ReformedTheology | Today In Theology

Happy Dependence Day!

Posted by Patrick Chan - July 3, 2008 on 4:55 pm | In ReformedTheology | No Comments Tomorrow is the 4th of July, our nation's celebration of its declaration and victory of independence from the British. Stinkin' redcoats! Just kidding. (I'm actually an Anglophile. For Queen and Empire! Okay, maybe not that much of an Anglophile...)

However, I just wanted to briefly suggest that as Christians we should think of the day (perhaps as we think of all our days, so that we'd gain a heart of wisdom) as our Dependence Day. Our dependence upon the Lord God -- the one, true, and living God, who revealed himself to us in the Holy Scriptures and ultimately in His Beloved Son, Jesus Christ himself.

We're dependent upon God for everything. From life itself, for every breath we breathe. For who we are as individuals, our personalities and the circumstances we were born into. For which families we were born into as well. For the time and place in which we were born. For our climate -- physical and moral. For our culture and background. For our friends and neighbors. For our physical needs like food, clothing, and shelter. For our jobs. For our communities. For the wonderful (and, yes, not-so-wonderful) people we've met in our lives. For our gifts and talents and opportunities. For the church, who is Christ's Bride and witness of himself in this fallen world. For our pastors and teachers who strive to hold out the Word of God to us, day by day. For our society, insomuch as the truths of God and Christians have been its salt and light -- and for not being as depraved as it could be by God's grace. For our government and laws and leaders. For the soldiers who serve in our military and protect our nation. For the relative peace and security of our society, which allows for the gospel to advance. And for so much more.

In all things we are dependent upon the Lord God.

Of course, at any time, these blessings could be taken away. We could lose our jobs. Our friends or loved ones could leave us. We ourselves could die at any moment. Our community or state or nation could suffer a major catastrophe. And that is why we are to be always humble and thankful for the blessings we do have as believers, and to continue to pray to the Lord that he would do what best glorifies himself and is for our good as his people.

Let us pray that no matter what, even if it means our liberties and freedoms and rights are taken away from us as Christians, even if it means all our goods and kindreds are taken away from us, we would nevertheless continue to live lives which honor and glorify the Lord Jesus Christ. (Although I'm not at all suggesting we shouldn't fight to maintain these freedoms and rights.) How so? By always seeking intimate communion with our precious Lord and Savior in his Word and in prayer so that we would know him all the more, know his love for us, and thus by his grace working in us to love him with all our heart, soul, strength, and mind, and our neighbors. By seeking God and his kingdom first and foremost in our lives, that his kingdom would expand in our hearts and the hearts of others. By preaching the gospel with our lives and our lips. By humbly and joyfully doing good to our neighbors, from wherever they might come, and whoever they might be, even if they are our enemies (I'm speaking on an individual, personal, relational level here). And by trusting and seeking to continue trusting, by repenting and seeking to continue repenting, by knowing and seeking to continue knowing, by loving and seeking to continue loving our thrice holy God, our fellow brothers and sisters in Christ, and others.

In all things we trust in God from whom all blessings flow. In all things we thank and praise him -- not just for the blessings he has given to our nation but also for its difficulties and trials which we pray would turn hearts and lives in repentance and faith towards him. In all things we trust and know God is sovereign, and that he is so very good to us as his people, infinitely far more than we deserve. In all things we humbly trust and thank him, and ask that he might glorify himself in and through us, as he best sees fit, for we are ever dependent upon him.

Happy Dependence Day!

P.S. And let's hope we're not invaded by hostile space aliens. In case we are, though, I've updated my Blogger profile to meet the challenge.

No Substitute for Hard Work

Posted by Reformation Theology - July 3, 2008 on 11:48 am | In ReformedTheology | No Comments

People who are without the gospel around you live in great vexation and torment. Sin has caused brokenness, alienation and mass personal and social problems in our world. But having been mercifully delivered from the bondage to corruption, God has granted you a sphere of influence, a ‘plot of land’ to cultivate (so to speak) and until you become an instrument of redemption for Christ in the workplace, the persons in your life will continue to look for solutions to problems in all the wrong places. God has prepared good works for you and because the gospel is the only hope for the world, God has made you indispensable to the well being of the people around you.

The kingdom of the age to come has broken into the current age in Jesus Christ. All those who are now united to Christ, the true Israel, are made partakers of kingdom of the age to come and are called in Christ to exhibit the resurrected kingdom life. Although weak in ourselves, God has made us ambassadors and granted us power to demonstrate to those in our midst a foretaste of life of the age to come. Christ commands us to go and promote the kingdom in every sphere, not to sit idly in our sanctuaries. In fact, God has given each of us specific gifts and a calling and we are to use the gifts and position God has given us to wield influence by redeeming the people and the institutions in our sphere for his kingdom. The gospel is our 'weapon' to take every thought captive for Christ advancing God’s kingdom and force darkness to retreat.

John 6 And The Eucharist

Posted by Jason Engwer - July 3, 2008 on 7:15 am | In ReformedTheology | No Comments For anybody who's interested, there's an ongoing discussion in another thread concerning John 6 and the eucharist.

Lux Mundi

Posted by steve - July 2, 2008 on 7:24 pm | In ReformedTheology | No Comments In a parallel world known as Tellus, a controversy erupted over the rite of light. This controversy turned on interpretation of the words: "I am the light."

There were some heretical schismatics as well as some schismatical heretics who took the words figuratively. However, an Inquisition put a speedy end to their unspeakable impieties.

That, however, left many questions unanswered. When the Savior became a photon (at the words of consecration, “Lux ecce surgit aurea”), what kind of photon did he become?

The Infrareds took one position while the Ultraviolets took another.

There was yet another faction, known as the X-rays (which split into two groups, the Soft X-rays and the Hard X-rays), but no one under the age of 21 is allowed to consult the illustrated history of that particular sect.

His Holiness, Pope Terahertz IV, convoked the Council of Ozone to resolve the controversy before the rift was irreparable. But at that point I lost my uplink to Tellus, so I can’t tell you how the proceedings went until transmission is restored.

Caiaphas

Posted by steve - July 2, 2008 on 3:23 pm | In ReformedTheology | No Comments I’ve been sparring with Perry Robinson over at Green Baggins.

http://greenbaggins.wordpress.com/2008/06/25/a-word-from-dr-richard-b-gaffin-jr/

steve hays said,
June 29, 2008 at 7:46 am

Perry,

Let’s not lose sight of what’s at issue in the debate over Enns. Enns and his supporters are taking the position that God sometimes inspires errors, that Bible writers sometimes intend to make true assertions which we now know are false.

How is the case of Caiaphas relevant to that issue? He intended to make a true assertion, and he succeeded in making a true statement. God inspired him to speak, and what he spoke was true.

That is not comparable to the alleged case of an inspired Bible writer who meant to make a true assertion, even though his assertion does not, in fact, correspond to reality—according to our enlightened, modern viewpoint.

steve hays said,
June 30, 2008 at 7:32 am

Perry Robinson said,

“There is more than one theory of inspiration, particularly a more theanthropic model rather than a pneumatological one like what Lane proposes which isn’t really Chalcedonian IMO.”

I suppose Lane favors a pneumatological model of inspiration because the Bible consistently attributes inspiration to the agency of the Holy Spirit. It’s terrible the way Lane gets his doctrine of Scripture from the witness of Scripture—instead of some post-Biblical, Greek Orthodox construct.

steve hays said,
June 30, 2008 at 11:59 am

Perry Robinson said,

“Caiaphas’ case is relevant since he was wrong yet inspired. I thought that would be obvious.”

No, it’s not obvious. Are you claiming that his statement is erroneous? If so, in what respect.

“And I wouldn’t think that a theory of inspiration would turn on a specific theory of truth like correspondence theory.”

Now you’re changing the subject. I was pointing out what Enns’ theory entails, and then pointing out that Caiaphas doesn’t illustrate that principle.

The theory of inspiration turns on the self-witness of Scripture, not a specific theory of truth. However, inspiration is not an end in itself. It’s a means of securing certain objectives, of which a truthful record is one.

“Further, as I noted before, his own gloss entails unbiblical doctrines such as ‘created grace’, an artifact of medieval Catholicism. This can be seen in the material where he talks about the Spirit giving created graces to the humanity from the outside. The standard Roman dialectic between nature and grace, where grace is alien and eternal to nature is obvious. That is hardly a product of the witness of the Scriptures.”

You’re obfuscating the issue by attacking a particular formulation of “pneumatic inspiration” because that particular formulation gives you a pretext to attack what you disapprove of in Protestant theology generally.

That doesn’t change the fact that Scripture itself attributes its inspiration of the agency of the Holy Spirit rather than a theanthropic model. Attacking “created grace” is an exercise in misdirection.

“I am still waiting for an exegetical defense of that doctrine without an appeal to natural theology from you.”

What’s your problem, Perry? I’ve already stated my position on the Filioque. Don’t you remember?

The problem is that you only have ears to hear the answers your looking for. If any answer doesn’t conform to your polemical agenda, you’re deaf to what the person said. So you keep demanding an answer as if none was given.

“As for constructs, last I checked, Protestant views are the result of an attempt to reconstruct the Bible’s meaning and so at worst you’ve only put Orthodoxy on the same level as Protestantism. And since I don’t think you are going to find any churches in the first century with Calvin’s name on them, Reformed theology is ‘post-biblical’ as well. Wise cracks make bad arguments.”

Once again, we weren’t discussing Reformed theology in general. Rather, we were discussing the Reformed doctrine of inspiration. In particular, the self-witness of Scripture.

And, of course, Reformed theology in general has an exegetical basis, so the question of 1C labels is a red-herring.

steve hays said,
June 30, 2008 at 3:45 pm

“[Perry Robinson] Perhaps you don’t think that God can die or did die, but I do.”

Perry makes provocative comments like this because he wants to change the subject. He’s looking for a wedge issue to use against Protestant theology.
He doesn’t want to talk about, say, Warfield’s inductive case for the verbal, plenary inspiration of scripture.

Instead, he wants to turn this into a fight over Christology since he’d rather fight on his own turf, and he feels comfortable debating Christology. So he’s baiting commenters into riding his hobbyhorse instead of discussing Richard Gaffin and Peter Enns.

steve hays said,
July 1, 2008 at 10:46 am

Perry Robinson said,

“Caiaphas was wrong in terms of what was in fact better for the nation, not to mention the justice and morality of his statement or rather lack thereof.”

It was wrong for Caiaphas to say it’s better for the people if Jesus dies? How is that wrong?

John didn’t think it was wrong. To the contrary, John thought his statement was ironically right. That’s why John does a gloss on his statement, building on the truth of what he said.

Your interpretation cuts against the grain of John’s editorial comment—not to mention the broader flow of the narrative. You need to learn how to exegete a passage of Scripture.

“Actually I didn’t change the subject. You inserted a specific theory of truth upon which the problem supposedly in part turned. I just brought to light your mistake. To my knowledge Enns isn’t necessarily wedded to a correspondence theory of truth and I don’t see why one must be in discussing this problem. So I don’t think Enns account ‘entails’ a correspondence theory of truth.”

No mistake on my part. I summarized Enns’ position as follows: “Let’s not lose sight of what’s an issue in the debate over Enns. Enns and his supporters are taking the position that God sometimes inspires errors, that Bible writers sometimes intend to make true assertions which we now know are false…That [Jn 11:50] is not comparable to the alleged case of an inspired Bible writer who meant to make a true assertion, even though his assertion does not, in fact, correspond to reality—according to our enlightened, modern viewpoint.”

How, specifically, is that a misstatement of Enns’ position?

But while we’re on the subject—yes, an oral or textual statement that corresponds to extratextual reality certainly figures in what Bible writers would take to be a true statement, and securing true statements is very much an aim of inspiration.

“If inspiration turns on the self witness of Scripture then it is odd that you are injecting correspondence here. And I am not convinced that inspiration is merely instrumentally valuable. It may be true that inspiration serves a goal, but intrinsic goods can also have extrinsic value. You’re assuming quite a lot here without argument.”

And you’re resorting to weasel words like “merely.” But that actually concedes my point.

Take the divine promises and prophecies of Scripture. Do you think they would be true, as Bible writers understood truth, if the fulfillment (the future referent) didn’t correspond to the promise or prophecy?

And what do you think is the purpose of inspiration if not to secure true statements? We don’t need inspiration to secure false statements, do we? The absence of inspiration will secure false statements.

Why does Paul carry on in Rom 9-11 if the word of God doesn’t have to match up with this historical outcome? Why are false prophets subject to the death penalty if a “true” or “inspired” oracle doesn’t have to match up with the historical outcome?

“I am not obfuscating the issue because the issue was your claim that my views were unbiblical. I shot back that Lipton’s view entails unbiblical doctrines so the shoe is on the other foot.”

Trying to shift the issue to Tipton’s position does nothing to absolve your own position. That’s just a diversionary tactic.

“So far you have left that untouched, unless of course you think that your statements constitute an exegetical argument.”

I’m not here to debate Tipton’s article. The onus is not on me to debate Tipton’s article.

“And you are confused since Scripture wouldn’t attribute inspiration to a ‘model’ but to the God-man.”

“Model” was your word. I responded to you on your own terms.

Scripture doesn’t attribute inspiration to the God-man. The agent of inspiration is the Holy Spirit.

“In fact, Scripture does give reason for thinking that the primary revealing agent was the Son since the Hebrews never heard the Father nor saw his form, but rather the Son. Hence the irony of coming to his own and his own not recognizing him.”

So you’re a Marcionite. You dispense with the OT. Divine revelation begins with the Incarnation.

You’re also equivocating. The Son is the self-revelation of God. That doesn’t mean the Son inspired the Scriptures. The Son is revelatory in his own right. The person and work of the Son is revelatory.

That’s not the same thing as inspiring the words of the prophets, whether their spoken or written words.

“And since 'created grace' was an essential part of Lipton’s piece in glossing inspiration, my comments regarding it were hardly a red herring.”

It’s a red herring when you introduce that gloss as an excuse to disregard the self-witness of Scripture regarding the distinctive role of the Holy Spirit in the inspiration of Scripture.

“You confuse describing my alleged argumentative behavior with an evaluation of the arguments themselves. The former is quite irrelevant to the question of the quality of the arguments.”

I’m under no obligation to respond to you according to the way in which you’d prefer frame the argument. You don’t get to dictate my theological priorities or recast the questions to your liking, then impose that on everyone else.

“As for the Filioque, you sure did give an answer but you gave no exegetical defense of the doctrine, which is what I am still waiting for. So you mislead the reader. The claim wasn’t whether you supplied an answer but whether you gave an exegetical defense for it, which you didn’t, or don’t you remember?”

This was my initial response: “Historically, this has its Scriptural appeal in certain Johannine statements. And, traditionally, these statements are understood as having reference to an ontological subordination within the immanent Trinity. But, in context, they actually refer to the economic Trinity, not the immanent Trinity. When I recite the Filioque clause, I do so in the Johannine (economic) sense. This may or may not be in line with the original intent of the creed, but unlike the original intent of Scripture, which is divinely authoritative, creedal intent is not inherently authoritative.”

http://triablogue.blogspot.com/2007/08/ugly-duckling-of-orthodoxy.html

I then did a follow-up piece:

http://triablogue.blogspot.com/2007/09/perry-robinsons-bombshell.html

What, exactly, do you think I need to defend? My economic reading of the processional statements in John? But since you reject double procession, why would you object to an economic reading of those statements? Are you paying attention?

“Your personal remarks about what I am deaf to or my polemical agenda are irrelevant to the questions at hand and to the arguments I gave. It seems you haven’t learned how to keep the ad hom’s out of your puff pieces.”

I’ve had more experience dealing with you than some of the commenters here. They didn’t even know you were a convert to Eastern Orthodoxy. It’s quite relevant for me to apprise them of your tactics.

“Once again, you mislead the reader. You claim was that my Orthodox views were ‘post-biblical’ and so I responded in kind. No amount of fist pounding that Reformed theology has an exegetical basis will make it so, nor will it get you away from the fact that it is historically “post-biblical.” So my comments about Reformed theology being “post-biblical” only constitute a red herring if yours do.”

My usage was self-explanatory. I set up a contrast between the self-witness of Scripture and a post-Biblical construct. So exegetical theology was the differential factor all along.

“As for Warfield’s inductive case, why would I need to discuss it? I favor a more presupp approach. I don’t think induction can get you to where Warfield wants to go and I think his gloss on inspiration, inductive or not is mistaken. I have addressed this before both here and on my own blog, but perhaps you missed that as well.”

Now you’re confusing two different things:

i) Does our doctrine of Scripture derive from the self-witness of Scripture. That’s an inductive question. A question of exegetical theology.

ii) How do we defend the doctrine of Scripture (thus derived)? That’s a question of apologetics, which might (or might not) involve a transcendental argument.
One doesn’t establish a Biblical doctrine of inspiration by presuppositional reasoning. Rather, that has to be established on the basis of what the Bible says about the nature of its own inspiration.

“So is it true to say that a divine person died on the cross or not? Let’s see if you can answer it in a straightforward fashion or not.”

I’m not going to step into your trap. Your question is irrelevant to the inspiration (and inerrancy) of scripture.

And even if you question were relevant, you have no interest in Scriptural answers. You want to frame this in terms of historical theology. You don’t care about a Biblical Christology.

“You talk quite often about what I ‘want’ and try to put my on the couch as it were and you do this on a regular basis with people, imputing all kinds of motives.”

Because I’ve dealt with you before. I know your modus operandi. And you’re reaching for the same bag of tricks here. You try to bait people into debating the issues you care about according to your rules. You try to reorient the thread so that you can take it where you want it to go.

“In any case, such comments are irrelevant to the arguments I gave and the degree that you engage in such behavior shows your inability to show exactly where my arguments supposedly go wrong.”

You want to dictate what the answers are by dictating what the questions are. I, for one, won’t take the bait.

Perry likes to pose trip-wire questions and redirect the conversation to his own turf. He wants to maneuver the conversation into a debate over the fine points of Cyrillian Christology, then score rhetorical points by accusing his opponents of the Nestorian heresy.

I understand why Perry’s upset. It’s hard for him to stage a successful ambush when I’m standing right behind him, exposing the hidden location of his guerilla warriors.

I hardly think that Lane wants to turn this thread into a debate over the Filioque. But I’ll leave that to the moderators.

steve hays said,
July 2, 2008 at 12:32 pm

Why does Perry keep harping on the Filioque anyway? He acts as if this is a big problem for Protestant theology. But, if so, then it’s an even bigger problem for Orthodox theology given internal divisions over this issue:

“At the Second Council of Lyons in 1245, and at the Council of Florence in 1439-45, Orthodox delegates accepted the filioque. Western theologians faced the Easterns with persuasive collections of patristic texts that used language suggesting that the Orthodox doctrine was not incompatible with the filioque,” The Blackwell Dictionary of Eastern Christianity, 198.

If Eastern Orthodoxy can’t speak with one voice on this issue, even within the solemnity of two church councils, then why is this a problem for us, but not for them?

He’s making grander claims for his ecclesiology that we make for ours. Look at the mismatch between the authoritarian claims and the end-product.

The sufficiency of Scripture

Posted by steve - July 2, 2008 on 2:52 pm | In ReformedTheology | No Comments Perry Robinson has been a very busy boy, popping up on Evangelical blogs to market Eastern Orthodoxy. He’s done so at Green Baggins, and he’s done so at Parchment & Pen. I attempted to post a reply, but my comment was “truncated per site policy.”

I take it that Patton wants to pitch his blog to the attention span of a kindergartner. Well, it’s his blog, so he’s welcome to be a merchant of mediocrity on his own blog.

But since I have my own blog, I’ll repost my comment here, minus the preschool word limit.

“[Perry Robinson] Your examples are irrelevant . Theological liberalism is relatively new. You’d expect in the 400 years prior to the advent of theological liberalism that Classical Protestants would be converging theologically, but they didn’t. In fact, they did the opposite.”

“If the theory were true, you’d expect the intelligent people with competence in the languages over a long period of time just using the same ore data to come to significant agreement.”

“As for belief about what, lets take a major Christian teaching like say baptism. You’d think that in 500 years, give or take, Calvinists, Lutherans and Baptists would make some significant headway. Or take polity, the eucharist, predestination, Christological differences, etc.”

http://www.reclaimingthemind.org/blog/2008/06/23/in-defense-of-sola-scriptura-part-two/#comment-60267

He keeps repeating and paraphrasing this objection, but you get the drift.

i) Why would we expect various Protestant traditions to converge over time? Perry is very naïve about human psychology.

Once a theological position wins enough converts, it tends to be self-reproducing. Social conditioning kicks in. Kids grow up in a home with a particular religious tradition. They attend a church with the same tradition. They may be sent to religious schools with the same tradition.

Consider countries with national churches. The whole culture indoctrinates and reinforces a particular religious tradition. One’s individual identity is bound up with one’s social identity. Kin, clan, and country.

Religious adherents have emotional ties to their fellow adherents. We certainly see this in the case of the high-church tradition, with its national churches. Where religious affiliation and ethnic loyalty merge.

So, unless you suffer from Perry’s sociological naïveté, what you’d expect is stability rather than fluidity as a particular theological tradition becomes institutionalized and handed down from one generation to the next.

ii) Moreover, there’s a period of theological consolidation following the initial “revolution.” A period of internal development as second-generation theologians produce a more systematic version of original position, taking various elements to their logical extreme and trying to create a tight-knit set of mutually supportive propositions. For example, Lutherans formulate their Christology to underwrite their sacramentology.

So what we’d actually expect is increasing divergence rather than convergence over time as the tradition hardens, as adherents develop what is distinctive to their position,

Moreover, opponents raise stock objections to the position, while proponents respond with stock answers. So, pretty soon, there’s very little room for progress since both sides are merely recycling the same arguments and counterarguments rather than advancing the argument.

iii) Furthermore, people have an emotional reaction to certain doctrines. They find some doctrines appealing and others repellent. For example, many people reject predestination because they dislike it. And they’re quite candid about their motives. They don’t like the consequences of predestination, and that’s it.

To take another example, high churchmen have a deep emotional stake in sacramental realism. Their assurance of salvation is vested in the ability of a priest to confine Jesus to a piece of bread. They know they have Jesus by having him in a wafer—like grace in spray cans. As such, they’re very resistant to anyone who would rob them of their shortcut to heaven.

“Is Scripture sufficiently clear on baptism? The Eucharist? Christology? You’d think that after 500 years and running the Lutherans, the Reformed and the Baptists, using the same data (scripture) and being competent in the biblical languages would be making some kind of convergence in these areas, but they haven’t.”

Here Perry’s ploy is to prejudge the scope of Scriptural sufficiency, then deem Scripture to be insufficient because Christians don’t agree on certain issues. But that begs the question.

Perry is beginning with his own theologian priorities, then measuring the sufficiency or insufficiency of Scripture by that extraneous stipulation. But why in the world should we accept that assumption?

Like all high churchmen, Perry never begins with God. Never begins with revelation. Never begins with divine precedent.

Rather, he begins with his preconception of the way things ought to be. If Scripture doesn’t measure up to his preconception, then Scripture is insufficient.

But a truly pious mind would broach the issue from the opposite end. God’s word is sufficient for his purposes. One reason we have ongoing debates between paedobaptists and credobaptists is because the Biblical data is someone inconclusive.

Does that mean Scripture is insufficient? If would only be insufficient on the gratuitous assumption that if it were sufficient, it would settle this issue once and for all. But why should we assume that?

Why not judge God’s intentions by God’s performance? It was certainly within his power to reveal more on the subject of baptism than he did. If God didn’t speak to that issue in enough detail to resolve the debate beyond reasonable doubt, then shouldn’t we leave it where God left it? Shouldn’t we respect God’s silence?

Why should we try to be more certain about something than God has given us cause to be certain about? If God, in his wisdom, has disclosed more of his mind on some things than others, then shouldn’t we calibrate our beliefs accordingly? Degrees of belief commensurate with degrees of revelation?

Why should a question be more important to me than it is to God? If God has chosen not to answer all our questions, then the problem is not with the lack of answers, but with the questions. We’re asking the wrong questions. We should limit ourselves to questions that God has answered. Where God is silent, that’s a point of liberty.

It’s not my Christian responsibility to answer questions God has chosen to leave unanswered. It’s not my Christian responsibility to be more specific than God’s word.

I’m not saying for a fact that the paedobaptist/credobaptist debate is stalemated. In part, I’m accepting Perry’s illustration of the sake of argument. Assuming, ex hypothesi, that the Biblical data does not permit a definitive or even probable conclusion, how does that impugn the sufficiency of Scripture?

Sufficient for what? Sufficient is a relative term. Sufficient in relation to what? In relation to God’s intentions—that’s what. Sufficient to discharge our duties to God and man.

“That being the case, I think this points to the formal insufficiency of the Scriptures. More to the point, if the Scriptures were formally sufficient, you wouldn’t need words like homoosious because Biblical language would always and only map on to one concept. But natural languages don’t work that way, which is why you do need words like homoousios.”

Other issues aside, if this proves the formal insufficiency of Scripture, then it also proves the formal insufficiency of Perry’s alternative. How did Christians manage before the Council of Nicea? Did they need a word like homoousios before Nicea? If, on the one hand, they needed that word, but didn’t have it (in the centuries before Nicea), then Perry’s rule of faith is “formally insufficient.”

But if, on the other hand, they didn’t need it, since they didn’t have it, then Perry’s rule of faith is superfluous. What’s the point of an ecumenical council (according to Robinson) if not to supply a need? But if the need went unmet before the council was convened, then how needful is the need of “homoousios”?

“As I noted before, the fact that we require words like homoousios seems to show that the bible is not formally sufficient. As far as I know, the Scriptures no where declare that they are formally sufficient.”

This is tendentious. He posits a condition which Scripture is supposed to meet. If Scripture were sufficient, it would be “formally” sufficient. Yet it never claims that for itself—hence, Scripture must be insufficient.

But that conclusion is an artifact of Perry’s premise. He holds Scripture to a standard of his own making, then deems Scripture to be deficient if it doesn’t submit to his demands. But that begs the question of whether the Bible must be ‘sufficient’ as Perry defines sufficiency.

With Perry, it’s always a game of question-framing. Act as though there’s a standing presumption that if Scripture were sufficient, it would be “formally” sufficient, and—what is more—it would declare itself to be formally sufficient. Absent that declaration, then Scripture must be insufficient.

But his reasoning is viciously circular. There’s no prior expectation that Scripture must be “formally” sufficient, or declare its formal sufficiency, for Scripture to be sufficient for God’s purposes.

“I think people can correctly interpret the Bible apart from tradition (of which the bible is part). That is possible, but that is not the question. “The question is whether the interpretation is binding and can actually require assent.”

Why is a correct interpretation insufficient? Why do you need something over and above a correct interpretation for that interpretation to be binding or constrain our consent?

Isn’t truth sufficient to constrain assent? Shouldn’t you believe something simply because it’s true?

“If not, then there will be no interpretation and hence nothing in any confession that is beyond revision.”

Why would a correct interpretation be subject to revision? Is truth revisable?

Or is Perry attempting to say that a correct interpretation would still be subject to revision inasmuch as someone might fail to recognize the right interpretation? Mistake the right interpretation for the wrong one, and vice versa?

But short of rendering every individual believer infallible, the possibility of misinterpretation is unavoidable. Perry’s rule of faith does nothing to preclude the possibility of misjudgment.

“This is why I focused on the council in Acts 15. Was that infallible or no? If so, then it significantly undermines SS.”

How would the infallibility of that “council” undermine sola Scriptura? During the apostolic age, the spoken word of an Apostle was authoritative.

But we’re not living in the apostolic age. All we have to go by are inspired written words, not inspired spoken words.

Prayer and Action

Posted by Reformation Theology - July 2, 2008 on 1:07 pm | In ReformedTheology | No Comments

Prayer is the place where humility is adopted, pride is abandoned, needs are admitted, and dependence acknowledged upon Christ. We must preface all endeavors with dependent prayer since too often we ignore prayer and seek to accomplish in the strength of our own wills those things God has placed on our hearts to do. But, on the other hand, prayer without action is also foolish. In most circumstances, it is not wise to prayer and then do nothing. Consider the farmer: He does not merely pray and hope that crops will come forth. Rather, he plows up the fallow ground, sows his seed and labors until harvest. But he also knows that without the blessing of rain and climate, his harvest will never come, no matter how hard he works. So both the farmers' work and God's blessing is necessary for results. Likewise when we pray, we should not merely sit back and hope something will happen. When we see God's will not being done on earth we must both pray and work to see change take place. This prayer driven work is the most wise and likely to bring success. Lke the planting of crops, the results are still ultimately dependent on God blessing the endeavor. We must 1) not work independently of God and 2) should not put our hands to rest only trusting in a miracle but must work as if the outcome depended on ourselves, while we rest in faith upon the glorious fact that everything depends on the soveriegn Lord. This is the biblical model and would fall under the doctrine of concurrence.

Feelings, nothing more than feelings

Posted by Patrick Chan - July 1, 2008 on 10:07 pm | In ReformedTheology | No Comments I have a friend who has recently been struggling over his feelings and emotions (among other things) through a difficulty. By God's grace, Steve has graciously ministered to him with sweet words of comfort, encouragement, and strength. So, with their permission, and after some editing on my part mainly to preserve as much anonymity as possible, a portion of Steve's half of the dialogue is posted below. I trust Steve's words will minister to others as they ministered to my friend.

For many of us, what makes life pleasant or even bearable is the combination of certain people and places. We need certain people in certain places to survive emotionally. One without the other isn't enough.

-

Haven't heard from you for a while. It's possible that you're having second thoughts about your situation. Even if [there's failure], that doesn't mean you made a mistake. Although she isn't ordinarily ranked with Plato, Aristotle, or Descartes among the great all-time philosophers, Lucille Ball had a sage piece of advice: "I'd rather regret the things that I have done than the things that I have not."

-

It didn't change your situation, but to some extent it changed you, and that, in turn, makes it easier for you to change your situation. You can put that experience to good use in the future.

Remember the adage: I'd rather regret the things I did than the things I didn't.

-

Although you're entitled to your feelings, you need to be careful not to dwell on your feelings.

On the other hand, your feelings are justified, and there's no automatic expiration date on how you feel. You're naturally going to be reflecting on your experience for some time to come.

Be patient with yourself.

-

BTW, don't feel that you have to act like a plaster saint about your emotions. There's a kind of Hallmark card piety that's promoted in a lot of fluffy Christian books and sermons.

But if you read the Psalms or Jeremiah or 2 Corinthians, you see raw emotions on full display. And a full range of emotions. Not just faith, hope, and love. So you're in good company.

-

You feel lonely because you're alone, away from friends (except for a couple) and family, living among strangers, in a strange part of the world, with a disagreeable climate.

That part of how you feel is due to external circumstances. That will dissipate as soon as you move back home. We can sometimes change our feelings by changing our circumstances.

That sadness won't go away so easily, but moving back home will help.

-

At present you're in no position to gauge your future or your feelings. You're too close to the situation right now.

At the moment you basically have two sets of emotions. One set is from living away from home. Away from your family and friends.

The other set of emotions has to do with the [difficulty]. You're coming right off of that experience.

The first set of emotions is driven directly by your immediate circumstances. The confluence of these feelings with sort themselves out as soon as you move back.

So that part of the problem will solve itself. That will still leave you with the other set of emotions. But, right now, you don't know which is which. They blend in to each other.

As long as you're a stranger in a strange land, you're in no position to judge your feelings or evaluate your future. Wait till you get back, settle back into your old rhythm, before you even attempt to take stock of your situation.

Put another way, wait till you move back, till you've been there for two or three months. That will automatically shrink your sadness down to more manageable levels. You will have far less to cope with.

It's easier to climb a mountain in summer than in winter. It's an effort to climb a mountain at any time. But it's more of an effort if you have to contend with all the snow and ice. Wait for the right season.

-

There's nothing inherently sinful about being "selfish" in the sense of preparing for your own future or attending to your own natural, emotional needs.

-

You're being way too apologetic. You've done nothing wrong. Naturally your mind is still on this situation. That's not going to evaporate overnight. Go easy on yourself, not hard on yourself.

-

Life in a fallen world has a tragic quality. There are genuine losses.

-

I wouldn't worry about your other emotions right now. They're perfectly natural and understandable at this point. Give them time to fade a bit.

Moreover, we don't forget important things that happen to us (well, nursing home patients may be an exception!).

As long as you don't go on a shooting rampage, don't browbeat yourself about how you feel at the moment. :-)

Or, if you do go on a shooting rampage, make sure it's a video game!

-

Hope you're feeling somewhat better now that you're back home. You have a lot of fresh, painful memories to process, so the feelings won't fade overnight, but moving back to familiar surroundings, with family and friends, ought to help the healing process.

However, we're not necessarily the same person after some experiences. And it's unfair to compare ourselves to an earlier, pristine version of ourselves.

-

I wouldn't worry about your [bad feelings] if I were you.

Put it this way: it's enough to have these feelings; it compounds the problem if you also feel guilty about your feelings, because that piles one set of feelings on top of another. You're adding the feelings of guilt to your [bad feelings]. So, pretty soon, it's feelings about feelings about feelings, like a receding, mirror-image glaring over your shoulder.

So I think you should stop blaming yourself for your feelings. These are perfectly natural, normal feelings.

It's enough to feel [bad]. Don't blame yourself by feeling bad about your bad feelings!

One set of bad feelings is quite enough, don't you agree? :-)

It's a good thing that we have a capacity to form emotional attachments. But the flipside of this capacity is that we suffer accordingly when that attachment is betrayed or unreciprocated.

That, of itself, is not a bad thing. That's the inevitable result of forming emotional attachments.

It's only a bad thing when people cling to these feelings and feed them rather than allowing them to be reabsorbed.

2. In my experience, for what it's worth, there's a difference between giving thanks and feeling thankful.

I find that when I give thanks, even though I'm not in the mood, thankful feelings tend to be the result of giving thanks.

3. Finally, and this is more of a priority, don't focus on whether you feel spiritual. Whether you have holy emotions.

Instead, focus on what makes you feel good by taking pleasure in the natural blessings of life. What is it that normally makes you happy? It is walking along the beach? Having a meal with your family? Watching a movie with an old friend?

Natural goods are also godly goods. They come from God's hand. The innate sanctity of God's creation.

4. Apropos (3), we don't have direct control over how we feel. But we have some indirect control. We know, from experience, the things that make us feel better. So try to spend your spare time in places, or with people, doing what normally gives you pleasure.

That won't make the dark moods disappear, but it will give then some sunny competition. And that's a way of beginning the process of recovery. Shafts of light leading out of the forest. [My friend had said he felt as if he were lost and alone in a thick, deep, dark forest.]

Like a horse and carriage

Posted by Patrick Chan - July 1, 2008 on 11:41 am | In ReformedTheology | No Comments (Posted on behalf of Steve Hays.)

An email correspondent asks about love and marriage:

1. For most Christian men, permanent bachelorhood would be a spiritual impediment to sanctification.

2. Having more things to be thankful for draws us closer to God. If a wife and kids are an occasion for thankfulness, that will draw you closer to God.

3. Loving God is not a substitute for sexual and asexual varieties of human love. God has not made us that way.

4. We can also love God by loving God's handiwork. By loving natural goods.

5. In this life, our knowledge of God is indirect. It is mediated in various ways.

Frankly, we can't expect to feel the same way about God that we do about someone physically present in our life.

6. Romantic desire is complex. In animals, the sex drive is purely instinctual. And there's an instinctual element in human sexuality as well.

But there are also elements of anticipation and memory. We are conscious of the future. We reflect on the experience of friends and family members.

Our feelings may change over the years. The sex drive may be most insistent in our teens, yet at that age we may also feel that we have your whole future ahead of us. What's the hurry?

As we grow older, the emotional element may become more insistent.

For example, if a young man enters the priesthood, he may, at that time, be quite sincere about his vow of chastity.

Yet life can look very different at 30 than it did at 20, or 40 than it did at 30.

7. It's true that those who never marry may have never made a conscious decision not to marry. It isn't that they never decided not to. Rather, they never decided to do so, and take the steps necessary to make it happen.

You don't have to do anything not to marry. Doing nothing takes no effort. It's not a choice, but the absence of choice.

Marriage is not automatic. It doesn't just happen all by itself. You have to create your own opportunities.

If we're not careful, we can let time pass us by. Life moves very fast. It's easy to become preoccupied -- to lose track of the passage of time.

Infallible falsehoods

Posted by steve - June 30, 2008 on 2:36 pm | In ReformedTheology | No Comments According to Perry Robinson:

“Added to this is the fact that various councils claim for themselves divine inspiration.”

“The cessation of the apostolic office wouldn’t imply a lack of divine inspiration in the church, which is exactly and explicitly what the ecumenical councils that Protestants profess fealty to claim for themselves.”

“But I would need to be infallible to judge in a way that was normatively binding on the consciences of other men and that seems fairly easy to establish in terms of what was in the mind of the church at councils.”

“Therefore, the judgments reached in this way are provisional and revisable and therefore represent a practical stability, which can always be re-opened. There isn’t any formal theological statement found in any Reformed confession that isn’t itself open to possible revision, and this includes the canon itself.”

http://energeticprocession.wordpress.com/2008/06/21/the-naked-book/

“I don’t have a problem with the idea that erroneous statements could be inspired.”

http://greenbaggins.wordpress.com/2008/06/25/a-word-from-dr-richard-b-gaffin-jr/#comment-52382

“Caiaphas’ case is relevant since he was wrong yet inspired.”

http://greenbaggins.wordpress.com/2008/06/25/a-word-from-dr-richard-b-gaffin-jr/#comment-52384

Let’s put two and two together. On the one hand, Perry thinks that ecumenical councils are inspired.

And he apparently thinks that conciliar inspiration renders conciliar statements “normative” and “unrevisable.”

On the other hand, Perry also has no problem with the idea of inspired errors. So if we apply Perry’s theory of inspiration to his belief in conciliar inspiration, Perry doesn’t have any problem with the idea that conciliar statements could be wrong or erroneous.

But why would an inspired error be normative or unrevisable? Indeed, given Perry’s theory of inspiration, wouldn’t conciliar statements be provisional and open to correction?

How do inspired errors bind the conscience of a believer? Are we duty-bound to believe falsehoods?

Are inspired errors better than uninspired errors?

Perry seems to regard the mind of the church, speaking in or through ecumenical councils, is infallible. An infallible judge. But how does that square with his theory of inspiration?

Dependence on Our Own Strength or Realization of our Impotence

Posted by Reformation Theology - June 30, 2008 on 1:53 pm | In ReformedTheology | No Comments

Helpful Quote from Jonathan Edwards

"My longings after it, put me upon pursuing and pressing after them. It was my continual strife day and night, and constant inquiry, how I should be more holy, and live more holily, and more becoming a child of God, and disciple of Christ. I sought an increase of grace and holiness, and that I might live an holy life, with vastly more earnestness, than ever I sought grace, before I had it. I used to be continually examining myself, and studying and contriving for likely ways and means, how I should live holily, with far greater diligence and earnestness, than ever I pursued anything in my life: but with too great a dependence on my own strength; which afterwards proved a great damage to me. My experience had not then taught me, as it has done since, my extreme feebleness and impotence, every manner of way; and the innumerable and bottomless depths of secret corruption and deceit, that there was in my heart."

Source of Edwards quote: (Marsden, Jonathan Edwards, 53). The quote is from his “Personal Narrative” in the Yale Works, 16:797. HT Steve Camp

“Hagar is Mt. Sinai”

Posted by steve - June 28, 2008 on 2:28 pm | In ReformedTheology | No Comments Does St. Paul embrace the allegorical method in Gal 4? Here’s some of what Moisés Silva has to say:

“Some scholars argue that the passage uses a typological approach to the Genesis narrative, but many others are convinced that the apostle is treating us here to a full-blown allegorical interpretation. After all, he begins 4:24 with the words ‘which things are spoken [or ‘interpreted’] allegorically.” We must not simply assume, however, that his use of the verb allegoreo (from allos [‘other’] and agoreuo [’speak’]) corresponds to what modern scholars mean when they speak of ‘allegorical interpretation’ (see Davis 2004),” G. Beale & D. A. Carson, Eds. Commentary on the New Testament Use of the Old Testament (Baker 2007), 808.

“Paul nowhere in his writings gives any hint that he rejects the historical character of biblical narrative or even minimizes its significance. Moreover, it could be argued that the apostle himself provides a clue to his meaning by using the verb systoicheo in the very next verse: ‘Now Hagar…corresponds to [systoichei] the present Jerusalem’ (4:25). In contrast to Philo, Paul casts no doubts on either the factual nature or the historical value of the Genesis narrative…Indeed, some of his comments here (e.g., ‘For it is written that Abraham had two sons, one by the slave woman and the other by the free woman’ [4:22]; “But just as at that time the one born according to the flesh persecuted the one [born] according to the Spirit, so also now’ [4:29]) are clear affirmations of factual events upon which the apostle builds his argument,” ibid. 808.

“Thus, if it turns out that Paul is pointing out a correspondence between two historical realities, we may with good reason regard his reading of Genesis as ‘typological’ rather than ‘allegorical.’ The central theological truth with which he is concerned is the contrast between Spirit and flesh: God works according to the former, while sinners depend on the latter. This contrast has manifested itself in a notable way at various points throughout (redemptive) history. It did during the patriarchal period, and it does now at the fullness of time (4:4), ibid. 808.

“In addition to these considerations, one should keep in mind the place of 4:21-31 within the argument as a whole. It can be argued that Paul had completed his scriptural demonstration at the end of chapter 3 and that the present paragraph is intended not as some kind of logical, exegetical proof, but rather as a climactic, forceful finale directed at those who claim to subject themselves to the law (4:21),” ibid. 808.

“In any case, the very fact that Paul nowhere else uses this approach (1 Cor 10:4 provides only a partial analogy, while 9:9 does not deal with an OT narrative) should be a warning against drawing major conclusions on the basis of Paul’s use of the Sarah/Hagar analogy,” ibid. 808.

Typology & allegory

Posted by steve - June 28, 2008 on 12:23 pm | In ReformedTheology | No Comments Since the topic of allegory and typology has arisen, it’s necessary to define our terms. Allegory is a hermeneutical method which asserts that a text denotes something other than, or above and beyond, its literal referents.

It may regard the allegorical meaning as addition to the literal meaning. Or the allegorical meaning may be the “true” meaning.

For example, the allegorical interpretation of Canticles takes this book to be, not a set of love poems about a man and a woman, but an extended metaphor for Yahweh’s relation to Israel, or Christ’s relation to the Church.

By contrast, typology is not, properly speaking, a hermeneutical method. We make speak of typological interpretation, as a shorthand expression, yet typology is not fundamentally about the significance of a text, but about the significance of person, place, institution, or event. (I’ll say “event” for short.)

It presupposes a Biblical philosophy of history, according to which God has orchestrated history such that certain earlier events foreshadow certain later events. So typology is rooted in things rather than words. It's a way of interpreting history.

Typology may take a text as a reference point because the text supplies a record of the event. So typology will refer to the event via the textual witness to that event.

But it’s not fundamentally about the meaning of the text. And it doesn’t set aside the historical context of the passage. Indeed, it presupposes the historical context of the passage as a necessary relatum. For typology asserts a parallel between one historical event and another. Both relata must be historical for the analogue to obtain.

The Bible Isn’t Spiritual Enough

Posted by Jason Engwer - June 28, 2008 on 9:01 am | In ReformedTheology | No Comments

In another thread, LVKA offers the following argument for applying non-grammatical-historical interpretations to scripture, but not to other documents:

“The First Ecumenical Council does not need a typological or Christological interpretation: because it *IS* a Christological statement. And it doesn't need a spiritual or allegorical interpretation either: the Dogamtical statement that Jesus is God is intrinsically tied up with our Chr. spirituality: ‘If Christ is not God, then He cannot engod us either, since He does not then possess divinity by His proper nature, and we're pointlessly [not to mention heretically] baptised in the Name of a creature’ --> that's what St. Athanasius said in his defence of the faith against the Arians. ‘God became man so that man might become God’ -- there's no spiritually-superior statement to that. If not even the fact that the Word became flesh and dwelt among us isn't enough to boost us spiritually and make us more spiritual people, then nothing else will.”

Apparently, Nicaea and Athanasius are spiritual enough to be interpreted as we would interpret other historical sources. But the Bible isn’t spiritual enough. Does LVKA interpret grocery lists and newspaper articles allegorically? Or are they, too, more spiritual than the Bible? Or, if he’s going to claim that only religious documents have this standard applied to them, does he apply non-grammatical-historical interpretations to posts, articles, or books written by people whose theology he disagrees with? For example, does he interpret the posts of Roman Catholics and Calvinists allegorically? Or are even such theologically errant writings more spiritual than the Bible? Apparently, the Bible needs more spirituality added to it by means of non-grammatical-historical interpretations.

I wonder where people get the idea that Roman Catholics and Eastern Orthodox have too low a view of scripture. How could anybody get that impression?

The Works of Cornelius Van Til

Posted by James Anderson - June 27, 2008 on 4:07 pm | In ReformedTheology | No Comments According to one leading Reformed theologian, Cornelius Van Til is "the most important Christian thinker of the twentieth century." If that's an overstatement, it's a forgivable one. Van Til's thought was profound, innovative, and provocative. He wrote voluminously, and his most prominent publications have been variously engaged, praised, and condemned by Christian scholars from practically every point on the theological spectrum. His 'presuppositionalist' Christian philosophy with its sharp distinction between analogical thought ("man thinking God's thoughts after Him") and autonomous thought ("man is the measure of all things") has wide-ranging implications for many other disciplines: apologetics, education, systematic theology, biblical hermeneutics, scientific inquiry, counselling -- indeed, for any area of human study and endeavour one cares to mention.

In 1997 Logos published The Works of Cornelius Van Til on CD-ROM in their Logos Library System format. For those of us with a more than passing interest in Van Til's thought, this was a gift from the heavenlies. A labour of love by Eric Sigward (who must have spent hundreds of hours assembling, editing, and formatting its content) the CD-ROM contained 29 of Van Til's books (including both editions of The Defense of the Faith) and over 200 other articles, pamphlets, reviews, and unpublished manuscripts. It also boasted over 50 hours of audio recordings. In addition to this wealth of content, the Logos Library System provided a fully indexed search facility that enabled complex searches for words and phrases (e.g., display every paragraph in which Van Til used the phrase 'natural theology' near the word 'Arminian').

At this point, I have to make a shameful confession. The Works of Cornelius Van Til has been utterly indispensable in helping me to sustain a wholly undeserved reputation. By serving as the moderator for the Van Til email discussion list for 8 years, and the maintainer of www.vantil.info for 6 years, it seems I've inadvertently given people the impression that I'm an 'expert' on all things Van Tilian. (Sadly, this is far from true, but I've been reluctant to come clean on the matter until now.) As a consequence, with some regularity I get emails asking me what Van Til thought or wrote on such-and-such a matter. Without the Van Til CD-ROM, my ignorance would be manifest; but with its help, I'm invariably only minutes away from an answer that makes me look like the world's greatest living authority on the Dutch Calvinist philosopher.

"Can you tell me what Van Til had to say about the New Testament canon?"

"What's Van Til's take on the Sermon on the Mount?"

"Did Van Til ever interact with Dietrich Bonhoeffer?"

No problem! (Click, click, tappety-tap, click.) You want citations with that?

Imagine then my delight on learning that Logos have issued an 'enhanced edition' of The Works of Cornelius Van Til. All the original content has been preserved, but also updated to take full advantage of the Libronix Digital Library System (the successor to the Logos Library System). The material has been arranged into 40 volumes to facilitate navigation and searching. Furthermore, the new edition includes thousands of indexed hyperlinks to other Libronix resources, such as Calvin's Institutes of the Christian Religion and Barth's Church Dogmatics. By means of the same technology, it is now possible to find out -- in a matter of minutes -- in which of his writings Van Til interacts with, for example, Calvin's discussion of the sensus divinitatis or Barth's treatment of the doctrine of Scripture. Provided that no one reads this review, I'm confident that my ill-deserved reputation as a Van Til scholar will be secure for many years to come.

Whatever one thinks of Van Til's work, there's no denying that The Works of Cornelius Van Til is a fantastic resource. At the time of writing, Logos are offering it on sale at a substantial discount, but I've been told that if readers of this review use the magic coupon code 'VANTIL' they’ll receive a further 25% discount when they order the product before 31st July 2008. And those who own the original Logos version of the CD-ROM are entitled to a free upgrade.^* What more could one ask for? (Did someone say, "The Collected Works of John M. Frame"? Volume 1 is already available; 2 and 3 are the pipeline.)

^*As Phil Gons of Logos explained to me: "It is true that owners of the old Logos version of the Works of Van Til get the new version for free. We've actually already activated the new version in the Libronix accounts of everyone who owned the old version; however, if someone never made the switch to Libronix, this automatic upgrade wouldn’t have worked for them. They will have to call our customer service (800-875-6467) and have it manually unlocked. There is a qualification, though. The individual must have owned the old version prior to the release of the new version or at least not purchased the old version as a way to get the new version at a significantly reduced rate."

Images of the Savior (12 — The Provision of a Wife for Isaac)

Posted by Reformation Theology - June 27, 2008 on 10:06 am | In ReformedTheology | No Comments Yahweh, the God of heaven, who took me from the house of my father and from the land of my birth, and who spoke unto me, and who swore unto me, saying, “To your seed I will give this land,” he will send his angel before you, and you shall take a wife for my son from there. – Genesis 24:7

It is altogether fitting that Abraham’s promised Son, Isaac, should be set forth as a type of our Savior in every notable event of his life: for, first of all, his birth was of so miraculous a nature as to reinforce to Abraham the truth that the promised Seed, who would bless all the nations of the earth, could never come naturally, by the efforts of the flesh, as Ishmael came. On the contrary Isaac came by the divine promise, and through the divine power, which is even able to bring life out of death. And so that son in whom was said to be the promised Seed, Christ our Savior, was, even from his birth, a type of the Savior, by virtue of his life which was brought out of death, through the power of God, and in accordance with his covenant promise. And second, in the account of Abraham’s testing, we have as clear a personal type as can be found in all of scriptures, of the substitutionary sacrifice and the rising again of our Savior; by means of which test, Abraham demonstrated his faith in the coming Messiah, whom he knew that God would certainly raise from the dead, and thus received his own promised son, “in a figure,” back from the dead (Hebrews 11:17-19). And so, if in two marvelous and unsurpassed ways this man Isaac served to foreshadow the life of our Savior, then we may with some reason suppose that the next notable circumstance in his life, the means by which he obtained his wife, may also convey some truth to us about the coming work of the true Seed of Abraham, Jesus Christ. In pursuance of which expectation, we will now turn to the account in Genesis, chapter twenty-four.

The Eucharist In Ignatius And Other Fathers

Posted by Jason Engwer - June 27, 2008 on 6:18 am | In ReformedTheology | No Comments In another thread, Anne posted a passage from Ignatius of Antioch that Roman Catholics often cite in support of their view of the eucharist. I thought I'd repeat and expand upon my response to Anne here, since some people might find it helpful. In my experience, this passage from Ignatius is one of the most commonly cited patristic passages among Roman Catholics.

Here's the passage:

"They abstain from the Eucharist and from prayer, because they confess not the Eucharist to be the flesh of our Saviour Jesus Christ, which suffered for our sins, and which the Father, of His goodness, raised up again." (Letter To The Smyrnaeans, 7)

Yet, earlier in the same letter Ignatius writes:

"Yea, far be it from me to make any mention of them, until they repent and return to a true belief in Christ's passion, which is our resurrection." (5)

Are we to conclude that Ignatius believed that Jesus' passion (or faith in His passion) is transubstantiated into our resurrection under the appearance of remaining Jesus' passion (or faith in His passion)?

Ignatius often wrote in a manner similar to what we see in the two passages quoted above. That should be a signal to the careful interpreter to proceed with caution.

There's nothing in Ignatius that tells us much about his view of the eucharist. Catholics can't claim to know that Ignatius agreed with them on this issue.

This passage in Ignatius was written in response to heretics who deny the physicality of Christ. Any of the popular views of the eucharist, including the symbolic view, would contradict the denial of Christ's physicality that Ignatius was arguing against. The symbolic view maintains that the eucharist has reference to Christ's physical body, so both a Baptist who holds the symbolic view and a Roman Catholic who adheres to transubstantation could agree with what Ignatius wrote. While it's possible that Ignatius believed in some sort of physical presence in the eucharist, nothing in the passage in question tells us that he did. When Jesus says that the cup is the new covenant (Luke 22:20), He obviously doesn't mean that the cup is transubstantiated into the new covenant. A covenant isn't something physical, and surely all of us understand how Jesus could use "is" in some sense other than transubstantiation. The same is true of Ignatius. Whether the eucharist represents Christ's physicality or is transubstantiated into it, either view contradicts a denial of Christ's physicality.

Roman Catholics often assume transubstantiation or something similar to it whenever they see an opportunity to read such a concept into a text. I would suggest that people closely examine Catholic claims on this subject, because a lot of what's commonly asserted is incorrect. A "real presence" isn't equivalent to transubstantiation. A person can believe in some type of eucharistic presence without believing in the Roman Catholic view of the eucharist. Many church fathers held a view of the eucharist that contradicts the Catholic view or could plausibly be interpreted in more than one way, not just in a Roman Catholic sense.

A good online source on this subject is Philip Schaff's church history. See section 69 here and section 95 here. I also recommend consulting Schaff's notes, since the notes cite additional passages from the fathers and cite other scholars confirming Schaff's conclusions. I don't agree with Schaff on every issue, and he doesn't include some arguments I would include, but his church history is good for a general introduction to the subject.

Contrast what Schaff and other scholars have documented with claims like these made by the Council of Trent:

"our Redeemer instituted this so admirable a sacrament at the last supper, when, after the blessing of the bread and wine, He testified, in express and clear words, that He gave them His own very Body, and His own Blood; words which, - recorded by the holy Evangelists, and afterwards repeated by Saint Paul, whereas they carry with them that proper and most manifest meaning in which they were understood by the Fathers, - it is indeed a crime the most unworthy that they should be wrested, by certain contentions and wicked men, to fictitious and imaginary tropes, whereby the verity of the flesh and blood of Christ is denied, contrary to the universal sense of the Church, which, as the pillar and ground of truth, has detested, as satanical, these inventions devised by impious men" (session 13, chapter 1, "On the real presence of our Lord Jesus Christ in the most holy sacrament of the Eucharist.")

"Since Christ our Redeemer said that that which he offered under the appearance of bread was truly his body, it has therefore always been held in the Church of God, and this holy Synod now declares anew, that through consecration of the bread and wine there comes about a conversion of the whole substance of the bread into the substance of the body of Christ our Lord, and of the whole substance of the wine into the substance of his blood. And this conversion is by the Holy Catholic church conveniently and properly called transubstantiation." (session 13, chapter 4, "Decrees Concerning the Most Holy Sacrament of the Eucharist")

The Eucharist In Ignatius And Other Fathers

Lord AND Savior: Just an Observation

Posted by Reformation Theology - June 26, 2008 on 2:10 pm | In ReformedTheology | No Comments

As Christians we sometimes forget we are desperate sinners, thus fail to see that we need an ongoing Savior. In light of this, we must never see Jesus as Lord, and not at the same time, as Savior ... even after conversion. The converse is also true since Lord and Savior are inseparably intertwined and come as a package. Seeing Jesus only as Lord (emerging church) leads to moralism and so we judge ourselves by our morals and activism -- where we inevitably compare ourselves to others, and boasting or envy is usually the unintended consequence. Our personal virtue functionally becomes a savior. On ther other hand, if we only view Jesus as Savior (Grace Evangelical Society, Zane Hodges), when we come to faith it leads to antinomianism and a weak, once saved, always saved mentality prevails, which fails to see the necessity of obedience and good works to demonstrate the reality of the gospel at work in us.

The ‘Other Side’ of the Tracks

Posted by Paul Manata - June 26, 2008 on 10:34 am | In ReformedTheology | No Comments For my fellow "Prots" . . .

We are repeatedly lambasted about how twisted to and fro in the wind we must be if we hold to sola Scripture and the right of private judgment. "Come on across the tracks," they tell us, " and hold on to Tradition and achieve cognitive rest about which doctrines are true."

But is this the case? Let's look at one concrete example. A journey of a man who rejected sola Scriptura. He is familiar to many of you since he debated Steve and some others here. His name is Jay Dyer. He recently debated Josh Brisby, and points out that largely due to brisby's efforts in that debate, Jay is no longer eastern Orthodox (he has a "technicality" which lets him off the hook because, "Though I confessed it for the past two and a half years and was a catechumen, I chose not to be chrismated, and thus not technically becoming Orthodox."). Here is his retraction.

Here is his "about" page:

Jay Dyer is a former Protestant Seminary Student who obtained his B.A. in philosophy & history. He is an avidly amateur (or "sophomoric" as some prefer) theologian, philosopher and writer. Jay currently resides in Paris, TN and is a convert to Eastern Catholicism, yet feverishly loves both rites.

Jay used to be a Protestant. The above is somewhat vague as to the rest of the details, though. Jay came to reject sola Scriptura. He also came to reject total depravity, which, in his words, presents "Prots" with a defeater for their beliefs because it "skews the facts for us." Okay, so all should be good for Dyer now. No more fact-skewing. But our story does not end there, though.

Jay became a Roman Catholic, and then a Sedevacantist Catholic (held to everything pre-Vat. II), then Jay became Eastern Orthodox (well, affirmed that it was the true way for roughly two years), and now Jay is an "Eastern Catholic" (basically they affirm much EO practice but are in communion with Rome). No doubt now he has the truth. No doubt now he's finally arrived at the "true" church.

Boy, it sure looks like there's a whole lot of fact-skewing going on for Mr. Dyer. And he even rejected sola Scriptura and total depravity. If it isn't belief in total depravity that is skewing the facts for Jay, pray tell, what is it? Is there a Catholic or Orthodox name for this fact-skewer? Having searched sacred Tradition, I could not find it and so must give it a name. Call it a "blip."

So, here's a prime example for all my brow-beaten Protestant brothers and sisters of the massive stability you will achieve by rejecting sola Scriptura and total depravity:

Protestant==>Roman Catholic==>Sedevacantist Catholic==>Eastern Orthodoxy==>Eastern Catholicism.

What's even better, the "Fathers" sent him everywhere. Jay constantly rebuts what he thought Tradition said with what he now thinks Tradition says. Jay believes Tradition says X, Perry Robinson that is says Y, and Scott Hahn that it says Z.

So my fellow Protestants, when the Socs ask us Greasers to come on over to the other side of the tracks because we'll achieve all sorts of "certainty" and cognitive rest, just tell 'em, "Nah, Ponyboy and me are fine where we're at, thank you. But we're ready to rumble any time you are."

Whose Tradition, And Why?

Posted by Jason Engwer - June 26, 2008 on 6:42 am | In ReformedTheology | No Comments LVKA said:

"And the problem with interpretation is not whether it's literal or figurative, but whether it's condoned by Tradition or not."

Like the Tradition of the ante-Nicene fathers who interpreted scripture in opposition to the veneration of images? Or the Tradition of the early Christians who prayed only to God, not to the deceased or angels? Do you agree with the Marian beliefs of the earliest Christians, such as their Tradition that Mary committed sin?

I agree with the principle that we can accept an interpretation of scripture that isn't derived from a grammatical-historical method of interpretation, if a verifiably authoritative entity is giving us that interpretation. For example, since Jesus is God, He would be in a position to know that an Old Testament passage has a secondary meaning that can't be attained through a grammatical-historical method of interpretation. We would be justified in accepting such a secondary meaning for an Old Testament passage, since that secondary meaning had been taught by Jesus.

The problem is that you and other Eastern Orthodox don't give us any reason to believe that your concept of Tradition has the authority you claim it has. You would first have to make an objective case for that system of authority by means of interpreting the relevant historical documents through the grammatical-historical method. That's the normative means by which we approach historical documents in general, such as the writings of the church fathers and ecumenical councils.

All that Evangelicals are doing is interpreting scripture as we would interpret other historical documents, until we have justification to do otherwise. The archives of this blog contain many examples of our asking Eastern Orthodox participants to make an objective case for their system of authority and their failure to do so. You haven't given us any reason to look to your Tradition to interpret scripture for us in the manner in which we look to Jesus or the apostle Paul to do so. Even if we assume that an interpretation of scripture given to us by Jesus or Paul wasn't derived from a grammatical-historical method, we still have reason to accept that interpretation on other grounds. The same can't be said for the interpretations derived from your Tradition.

Our Ongoing Need of Redemption as Christians

Posted by Reformation Theology - June 25, 2008 on 1:39 pm | In ReformedTheology | No Comments

"Fear, lest, by forgetting what you are by nature, you also forget the need that you have of continual pardon, support, and supplies from the Spirit of grace, and so grow proud of your own abilities, or of what you have received from God, and fall into condemnation ... Fear, and that will make you little in your own eyes, keep you humble, put you upon crying to God for protection, and upon lying at his footstool for mercy; that will also make you have low thoughts of your own parts, your own doings and cause you to prefer your brother before yourself. And so you will walk in humiliation and be continually under the teachings of god, and under His conduct in youway, God will teach the humble. "The meek will He guide in judgment, and the meek will He teach His way." (Psalm 25:9) (John Bunyan - The Fear of God, page 96)

Related Article
Our Ongoing Need of Redemption as Christians by J.W. Hendryx

The Wafer Wars

Posted by steve - June 25, 2008 on 1:06 pm | In ReformedTheology | No Comments Opening hostilities in the Wafer Wars commenced when a renegade monk by the name of Sensibilius published a commentary on the Gospel of John in which he suggested that the words, “I am the true bread,” should be interpreted figuratively rather than literally.

His book was immediately placed on the index, and a bench warrant was issued for his arrest and he was promptly burnt at the stake.

That seemed to put an end to the matter, but his contraband commentary became the subject of learned disputations, and this—in turn—merely raised more meddlesome questions.

If the Son was a loaf of bread, then who was the Baker, and when did he come out of the oven?

After much agitation, the Council of Holy Dough solemnly decreed the dogma of the eternal fermentation of the Son.

However, the Western Church took it upon herself to amend the decree. The amended text of the Council now decreed the double fermentation of the Son.

This led to a schism between the One True Church of the West and the other One True Church of the East.

In the East, the Patriarch of Constantinople soon has his own crisis to deal with. For centuries, Eastern liturgy specified that the sacred baker add the salt after the flour, but before the water.

This was in accordance with The Booke of Julia Chylde, in the Slavonic version. Unless the ingredients were added in the prescribed order, the sacrament was invalid.

However, the Slavonic version was a translation of the long lost Nubian version. A monk at St. Catherine’s recently discovered the misfiled copy of the Nubian version.

Upon inspection, church authorities found, to their chagrin, that in the Nubian version the baker was to add the salt before the flour, but after the water.

Church authorities tried to repress the discrepancy, but word got out. Soon the One True Church of the East was rent between the pre-Saltine faction and the post-Saltine faction, depending on which recipe was deemed to be the canonical recipe.

One pre-Saltine baker was charged with sacrilege for surreptitiously adding the ingredients in the wrong order. As punishment, he, his wife, and their eleven children were stuffed into a giant puff pastry and heated in his own oven.

And if that wasn’t bad enough, the Nubian version also contained a variant reading of Ps 103:12. For centuries, the Church had used this verse as a prooftext for unleavened communion bread. In the Slavonic version, it read, “as far as the yeast is from the west, so far does he remove our transgressions from us.”

Now, however, they found out that the original reading was “east” instead of “yeast.”

This was a matter of extreme delicacy, for it meant that generations of devout communicants had been receiving mere bread. When word leaked out of this revelation, lay believers began to practice proxy communion on behalf of the dead—in hopes of redeeming their loved ones from the lake of fire.

Meanwhile, the other One True Church of the West was fighting the Wafer Wars on another front.

Charles the Short, lord of the Holy Roman Empire, needed to form a military alliance with the king of Saxony to defend his border along the Palatinate. And to do that, he needed to arrange a marriage between his only daughter, Princess Crumbcake, and Duke das Brot, nephew to the king of Saxony.

But the nephew to the king of Saxony was already married, so he needed to annul his marriage.

However, Pope Obnoxius III needed to form a military alliance with the Palatine king to defend the eastern flank of the papal estates. And he couldn’t grant an annulment to the king of Saxony without offending the Palatine monarch.

On the other hand, he couldn’t afford to offend the king of Saxony since he needed his troops to defend the western flank of the papal estates.

To further complicate matters, Princess Crumbcake was a secret disciple of the Cinnamonians. This was a sect that ardently believed the wafer should be made of cinnamon bread.

After all, if the Savior was literally bread, then what sort of bread was he? Princess Crumbcake’s theological judgment was admittedly swayed by the fact that she had a sweet tooth.

By contrast, the Duke was of the firm conviction that banana bread was the only true communion bread. After all, the true bread came “from above,” which is true of banana trees, but hardly true of wheat fields.

Pope Obnoxius III convoked the Second Council of Holy Dough to hammer out a compromise. By handing out a preferment here and a preferment there, Pope Obnoxius was able to secure the votes necessary to pass an infallible decree.

But his compromise provoked a peasant revolt. For generations the peasantry had been led to believe their liturgy was the true liturgy. To go to Mass one day and suddenly hear new words and see new rites left them deeply shaken. They boycotted the new Mass. They threatened to do violence to the village priest unless he recited the old Mass. Civil war was close at hand.

Pope Obnoxius laid the countryside under edict. For a while, there was a thriving black market in old communion wafers, consecrated under the old rites. At its peak, a wafer might go for as much as a milk cow and two guinea hens.

Families huddled behind barricaded doors during the witching hour, for fear the bowels of perdition would open wide and swallow them whole now that they had no digested wafer to ward off evil spirits.

But as time went on, people began to notice...well...they began to notice that time went on. Things that go bump in the night were no bumpier than normal. Death by ritual Satanic murder remained well within the actuarial mean.

It slowly dawned on people that maybe Sensibilius was right all along.

Oo, Those Awful Orcs!

Posted by steve - June 24, 2008 on 7:06 pm | In ReformedTheology | No Comments I recently got drawn into hand-to-hand combat with a couple of orcs who invaded the shire of a Presbyterian hobbit:

http://greenbaggins.wordpress.com/2008/06/04/some-questions-for-pete-enns/

Here is my side of the exchange:

steve hays said,
June 16, 2008 at 6:29 pm

Ken Hendrickson said,

“In the first place, Sola Scriptura is directly contradicted by 2 Thess 2:15, which commands that we hold fast to the TRADITIONS which were taught by the Apostles, even those which were only taught orally and never written down.”

It says nothing of the kind. You’ve taken a verse of Scripture, stripped it of its historical context, and then reapplied it willy-nilly to your denomination of choice.

i) And what does this verse actually say:

“So then, brothers, stand firm and hold to the traditions that you were taught by us, either by our spoken word of by our letter.”

This is a command…to whom? To Christians in general? Did Paul address 1 Thessalonians to Ken Hendrickson? No. Did he speak to Ken personally? No. Was Ken in the audience when he spoke? No.

Is Paul, in this verse, enjoining *Ken* to adhere to the written and oral traditions which *he* (Paul) taught Ken by his spoken word or earlier letter? No. False on both counts.

Is Paul enjoining Ken to follow a 5C bishop of Thessalonica—or 8C bishop of Constantinople, or 18C bishop of Moscow—who claims to be handing down an oral Pauline tradition? No. Since the text never says that, it can’t very well mean what it never said.

Rather, the verse is directed to mid-1C members of the church of Thessalonica. It is not referring to Christians in general. It isn’t referring to apostolic succession. It isn’t referring to subapostolic oral traditions allegedly of Pauline origin.

That’s what it says. That’s all it says. It can’t mean more than it says. No contortions. Couldn’t be more straightforward.

ii) Of course, there are commands in Scripture which do apply beyond their immediate audience. But there’s no automatic presumption that any or every divine command is binding on all Christians at all times and places. That, rather, depends on the nature of the command, the wording of the command, and/or the context in which it’s given.

I wonder if Ken tries to universalize Hos 1:2 in the same way he tries to universalize 2 Thes 2:15.

steve hays said,
June 17, 2008 at 7:37 am

Ken Hendrickson said,

“Next, Sola Scriptura is self-contradictory. Sola Scriptura is a doctrine. It posits that all doctrine be formed only from scripture. But Sola Scriptura cannot be found in the Bible. It is a *presupposition* of those who suspect Rome or Constantinople (or Moscow or Antioch, etc.) are teaching error. Sola Scriptura is therefore self-contradictory.”

Next, oral tradition is self-contradictory. Either you can document oral tradition or you can’t. If you can document oral tradition, then it ceases to be oral tradition. If you can’t document it, then you can’t identify oral tradition.

steve hays said,
June 17, 2008 at 7:39 am

Ken Hendrickson said,

“It was the Bible that drove me into Catholicism. John chapter 6, when interpreted with the grammatical-historical method, teaches what the Catholic Church has always taught.”

The primary concern of the grammatico-historical method is to avoid anachronistic interpretations. How could Jesus fault his Jewish audience for failing to recognize a Eucharistic allusion before the Lord’s Supper was even instituted?

steve hays said,
June 17, 2008 at 7:40 am

Ken Hendrickson said,

“Even more importantly, I find Matt 16:19 to be a very clear and emphatic transfer of authority from Jesus to Peter, the first pope. This passage of scripture hearkens back to Isaiah 22:22, and the authority of the Eliakim the steward of the King.”

The stewardship of Eliakim was not a perpetual office.

steve hays said,
June 17, 2008 at 7:56 am

Ken Hendrickson said,
“We sinners are not the final arbiter of Truth. It is the Church who is the pillar and foundation of the Truth. (1 Tim 3:15).”

1 Tim 3:15 is a reference to the local church, not the universal church. Even Catholic commentators admit this (e.g. Quinn, L. T. Johnson).

It would also behoove Ken to read L.T. Johnson on the actual meaning of the metaphor. He doesn’t even keep up with Catholic scholarship.

“Even more importantly, I find Matt 16:19 to be a very clear and emphatic transfer of authority from Jesus to Peter, the first pope. This passage of scripture hearkens back to Isaiah 22:22, and the authority of the Eliakim the steward of the King.”

Even if, for the sake of argument, we accept the claim that Mt 16:19 teaches apostolic succession, that would hardly make the bishop of Rome Peter’s sole successor. According to both Scripture and tradition, Peter ministered in areas outside Rome. So he would have ordained successors to other Apostolic Sees besides Rome. Hence, Ken’s argument either proves too much or too little.

“That is my point, and Robert Sungenis’ point, that Sola Scriptura is a false doctrine, because it is not found in scripture itself.”

Christianity is a revealed religion. God holds his people accountable to himself via his word. His Word is found in Scripture. That is why his Word was committed to writing in the first place. That is why the Mosaic Covenant is a written contract. Note the commands which God issues to OT prophets to write down his revelations. That is why the gospels were *written*. The age of public revelation ended with the Apostles.

steve hays said,
June 17, 2008 at 7:54 pm

Ken Hendrickson said,

“PS Most others here are also chasing rabbits. There are answers for all of those questions, but none of you are asking them because you are honestly seeking answers. You are asking them as an attack.”

To the contrary, we were merely answering you on your own grounds. You chose to level a number of objections to the Protestant faith. When we respond to your objections, you suddenly shift tactics in midstream.

Obviously you have no counterargument. You shot your wad the first time round with your rote, Catholic Answers talking points. As soon as those were shot down, you had no fallback position. So now you’re changing the subject.

But let the record show that we were responding to you in the way you yourself chose to initially frame the issues. It’s only after you lost when we responded to you on your own turf that you decided to try out this new tactic. Very transparent, Ken, and very disingenuous.

If we’re going down rabbit trails, that’s because we’re chasing down the rabbit trails you led us down in the first place.

“To deny Jesus’ words ‘This is My Body’, and ‘This is My Blood’, is to make Jesus out to be a liar.”

In that case, you, as a Catholic, make Jesus out to be a liar. In that case, you, as a Catholic, have a Gnostic Christology. For if you’re really going to take Jesus at his word, if you’re really going to take his words at face value, then he didn’t say that his is merely “present” in the communion elements. He didn’t say that is true body and bloody is present under the “species” of bread and wine. The communion elements *are* his body and blood. It’s the language of *identity*.

Moreover, Jesus never said that this only happens when the priest pronounces the words of consecration. So where are you getting that from Jn 6 or 1 Cor 11?
Furthermore, if you interpret Jn 6 sacramentally, that every communicant is heavenbound (Jn 6:51,54). Everyone Catholic who ever went to Mass and partook of communion is saved, once and for all.

But, according to Catholic theology, it’s possible for a Catholic to die in mortal sin and go to hell, right? So where does that leave your interpretation of Jn 6, Ken?

“Only the Catholics, the Eastern Orthodox, and a few high-church Anglo-Catholic Anglicans get the Eucharist right. All other Protestants get it wrong. And thus, all other Protestants have a religion which is fundamentally different than the Christian Religion.”

Of course, Ken, your reasoning is reversible. If high churchmen and low churchmen disagree, then that disagreement doesn’t, of itself, indicate the direction in which the truth lies. It could just as well be the case that all the high churchmen got it wrong.

And, to judge by your performance thus far, it surely looks like the high churchmen took a wrong turn.

steve hays said,
June 18, 2008 at 7:51 am

Ken Hendrickson said,

“Correct. That is what the shorthand phrase ‘Real Presence’ means.”

No, strict identity doesn’t allow for the true body and bloody under the species of the bread and wine. Identity doesn’t allow for any distinctions between appearance and reality. You’re equivocating.

And, of course, Jn 6 doesn’t speak of wine. If Jn 6 were Eucharistic, we would expect the following parallel:

Bread is to body
as
Wine is to blood

What we instead get is bread/flesh.

You’re also dodging other problems internal to your interpretation which I already pointed out.

“I believe John 6 literally.”

Do you also believe Jn 15 literally? Is Jesus a literal grape vine? What type of grape juice is Jesus composed of? Concord grapes? Is Jesus composed of fermented or unfermented grape juice?

In Jn 6, Jesus says he’s bread. Do you think Jesus is made of bread? What kind of bread to you think Jesus is made of? Sour dough? Gingerbread? Pumpernickel Rye? Remember, you take this literally, right?

steve hays said,
June 18, 2008 at 8:26 pm

Ken Hendrickson said,
“First, let’s deal with the context. Jesus was born in Bethlehem. In Hebrew, this means ‘House of Bread’. This is not a coincidence, or an accident. It is significant.”

It’s not significant to the context of Jn 6 since the Fourth Gospel doesn’t have a nativity account.

“Next, what happened just prior to this teaching from Christ was the feeding of the 5000 (+ women and children) from 2 fishes and 5 loaves (:1-:14). This is not a coincidence or an accident either. It is significant.”

No one denies that Jesus’ action is significant. That’s a straw man argument.

“Jesus was showing us that He could feed the entire world with His flesh and blood, despite the large size of the world, and the relatively small size of His body.”

That’s an assertion, not an argument. You need to exegete that claim from the text.

“The Manna is a clear “type” — a pre-figurement — a fore-shadowing — of the Eucharist.”

No, it’s a type of the Cross.

“Does Jesus explain that he is only figuratively the Bread of Life? Does Jesus explain that He is only speaking symbolically? No!!”

So if Jesus is literal bread, then what kind of bread is Jesus? Cornbread? Cinnamon bread? What kind of bread dough does the heavenly bakery use?

Remember, it’s a no-no to treat this imagery as figurative or symbolic. So this is literal bread—hot out of the celestial oven.

After all, God wouldn’t give his children stale bread or day-old bread. Only fresh-baked bread will do.

“Jesus, even more emphatically, claims again that He is the Bread of Life, and if anybody eats this bread, he will live forever.”

So, according to Ken, anyone who ever went to Mass has a nonrefundable ticket to heaven.

Does Catholic theology teach that a communicant can’t fall into mortal sin and go to hell? No.

“Get yourself into the True Church, where you may eat Jesus’ Flesh, and drink His Blood, because otherwise you will have no life in you.”

Really? So, according to Ken, only Catholics are heavenbound. Everyone else is damned.

Is that what Vatican II theology actually teaches? No.

Ken is misrepresenting the theology of his own church. A typical convert. More Catholic than the Pope.

steve hays said,
June 19, 2008 at 6:35 pm

Ken Hendrickson said,

“Consider the implications. Jesus said, ‘Unless you eat My Flesh, and drink My Blood, you have no life in you.’ Protestants, according to this, have no life in them, because they are not eating Jesus’ Flesh, nor are they drinking Jesus’ Blood, by their own admission and their own teaching.”

How does that conclusion follow—even on Ken’s assumptions? It would only follow if the subjective intentions of the communicant determine whether the words of Jesus are true or false. Is that Ken’s position?

If a communicant happens to believe in the Real Presence, then Jesus’ words are true—but if a communicant doesn’t believe in the Real presence, then Jesus’ words are falsified by his disbel