Thomas Long and Narrative Preaching

Here are some thoughts from Beliefnet on narrative preaching from a rather different vantage point, which discusses Thomas Long’s Preaching from Memory to Hope:

Conservatives worry about the lack of didactic information, entertainment, too little doctrine, lacking in ethical appeal and not evangelistic enough.

Moderates contend that narrative worked when folks knew their Bibles and their beliefs but needed to be awakened, and those are not the issues today.

The left side argue that there is too much power and reshaping and ideology at work in the narrative preacher.

Long thanks each of these but doesn’t think their criticisms are fatal, even if well-aimed at times. He thinks sermons need to do what Augustine said: teach, delight and persuade. Narrative can do too much delight and not enough teaching and persuading, but it can’t be abandoned.

In fact, he argues four points:

1. Narrative as dress rehearsal, where the preacher embodies the activity of God in human events.

2. Narrative as congregational canon, where stories being told shape a community.

3. Narrative as means for remembering the lost and silenced.

4. Narrative as process for coming to faith…

HT: @scotmcknight

 

A Review of ‘The Book of Eli’

From a review on beliefnet.com:

Should we be glad a man named Eli (means “my God”) risks his life and slaughters many people in order to get the only surviving Bible to a printing press so that others can have access to it? The story opens 30 years after a global, nuclear holocaust; a holocaust sparked by warring religions. Survivors are living in the grim, chaotic and violent remains of civilization. Values are altered so that KFC wet wipes are exchanged as currency and water is extremely scarce. Eli (played by Denzel Washington) is “a walker” who is commissioned by “a voice” to head west to deliver the literary treasure in his possession. In the story, Eli is the good, yet stunningly violent guy. The Christian Science Monitor review labels Eli “a pacifist warrior” meaning that Eli is a peaceful man unless provoked. Eli’s nemesis is Carnegie (played by Gary Oldman) who is collecting books in his desperate search of copy of the Bible. Carnegie, the bad guy, wants the Bible because he believes he can use it to keep ignorant, bewildered people in sheep-like submission to his power. Carnegie seeks to capture the Bible faithfully carried and zealously protected by Eli. With Carnegie and Eli, we are presented with a post-apocalyptic Satan and a very uncharacteristic, gun-slinging, knife-wielding Messiah. Is The Book of Eli a postmodern, cinematic Pilgrim’s Progress? I don’t think so.

HT: @scotmcknight

 

Center of Paul’s Theology

“What is the center of Paul’s theology?” Frank Thielman asks in Theology of the New Testament. Here are some answers among theologians:

• Grace of Christ (Thomas Aquinas)
• Justification by faith alone apart from human effort (Martin Luther, and many Protestants since)
• Christ and what he has done for us (many Roman Catholic interpreters)
• Redemptive history (Herman Ridderbos)
• Reconciliation (R. P. Martin)
• Christ’s resurrection (Paul J. Achtemeier)
• The apocalyptic triumph of God in the death and resurrection of Christ (J. Christiaan Beker)
• God’s glory in Christ (Thomas R. Schreiner)
• The contribution of Father, Son, and Spirit to salvation (Joseph Plevnik)
• God’s graciousness toward his weak and sinful creatures (Frank Thielman)

 

Pneuma and Paul’s Elusive Center

Gordon Fee’s God’s Empowering Presence looks into all passages related to the pneuma, both in the spirit language and the phenomena. The elusive center of Paul’s theology can be any of the following:

• church as an eschatological community
• an eschatology of existence and thinking
• eschatological salvation
• focus on Jesus as messiah, Lord, and Son of God

 

Vos: ‘The Pauline Eschatology’

Geerhardus Vos’ work The Pauline Eschatology provides a glimpse into Paul’s intertwined framework of eschatology and soteriology. Paul, dubbed “father of Christian eschatology,” is considered first to gather the pieces of the eschatological belief scattered through Scripture and weave them together into a coherent form of a eschatological hope that became securely fixed on the mind of Christians.

Resurrection is found in these progressive stages:

1. resurrected bodies in purely Jewish understanding, according to 1 Thess;
2. the pneuma, according to 1 Cor;
3. the new Christian life, according to 2 Cor 5:1-8, Rom, Col; and
4. a genesis and development of the new believer in the “weight of glory” of 2 Cor 4:17.

 

Steve Jobs on Living

A few years back, Steve Jobs gave this commencement speech at Stanford University, in which he shared his life lessons:

1. Connecting the dots. “Trust that dots will connect in life is done in retrospect, even when it leads you off the well worn path, and that will make all the difference.” He attended Reed College, but dropped out. He sat in on classes instead–classes like calligraphy, which would be later foundational for developing the aesthetically appealing typography of Macs.
2. Love and loss.  “You’ve got to find what you love. Your work is going to fill a large part of your life, and the only way to be truly satisfied is to do what you believe is great work. And the only way to do great work is to love what you do.” He got fired from Apple, a company he started, but that’s when he was freed to his most creative periods in his life. He founded neXT, which was later bought out by Apple, and Pixar, a highly successful animation studio.
3. Death. “If today was the last day of my life, would I want to do what I am about to do today? Remembering that I’ll be dead soon is the most important tool I’ve ever encountered to help me make the big choices in life, because almost everything all external expectation, all pride, all fear of embarrassment or failure, these things just fall away in the face of death, leaving only what is truly important. Remembering that you are going to die is the best way I know to avoid the trap of thinking you have something to lose. You are already naked. There is no reason not to follow your heart.” He recalls the day he was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer. This was the closest he got to facing death.

 

Zwingli and Hübmaier on Infant Baptism

On May 28, 1525, Swiss Reformer Ulrich Zwingli published a tract On Baptistm, Anabaptism, and Infant Baptism:

The contents of this tract are summarised by Zwingli himself in three theses: (1) No element or outward thing in this world can cleanse the soul; the cleansing of the soul pertains only to the grace of .God. Thence it follows that baptism can remit no sins. Since it cannot do this, and nevertheless has been appointed by God, it must be a sign of allegiance of God’s people and nothing else. (2) Christian children are not less God’s children than their parents, just as in the Old Testament. But if they are God’s children, who shall forbid their baptism? Circumcision in the old covenant was the sign that baptism is to us. As that was given to children, so should baptism also be given to children. (3) Anabaptism has neither teaching, example, nor witness from God’s word. They who rebaptise crucify Christ afresh, either from selfishness or seeking after novelty.

Anabaptist Balthasar Hübmaier responded with The Christian Baptism of Believers, completed on July 11, which includes this critique:

The next two chapters discuss the baptism of John, and contend against Zwingli’s idea that it [viz. baptism of John] is the same as Christian baptism. If this were so, Hübmaier argues, infant baptism would be excluded, for all accounts agree that the order of John was: hearing of the word, repentance or conviction of sin, baptism, works. John baptised only those to whom he had first preached, who had therefore believed, confessed their sins, and promised amendment of life. Those who received the baptism of John were rebaptised by the apostle, and that is the true Anabaptism. Infant baptism, hitherto reckoned the true baptism, is no baptism, and it is a groundless complaint against us that we practice rebaptism.

And of course, Hübmaier doesn’t leave it at that. He later adds:

In chapter six, the question is raised whether the baptism of infants is forbidden in the Bible. Yes, says Hübmaier, for it is commanded to baptise only believers. If the plea is valid that infant baptism is not forbidden, one might baptise his dog or ass, circumcise girls, bring young children to the Supper, and the like. If you say to baptise an ass is forbidden, because one may baptise only men, then baptise Jews and Turks; or if you say, one may baptise only believers, then why do you baptise children?

 

Counterfeit Gods, A Review

Counterfeit Gods: The Empty Promises of Money, Sex, and Power, and the Only Hope That Matters. By Timothy Keller. New York: Dutton, 2009. 210 pages. Hardback, $19.95.

So, we’ve heard it: idols are everywhere on the rise. Pastors preach about the rise of greed, how Jesus preached against the greed of men for money. These sermons have become stock Sunday service material, beating the same trite, dead horse. Tim Keller, in his latest book Counterfeit Gods, reinvigorates the message of turning away from idols to serving the one and only true God.

Refreshingly, Keller avoids the usual course of fire and brimstone, by allowing the reader to think through a list counterfeit gods. The idols of society are found in romantic love, financial prosperity, need for success, and desire for political power. The present reality is this: Self-worth and esteem are often sought in relationships. When fortunes were lost in the market crisis of 2008-2009, prominent figures on Wall Street committed suicide–a semblance of the crash in the 1930s. There is an endless need for money. Only 2% of Americans consider themselves wealthy; the rest are upwardly driven as members of the middle class. Keller provides a candid assessment of the kind of thinking that prevails in our culture. The problem is idolatry, which admittedly is an inevitable part of the human condition.

The idols cannot be just expelled; it must be replaced. Keller writes: “The human heart’s desire for a particular valuable object may be conquered, but its need to have some such object is unconquerable.” Christ’s sufficiency replaces the need to worship the idol of success and the idols of the world: “Only when we see that Jesus, our great Suffering Servant, has done for us will we finally understand God’s salvation does not require us to do ’some great thing.’” This is the point, which Keller drives home.

 

The Reformed-Anabaptist Disputation

Thus the Reformed spokesman at the Reformed-Anabaptist disputation in Zofingen (near Bern) agreed that they were “one in the chief points of the articles of faith” and differed on “externals.” But the Anabaptists insisted on enforcing the sole authority of Scripture even more consistently and on implementing the Reformed parallelism of the two sacraments by applying to baptism the same definition of “sign” that Zwingli had applied to the Lord’s Supper (and in his early thought also to baptism). In spite of being “one,” therefore, the two parties could not be united. Roman Catholic polemics, despite the preponderance of Protestant over Roman Catholic theologians in the ranks of the conflict against the Anabaptists, went on tracing the origins of Anabaptism to Luther, but Luther and Calvin both charged that the pope and the Anabaptists were essentially alike in their subjectivism, while the Anabaptists for their part charged that there was no difference between “the papists and the Lutherans” and that “the Lord’s Supper of the preachers” in the established churches, whether Reformed or Roman Catholic, was “false” and “perverted.”

–Jaroslav Pelikan, The Christian Tradition: A History of the Development of Doctrine. Vol. 4, Reformation of Church and Dogma (1300-1700).

 

Menno Simons on Persecution

Menno Simons, an Anabaptist leader, writes, regarding persecution: “[The children of God] must in all misery, ignominy and trouble take upon themselves the pressing cross and must follow the rejected, outcast, bleeding and crucified Christ, as He Himself said: ‘If any man will come after Me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow Me.’”

Furthermore, Menno notes: “Persecutions will not cease so long as there are righteous and unrighteous people on earth.”

How does persecution serve for our good?

1. It keeps from inclining toward earthly ease, peace and prosperity which have so great a tendency to ruin and undo us before our God and to render us careless, refractory, lukewarm and drowsy.
2. It makes us lay aside the sins which so easily beset us.
3. It keeps us from fleeting thought.
4. It puts us to a severe test, even such as Christ experienced.
5. It gives us firmness of confidence, tranquility of patience and vehement ardor of prayer.