January 23rd, 2010 | 
Author: 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.
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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.
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If you leave out an important ingredient, your best cooking efforts are doomed.
This article was written while I was in Nova Scotia and had just returned from having supper with a local family.
This part of the world, Clare County, has several municipalities that are Old French culture and language. The schools in these municipalities hold their classes in the old Acadian language, while the municipalities either side are English. In the seventeenth century, the French living in the valley of Nova Scotia were forcibly relocated by the British. Some found their way to the western shores of Nova Scotia while others were settled in Louisiana. The Cajuns and the Acadians are linked culturally — and share an understandable attitude towards the British. In Nova Scotia, the Acadians have been promised an apology from the monarch of England, but it is yet to arrive.
This caused me to reflect on the turmoil of Europe at the time of their dislocation. The Acadians, French in origin, tried to remain neutral in the struggles between Britain and France. They were not permitted to do this. 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.
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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?
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ELIMINATE MASCULINITY IN THE CHURCH
I’ve a confession to make. If you’re like me, you go to church, sing some hymns or spiritual songs, listen to a sermon, listen to someone else pray (except when you’re in a church that allows congregational participation) then go home and forget the experience.
Take this morning for example. The song leader extols the virtues of “He loves me” repeated many times. Now you could be forgiven for making a mistake on the meaning of these words Read the rest of this entry »
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