Number 21

This is a week late (it's been pretty busy around here!), but here's what a 21 year old looks like!!

Happy 21--Andrew

The Erosion of Inerrancy

The third mini-review from my vacation is G.K. Beale's The Erosion of Inerrancy in Evangelicalism. Beale's concern is that a significant number of evangelicals are moving away from the Chicago Statement on Inerrancy and embracing more postmodern interpretive methods, causing less confidence in the propositional claims of the Bible.

Primarily Beale debates Peter Enns, whom Beale sees as a primary example of those who are moving away from inerrancy. Enns' book, Inspiration and Incarnation: Evangelicals and the Problem of the Old Testament, is Beale's primary target. There are chapters concerning OT narratives [primarily those in Genesis], how OT texts are handled in the NT, the authorship of Isaiah, and OT cosmology.

Can the Bible contain myth and still be considered authoritative? Can inspiration for the Bible be maintained if it contains distortions of history? Did Jesus and the apostles misinterpret the OT? If Jesus taught that Isaiah wrote all his prophecy, can one hold to Second or Third Isaiah and still hold to the authority of Scripture? Does the OT borrow mythological beliefs about the cosmos that are clearly incompatible with modern scientific knowledge? These are important questions dealt with by the author as the book unfolds. Beale is concerned that these questions once posed by liberal theologians are now being asked from within evangelicalism. He is rightly concerned. If evangelicals continue to move along the lines outlined in this book, we all better be concerned!

I would urge a reading of this book to open one's eyes to what is happening in larger evangelicalism.

The Attentive Life

As mentioned earlier, I had the chance to catch up on some reading on my recent vacation. The best book I read was The Attentive Life by Leighton Ford. For Ford, the great sin Christians commit is that of inattention to God and what He is doing in your life. Ford writes: "We live in an age of continuous partial attention." This partial attention is a major hindrance in our relationship to God because it is sin. He quotes the Quaker writer Douglas Steere: "For prayer is awakeness, attention, intense inward openness. In a certain way sin could be described . . . as anything that destroys this attention" [26]. Ford's solution--practice in some way the Benedictine Hours, from Vigils to Compline. For the author, these divine hours are not just for one's day but for one's life.

The book then is structured along the "Hours." In each chapter there is a description of the "Hour," a biblical/devotional development of it, and an example of one "Who Paid Attention."

If distraction is the primary problem of most believers (and I agree that it is), then this book is at least a partial remedy. Some salient quotes:

• The true mystics . . . are not those who contemplate holiness in isolation, reaching godlike illumination in serene silence, but those who manage to find God in a world filled with noise, the demands of other people and making a living [quoting Kathleen Norris].
• The great irony of our wired age of communication is that many of our children are growing up information rich and imigination poor.
• To pray without ceasing is not to think about God rather than other things, or to talk to God instead of to other people, but rather to think, speak and live in the presence of God [quoting Henri Nouwen].
• Love is focused attention.
• Hurry is the great enemy of life in the Spirit.
• Ruthlessly eliminate hurry! [The key to keeping the 'fast lane' from ruining one's spiritual life]
• Death, some small, some huge, may be God's way of bringing transformation and new life.

You get the idea. There are many quotes and scriptural references that bring life to this book. Ford has written something we all need. He is calling for something we all need to do. We all need to slow down and pay attention to the One who always pays attention to us. You need to read this one!

Ending of Mark

I read several books during my recent vacation. I'll comment on three of them over the next few days. David Alan Black has edited, Perspectives on the Ending of Mark. The book consists of papers shared during a 2007 conference held at Southeastern Seminary.

Whether or not Mark 16:9-20 is original is something text critics and Bible students have grappled with for centuries. By and large there are three major views: (1) The Gospel ended at v. 8; (2) vv. 9-20 belonged with the Gospel from the start; and (3) the ending was lost. Those views were touted by Daniel Wallace, Maurice Robinson, and Keith Elliott, respectively. David Alan Black adds a chapter in which he touts his own proposal for solving the Synoptic Problem (see his Why Four Gospels?]. Black believes Mark wrote vv. 9-20 as an addendum to the Gospel later.

Each of the chapters is well done and clearly outlines the proposal championed. I have in recent years come to the conclusion that Mark ended his work at v. 8 and vv. 9-20 are secondary. That just seems to me to be the easiest and best explanation. However, as this work makes clear, one must hold to his view on these verses tentatively. The last word has yet to be spoken or written about them.

If you want a clear outline of the major ways this text is handled, this book is for you. I highly recommend it. All the chapters were a good read and stimulated further thought and study on my part.

Myrtle Beach 2009

Vacations are awesome but end too soon! We had a great time on Myrtle Beach. It was bike-week but that didn't bother us too much, surprisingly.

Divine Interruptions

This morning God turned my attention to Amos 7:14: So Amos answered Amaziah, “I was not a prophet or the son of a prophet; rather, I was a herdsman, and I took care of sycamore figs. The High Priest has warned Amos to stop prophesying and go back home where he belongs. Amos simply says he cannot. He had been living his life, tending to his business, when God interrupted and called him to be a prophet.

God specializes in divine interruptions. As you move along your day, look for them. They are divine opportunities to get in on kingdom work. Because He's God, He has a right to intervene in our lives anytime He chooses. It is up to us to be ready.

Ask God today to give you a discerning spirit. Ask Him to open your eyes and heart to those divine interruptions, opportunities to do something eternal. He's working. Are you ready?

A Christian Take on Mother's Day

Al Mohler is always articulate on the "now" issues. Here is part of his recent take on Mother's Day.

The Christian vision of motherhood is more about courage and faithfulness than about sentimentalism. The mothers of the Bible are a tough lot. Jochebed put her baby in a floating ark of bulrushes, defying the order of Pharaoh that all Hebrew male children be put to death. Rachel, mother to Joseph and Benjamin, died giving birth to Benjamin. Hannah promised her son to God, and presented Samuel as a young boy for service in the House of the Lord. Mary, the mother of Jesus, risked shame and disgrace to bear the Savior, and to provide all Christians with a model of brave and unflinching obedience. She was there when Jesus Christ was crucified. As Simeon had told her just after the birth of Christ, "Behold this child is appointed for the fall and rising of many in Israel, and for a sign that is opposed (and a sword will pierce through your own soul also), so that thoughts from many hearts may be revealed." [Luke 2:34-35]
A corsage hardly seems appropriate.

Christians must resist the reduction of motherhood to sentimentality, and particularly that sentimentalism that undermines what mothers are truly to represent -- nurture, fortitude, courage, dedication, faithfulness, discipline, and trust in God.

Mother's Day is a bad idea because it subverts the reality of faithful mothering and robs faithful mothers of their true glory. Mothers deserving of honor are handed cards and taken to lunch, when songs of praise should instead be offered to the glory of God. Undeserving mothers, who abdicate their true responsibility, are honored just because they are mothers. Children, young and old, who ignore and dishonor their mothers by word and by life throughout the year, assuage their guilt by making a big deal of Mother's Day.
So, Mother's Day is a bad idea.

Then again, Mother's Day is impossible to ignore. What quality of ingratitude marks the son or daughter (or husband) who does not honor mothers on Mother's Day? There was I yesterday, with son and daughter, honoring both their mother (my dear wife, Mary) and my mother-in-law. Yes, we had a celebratory meal out and we passed out greeting cards with our own personal inscriptions. Gifts were delivered, and all the right things were said. Calls were made to my mother, several states away.
In the end, we are all like little children who push crumpled hand-made greeting cards toward Mom, who then accepts our grubby offerings with love and gratitude.

So much for avoiding sentimentality. Let's just make certain that there is more to Mother's Day than sentiment. The mothers we should honor are those who raise children in the nurture and admonition of the Lord, who honor their marriages and live faithfully, who teach and nurture and discipline by the Bible. These are mothers who defy the spirit of the age, protect their children from danger, maintain godly discipline and order in the home, and feed their children the pure milk of God's Word.

These mothers deserve honor upon honor, and their reward will be great in heaven. Yet, in the meantime, a card and a kiss on Mother's Day won't hurt. It's just not nearly enough

I couldn't agree more!

A Case for Historic Premillennialism

I've just finished a book edited by Craig Blomberg and Sung Wook Chung that presents a strong case (finally) for historic premillennialism. Most of the contributions in A Case for Historic Premillennialism: An Alternative to 'Left Behind' Eschatology come from papers presented by faculty members at Denver Seminary.

The chapters are:

• "Dispensational and Historic Premillennialism as Popular Millennialist Movements" by Timothy P. Weber. The bottom line of this article is that Dispensationalists [D] have done a much better job than Historic Premillennialists [HP] in relaying their story. HP is primarily found in academia while D is found in the pews of churches.
• "The Future Written in the Past: The OT and the Millennium" by Richard S. Hess. In this study Hess concludes that God will allow his people to go through tribulation and will bring them through it to demonstrate his faithfulness to his people.
• "Judaism and the World to Come" by Helene Dallaire. Dallaire surveys Jewish texts concerning life after death. Her conclusion is that there is no single systematized statement on the Jewish understanding of life after death.
• "The Postribulationism of the NT" by Craig Blomberg. Blomberg primarily surveys the word translated "tribulation" and its verbal cognates in the NT. His conclusion is that no where does God ever promise that his children will be removed from it--even the so called Great Tribulation. He also deals with the rapture question and why the church missing from Rev 4 and following.
• "The Theological Method of Premillennialism by Don Payne. His thesis is stated clearly: "Premillennialism depends upon a distinct theological method that involves factors and influences beyond its commitment to certain hermeneutical and exegetical procedures" [90]. Those influences include tradition, reason, and experience. This article is especially interesting in that most premillennialists simply refer to the Scripture as their lone authority.
• "Contemporary Millennial/Tribulational Debates: Whose Side Was the Early Church On? by Donald Fairbairn. The author states that chiliastic expectations were clear in the patristic period and that the shift away from premillennialism in the third and four centuries is due primarily to philosophical concerns. A pretribulatinal rapture was not in the minds of patristic writers, and they expected believers to be present and to suffer during the Great Tribulation. An interesting insight was that patristic writers used eschatology in their battle against heresy, particularly Gnosticism. Perhaps the church should learn a lesson in its contemporary battle against the same heresy.
• There are two other chapters--one dealing with Reformed theology and the other with Latin American evangelicalism that I didn't find as helpful but I'm sure others will.

Historic Premillennialism is, I think, the best way to explain eschatological issues. It is not perfect; no eschatological system will be because of our many limitations. This book will not replace "Left Behind" on the popular level, but it does give those who embrace HP already some help in verbalizing and defending what they believe. I highly recommend this book no matter what eschatological system one holds.

Youth, Arrogance, and the Church

In a recent column, Cal Thomas commented on remarks made by John McCain's daughter, Meghan. She believes she knows why her father lost the election last year and what the GOP needs to do in the future: Republicans need to be more like Democrats. Thomas writes: "McCain said Republicans needed to look forward, be more modern, forget the past (presumably she means those Reagan and Republican congressional victories) and adopt new beliefs."

Thomas is rightly critical of Meghan McCain and others like her: "Dissing the past is a quality found mostly in arrogant youth who think they know more than anyone who has ever lived and believe only they are sufficiently enlightened enough to tell the rest of us how and what to think. But the past and those who have gone before are great teachers for moderns who would learn. The writer of Ecclesiastes noted that there is “nothing new under the sun.” And there’s also this, “Is there any thing whereof it may be said, ‘See, this is new’? It hath been already of old time, which was before us.”'

Meghan McCain reminds me of some younger ministers today. The Baptist Courier has an article in this week's edition on the need for younger ministers to be involved in SBC leadership. Some of the comments are very insightful, but there was one in particular that caught my attention and reflects many younger than I:

Billy Baugus, 41, youth and children’s pastor at First Baptist Church, Wagener, said Southern Baptists “spend way too much time stuck in the past” and that 1950s-era Sunday school and traditional worship services are no longer effective in reaching what he calls the “now” generation. “We must be willing to change our ways and bring the word of God in relevant means to this generation,” he said.

Bro. Baugus' comments are much like those of McCain's and are not really helpful. Getting rid of traditonal approaches is not the answer to the problems the SBC or any other denomination faces in our post-Christian society. If every church today got rid of traditonal worship and Sunday School, and decided to move in a completely new direction, I doubt very seriously that our baptism numbers would go up sigificantly. The answer to the downward trend in membership and baptisms is to be found spiritually not functionally.

By the way, I'm in favor of ministers of all ages being involved in SBC leadership. I'm also in favor of new methods. I'm not stuck in the past. However, the past always has a great deal to teach us. Some of it is even good.

There are great men of God upon whose shoulders we all stand. I'm thinking we can still learn from them. For what it's worth, I think we can learn from the younger guys too.