Christ with us sleeping,
Christ with us waking,
Christ with us watching,
each day and each night.
Save us, Lord, while we are awake,
guard us while we are asleep;
that, awake, we may watch with Christ,
and, asleep, may rest in His peace.
A Celtic Compline
November 25, 2011 By 3 Comments
Are Catholics Born Again?
November 25, 2011 By 12 Comments
Did you see this by Deacon Mike Bickerstaff?
My mother was a Catholic and my father was a Baptist. Both were committed, after serious consideration on my father’s part, to raise their children Catholic and baptize us at infancy. Years later I met non-Catholic Christians who would invariably ask me if I had been saved and if I was born again. Of course, the question perplexed me at first, but I had the advantage of a Baptist father who could explain to me the nature and meaning of the questions. Because of his study of the Catholic faith, he was also able to provide a positive explanation consistent with Church teaching….
Here was the challenge. Catholics believe in the necessity of being born again (though we did not ordinarily use that term). But, “born again” meant at least two different things – one thing to Catholics and another to Protestants…. [Read more...]
A Soterian Gospel Test
November 25, 2011 By 48 Comments
Some folks have reshaped the Bible and the gospel so that it is driven by the plan for personal salvation. The Greek word for salvation is soteria so it is accurate to refer to such thinkers as soterians and their gospel as the soterian gospel. There are ways of detecting whether we are soterians or truly evangelical, and by that I mean letting the gospel be shaped by the gospel text 1 Corinthians 15 or the gospel sermons in Acts or the Gospels (which are in fact the gospel itself), but one rather simple way is to ask how one explains judgment texts.
Here’s the thesis: No one in the Bible, when described in a judgment scene, is asked if they accepted, trust, or embraced the soterian gospel. In other words, “Did you accept Jesus into your heart consciously?” or “Did you walk the aisle to receive Christ?” or “Did you accept that Christ was your righteousness?” No one.
In fact, in every judgment scene in the Bible humans are judged not by a singular act of faith but by works. Every judgment scene indicates that, to use words I first heard from Howard Marshall years ago in a Tyndale House lecture, we may be saved by faith but we are judged by works. Of course, this is a complex issue but I believe the soterian gospel forces a reading of these texts that is not natural, while the apostolic gospel, what I call the The King Jesus Gospel, does not have the slightest trouble with the routine NT observation that we will be judged by works (and this is not about rewards but about destiny). If Jesus is king, if Jesus is the Lord who saves, if the gospel is to declare those facts about Jesus, then the response is to King Jesus, the Lord, and that means a whole-life surrender to him — and that means works are the sure sign (as Jesus teaches, as Paul teaches) that one is a kingdom citizen.
So I will simply put on the table today a few of these texts, and the test is this: Do you permit the plain reading of these texts or do they make your theology squirm some? [Read more...]
For and Against Calvinism 10
November 25, 2011 By 39 Comments
The question at hand is this: Did Christ die for every human being and make atonement for every human being, or did Christ die effectively only for the elect? Strong Calvinists, or high Calvinists, contend Christ died only for the elect (particular redemption, limited atonement) while Arminians believe Christ died for all but only those who repent and believe have that atonement applied to them.
As you may know, we are doing this series on Roger Olson’s Against Calvinism and Michael Horton’s For Calvinism. Olson contends limited atonement is not supportable from Scripture, is out of sync with the Great Tradition of the Church (no one believed this among the fathers, before Augustine), and takes exegetical ingenuity to make NT texts teach this. Roger Olson says it this way: “the high Calvinistic doctrine of limited atonement is confusing at best and blatantly self-contradictory and unscriptural at worst” (145).
Calvinism believes the death of Christ actually redeemed while Arminians contend it provided salvation but that redemption is only applied if one believes. The big nuance for Calvinists is this: the death of Christ was sufficient for all but efficient only for the elect. Olson contends there is virtually no difference between “sufficient for all” and the typical Christian view that Christ died for all. Since some Calvinists accuse others of believing necessarily of universalism if they believe Christ died for all (since that death actually saved), Olson argues that Calvinists ought to be universalists since they believe the death of Christ is actually sufficient for all. [Packer unfortunately says Arminians save themselves since they believe Christ's death potentially saves but only saves those who believe.] [Read more...]
Simply Jesus 4
November 25, 2011 By 9 Comments
The major themes of the Exodus are at the heart of Tom Wright’s new book Simply Jesus: A New Vision of Who He Was, What He Did, and Why He Matters. But there’s more to say than that: Exodus is at the heart of the entire mission of Jesus. Because this Exodus theme is both cut up into its seven segments (more below) and because Exodus becomes more central, it is fair to say that Simply Jesus takes us beyond Tom’s well-known Jesus and the Victory of God. He puts it all together in this book….
First the seven Exodus themes are tyrant, leader, divine victory, sacrifice, vocation, divine presence, and promised inheritance. This is at the heart of this book.
Second, Tom sketches how three absolutely crucial (to Jesus and to the apostles) figures of the Old Testament illustrate these seven themes and therefore are instances of carrying forward the Exodus project. The three figures are the Servant of Isaiah 40-66, the Son of Man of Daniel 7, and Zechariah’s king, esp as found in the last half of Zechariah. You will have to take my word for it that he has given us an important sketch of exodus themes here.
Third, now the big one: Jesus’ mission is shaped by those same themes, and so I want to quote from what I think is perhaps the crucial paragraph in this whole book. Remember: it’s Exodus, Exodus from Moses through Isaiah, through Daniel, through Zechariah, and now reshaped and reconfigured for a new day in a new way by Jesus — the three-fold storm converging: Rome, Jewish leaders, and the new message about God becoming king in and through Jesus: [Read more...]
Follow Patheos
Evangelical: