Biblical Landmarks

Archive for the ‘Theology’ Category

WHAT IS THE CANON?

This is an important question. And confusion over the answer results in some misunderstandings.

Those involved closely in the debate look at the canon from two perspectives. Both are needed.

The first perspective is that of an authority. It can be in either written or oral form. The Ten Commandments written in stone and the words of Moses were an oral and written tradition, and they were authoritative.

The second idea of canon is that it eventually “came to refer to a perpetual fixation or standardization” (McDonald, The Biblical Canon, p. 55).

A little consideration of these two ideas shows that they are not mutually exclusive. Again to quote McDonald, “the primary debate is over when this literature” took on the status as an authoritative-scriptural manner among the Jews and the Christians. Read the rest of this entry »

When a Dad Worries His Son, The Father Better Have Some Good Answers

I have four sons and a daughter, the firstborn being Matthew. He’s a thinker. And he’s trying to give his father a hard time over some of my comments. Matt’s worried that I’m putting the Torah as a higher authority than the Person of Jesus Christ as revealed in the gospels. Here’s his question:

“What role does the person of Jesus Christ play in all of this?”

Now Matthew is concerned that his father might be going off in a wrong direction, so he’s checking up on his old man to make sure. He comments further,

” Shouldn’t it be Jesus Christ that we look to as the central revolving point of the Scriptures rather than the Torah?”

Good questions. Here’s my reply:
Read the rest of this entry »

Are we really justified by faith alone?

This topic has been debated for a L-O-N-G time. But consider these biblical quotations.

I’ve had some correspondence with a good friend, Mark. He’s a “justified by faith alone”, hang-on-to-the-Reformers guy who takes the Bible seriously. I’ve been a little rough on him.

Here’s how.
Read the rest of this entry »

HOW TO EXCEED THE PHARISEES

The words of Jesus create problems for many people. The reason? They don’t like them.

Consider this from Matt.12: 36-37: “But I tell you that every careless word that people speak, they shall give an accounting for it in the day of judgment. For by your words you will be justified, and by your words you will be condemned.”

Everyone hopes that these words are somehow and somewhere modified elsewhere in Scripture. Justified by our words? No way. We’ll never make it, that’s for sure. Yet the words of Jesus are there to deal with.

Now consider this passage earlier in the book of Matthew: “For I say unto you that unless your righteousness exceeds he righteousness of the scribes and Pharisees, you will by no means enter the kingdom of heaven.”

For many, that sounds like a great dose of legalism.
Read the rest of this entry »

Living with a Reformed Baptist family, as I have been doing, has given me the chance to exercise some discussion on the topic of baptism. In that discussion it has become increasingly clear to me why Reformed Theology in general and Christian Reconstruction in particular are not really winning the intellectual war. They certainly win some of the skirmishes, but the war itself is far from over. And it will remain so until the unassailable Word of God is brought to bear on the enemy. Here’s the problem.

In my discussions with my host it was evident that he relied completely on a New Testament theology. No matter how many times I tried to get the discussion going from the Old Testament, my host would say words like, “That’s fine, but the New Testament says . . .” And off he would go quoting the New Testament.

As I thought about this, I realized something that had not been so clear before. It was the willingness of my host to hold not just to the Bible in general, but to the idea in particular that irrespective of what might be taught in the Old Testament, the New Testament now offered a “correction” to the older Testament.

Who is the wise man?

As a young boy in a small Baptist church in rural Australia, I was taught to sing:

The wise man built his house upon the rock,
The wise man built his house upon the rock,
The wise man built his house upon the rock,
And the rains came tumbling down.
Read the rest of this entry »

No, this is not a math lesson!

In my essay “Unequal Testaments” I explored the question of how and where does the New Testament get its authority. Here’s something else to add to those comments.

Consider the teaching of the Old Testament itself in one of its key passages, Deut. 4:2. “You shall not add to the word which I command you, nor take from it, that you may keep the commandments of the LORD your God which I command you.” Thus spoke Moses.

It is an interesting fact, according to McDonald, that “All Scriptures after the Torah received their authority from the Torah and were always viewed in relation to it” (Lee McDonald, The Biblical Canon, p. 176). Now the Torah was the Law of God as found in the first five books of the Bible. And here we see a consistent pattern of scholarship:
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IN one of the western counties, the writer of this paper was recently present at an evening Evangelical prayer-meeting. The congregation were partly church-goers, partly dissenters of various denominations,
united for the time by the still active revivalist excitement. Some were highly educated men and women farmers, tradesmen, servants, sailors, and fishermen made up the rest: all were representative specimens of
Evangelical Christians, passionate doctrinalists, convinced that they, and only they, possessed the ‘Open Sesame’ of heaven, but doing credit to their faith by inoffensive, if not useful, lives. One of them, who took a leading part in the proceedings, was a person of large fortune, who was devoting his money, time, and talents to what he called the truth. Another was well known through two counties as a hard-headed, shrewd, effective man of business; a stern, but on the whole, and as times went, a beneficent despot over many thousands of unmanageable people.

The services consisted of a series of addresses from different speakers, interchanged with extempore prayers, directed rather to the audience than to the Deity. At intervals, the congregation sung hymns, and sung them particularly well. The teaching was of the ordinary kind expressed only with more than usual distinctness.

Destroyed From Within — Not Without

The other night I was speaking with a friend, John, who’s a member of this list. The topic: the canon.

I keep asking the question: what is the authority that determines the canon? The question really needs to be split in two: What is the authority that determined the Old Testament canon? What is the authority that decide these 27 books were the New Testament canon?
Read the rest of this entry »

Do You Believe in the Power of Symbols?

As I’ve thought about the issues which have been the topic of the last few e-zines, I’ve come to a conclusion about the general response to those issues in the broader Christian community, and the response is nuts. It’s like staring at a business which is losing money, yet the business owner won’t make the changes necessary to plug up the holes. You tell him what needs to be done, but he can’t make the decision to invest the time and money to fix the problems. That decision doesn’t make sense. It’s nuts. With that in mind, read on.

Are you a nominalist or a realist? Have you figured that one out yet? Consider this.

In my last e-zine, I mentioned the older practice of symbols. For a nominalist, symbols and symbolism can appear to be strange. There are some personality styles that struggle with symbolism, but there are others who appreciate and understand symbols and their meaning.

Recently, on assignment in Calgary, I was helping a business owner make some changes to improve the business. He said his was a quality business, and he did make beautiful cabinet work in his kitchens. But I asked him about the symbols in his business that would indicate quality. The showroom was dusty and things left lying around. His personal dress was very casual, his hair was longish and somewhat untidy. His language was coarse except in front of the clients. These, I indicated, were the symbols of his business. I asked him which ones would tell people this was a quality business. He understood very well what I meant.

I made mention of the fact that at one time the baptismal font was at the doorway of the church. I remember seeing this as a teenager on the one occasion I visited the local Catholic Church to play organ for a wedding. It was not the first time I had seen a baptismal font — rather than a baptismal bathtub big enough for immersion to take place — but it was the first time I saw it at the doorway of the church.

Now a good part of my problem was that I was raised as a nominalist — not to believe in symbols. We had no cross in our little Baptist church. The only thing we had was a banner across the front that said “Be still and know that I am God.” I always figured that was there for us kids to keep us quiet during the service. It worked. While that text was up there, I wasn’t about to raise my voice unless I had an invitation.

But there was something else of significance which I did not realize at the time. The pulpit was off to the left-hand side of the building up against the wall. At the center was the communion table on which was prominently displayed a large open Bible.

It was many years before I understood the significance of the positioning of these items. I had been in an evangelical Anglican church at one time and also saw the pulpit on the side, the communion table and Bible in the center, and the lectern right beside it. When the pastor read the Scripture passages for the service, he always stepped to the lectern — front and center — but when he spoke he went back to the pulpit — right-hand side on this occasion. His movement from one spot to the other was strange, because I did not understand the significance of what he was doing and why he did it.

What picture do you get from these descriptions? If you just stop for a moment and think, it becomes evident that the centrality of the church service is the Bible and the communion table. They occupy center stage. The pulpit, the place where teaching is done, is not held in the same regard as the Scriptures themselves. Preaching — man’s word — cannot be the center of the church. Only God and His Word occupy that space. So the pulpit is over to the side.

Well, you don’t need to see what happens in many churches today. Center stage is for the preacher or the song leader. The communion table is probably nowhere to be seen. Anyway, the auditorium is too large to see anything except what’s displayed on the large screens.

What may be center is the lectern where not only the reading of Scripture is done, but also the preaching. In one church I’ve been in, one of the largest conservative Presbyterian churches in the US, a stool appears when the pastor’s ready to preach, and he’ll sit casually on the stool and speak just as if he’s in your living room. Great style! But no communion table and no Bible. Before the preacher gets on center stage, the space is occupied by the worship leader and musicians.

Symbolically, however, the message is that man’s word and God’s word occupy the same space at the center. This indicates not only the center of the church, but also the center of life. This is what the symbol means. And this is nuts!

Can you see why we cannot change the culture? Our symbols and the message they convey are all wrong. In the mind of many people man is already center stage. They have no need to go to church to get the same message. And to expect them to do otherwise is a greatly misplaced expectation.

God bless you as you serve Him this week.