Today is Trinity Sunday, so I want to post this about the Trinity:

How have theologians understood — or explained — the Trinity?

Ron Highfield’s new book, Great Is the Lord: Theology for the Praise of God , sketches the “Trinity” as well as I’ve seen for an introductory text and the 3d section of chp 4 is about the theological understanding of the Trinity.

(more…)

Kris and I were kindly invited to the wonderful Trinity Covenant Church in Manchester CT last weekend. It was good to be with Phil Hakanson and Peter Tullson. And Phil and family are friends with my editor, Lil Copan, and it was great to see Lil again. I wanted to say more about Lil when I spoke, but I became emotional and couldn’t get through it … so I went on to the Jesus Creed (which she edited).

We find that thriving churches have vibrant community groups, and Trinity has shifted its focus in the last few years toward those groups and it has made a big difference, as was so visible in the story of Barbara in the Sunday morning services. She told of how community groups had helped her with the lonely joy of her new faith and of how these groups were enhancing both her marriage and her family.

Increasingly, I have come to value the incidental remarks about our books. At Trinity Covenant, I heard some encouraging comments about both 40 Days Living the Jesus Creed

and The Blue Parakeet: Rethinking How You Read the Bible
. Phil suggested to me, wondering what I thought, that he liked 40 Days more than Jesus Creed. It is true, that 40 Day book is a completely different kind of book. 

Churches have to be one of the best resources for the development of music and the music and worship at Trinity was something special. Both worship teams and the solos and the drums and piano … all fantastic. 

Kris and I loved how Trinity finished the worship services: instead of receiving the famous Blessing from Numbers 6 (“the Lord bless you…”) from the pastor, we faced one another and sang the blessing to each other. Moving … and wonderful example of what the priesthood of all believers means.

If you want a good example of a multigenerational church, Trinity is the place to begin. We need more of this, folks.

By the way, I did a Jesus Creed talk and then one of how everything about the other-oriented ministry of Jesus ends up in the community life of Acts 2:42-47.

The Gundrys and Me, by Ruth Tucker

Stan and Pat Smith Gundry. Where would my life be today without them? This little series began with A. B. Simpson, founder of the Christian and Missionary Alliance. Last week, I continued with Elisabeth Elliot’s influence on my life. Like Simpson and Elliot, Stan and Pat have left very large footprints on the evangelical world and on my life in particular. Where would I be today had Pat not written Woman Be Free! and had Stan not been fired from Moody Bible Institute? Forced to leave his teaching position in Chicago, he would spend the next decades at Zondervan Publishing House in Grand Rapids, and that is where I first encountered him.

In last week’s post I recalled how I was flying by the seat of my pants developing college-level courses on subjects I didn’t know anything about. But I successfully turned a History of Missions course away from mind-numbing facts into a biographical history.  It made the subject matter interesting and stirred up class discussion. After teaching it a second year, I put together a proposal and sent it to Stan at Zondervan. I told him that, having taught the course for years (I didn’t say it was only two), I had discovered that it was best taught through biography. He got back to me confessing that History of Missions had been the most boring course he had taken in seminary and that he would be interested in seeing chapters—chapters that would become my text, From Jerusalem to Irian Jaya.

Stan passed me on to a good editor, Mark Hunt, and through him (with Stan’s encouragement), I was connected with Walt Kaiser, academic dean at Trinity Evangelical Divinity School, where I would teach part-time for seventeen years, flying back and forth from Grand Rapids. It was there where I became acquainted with Scot, so the line of influence comes right up to this post.

But back to my first teaching job at Grand Rapids School of the Bible and Music. Another course that fell into my lap because the regular teacher wanted out was Women in Ministry. The previous teacher had taught how to be a proper pastor’s wife and hostess as well as how to put together a mother-daughter banquet and an assortment of other practical tips. Although I had been a pastor’s wife for six years, I did not shine in that arena. Much of my time had been devoted to writing a doctoral dissertation. So again I was trying to figure out how to teach a course. And then I laid my hands on a book published a year earlier in 1977, Woman Be Free!  My life would never be the same.

I learned from Pat and then from others that a woman could do much more in ministry than be a pastor’s wife. So, I would feature strong women of the Bible and in church history and we would dig into passages that had been wrongly interpreted to keep women out of ministry. The students were startled by my course material, but I was getting the information from actual books so it must be true. Fortunately, the president of the school seemed to have no problem with my budding feminism, having known women preachers, including his Methodist grandmother. Just don’t start teaching Calvinism, he warned me.

After having taught this course several times, utilizing my training as a historian, it was a natural step to begin team-teaching a course at Trinity on women in ministry with Walt Liefeld, a New Testament expert. Then together we pitched a book proposal to Stan—a volume that would become Daughters of the Church.

Again, Pat’s foundational research was critical. And I realized how much I resonated with her personal perspective. Responding to an interviewer, she answered:

I had always been a feminist and egalitarian, before I knew those terms. I’d been raised to be an independent thinker, confident in my ability to do and be whatever I set out to do or be. It came as a shock to me as an older child to realize that some people would want to limit my opportunities solely because I was female.

We were both raised on farms, Arkansas and Wisconsin, though Pat’s family moved to California when she was young. She gravitated to the domestic side of life, whereas I preferred driving a tractor or milking cows—anything but the kitchen where Pat was a natural. In fact, once when Pat and Stan had been hosting Moody students in their home, two young men on noticing her shelves of cookbooks were surprised that a feminist would be handy in the kitchen. Indeed, she has since published a cookbook of her own. But it was Woman Be Free! and subsequent books, including Heirs Together, that would shape the conversation for Christian Feminism. Also decisive was her role in founding Christians for Biblical Equality (and her naming the CBE journal, The Priscilla Papers, contributing some of the early articles).

As a Moody professor’s wife, she had considerable freedom, and during that time was actively involved in the effort to pass the Equal Rights Amendment into law. Hers was hardly a radical stance. There was bipartisan support in both Houses of Congress as well as from Presidents Nixon, Ford and Carter. It would go on to be ratified by 35 states, only three states short of the necessary 38. But that is when STOP ERA was bringing out its big guns—that of trashing ERA supporters, or, in this case, the husband of a supporter. Opponents “wrote letters to Moody administrators denouncing me, and my husband,” writes Pat. “The letters were full of distortions and downright lies, which Moody administrators said they knew were fabrications.” But as the volume of letters increased so did the fear that the school would lose financial support. Thus, the decision to fire a fine professor, a brilliant scholar and writer.

Before teaching at Moody, Stan had been a Baptist minister as had his father. Women’s roles in the home and in ministry were simply assumed to be secondary to those of men. Stan’s father, in fact, kept a stash of John R. Rice’s Bobbed Hair, Bossy Wives and Women Preachers, giving away copies to fellow travelers. During his college and seminary years, and even after marriage to Pat, Stan held the traditional view with no inclination to defend bossy wives or women preachers. But it was in the following years as the children were growing that Pat had begun studying the Bible to see if Rice and others had actually interpreted passages correctly. Her questions and further study led to long discussions with Stan, and he credits her for his slow change of mind.

Responding to a request for an article in Priscilla Papers, Stan wrote:

I have agreed to tell my story for two fundamental reasons. 1) I want to give tribute to the person who opened my eyes to a new paradigm through which to view Scripture and who did not allow me to be satisfied with the easy answers. These were answers that had been drilled into my head as a youth and were assumed throughout my college and seminary training. 2) Arguments alone often do not convince. This is especially so with theological and exegetical arguments on this subject that for many has so much emotional baggage associated with it. So, when people come to me asking questions and searching for answers on the “women’s issue,” I often just tell them my story—where I have come from, where I have landed, and how and why I got there.

Stan tells how in the early 1970s be began seeing the Bible more holistically. He “began to see that the passages that were barriers to . . . moving to a fully egalitarian position needed to be understood in terms of the big picture.” It is the big picture “that establishes the context for understanding the difficult passages.” His position slowly changed. “By 1974 in my lectures and discussions with students at Moody Bible Institute, I was affirming a view that was essentially egalitarian.”

Stan goes on to say far more than can be recounted here, but I take three critical things from him: He was willing to learn from a woman (even as Apollos had learned from Priscilla); he looked at the big picture of Scripture; and he recognized emotional baggage. This final point should stop all of us in our tracks. Whenever we hear someone pontificating on their precise exegesis and hermeneutical expertise related to a particular passage, we do well to wonder what kind of emotional baggage is hiding inside their heads.

My connections with Stan have continued over the years and I was privileged to contribute an article for a Festschrift in 2017 honoring him on his 80^th birthday and his decades of ministry at Zondervan where he continues to serve today. My relationship with Pat has continued as well. I love her wry sense of humor, as when she related to an interviewer her baptism at thirteen:

Unlike most Baptists, though, I was immersed twice. Just as I was catching my breath, the pastor dipped me under again. Later, he explained that he’d not immersed some part of me completely, and he knew there would be objections if he didn’t do it again. I don’t know what kind of Baptist that makes me, maybe a DuoBaptist.

That sense of humor, along with her wise counsel, helped me survive two very difficult times in my life—after escaping a violent marriage in 1987 and again nearly two decades later after I had been terminated from Calvin Seminary.

Thank you, Pat and Stan, for your generosity of spirit in all the ways you have profoundly influenced my life.

Postscript

I “borrowed” these photos from Pat’s Facebook. Neither she nor Stan have known of my intentions to post any of this on Jesus Creed.

What a little beauty is Pat Smith. I would have loved to have had her as my BFF when I was growing up. She looks like she’s ready to take on the world. Below, daughter Ann is kissing her Mom, who sure doesn’t look like some sort of radical women’s libber to me.

By Mike Glenn

He’s Here. Now What?

Advent, the four weeks before Christmas, is a time of waiting and preparation, of anticipation and thoughtfulness, of hope and dreams. When Jesus gets here, our lives will be different because (fill in the blank) and our world will be different because (again, fill in the blank). We wait in breathless anticipation for Christ to come, for God to come into world. Joy to the world! The Lord has come!

Everything will be different when Jesus gets here.

Now, in these few weeks after Christmas, after celebrating the arrival of Jesus, have you noticed anything different? Has anything really changed?

It’s now January. The Christmas decorations have been put up. Family has returned to their homes, and we’re back into our everyday routines. Besides having to scratch out “2019” a few times and write in “2020,” most of us have slid back into our same old routines. Now, routines can be good and sometimes, helpful, but honestly, didn’t you expect more?

Jesus is here! Shouldn’t life be different? Shouldn’t life be more?

Yes. Yes, to all of that. Life should be more. If Jesus has come as we proclaim, we should be able to see the difference somewhere, in someone…

…but we don’t. Why not?

Because most of us don’t believe. Now, I know, you winced when you read that. You want to tell me that you do indeed believe. In fact, you believe a lot. Just ask you any question and you’ll show everybody how much you believe.

And you would be right. Most of us can get the answers right when we’re given the questions about our faith.  Do we believe in the Trinity? Check. Did Jesus do miracles? Check. Was Jesus raised from the dead? Check again.

Ok, so how can I say we don’t believe? Because we don’t live it, and if you don’t live it, you don’t believe it.

As followers of Christ, we believe Jesus is the Son of God, the Savior of the World. Given that, we’d also have to say Jesus is the smartest man to ever live. Jesus understands something about life and what makes life matter that the rest of us don’t. That’s why we pay attention to His teachings. We believe they are true.

And we believe they are true because they’ve been field tested – lived out – for over two thousand years. Men and women have applied Jesus’ teaching to their lives and found out the Jesus way works best. The Jesus way works because Christ is present in the life of every follower teaching us how to live and giving us the strength to actually do what His commandments require.

Let’s face it. All of us at one time or another have tried to love our enemy. We failed. Not only did we fail, but we never got to the “like your enemy” stage. We conclude the commandments of Jesus are meant for really spiritual people, super-saints, but not for people like us.

So, if Christ is here, what difference can He make? Let’s face it. Some people are hard to love.

The only way I can answer you is to tell you, since Christ lives in you as His follower, Christ will love that person through you. Now, before you roll your eyes, listen to how this works.

When you decided to follow Christ, He promised to live inside of you. He promised He would teach you His ways and guide you through your life. This means there is a running conversation going on between the Spirit of Christ living in us and us. So, as we’re going through our day and we turn a corner and bam!

There he is! Our enemy is right in front us. What do we do?

Our natural response would be fight or flight. Either we engage in battle or we run away. Either way, our adrenaline is pumping, our heart beating fast…and we prepare for what’s next.

That’s when you’ll hear the Spirit of Jesus. “Relax,” the Spirit will say. “Your enemy can’t take anything that matters away from you.”

“Look at him,” the Spirit will say. “Do you see what’s going on his life? Do you see the fear, the pain? Can you help Me bring some healing and hope to his life as I did yours?”

And you will…in the beginning, it won’t be because you love your enemy, but because you love Jesus and you’ll love Jesus by loving your enemy. Make sense?

And here’s the most mind-blowing part of it all. In time, your one-time enemy will be one of your most valued friends. Yeah, I know, I didn’t believe it either until it happened to me.

Now, I believe it. Now, I live it.

What needs to change in your life? In your marriage? In your community? What have you prayed about that you now need to act on?

After all, you’ve been telling yourself everything will be different when Jesus gets here.

Well, He’s here. Now, what are you waiting on?

Therefore the Lord himself will give you a sign: The virgin will conceive and give birth to a son, and will call him Immanuel. Isaiah 7:14

Taken up again in the Gospel of Matthew

All this took place to fulfill what the Lord had said through the prophet: “The virgin will conceive and give birth to a son, and they will call him Immanuel” (which means “God with us”). (1:22-23)

Most Christians have a deep appreciation for the scriptures, both the Old Testament and the New Testament. For those who were not raised in the church however, or who have for any one of a number of reasons become distrustful of the reliability of the scriptures, the questions are quite different. Scripture relates some pretty incredible events and stories – the virgin birth is high on the list. Why should intelligent educated person in secular, modern or postmodern, enlightened, Western society take this seriously?

Dr. John Polkinghorne’s book Testing Scripture: A Scientist Explores the Bible can provide some useful insights here – whether one agrees with him across the board or disagrees with some of his conclusions. Dr. Polkinghorne was a very successful scientist, an expert and creative theoretical physicist involved in the discovery of quarks. He was Professor of Mathematical Physics at Cambridge University before he resigned to study for the Anglican priesthood. He has since been a parish priest, Dean of the Chapel at Trinity Hall Cambridge and President of Queen’s College, Cambridge. After retirement he continues to write, think, and lecture about the interface between science and faith. In Testing Scripture Polkinghorne isn’t dogmatic or defensive about about scripture, rather he is explaining why he, as a scientist, scholar, and Christian, takes scripture seriously. Both faith and reason play a role in his approach to scripture.

The Gospels record a reliable history. Within the historical conventions of their time they tell the gospel; the story of the birth, life, death, and resurrection of Jesus as the good news of God’s work in the world. Dr. Polkinghorne works through a number of different episodes and events as he describes his reasons for taking the Gospels seriously. One of the most interesting, though, is the one he leaves for last.

I have left till last what are among the best-known and best-loved narratives in the Gospels: the stories of the birth of Jesus. We find them only in Matthew 1.18-2.12 and Luke 2.1-20. John, after his timeless Prologue, and Mark, without any preliminaries, both start with the encounters between John the Baptist and Jesus at the beginning of the public ministry. We are so used to conflating the two gospel accounts that it is only when we read them carefully and separately that we become aware of how different they are. Luke seems to tell the story very much from the point of view of Mary, and the visitors to the newborn Jesus are the humble shepherds. Matthew seems to see things much more from Joseph’s perspective, and his visitors are the magi. … Luke gives us a very specific dating of the birth in relation to a Roman census, but there are severe scholarly difficulties in reconciling this with Matthew’s (plausible) statement that it took place during the reign of Herod the Great. A principle concern of both narratives is to explain why, if Mary’s home was at Nazareth, Jesus was born in Bethlehem, as Messianic prophecy required. I do not doubt that there is historical truth preserved in the birth stories, but establishing its exact content is not an easy task. (p. 67-68)

As with some of the other stories in the gospels and in other parts of scripture there are discrepancies that can be difficult to reconcile and harmonize. There is no strong reason, however, to doubt a historical root, down to and including the birth of Jesus in Bethlehem.

A Virgin Conceived. The conception of Jesus is a different issue. Matthew 1:18 relates the claim:

This is how the birth of Jesus the Messiah came about: His mother Mary was pledged to be married to Joseph, but before they came together, she was found to be pregnant through the Holy Spirit.

Joseph responds to Mary’s pregnancy by planning to divorce her and an angel in a dream reiterates the claim “what is conceived in her is from the Holy Spirit.” Luke 1:34-35 records Mary’s response when told she would conceive and give birth to a son, the Messiah.

“How will this be,” Mary asked the angel, “since I am a virgin?” The angel answered, “The Holy Spirit will come on you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you. So the holy one to be born will be called the Son of God.

The very idea that a virgin conceived and bore a son raises an eyebrow or two in our secular Western society – both modern and postmodern. At the risk of being a little too earthy – conception in humans requires input from two sources. After all, we all know that an egg from the woman requires the DNA from the sperm provided by a man to make it whole, capable of producing a new individual. One might, perhaps conceive of a clone of some sort using only Mary’s DNA – but this could only make a female, not a male. No Y Chromosome in Mary. If a virgin gave birth to a son it was a truly miraculous conception. The DNA had to come from somewhere. Did God just produce a a unique set of chromosomes to join with Mary’s? Was it Joseph’s DNA? Some other descendant of David? Was this a divine artificial insemination?

How and can an intelligent, educated, experienced person believe in a virgin birth?

Dr. Polkinghorne gives his reasoning:

Luke, very explicitly in his story of the Annunciation (1.34-35), and Matthew, more obliquely (1.18), both assert the virginal conception of Jesus. Christian tradition has attached great significance to this, often rather inaccurately calling it the ‘virgin birth’. Yet in the New Testament it seems nowhere as widely significant as the Resurrection. Paul is content to simply lay stress on Jesus’ solidarity with humanity: ‘God sent his Son, born of woman, born under the law’ (Galatians 4.4). The theological importance of the virginal conception lies in its lending emphasis to the presence of a total divine initiative in the coming of Jesus, even if this truth is much more frequently expressed by the New Testament writers simply in the language of his having been sent. Jesus was not opportunistically co-opted for God’s purpose when he was found to be suitable, but he was part of that purpose from the start. The virginal conception is a powerful myth, and I believe that in the religion of the Incarnation the power of story fuses with the power of a true story, so that the great Christian myths are enacted myths. On this basis, I find myself able to believe in the virgin birth, even if the motivating evidence is less extensive than for the belief in the Resurrection. (p. 68-69, emphasis added)

Interaction not Intervention. One of the most important criteria for thinking through the incredible claims in scripture is God’s interaction with his creatures rather than his intervention in his creation. The miracles ring true when they enhance our understanding of the interaction of God with his people in divine self-revelation. The virginal conception is part of the Incarnation, “The Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us”. The magnificent early Christian hymns quoted by Paul in Col 1.15-20 and Phil 2.6-11 catch the essence of this enacted myth as well.

It makes no sense to try to defend the virginal conception, the resurrection, or any of the other signs or miracles related in the New Testament, separate from the story of the Gospel, the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus as God’s Messiah. In the context of God’s mission within his creation the miracles make sense and are truly miracles. Separate from this they will never make sense.

This is also a place where it is wise to avoid asking too many questions. Especially as there is no way these questions will ever find answers. I rather expect that the conception (insemination) was miraculous – but that a modern DNA test would have confirmed descent from the house and lineage of David in some manner. But this is really beside the point and unimportant. The point is the one that Dr. Polkinghorne emphasizes … Jesus was not opportunistically co-opted for God’s purpose but he was part of that purpose from the start. This was God’s plan and God’s doing.

What do you think? Do Dr. Polkinghorne’s reasons for believing in the virgin birth make sense?

What arguments are persuasive on this, or any other “difficult to believe” event?

If you wish to contact me directly you may do so at rjs4mail[at]att.net.

If interested you can subscribe to a full text feed of my posts at Musings on Science and Theology.

(This is an edited repost, always appropriate this time of year. The links above are paid referrals – try this one if you prefer: Testing Scripture.)

By Ruth Tucker

Years ago son Carlton and I visited a grove of trees near Palmyra where Jesus had appeared and told Joseph Smith, in answer to his prayer, that he should join none of the churches because “their creeds were an abomination in his sight.” Last week I posted on Spurgeon and MacArthur and their “downgrading” of fellow Baptists. The top-dog downgrader, however, was surely Joseph Smith, founder of the Mormons. Smith was fourteen, the same age as Carlton was when he visited the grove with me. That fact was not lost on me at the time—a mere kid—although the report of the vision did not come until many years later. Next spring marks the 200^th anniversary of that retroactive claim of Smith’s first vision,

But like Spurgeon, Smith and his religious beliefs have had defenders—the entire LDS community for most of two centuries (and I’m certainly not comparing the theological content of the two men). But both have had cult-like followings. Very troubling, however, are some noted Christians who stand alongside Mormons, while seeking to convince fellow Evangelicals that the LDS is making significant changes toward orthodoxy. I cite in particular the highly respected Christian leader, Richard Mouw. He argues in Talking with Mormons that Jehovah’s Witnesses should be classified a “cult” but not Mormons—even though JWs do not have extra-biblical scriptures.

I know what it’s like to defend a “cult.” Years ago when I was writing my book Another Gospel, I called the Pasadena headquarters of the Worldwide Church of God, founded by Herbert W. Armstrong, asking for clarification on certain issues. I quickly learned that significant changes were occurring from the top down. Soon after, I met with the three top leaders and was able to offer critical advice. They were moving rapidly toward historic orthodoxy, but were fearful of everything blowing to bits if they moved too fast. At one point they were ready to go public with a new doctrinal statement and passed it on to me for review. I immediately spotted a red flag—how the statement would be perceived by Evangelicals. So I made a substitution for a twice-used 2-letter word and sent it back. The statement was published with my correction.

When my relationship became public, I was attacked by counter-cult leaders—this coming during the decade I chaired the Tanner Lectures on cults at TEDS.  In the years that followed, even as my relationship with WCG leaders continued, Richard Mouw, then President of Fuller Seminary, stepped in and played an important role in their theological development. Located close by, he was the ideal individual to stand beside them and I was grateful for his supportive involvement. They encountered many difficulties and schisms along the way, but within several years had become a member of the National Association of Evangelicals. In 1996, I summed up their story in a lengthy article, “From the Fringe to the Fold” in Christianity Today.

The situation regarding the LDS, however, is entirely different, and Mouw, above all others should recognize that. He writes an article in First Things (May 2016), titled “Mormons Approaching Orthodoxy”—no “Are” to begin with or question mark at the end. He focusses primarily on what he and many Mormons have referred to as the Lorenzo Snow couplet:

As man now is, God once was;
As God now is, man may be.

Mouw writes: “[T]he Mormon teaching about becoming gods can be seen as expressions of a straightforward theological orthodoxy.” Others have challenged Mouw on this matter, and I have nothing to add.

My own challenge to Mouw relates to Joseph Smith and LDS history. Two centuries ago young Smith came out of the woods with an answer to prayer about which church to join. In LDS scripture, we learn that the personage, whom God the Father introduced as his son, told Joseph that “all their Creeds were an abomination in his sight [and] that those professors were all corrupt.” Today LDS apologists insist that evangelists and preachers of that day often said similar things about other religious groups, and that young Smith was no different—he was not perfect. The problem with that argument is that Smith did not say it. Jesus did. Smith’s only involvement was to repeat what Jesus told him.

My question: Has Jesus (or God the Father) changed his mind? If so, it would seem that the current Prophet and President Russell Nelson should make a public announcement as was done in the instances relating to polygamy and blacks in the priesthood. It’s a question Mouw should pursue.

Another matter relates to evangelism. Mouw speaks often of his good friend, Robert L. Millet, an academic who taught at BYU. I chaired a small meeting at Calvin Seminary with Millet and several of my colleague. My first question to him was: If Mormons are Christians, as you say, why do you focus most of your evangelistic outreach on other Christians? I would be upset, I told him, if Reformed leaders were instructing missionaries how to teach classes in order to convert Baptists. His response was that he would check into it. That evening when John and I went out to dinner with him, I followed up, and he assured me that he would take my concerns to Mormon leaders and get back to me. That was more than a dozen years ago. Still no word.

Another critical issue for Millet and Mouw is found in Doctrine and Covenants (one of 3 LDS scriptures in addition to the Bible). Here God reveals to Joseph how to handle his wife Emma who was outraged by his introduction of polygamy, including a very early incident of his taking their teenage servant girl to the hay mow for a spiritual marriage. Here is D&C 132: 52, 54:

And let mine handmaid, Emma Smith, receive all those that have been given unto my servant Joseph. . . . And I command mine handmaid, Emma Smith, to abide and cleave unto my servant Joseph, and to none else. But if she will not abide this commandment she shall be destroyed saith the Lord; for I am the Lord thy God, and will destroy her if she abide not in my law.

Did God actually reveal this, or did Joseph make it up as he was going along? Either way, it is nothing less than staggering abuse of Emma Smith, not to mention all the young girls and women he took as wives, this Prophet of God.

In defending the LDS, Mouw offers an illustration of ­Ellen Tucker Emerson, daughter of Ralph Waldo Emerson. She taught Unitarian Sunday school and Bible studies, “especially fond of studying Ephesians and Romans. . . . But was her Christocentric view of salvation negated by her rejection of the doctrine of the Trinity?” He doesn’t answer.  But it seems very problematic to cite a non-Trinitarian obscure woman with no following to bolster a specious argument in favor of the massive LDS establishment.

What I’ve written is only the tip of the iceberg regarding LDS heterodox beliefs, the sum of which is the “Restored Gospel.” The original true gospel had vanished at the end of the first-century apostolic era. That true gospel was then restored by Joseph Smith after some eighteen hundred years of apostasy. Really. I say it again. The “Restored Gospel” is Mormonism. Period.

Mouw blames Christians generally, and counter-cults specifically, for misrepresenting Mormon beliefs in an effort to malign them. I’ve encountered that myself. But Mouw misrepresents their beliefs in order to befriend and bolster them.  Serious interaction with Mormons about their beliefs must be based on LDS scriptures and other official teachings, not on what a BYU professor might say. Smith’s visions and revelations contain startling instructions and information, as did some of the claims Herbert W. Armstrong dreamed up. The leaders of the WCG, as Mouw well knows, slowly denounced his heresy and brought the WCG into the NAE.

In the case of the Mormons, Mouw writes: “Indeed, it has often struck me that their view of their later [3 extrabiblical] scriptures is much like my own view of the Calvinist creedal documents that I subscribe to.” I certainly don’t know Mouw’s personal view of these creedal documents. Does he believe they’re direct revelations from God? Mormons believe that about their scriptures, which are far more than merely creedal documents. The Book of Mormon is translated into more than 90 languages, another 30-plus in the works. It is not sub-titled “Another Testament of Jesus Christ” for nothing, taking “its place where it should be,” writes Boyd Packer, President of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles, “beside the Old and the New Testament.”

Mormon missionaries take those translations around the world with them. They have publicly praised Wycliffe Bible Translators for opening their translation courses to them, thus assisting in their own translating of the Book of Mormon. And they have also praised Christian missionaries for paving the way for them so that they can more easily bring the “Restored Gospel.”

I support the work of Joel Groat, the brilliant and mild-mannered Director of the Institute for Religious Research. He is fluent in Spanish and often travels to Latin American countries (as well as Africa), at the invitation of church leaders who are desperate for help in countering the Mormon onslaught. I believe, Dr. Mouw, that you are making Joel’s work in the States and abroad far more difficult. I fear that your desire for friendship with Mormons has tainted your objectivity, and that you are playing right into of the hands of the LDS.

OK, I’m tired of the term “evangelical” but let’s get over it and just (for the moment) drop the discussion and ask What would an evangelical theology look like? Many would say “biblical” and that, like forgiveness said C.S. Lewis of forgiveness, is a lovely idea until someone has to choose which “biblical” body of literature would take as the set of categories.

Try as one might one has to choose when it comes to “biblical.” The most influential evangelical biblical theology of the last 50 years is GE Ladd’s A New Testament Theology and, truth be told, he used the eschatological vision of Jesus’ teaching on the kingdom and in some ways imposed that on the rest of the NT — and provided insight. But his overall form of NT theology was virtually unusable in catechisms, in church theological statements, and in anything close to a pastoral theology. (I cut my teeth on Ladd so this is not a criticism.)

To be fully biblical one has to sort through each author of the Bible — Old and New Testaments — and let each say things as they say them. Long ago GB Caird did a nice job in his New Testament Theology, asking each author of the New Testament come to a conference table and answer questions about salvation, etc.. This is how to do it, but it would take three volumes and, in most cases, there are both lots of loose ends and not enough synthesis.

So, what to do?

One approach has been the so-called loci: God, humans, Christ, sin, salvation, ecclesiology and eschatology. This has been the approach of many if not most Protestant systematic theologies. One volume after another, from Hodge to Strong to whichever modern theologian one is assigned and has on the shelf, has sought to rehearse, repeat and reframe the loci. This approach has been eminently useful to many. It answers questions, it organizes topics, it often provides biblical support.

But, another approach has been even deeper in the history of the church. The big bonus here is that it fits with church worship. I’ll say it then: the loci approach is for a classrooms and the other approach is for church theology.

Enter Daniel J. Treier’s wonderful new Introducing Evangelical Theology. (Thank God Dan avoids an argument about the meaning of “evangelical.”) What is this approach? The credal approach. What does it look like? The Three Articles of our Creed. Here theology is not forced into one biblical author that mutes the voice of other biblical authors, but instead it is shaped by the fundamental categories of the great tradition that forms the Apostles’ Creed and the Niceno-Constantinopolitan Creed. Yes, Bible. And Yes, the church’s formation of its basic ideas. There’s no claim here to be the biblical theology.

Perhaps best, it turns “evangelical” away from some of its petty theological debates and pushes it back to the origins of Christian theologizing in the Creed.

So, here is how Treier organizes his theology:

1. Knowing the Triune God: creed, ten commandments, Lord’s prayer
2. The Father, the Almighty Lord: triune name of God, providence, goodness of creation, human beings.
3. The Son, the Mediating Logos: identity, reconciliation, sin and salvation, the gospel
4. The Holy Spirit, the Life Giver: God’s empowering presence, scripture, church, all things new.

I’d put church prior to scripture in this ordering, but I really like this ordering: it’s sorted by God as Trinity instead of simply soteriology.

If I were teaching “theology” in a seminary or college, this would be my text and one big reason is that it draws us to the creed, the faith common to all Christians. I do think there are other approaches to doing theology — narrative, systematic loci, biblical, or even running a category (kingdom, salvation) through the whole Bible — but this is one that could bring a lot of unity between Christians.

Join me as I go through this book — or sample its chapters.

Hello from Houston! We are here for the Lanier Library Lecture.

Some Trick-or-Treaters may need a watch:

(Meredith) — Trick or treat, smell my feet, give me a… Class 4 misdemeanor?

In six Virginia cities, that’s exactly what will happen to any child who is found trick-or-treating after 8 p.m. or is older than age 12.

According to WAVY-TV, the city code of Virginia Beach, Virginia states that trick-or-treating hours are from sunset until 8 p.m. for children 12 and under. It is against the law for any child over 12 years old to trick-or-treat at any time, and they will be found guilty of a Class 4 misdemeanor.

But the city code doesn’t stop there. Any child — no matter what age — will be found guilty of a Class 4 misdemeanor if they trick-or-treat past 8 p.m.

Virginia Beach isn’t the only city with these laws. The nearby cities of Hampton, Newport News, Norfolk, Portsmouth and Suffolk have the same laws.

Rewilding:

 SEBASTOPOL, Calif. (Reuters) – The staggering decline of honey bee colonies has alarmed experts across the United States, but an unconventional apiculturist in California thinks he has found a way to save them.

Michael Thiele has championed an approach he calls the “rewilding” of honeybees, allowing them to live as they did for millions of years — in natural log hives high above the ground.

“We can do this very, very simple thing — return bees into their natural nest environment, into their natural biosphere,” said German-born Thiele at his home in Sebastopol, California. “If we lose them due to human-induced mass extinction, will there be a tomorrow?”

Thiele’s method consists of hollowing out logs and strapping them high on tree trunks to mimic bees’ hives before they were domesticated. He also sometimes suspends them from barn rafters or perches them high on wooden tables for a similar effect.

Honey bees are critical to the planet’s ecosystem because they pollinate plants that produce about a quarter of the food consumed by Americans, according to U.S. government reports.

Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s secret?

Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg told an audience in California on Monday that even after she was diagnosed for the fourth time with cancer, she never stopped working out, although she couldn’t always complete her full routine.

“I do pushups,” the 86-year-old told an audience at Berkeley Law, adding that she planks, “both front and side,” as well as does weight-bearing exercises with her personal trainer.

Asked how she is feeling now, Ginsburg said that compared with six months ago she is doing “very well.”

The comments come as the Supreme Court is on a brief recess after its first sitting. Ginsburg was an active participant on the bench as the court heard a blockbuster LGBT case and decided to add other significant issues to an already robust docket.

Ginsburg announced in August that she had been treated for pancreatic cancer and the tumor had been treated “definitively.”

What a gift!

CHICAGO — Thousands of local families burdened with medical debt are getting some much-needed relief ahead of the holiday season.

A coalition of local churches worked with the nonprofit group RIP Medical Debt to raise $38,000, which is enough to purchase more than $5 million worth of debt belonging to close to 6,000 struggling families. And clear it all out.

“We were able to raise funds to purchase 5.3 million worth of debt in the city of Chicago and Cook County,” said Dr. Otis Moss III, Trinity United Church of Christ.

Parishioners and church leaders celebrated the huge announcement at Trinity United church Sunday. The forgiven debts average $907 dollars a household.

Some struggling South Side families will have some their prayers answered this Thanksgiving.

“They will receive a very special card before Thanksgiving – completely anonymous, they don’t know this is coming – the card will simply say, ‘have a wonderful Thanksgiving. We want you to know all your debts have been forgiven,'” Moss said.

Another gift!

(CNN)When Andrella “Lashae” Jackson was pulled over on October 12 by a Milwaukee police officer who noticed her two young daughters were not in car seats, the single mom of five expected to leave with a hefty ticket.

Instead, Officer Kevin Zimmerman purchased and installed two car seats for the girls, Niyah and Sky, and issued Jackson a simple verbal warning.

“My girls couldn’t stop thanking him and it made them smile….shout out to Officer Zimmerman at District 5,” Jackson said on Facebook. “We appreciate it a lot.”

Many I bump into don’t care about this issue because for them all other Gods than the Christian God are non-gods, idolatries. Others, however, probe this question with far more interest, asking at times about overlaps and dissimilarities. I’m grateful to Zondervan’s industrious editors for yet one more volume in the Counterpoints series with this new volume:

Do Christians, Muslims, and Jews Worship the Same God?

The editors are Ronnie P. Campbell and Christopher Gnanakan.

The contributors are Wm Andrew Schwartz and John B Cobb, Jr (religious pluralism view), Francis Beckwith (same God view), Gerald McDermott (Jews and Christians do, the shared revelation view), Jerry Walls (different conceptions view).

Ministry reflections are by Joseph Cumming and David Shenk, who focus on Christian Muslim relations.

Each delves into the following questions:

Jews, Christians, and Muslims all hold to monotheism, but is monotheism enough to claim that adherents of each religion worship “the same” God?

Does the doctrine of the Trinity matter in this debate? If so, to what extent?

Much of the current debate hinges on what one means by “the same.” What do we mean by “the same,” and how do we make sense of the differences underlying each religions understanding of God?

What is included in worship? Is worship necessary for salvation? Furthermore, what place does the worship (or reverence) of Jesus Christ have for understanding the sameness of the God of Christianity, Judaism, and Islam and to what extent does this matter?

Does affirming sameness lead to inclusivism or pluralism with respect to salvation, or does denying sameness imply exclusivism?

I’m with Jerry Walls, and I will provide a summary by the editors of his view:

Dissenting from the previous three views, Jerry Walls takes the fourth and final position, that none worship the same God. Certainly, Christians, Jews, and Muslims share common beliefs about God, but Walls questions whether such shared beliefs are enough to maintain that the same God is in view. Drawing from recent studies in the philosophy of language, particularly the notion of “reference shifts,” he first argues that it is doubtful whether Muslims and Christians can even claim to refer to the same thing when they speak of God. But even if a reference shift has not occurred, it is still not clear that the conditions necessary for worship obtain. Walls then provides another argument grounded in New Testament revelation, which, if successful, would show that Christians, Jews, and Muslims have radically different conceptions of God. He distinguishes between the order of being and the order of knowing. According to the order of being, God has eternally been a triunity of persons. Yet with respect to the order of knowing, this is something that was not revealed until the incarnate Son rose from the dead—something Christians recognize as progressive revelation and is established by the New Testament. Jews and Muslims both reject these distinctive elements of God’s revelation to us, namely, the incarnation and resurrection of Jesus and the triunity of God. The thrust of Walls’s argument suggests that for those Muslims and Jews who have been properly informed of the incarnation and resurrection of the Son of God, and yet who reject this revelation given to us by God through the New Testament, are not worshiping the same God as properly informed Christians, since those who reject are denying something that is true about God.