Gospel's message of the Kingdom and the Epistles' message of salvation are closely linked, and that justification was used by Paul as a doctrine to explain the breaking down of barriers between Jew and Gentile.
Kuhrt's book is a useful tool in this ongoing dialogue. I feel that Kuhrt is overly gushing in his praise of Wright and his acceptance of virtually every substantial point, hook, line and sinker. The few things where Kuhrt registers disagreement with his hero are few and very minor. My disagreements with Wright are much larger, but since there are also many points that Wright emphasises that I haven't found from any other source, and so I continue to think that Wright is well worth reading and learning from. I only wish he was better informed about Reformed theology. If he was, I think he would realise that the differences between him and us is neither as great as he thinks, nor as great as we tend to think.
Reclaiming Genesis
Reclaiming Genesis
Melvin Tinker
Monarch Books 2010
Reclaiming Genesis is more an exposition than a commentary dealing with the first twelve foundational chapters of Genesis. These chapters are foundational, not just for the rest of Genesis and the Pentateuch, but for the whole Bible.
The book consists of ten chapters, each basically dealing with one chapter of Genesis, except for Genesis 7 (part of Noah's story on the ark) and 10 (a genealogy from Noah's sons).
Tinker takes a literary approach to the early chapters of Genesis and sees the primary meaning of these chapters in theological and polemical terms. He also argues that there is no need to accept a Young Earth Creationist (YEC) standpoint and even accepts that theistic evolution would be a compatible view with Genesis, so long as we only accept evolution as a mechanism under God's control. It is evolutionism - the naturalistic view that the life in the universe came about and continues without God - that the Christian view of creation cannot accept.
Rather than on the 'how" of creation, Tinker's chapter on Genesis One focuses on the chapters polemics against paganism, and a functional view of creation whereby God fits the universe to be "the theatre of his glory" (Calvin) and fills it with creatures.
A similar viewpoint carries us through the other chapters through to God's calling Abram in Genesis 12.
Tinker himself claims that much of what he writes would be agreed by Christians, no matter what view of creation we accept. In other words, much of what he says Genesis One teaches would not be denied by YECs. I'm sure he is correct in this. Even so, I think many would have problems with Tinker's acceptance that Genesis One does not rule of the biological evolution of life, even the descent of human beings from other primates.
This book is of value to all Christians, even those who cannot accept anything other than a YEC interpretation of Genesis. As someone who also takes a literary-theological approach to Genesis One (albeit a slightly different one), I found that a lot of what Tinker says made sense. I think he shows that the main points of these chapters of Genesis is not arguing over science, but seeing God as he really is and human beings as we really are.
Melvin Tinker
Monarch Books 2010
Reclaiming Genesis is more an exposition than a commentary dealing with the first twelve foundational chapters of Genesis. These chapters are foundational, not just for the rest of Genesis and the Pentateuch, but for the whole Bible.
The book consists of ten chapters, each basically dealing with one chapter of Genesis, except for Genesis 7 (part of Noah's story on the ark) and 10 (a genealogy from Noah's sons).
Tinker takes a literary approach to the early chapters of Genesis and sees the primary meaning of these chapters in theological and polemical terms. He also argues that there is no need to accept a Young Earth Creationist (YEC) standpoint and even accepts that theistic evolution would be a compatible view with Genesis, so long as we only accept evolution as a mechanism under God's control. It is evolutionism - the naturalistic view that the life in the universe came about and continues without God - that the Christian view of creation cannot accept.
Rather than on the 'how" of creation, Tinker's chapter on Genesis One focuses on the chapters polemics against paganism, and a functional view of creation whereby God fits the universe to be "the theatre of his glory" (Calvin) and fills it with creatures.
A similar viewpoint carries us through the other chapters through to God's calling Abram in Genesis 12.
Tinker himself claims that much of what he writes would be agreed by Christians, no matter what view of creation we accept. In other words, much of what he says Genesis One teaches would not be denied by YECs. I'm sure he is correct in this. Even so, I think many would have problems with Tinker's acceptance that Genesis One does not rule of the biological evolution of life, even the descent of human beings from other primates.
This book is of value to all Christians, even those who cannot accept anything other than a YEC interpretation of Genesis. As someone who also takes a literary-theological approach to Genesis One (albeit a slightly different one), I found that a lot of what Tinker says made sense. I think he shows that the main points of these chapters of Genesis is not arguing over science, but seeing God as he really is and human beings as we really are.
Monday, 1 August 2011
Trevin Wax on Piper on Wright
Enjoyed this series by Trevin Wax reviewing John's Piper's book on N T Wright: http://ow.ly/5RZNE
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