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In this interview, Brian offers a beautiful picture of redemptive history from the Nephilim in Genesis 6 to the triumphant arrival of Jesus, the sin-crusher. Brian’s extensive knowledge of Ancient Near Eastern narratives and his provocative analysis of Genesis offers a fascinating look at a mysterious and controversial aspect of biblical revelation.
You can purchase the entire series here.
Kuyperian Press is proud to announce our third publication.Dr. David Goetsch has been in the academic and business worlds for over four decades and has become a prized consultant in those fields. This latest publication–originally published by American Vision–is an accessible treatment for the young and older Christian. The question of how we should take our faith to work is an especially salient matter at this day and age. In this work, the author offers not only wise insight into how a Christian ought to conduct himself in secular environments (by secular I am simply referring to environments that are not explicitly Christian in orientation or in vision), but also lays out a vision for a disciplined Christian pattern of work.
Order the Kindle edition now! | Hear an interview with Dr. David Goetsch
“A developed memory is a wondrous and terrible storehouse of things seen and heard and done. It can do what no mere search engine on the internet can do. It can call up apparently unrelated things at once, molding them into a whole impression, or a new thought. The poet T. S. Eliot understood this creative, associative, dynamic function of a strong memory. The developed imagination remembers a strain from Bach, and smells spinach cooking in the kitchen, and these impressions are not separate but part of a unified whole, and are the essence of creative play. Without the library of the memory—which the Renaissance poet Edmund Spenser compared to a dusty room full of wonders in the attic of the mind, where a wise old man pores over his books, and a little boy called Anamnesis, ‘Reminder,’ sometimes has to climb a ladder to go fetch them—the imagination simply does not have that much to think about, or to play with.”
~Anthony Esolen, Ten Ways to Destroy the Imagination of a Child
Purchase the book here: http://www.classicalconversationsbooks.com/tenwatodeimo.html
Love your neighbor as yourself.
This is the 2nd Great Commandment of Jesus’ summary of the law (Matt 22), while it is Paul’s entire summary (Gal 5).
In the first place, Jesus said love God with all your body and being, and secondly, love your neighbor as yourself. The second being like unto the first. Perhaps the second is so like unto the first that Paul did not give a second thought to leaving the first commandment unmentioned when he wrote to the Galatian church.
God is love. The Father is both lover and beloved; the Son is both lover and beloved; the Spirit is both lover and beloved. Bearing His image, we are both lover and beloved—beloved by Him, by our fellow image-bearers, and no less, by ourselves.
We love to be loved. Do we love to love?
We are finite creatures bearing the image of our infinite God, yet in spite of that finitude no temporal qualifications accompany the two great commandments and the necessary corollary to the 2nd: to love ourselves. Every moment, every thought, every word, every deed, every impulse, every glance, every prayer, every purchase, every passing moment is a gift from God that we give back to God and impart to our neighbor without ever ceasing to love ourselves. The second is like unto the first and the third is logically necessary to fulfill the second.
The commandments are gracious: the mind of God written down for men to read. What a gift!
The work of God in Christ is gracious: we’ve been freed in order to fulfill these laws in this flesh. What a gift!
“Teacher, which is the great commandment in the Law?” And he said to him, “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind. This is the great and first commandment. And a second is like it: You shall love your neighbor as yourself. On these two commandments depend all the Law and the Prophets.” (Matthew 22:36-40 ESV)
“For you were called to freedom, brothers. Only do not use your freedom as an opportunity for the flesh, but through love serve one another. For the whole law is fulfilled in one word: “You shall love your neighbor as yourself.” (Galatians 5:13-14 ESV)
Eric Ferrero, vice president of Planned Parenthood, said in a statement. “The people behind these protests have a clear political agenda: They want to ban abortion, and block women and men from accessing basic reproductive health care.”
These people constantly have to resort to lies because what they really stand for is murdering children. So he says, “The people behind these protests have a clear political agenda: They want to ban abortion…” It’s not a political agenda, it’s an ethical agenda, but that noted, fine. His point is basically right. These people want to ban abortion. That is the ultimate goal. But because that doesn’t sound monstrous, he tags on “…and block women and men from accessing basic reproductive health care.” No. The only thing we want to block people from is being allowed to murder their children. That’s it. No one is protesting abortion *and* neonatal care. No one is protesting ob/gyns. There are no protests at the thousands of community care clinics across the country that don’t perform abortions.
So no, we do not want to block women and men from accessing basic reproductive health care. We want elective abortion, the willful termination of a human child’s life in utero to be unequivocally banned, abolished, and criminalized just as murdering any other human person is. That’s it. That is what we want. And of course, to that end we will protest those organizations that support, promote, and perform abortions, Planned Parenthood being the most prominent and egregious example. If that offends you fine, but please stop with the nonsense about wanting to block women’s access to basic medical or reproductive health care. It’s ludicrous.
Recently Lutheran Satire posted this. Below is my response.
I really like Lutheran Satire but this is ridiculous. We developed a children’s church program at our (Anglican) church precisely for the purpose of helping our little ones (under 6) understand the message of the sermon text in a way that they could grasp more readily than the sermon, which by the way averages about 20 minutes, not exactly an overly didactic lecture. For us it is an attempt to better serve them. The children go to children’s church during the sermon hymn (just before the sermon is preached), and return during the offertory which immediately precedes communion. During that time rather than having a “half trained laymen give them a paltry amount of instruction,” the children’s church workers utilize a thoughtfully designed lesson prepared by my (seminary trained) wife to teach our little ones the lesson of the sermon text in a way that is suited to their maturity and development. Every week my children are able to tell me what they have learned from the text. And guess what? It typically matches up with what I took from the sermon. Before we had children’s church they could not do this. Do they do crafts and activities? Yes, and these help them learn and retain the lesson, as anyone who knows anything about early childhood education would tell you.
Finally, and not to put too fine a point on the matter, but when they return from being taught the Bible by faithful members that remember that it is such as these that will inherit the Kingdom my toddler and infant children are invited week by week to participate in the Eucharist, to eat “the Body of our Lord Jesus Christ, which was given for thee…” and to drink “the Blood of our Lord Jesus Christ, which was shed for thee…” In our church my children don’t have to prove themselves worthy of Christ and His Kingdom to be invited to Jesus’ table. They are members of his body and full participants in his family meal.
From the Lutheran Satire post, given as an example of what not to do (i.e. children’s church, yet they do not allow their young ones to partake of the Lord’s Supper)”…why don’t we suffer not the little children and forbid them from coming to church until they prove themselves worthy of Christ and his Kingdom…”
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Kuyperian Press is pleased to announce its third publication, Taking Your Faith to Work: How Christians Can Succeed in Secular Careers. I was able to sit down with David and talk to him about this publication.
Guest Post By Gregg Strawbridge
See the longer article here which addresses the details of St. Luke’s Gospel:
http://allsaints-church.com/files/etstearingdownhouse.htm
Should we interpret “literally” – well, yes. But what does this mean? Let me pick on the dispensationalists. “That a single passage has one meaning and one meaning only has been a long-established principle of biblical interpretation. Among evangelicals, recent violations of that principle have multiplied,” writes Robert Thomas. Thomas cites Milton S. Terry’s classic Hermeneutics text, “A fundamental principle in grammatico-historical exposition is that the words and sentences can have but one significance in one and the same connection. The moment we neglect this principle we drift out upon a sea of uncertainty and conjecture.” In defending grammatical-historical hermeneutics, Thomas challenges Clark Pinnock’s “future” meanings, Mikel Neumann’s contextualization, Greg Beale and Grant Osborne on Revelation 11, and Kenneth Gentry’s preterism, and last but not least the whole lot of progressive dispensationalists with their “complementary” hermeneutics. He even calls Daniel Wallace’s Greek book dangerous because Wallace acknowledges that there are “… instances of double entendre, sensus plenior (conservatively defined), puns, and word-plays in the NT.” He sounds the alarm: “A mass evangelical exodus from this time-honored principle of interpreting Scripture is jeopardizing the church’s access to the truths that are taught therein.”
However, literary structure, encoded narratives, and double senses in Luke’s gospel, not to mention the Gospel of John, and indeed most Biblical literature, do not square with this simplistic hermeneutic. I call this way of reading mono-literalisticalism. It assumes the Bible is a term-paper, apart from obvious metaphors like “I am the door.”
The insistence on a monoliteralistical-meaning to Scripture surely does not reflect the NT writers’ use of the OT. Think of Paul’s allegro in Galatians 4:21–5:1 with Sarah and Hagar. Or of the ark and baptism in Peter’s antitupos in 1 Peter 3:21. Or Matthew’s “out of Egypt, I called My Son” (Matt. 2:15, Hos. 11:1). I believe that for interpreters such as Dr. Thomas, the real issue is to protect certain conclusions of the interpretive process, namely, classic dispensationalism’s schemata. The process of interpretation is not made of stainless steel rules, neutral, objective, and unbiased. No interpretive process is a mere straight-jacket of meaning; no interpretation is a mere following a objective, neutral, obvious rules. Hermeneutics is really an exercise in the justification of a point of view. Ok, I sound too deconstructionist here. Not my intention. There is objectivity and the Text is not a wax nose you can bend any way. But the old school dispensationalists really did not produce an objectively demonstrable interpretation out of linear hermeneutics. That’s why they had to reform from within; “progressive dispensationalism.”
Consider St. Luke. One can easily miss the structure of Luke without reading for structure, type, and parallels. But it is clearly no accident that the temple (beginning, middle and final verse) is so prominent. As it turns out, no Biblical writer gives us modern prose which sets out its messages flatly without any dimensionality. From the crafted genealogies to the arrangement of the Psalms, Scripture is robust literature. It is the first literature and the perfect literature. All Scripture has, what I am calling, multi-dimensionality. To some extent that is how all good literature works. Melville’s classic, Moby Dick, is just a story about a big whale. No. It is a rich and wonderful novel because it is more than the story of Ishmael and the hunting of a white whale. It is the story of Ahab “striking through the mask” at God. Such literature includes the robust and subtle development of symbol, type, foreshadowing, and imagery, almost to the point of allegory.
In Luke, Jesus walked to Jerusalem. Who denies Jesus traversed from this GPS coordinate to another GPS coordinate? That is true. But that is hardly the meaning of Luke’s refrain in chapters 9-19. Jesus “steadfastly set His face to go to Jerusalem” (9:51). Luke clearly has deeper structures of meaning in mind which shaped his gospel. All Scripture abounds in such rich literary structures.
Taking another example, is it scientifically possible for a man to survive inside of “fish” for three days, is it a fish or a whale, fish or mammal? The point of the book of Jonah is not biology. Jonah is a story about a man swallowed up. Jonah has more than one sense. There are literary conventions in Jonah. There are undercurrents like the chiasm in Jonah 1:3 (a structural parallelism). Jonah’s action is a fleeing from the Lord that takes him:
…to Tarshish, away from the face of the Lord
down…
…to Tarshish
down…
…to Tarshish, away from the face of the Lord.
This pattern communicates the rebellious nature of Jonah’s flight in a very vivid sense. It sets up the more subtle point of Jonah’s real repentance when he is spat “up” on the land (Jon. 2:10).
Jonah was swallowed by “a great fish” and he came out alive. This actually happened. Liberalism has long seen these dramatic literary delights, denying the power thereof. Fundamentalists know this is a fact and truth. They will stare down a liberal with the gleam of a thousand Covenanters in their eye (CSL That Hideous Strength). But the Triune God of the Bible is not outdone in creativity. He can do poetry. He can create poetic and artistic reality.
The literary purpose of Jonah has extra-dimensionality and we are told as much by Jesus. He refers to the “sign of Jonah.” “An evil and adulterous generation seeks after a sign, and no sign will be given to it except the sign of the prophet Jonah. For as Jonah was three days and three nights in the belly of the great fish, so will the Son of Man be three days and three nights in the heart of the earth” (Matt. 12:39-40). Jonah is the story of the whole nation (Hos. 6:2). Israel is disobedient and will be cast into the sea of the Gentiles. But she will be saved by the unclean nations somehow (Assyria, Babylon, Persia) and finally delivered back into the Land. This will result in the increasing knowledge of God (in Assyria, Babylon, Persia). Israel will come back to life (in the spread of the knowledge of God). Finally Israel will be embodied in One who will go down, down, down and come up to Life.
An elder (Chris Schlect) once challenged me on this point in an interview for my pastoral charge. What is my view of Westminster Confession 1:9? “The infallible rule of interpretation of Scripture is the Scripture itself: and therefore, when there is a question about the true and full sense of any Scripture (which is not manifold, but one), it must be searched and known by other places that speak more clearly.” I believe my points above reinforce the main point of these wise words: “The infallible rule of interpretation of Scripture is the Scripture itself.” But note the parenthetical remarks: Scripture’s sense “(which is not manifold, but one).” We are to take all of God’s Word as instructive and inductively search out our principles of interpretation from the way Scripture uses Scripture. This will not lead us to impose a “four-decker” allegorical bus (as some medievals saw) on the text. Still, reading the Bible as a xerox of Modernity leads to woeful error. Scripture is ancient literature and we must understand the differences between the way ancients “hear” the Text vs how modern writing and reading works. Moreover, it is God’s writing and we must accept His hermeneutics. In order to do that we must immerse ourselves in the ad fontes of the Word.
The greatest influence on my reading of Scripture has been James B. Jordan. Check out his teachings on interpretation:
The most valuable biblical commentary in the world (audio):
http://www.wordmp3.com/details.aspx?id=13689
Some thoughts about JBJ’s contribution:
http://www.wordmp3.com/details.aspx?id=18300
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http://www.wordmp3.com/details.aspx?id=17886
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1. After God has once received us into his family, it is not that he may regard us in the light of servants, but of sons, performing the part of a kind and anxious parent, and providing for our maintenance during the whole course of our lives. And, not contented with this, he has been pleased by a pledge to assure us of his continued liberality. To this end, he has given another sacrament to his Church by the hand of his only-begotten Son—viz. a spiritual feast, at which Christ testifies that he himself is living bread (John 6:51), on which our souls feed, for a true and blessed immortality… First, then, the signs are bread and wine, which represent the invisible food which we receive from the body and blood of Christ. For as God, regenerating us in baptism, ingrafts us into the fellowship of his Church, and makes us his by adoption, so we have said that he performs the office of a provident parent, in continually supplying the food by which he may sustain and preserve us in the life to which he has begotten us by his word. Moreover, Christ is the only food of our soul, and, therefore, our heavenly Father invites us to him, that, refreshed by communion with him, we may ever and anon gather new vigour until we reach the heavenly immortality. But as this mystery of the secret union of Christ with believers is incomprehensible by nature, he exhibits its figure and image in visible signs adapted to our capacity, nay, by giving, as it were, earnests and badges, he makes it as certain to us as if it were seen by the eye; the familiarity of the similitude giving it access to minds however dull, and showing that souls are fed by Christ just as the corporeal life is sustained by bread and wine. We now, therefore, understand the end which this mystical benediction has in view—viz. to assure us that the body of Christ was once sacrificed for us, so that we may now eat it, and, eating, feel within ourselves the efficacy of that one sacrifice,—that his blood was once shed for us so as to be our perpetual drink. This is the force of the promise which is added, “Take, eat; this is my body, which is broken for you” (Mt. 26:26, &c.). The body which was once offered for our salvation we are enjoined to take and eat, that, while we see ourselves made partakers of it, we may safely conclude that the virtue of that death will be efficacious in us. Hence he terms the cup the covenant in his blood. For the covenant which he once sanctioned by his blood he in a manner renews, or rather continues, in so far as regards the confirmation of our faith, as often as he stretches forth his sacred blood as drink to us.
…
10. The sum is, that the flesh and blood of Christ feed our souls just as bread and wine maintain and support our corporeal life. For there would be no aptitude in the sign, did not our souls find their nourishment in Christ. This could not be, did not Christ truly form one with us, and refresh us by the eating of his flesh, and the drinking of his blood. But though it seems an incredible thing that the flesh of Christ, while at such a distance from us in respect of place, should be food to us, let us remember how far the secret virtue of the Holy Spirit surpasses all our conceptions, and how foolish it is to wish to measure its immensity by our feeble capacity. Therefore, what our mind does not comprehend let faith conceive—viz. that the Spirit truly unites things separated by space. That sacred communion of flesh and blood by which Christ transfuses his life into us, just as if it penetrated our bones and marrow, he testifies and seals in the Supper, and that not by presenting a vain or empty sign, but by there exerting an efficacy of the Spirit by which he fulfils what he promises. And truly the thing there signified he exhibits and offers to all who sit down at that spiritual feast, although it is beneficially received by believers only who receive this great benefit with true faith and heartfelt gratitude. For this reason the apostle said, “The cup of blessing which we bless, is it not the communion of the blood of Christ? The bread which we break, is it not the communion of the body of Christ”? (1 Cor. 10:16.) There is no ground to object that the expression is figurative, and gives the sign the name of the thing signified. I admit, indeed, that the breaking of bread is a symbol, not the reality. But this being admitted, we duly infer from the exhibition of the symbol that the thing itself is exhibited. For unless we would charge God with deceit, we will never presume to say that he holds forth an empty symbol. Therefore, if by the breaking of bread the Lord truly represents the partaking of his body, there ought to be no doubt whatever that he truly exhibits and performs it. The rule which the pious ought always to observe is, whenever they see the symbols instituted by the Lord, to think and feel surely persuaded that the truth of the thing signified is also present. For why does the Lord put the symbol of his body into your hands, but just to assure you that you truly partake of him? If this is true let us feel as much assured that the visible sign is given us in seal of an invisible gift as that his body itself is given to us.
11. I hold then (as has always been received in the Church, and is still taught by those who feel aright), that the sacred mystery of the Supper consists of two things—the corporeal signs, which, presented to the eye, represent invisible things in a manner adapted to our weak capacity, and the spiritual truth, which is at once figured and exhibited by the signs. When attempting familiarly to explain its nature, I am accustomed to set down three things—the thing meant, the matter which depends on it, and the virtue or efficacy consequent upon both. The thing meant consists in the promises which are in a manner included in the sign. By the matter, or substance, I mean Christ, with his death and resurrection. By the effect, I understand redemption, justification, sanctification, eternal life, and all other benefits which Christ bestows upon us. Moreover, though all these things have respect to faith, I leave no room for the cavil, that when I say Christ is conceived by faith, I mean that he is only conceived by the intellect and imagination. He is offered by the promises, not that we may stop short at the sight or mere knowledge of him, but that we may enjoy true communion with him. And, indeed, I see not how any one can expect to have redemption and righteousness in the cross of Christ, and life in his death, without trusting first of all to true communion with Christ himself. Those blessings could not reach us, did not Christ previously make himself ours. I say then, that in the mystery of the Supper, by the symbols of bread and wine, Christ, his body and his blood, are truly exhibited to us, that in them he fulfilled all obedience, in order to procure righteousness for us— first that we might become one body with him; and, secondly, that being made partakers of his substance, we might feel the result of this fact in the participation of all his blessings.
John Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion, Book IV, Chapter 17, §1 & 10-11 (All the stuff in between is really good too and I would encourage you to read it.)
“Let our whole body, then, be preserved in Christ Jesus; and let every one be subject to his neighbour, according to the special gift [charism] bestowed upon him. Let the strong not despise the weak, and let the weak show respect unto the strong. Let the rich man provide for the wants of the poor; and let the poor man bless God, because He hath given him one by whom his need may be supplied. Let the wise man display his wisdom, not by [mere] words, but through good deeds. Let the humble not bear testimony to himself, but leave witness to be borne to him by another. Let him that is pure in the flesh not grow proud of it, and boast, knowing that it was another who bestowed on him the gift of continence. Let us consider, then, brethren, of what matter we were made,—who and what manner of beings we came into the world, as it were out of a sepulchre [grave or burial place], and from utter darkness. He who made us and fashioned us, having prepared His bountiful gifts for us before we were born, introduced us into His world. Since, therefore, we receive all these things from Him, we ought for everything to give Him thanks; to whom be glory for ever and ever. Amen.”
N.B. I Clement is a letter of Clement of Rome, and likely one of the earliest of the writings of the Apostolic Fathers. It is one of the few writings that was considered for inclusion in the Canon of Scripture, but ultimately not received by the Church. However, like many of the writings of the Fathers, it has always held a place of special honor. It’s exclusion was not because of any error of doctrine but because the Church recognized that though it was written by a disciple of the Apostle Peter it was not written in his name as, for instance, Luke and Acts which were written by Luke (not an apostle) but in the name or under the supervision of Peter, were. Thus the Church received it as an important and pious text, but not an inspired one.
Kuyperian Commentary Podcast
