There are many more real-life situations to draw from in the Old Testament than in the New— many more historical narratives that reveal to us men and women who are realistically portrayed, ‘warts and all’, in their encounters with God. But the difficulties we met in the historical narratives of the Gospels and Acts are increased when we come to the Old Testament narratives. We cannot simply transfer the experiences of the past wholesale to today. There are two dangers to avoid in regard to historical narrative: Continue reading Why ‘Character Study’ Approach is Problematic
Category: Random
The Fiercest Enemies of the Church Are Not Unbelievers
The persecution of the true church, of Christian believers who trace their spiritual descent from Abraham, is not always by the world, who are strangers unrelated to us, but by our half-brothers, religious people, the nominal church. It has always been so. The Lord Jesus was bitterly opposed, rejected, mocked and condemned by His own nation. The fiercest opponents of the apostle Paul, who dogged his footsteps and stirred up strife against him, were the official church, the Jews. The monolithic structure of the medieval papacy persecuted all Protestant minorities with ruthless, unremitting ferocity. And the greatest enemies of the evangelical faith today are not unbelievers, who when they hear the gospel often embrace it, but the church, the establishment, the hierarchy. Isaac is always mocked and persecuted by Ishmael. Continue reading The Fiercest Enemies of the Church Are Not Unbelievers
We Cannot Afford to Not Know Christ
Most of us are constantly faced by the reality that there are many things we cannot afford in this world. We often mightily resist this fact, sometimes even by ‘affording’ what we cannot pay for (i.e. going into debt). There is, however, only one eternally significant thing that we cannot afford: namely, to remain ignorant of our beautiful Saviour. We must know Christ, the Son of the living God.
Fortunately for Christians, Jesus has taken the initiative by praying to his Father that we might know him. If we belong to him, we must out of necessity be those who will know him: ‘I am the good shepherd. I know my own and my own know me’ (John 10:14).
~Mark Jones, Knowing Christ
Anti-Intellectual Obscurantism
Etienne Gilson on St. Francis of Assisi:
It is clear that he never condemned learning for itself, but that he had no desire to see it developed in his Order. In his eyes it was not in itself an evil, but its pursuit appeared to him unnecessary and dangerous. Unnecessary since a man may save his soul and win others to save theirs without it; dangerous, because it is an endless source of pride.
~Carl Trueman, The Real Scandal of the Evangelical Mind
Wilberforce on the Slave Trade in Britain
October 28, 1787
Wilberforce realized the need “for some reformer of the nation’s morals, who should raise his voice in the high places of the land and do within the church and nearer the throne what Wesley had accomplished in the meeting and among the multitude.”
“So enormous, so dreadful, so irremediable did the trade’s wickedness appear that my own mind was completely made up for abolition. Let the consequences be what they would; I from this time determined that I would never rest until I had effected its abolition.”
Source: Christopher Hancock, The Shrimp Who Stopped Slavery in Christian History Magazine— Issue 53: William Wilberforce: Fighting the Slave Trade.
The Fundamental Principles of Theology as the Work of the Trinity
“We thus identify three fundamental principles for theology: God is the essential foundation (principium essendi); Scripture is the external cognitive foundation (principium cognoscendi externum); and the Holy Spirit is the internal principle of knowing (principium cognoscendi internum). The foundations of theology are thus trinitarian: The Father, through the Son as Logos, imparts himself to his creatures in the Spirit.
“The archetypal knowledge of God in the divine consciousness; the ectypal knowledge of God granted in revelation and recorded in Holy Scripture; and the knowledge of God in the subject, insofar as it proceeds from revelation and enters into the human consciousness, are all three of them from God. It is God himself who discloses his self-knowledge, communicates it through revelation, and introduces it into human beings. And materially they are one as well, for it is one identical, pure, and genuine knowledge of God, which he has of himself, communicates in revelation, and introduces into the human consciousness.“
Source: Herman Bavinck, Reformed Dogmatics: Prolegomena
Jojo Agot 