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On November 17, 2022 By In Culture, Politics, Theology, Wisdom

Christ the King

Proverbs is a training manual for David’s son to learn how to exercise authority wisely. Yahweh promised him the nations as an inheritance (Ps 2); that he would rule over the world (Ps 72). Consequently, he must grow in wisdom to match the responsibility that the Father planned for him.

Standing on a mountain in Galilee, having been recently declared David’s true son through his resurrection from the dead (Rom 1.3-4), Jesus proclaims, “All authority in heaven and upon earth has been given to me” (Mt 28.18). Unlike the first son, Adam, who grasped for authority prematurely, seizing the fruit of the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil, which had the power to make one wise (Gen 3.6), Jesus was patient, waiting until the Father gave him the authority. He resisted, what James Jordan calls, “the dominion trap,” on several occasions. During his temptation in the wilderness, the devil tempted him by promising him authority over all the kingdoms of the world if he would pledge his fealty to him. “You don’t need to wait. The world is a mess. You need to be a man of action. Jump out there and do something about it. You have power. You could change the world.” Jesus knew that it wasn’t time. Going about taking dominion without first being established in the fear of the Lord and maturing to the point that he could handle the responsibility was a fool’s errand. No matter how good his intentions might be, without the wisdom to handle the responsibility, the mess made in the end would be worse than the beginning.

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On November 2, 2022 By In Theology, Worship

The Canterbury Trail: Liturgy and Reformation

Modern Reformation recently published an article by Gillis Harp with a very long title: Evangelicals on the Canterbury Trail: Reflections on the Pilgrimage to Anglicanism Nearly 40 Years After Webber’s Classic. Although I am not an Anglican, I read Robert Webber’s book, Evangelicals on the Canterbury Trail: Why Evangelicals Are Attracted to the Liturgical Church, and I found myself deeply sympathetic to his concerns. In fact, I have worshipped in Anglican and Episcopal churches at various times throughout my life, most recently between 2003 and 2008 when our family attended regularly the Church of St. John the Evangelist here in Hamilton, Ontario, Canada.

I did not know Webber very well personally, although I grew up in Wheaton, Illinois, home of Wheaton College, where he taught for many years. But he was a colleague of my wife, who was a faculty member in the same department for six years, and he was a guest at our wedding. I also contributed at least two articles to his Complete Library of Christian Worship. What drew many Christians to his project to recover the ancient glories of Christian worship was a recognition of the superficiality of their own traditions. As Harp observes,

Initial pilgrims to Anglicanism were not from confessional Protestant traditions but from revivalist and fundamentalist churches—communities that are typically independent/non-denominational, dispensational, or charismatic/Pentecostal. Webber himself was a graduate of the uber-fundamentalist Bob Jones University in 1956. Fundamentalist churches tend to see their tribe as the pure descendants of the early church, and they view other traditions with deep suspicion. As a movement, fundamentalism is deeply sectarian; it confuses major doctrinal issues with minor ones and makes minor disagreements into reasons to break fellowship. For understandable reasons, these tendencies have tended to rub many Canterbury pilgrims the wrong way.

But might Webber have captured only a narrow slice of Anglicanism? Harp thinks so.

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On October 27, 2022 By In Culture, Theology, Wisdom

A Beautiful Gray Crown

A crown of beauty is the gray head found in the way of righteousness.

Proverbs 16.31

We are a culture obsessed with the appearance of youth. When a middle-aged or older man or woman is told, “You look so young,” it is taken as a compliment. To keep those compliments coming, we will do everything from taking supplements to having surgeries; we dress young, nip and tuck everything we can, color our hair, and apply stuff with hyaluronic acid to our faces because it sounds like the model knows what she’s talking about. Forever young is our aim.

There is nothing inherently wrong with wanting to maintain as much youthful vitality as possible. The curse that works through our bodies should be fought just as we fight the thorns and thistles of the ground. But there are certain aspects of aging that we should joyfully accept. Solomon tells his son that gray hair is one of those glories.

One theme that runs through Proverbs is that of exaltation and its means. Our all-glorious God created us with an appetite for glory or exaltation. That appetite drives us in our dominion project just as our appetite for food drives us to find ways to be fed. We want to be more and have more. Sometimes we want the wrong kind of glory and/or we pursue glory in a sinful way, but the fundamental appetite for glory is God-given. It is, after all, the promised end of our salvation (cf. e.g., Rom 8.18-30).

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On October 20, 2022 By In Theology, Wisdom

Judgment According To Works

We Protestants get nervous when talking about water and works. Let someone quote the Apostle Peter, “baptism now saves you” (1Pt 3.21) and you might be accused of being Roman Catholic or told why baptism in that passage is not baptism and how it doesn’t save you. We get a little nervous around water.

We become equally antsy when someone brings up those pesky passages in the Bible about a final judgment according to works. James has that irritating sentence, “You see that a person is justified¬ [judged to be righteous] by works and not by faith alone” (Jms 2.24). Solomon says that God will bring every deed into judgment, every secret thing, whether good or evil (Eccl 12.14). Jesus joins this party by saying that those who have done good will participate in the resurrection of life, and those who have done evil in the resurrection of judgment (Jn 5.29). He also speaks about how he will separate his sheep from the goats based on the deeds of mercy (Mt 25.31-46). Paul jumps in here by saying that the doers of the Law will be justified (Rom 2.13) and that we will all appear before the judgment seat of Christ to receive what is due for what we have done in our bodies, whether good or evil (2Cor 5.10). Finally, the judgment scene in Revelation 20.11-15 describes judgment based on what the person has done. And this is only a smattering of passages that speak of this reality. Is it just me, or is it getting difficult to breathe in here?

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On October 6, 2022 By In Theology

Ten Thoughts on Biblical Language

a) The worldview that should shape our formation is not so much the kind of discursive and analytical philosophy but the worldview formed by the Bible’s own language.

b) When we think of the sun, moon, and stars, we may have certain ideas of what these mean, but the biblical worldview speaks of these as not only scientific in reference but as symbols of the hierarchy of heaven and earth.

c) The Bible re-uses this language throughout the prophets and the Gospels to represent civil authorities, governmental entities, and hierarchical structures on earth and in heaven. So, there is much more than first meets the eye.

d) We are required to see the language of the OT as is, which means we need to develop an appetite for visual imagery and repeated patterns. And these are the two ideas that will guide our interpretation: visual imagery refers to symbolism, & repeated patterns refer to typology.

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On September 29, 2022 By In Theology, Wisdom

The Standard

Throughout Proverbs, Solomon assumes the reality of the righteous and the wicked. The righteous are those who are in the way of wisdom and the wicked are in the way of folly. They are antithetical to one another in their hearts’ thoughts and affections (12.5), the way they speak (12.6), how they treat their animals (12.10), the way they do business (16.11), and their confidence before real or perceived accusers (28.1). Each finds the other odious (29.27). The righteous and the wicked live together in this world.

Wait. Is that really possible? Are there really righteous people in the world?

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On September 15, 2022 By In Discipleship, Theology, Wisdom

Pure Strength

In my half-century-plus of life, I have watched movements and men come and go. Fads in fashion as well as issues are like vapors that appear for a little while and then vanish away. Men’s stars have risen and fallen quickly and hard, many times leaving a great deal of damage. Growing up in and around the Christian ministry, my stepfather being a pastor, and being associated with ministers and ministries for most of my life, I have seen the good, bad, and ugly. I watched men through the years who could captivate crowds with their dynamic preaching, mesmerizing people through emotional fervor, rhetorical skill, and/or theological sophistication. As a young man I remember desiring to be like many of these men. But then I learned what would eventually become apparent to all: many of these men lived duplicitous lives. Some men told outright lies about their lives to make their testimonies more exciting. Others used their magnetism to engage in adultery with multiple women. Still others’ families were in absolute shambles while they were out “saving the world.”

I was disillusioned and sometimes discouraged.

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On September 8, 2022 By In Humor, Theology, Wisdom

Learning To Laugh

[1] Humor is a funny thing. It is altogether familiar yet also mysterious. What makes us laugh? Why do we find things funny? There are academic fields of study dedicated to discovering what makes things humorous. These academicians even have a journal entitled International Journal of Humor Research. No joke. Just thinking of a room full of academicians studying jokes and such to discover what makes them funny is … well … hilarious. Analyzing jokes and explaining punchlines kills the joke. In the off-Broadway play, Freud’s Last Session, Freud quotes American humorist E. B. White’s classic aphorism about humor: “Humor can be dissected as a frog can, but the thing dies in the process and the innards are discouraging to any but the purely scientific mind.”[2] Hopefully, exploring a bit of what it takes to have a sense of humor won’t kill it.

Humor is something relatively unique to us as image-bearers of God in creation. Animals tend not to have a sense of humor. As Terry Lindvall writes, “Animals lack that sense of incongruous. Woodpeckers don’t do knock-knock jokes. Monkeys don’t human around. No chicken laughs when another asks him why the human crossed the road. And other chickens don’t crack up when one chicken steps in chicken … stuff.”[3] Our sense of humor comes from being made in the image of God who laughs.

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On September 1, 2022 By In Theology, Wisdom

Paths To Glory

“Now pride is a great vice, and the first of vices, the beginning, origin and cause of all sins.”[1] Many theologians throughout church history echo Augustine’s understanding of pride as the fountainhead of all sin. While Solomon doesn’t ascribe this capital position to pride, he does make it clear that pride is far from a peccadillo. Pride portrayed as “exalted eyes” in Proverbs 6.17 is on the list of the seven things God considers an abomination, those things that attack and distort creation so as to disorder it that it brings desolation. Wisdom hates pride (8.13) and the heart from which it springs (16.5). Everything that guides the proud heart and everything that the proud heart produces, even providing for a family, is sin (21.4). Pride seeks to overturn God’s order at the most fundamental levels. Solomon, training the king-in-waiting, warns him of pride because it is his responsibility to set the world right, beginning with himself. Where there is pride, this can’t be done.

Pride can be quite obvious at times, but it is also slippery. As with all other sins, pride is not an ex nihilo creation. Pride finds a righteous host, attaches itself to it, distorts it, and sucks all the life out of it until it is a corpse. The good creation from which pride leeches is glory.

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On August 19, 2022 By In Church, Theology

Does Romans 6 require submersion baptism?

In Romans 6:3-4, Paul says, “Do you not know that as many of us as were baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death? Therefore we were buried with him through baptism into death, that just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, even so we also should walk in newness of life.”

Does this passage require submersion as the proper mode of baptism? I was baptized by submersion and believe that submersions are legitimate baptisms, but my church practices baptisms from above (sprinkling or pouring). We believe this mode lines up best with biblical commands and imagery.

Submersionists appeal to Romans 6 as proof that baptisms must be done by submersion. The thinking goes like this: If baptism represents the death and burial of Jesus, then the recipient must go completely under water, similar to being buried underground. They think that the visual component of baptism must symbolize a visual burial. But there are problems with this argument.

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