Theology

Phillip Jensen challenges the old saying: “Be a Calvinist on your knees and an Arminian in the pulpit”. I liked the following point:
The ‘Calvinist on knees and Arminian in pulpit’ saying appears to take the best from both theological systems, but it insults them both - as if Arminians do not depend upon God in […]

The Jews have not sacrificed in the Temple since Jerusalem was destroyed by Titus in AD 70. A few hundred years ago a ceremony was initiated which is still practised in ultra-Orthodox Jewish communities each year called in Yiddish shlugging kapores. The rite involves a rabbi slinging a chicken over his head and declaring, “This […]

Tom Wright, following E.P. Sanders, undermines penal substitutionary atonement, by repudiating the notion that justification is “in Christ” and replacing it with the idea that it is rather through the church. That is, he contends that justification is not so much about getting into the kingdom, or staying in, as it is about saying who […]

Bruce Winter recalls that when he was at Cambridge he often had to address the popular idea, adopting Peter Abelard’s emphasis, and encouraged by happiness- or pleasure-seeking utilitarianism, that the atonement is simply a demonstration of how much God loves us. Indeed, Abelard proposed that God could have forgiven mankind even without the death of […]

Tony Payne has written a great article on 19th century American Methodism and the indirect influence it came to have on his own life (Briefing, April 2010, 23ff). He observes that the subtleties of John Wesley’s teaching on “entire sanctification”, a higher level of sanctification through faith, which he never claimed to have attained himself, […]

“Where have all the miracles gone?” asks John Woodhouse in an article on Cessationism, Continuationism and the Bible (The Briefing, Apr 2010). Mark Driscoll’s wrong-headed categorisation of Sydney evangelicals as cessationists must be understood against the backdrop of a polarisation in the US that places pressure on Bible-believing Christians to be either cessationists or continuationists.
Woodhouse […]

In Sent by Jesus D.B. Knox explains why it is so essential to use masculine language when speaking of God. Here is my summary of key points he makes:

Only masculine pronouns are used throughout the Bible to refer to God.
Masculine terms are used to describe God, e.g. “father”, “husband”, “king”, “lord.”
Our Lord Jesus Christ in […]

In previous posts I have commented on Barth’s failure to identify Scripture with revelation. However, though he erroneously views Scripture as the witness to revelation it must be recognised that Barth did venerate the text of Scripture. Barth insists, “We are tied to these texts” and that it is only in Scripture and in no […]

In Sent by Jesus D.B. Knox quotes from the Second Vatican Council (”Nostra Aetate: Declaration on the Relation of the Church to Non-Christian Religions”, paragraph 3):
Moslems adore the one God, living and subsisting in himself, merciful and all powerful, the Creator of heaven and earth, who has spoken to men; they take pains to submit […]

We have noted before in previous blogs that Karl Barth makes a monumental error, with dire consequences, by failing to recognise Scripture as revelation and instead relegating it to the status of being a witness to revelation. That being said, Barth does have a very high view of Scripture, seeing an intimate, inseparable and utterly unique […]

I was re-listening to a Philosopher’s Zone podcast with Simon Critchley, author of The Book of Dead Philosophers. Critchley opened up with an amusing anecdote about philosopher A.J. Ayer. Ayer was suffering from pneumonia and had a near-death experience after choking on a piece of smoked salmon, when his heart stopped beating for about four minutes. […]

Here is a great quote from Luther:
For Holy Scripture is the garment which our Lord Jesus Christ has put on and in which He lets Himself be seen and found. This garment is woven throughout and so wrought together into one that it cannot be cut or parted. But the soldiers take it from Christ […]

In his Church Dogmatics Barth often calls Scripture “the Word of God.” For example, in Volume 1 (The Doctrine of the Word of God) we find a whole section entitled “Scripture as the Word of God” (Part 2). There he states: “Holy Scripture is the Word of God to the Church and for the Church” […]

In his Church Dogmatics (Vol 1. The Doctrine of the Word of God, Part 2) Karl Barth stuffs up the doctrine of revelation. Ironically, he does this by identifying revelation exclusively with Jesus Christ. But for Barth this means that the Old Testament is reduced down to being nothing more that “the witness to the […]

A while back I was reading an article in Philosophy Now by Russell Berg in which he presented 15 criteria for distinguishing between a scientific theory and a non-scientific one. Perhaps predictably enough, his first criterion, that a scientific theory uses natural explanations, takes us to the heart of major issues, which, however, were not […]

Karl Barth’s discussion of revelation in his Church Dogmatics suffers from his failure to treat the Bible as God’s self-revelation and to merely regard it as a witness to revelation. But Barth had a tremendous respect for Luther and often quotes him, sometimes at length. In one section Barth gives a great illustration of the difference […]

Read the latest Briefing today. I like the title THE GODNESS OF GOOD. Paul Grimmond makes the point that there is a level at which we need to say to those who charge God with not being good (e.g. because they might not like some of the things they read in the Bible), “God is […]

When I was in Dallas just over a week ago, I was driven around the city for three-and-a-half hours to see the sights. At one point I got out of the car to take some photos. A bikie rode by, conspicous for the fact that he was wearing no helmet. When I got back in […]

In Karl Barth’s Church Dogmatics Volume 1 Part 2, he makes the mistake of making an identity relationship between the incarnation and God’s revelation, failing to recognise Scripture itself as God’s self-revelation, which he rather treats as but a witness to revelation. However, along the way he singles out some great quotes from Luther on […]