The Beauty of the Incarnation

/ davidsschrock

When God created the world, he filled it with splendor and beauty.  The sky above flashes a myriad of colors, and the world below is covered with majestic mountains, lush valleys, winding rivers, hidden lakes, and fields filled abundant wildlife.  All of which highlight the wise creativity of our God.

The beauty of our planet is so pervasive, that many give their lives for the preservation of the environment or the thrill of filming the most exotic locales.  Yet, God’s beauty is not just seen in creation.  The pages of history, while smeared with darkness and death, display a redemptive beauty that in the end will swallow death.  Aside from the death-defeating resurrection itself, nowhere is the jaw-dropping beauty of God’s sovereign story-telling more evident than in the incarnation of Jesus Christ.

Thus, as we think about aesthetics and the beauty of God in creation, history, and redemption, we must behold Christ’s humble beginnings.

Continue reading →

Aesthetics Is Not Optional

/ davidsschrock

Why aesthetics?

Aesthetics is kind of a funny word.  Using it in casual conversation could easily gain the charge of being esoteric (another funny word), but indeed, the word and its employment are essential for the Christian.

Even those who have never dabbled in the academic discipline of aesthetics are being shaped by someone to think about beauty, art, and culture.  It may come from the paintbrush of Thomas Kinkade or the pen of Wendell Berry.  The source does not make someone an aesthete.  We all assign beauty to certain things, and thus we should learn what the Bible thinks about beauty and how it plays a formative role in the believers salvation and sanctification. Consider four reasons why aesthetics is so vital for the Christian.

Continue reading →

Aesthetics 101: Learning to Look for the Beauty of Christ

/ davidsschrock

Last week, I guest-posted (I guess that’s a word) on Trevin Wax’s blog, a meditation from Revelation 19 on “The Greatest Love Story Ever Told.”  It was one of a couple meditations that came out of a series of sermons I preached last year on the subject of beauty–namely beauty as it is found in the Bible.

Today, I will begin to add to that post.  Looking at the subject of aesthetics, I will consider its place in the Bible, and in the days ahead I will post a few reflections on beauty and its essential place in the Christians’ life.  Then, after considering the need for aesthetics, I will offer a few reflections on how the beauty of the incarnation and hell (yes, the beauty of hell) can move us towards greater love and holiness.

Whether aesthetics is a subject that is familiar or foreign, I hope you will consider with me the idea of beauty as it relates to the gospel of Jesus Christ–who is indeed, the most beautiful one of all.

Aesthetics 101

In his letter to the Philippians, Paul concludes his six-fold admonition to right thinking by saying, “if there is anything excellent or praiseworthy, think about these things” (4:8).  As someone who had seen firsthand the glories of heaven (2 Cor 12:1-3), Paul spoke with a unique knowledge of beauty, truth, and goodness.  Indeed, as a herald of the gospel, he was at great pains to proclaim the beauty of Christ and him crucified (1 Cor 2:2) and to see the beauty of Christ formed in the believers whom he betrothed to Christ (2 Cor 11:2).

In a way, Paul was an aesthete (i. e. a person who has a highly developed appreciation for beauty).  Now, that sounds really esoteric and unnecessary for the Christian life.  But I want to argue that seeing God’s beauty in the Word and the world is essential for Christian discipleship and spiritual growth.

Indeed, I am grateful to Trevin for letting me scribble some thoughts on the subject of aesthetics, and to share them with you.  For indeed, it was a book review on Erasing Hellthat Trevin wrote about a year ago that sowed the first seed in my thinking about the subject of beauty and its importance—make that, its necessity—in the Christian life.

A Journey into the Beautiful

I am a novice when it comes to art, literature, and most things that fall under the subject of aesthetics.  I have not taken a class on it.  I have read very little on the subject.  So, I am sure that in what I have to say on the subject will make plain my naïve understanding.  However, as a pastor, the subject of beauty is weekly occupation.  Here is what I mean.

Called to herald the sufferings and glories of Christ every Lord’s Day and every day in between, I have found that preaching the gospel means more than simply explaining concepts like justification, sanctification, and grace.  Of course, Christ-centered exposition must never divert from such biblical theology.  However, the call to preach and teach God’s word must go further. Indeed, stewards of the gospel must explain the whole counsel of Scripture, but they must also exalt beauty of these gospel truths.  This is why aesthetics is a necessary discipline for Christian preachers and parishioners.

And truly, I am grateful to Trevin for helping me see this.  Here is what he said a year ago, that grabbed my attention:

 What is needed is a response that takes into consideration the beauty of Truth. We’ve got the truth portion down when it comes to propositions. What is needed is a beautiful and compelling portrait of Truth – the Person. God is inherently beautiful, but many times, we don’t do well at drawing out the inherent beauty of Truth with a capital T.

Trevin makes the probing observation, “We struggle in the area of aesthetics, and I’m not sure why.”  Then, he comes back and challenges those who defend the truth by means of propositions to consider other artistic tools to depict the beauty of God’s capital T truth.

The problem with the responses to Love Wins is that, while we are experts at critiquing Bell’s vision of God, we aren’t stepping up with a more compelling portrait of God’s magnificence. We are scribbling down our thoughts under Bell’s chalk drawing instead of taking up the paint brush and creating something that reflects the beauty of biblical truth.

I am grateful for Trevin awakening me from my aesthetic slumber, and so as I have preached, blogged, and counseled in the last year, I have sought not only to diagram sentences but to communicate the beauties of God and his gospel.

One last attribution.  I was greatly helped in the months leading up to preaching on the beauty of God in creation and redemption  by the excellent little book on the subject of beauty by my friend Owen Strachan and his doctoral supervisor, Doug Sweeney.  Their book, Jonathan Edwards on Beauty, is full of Edwards own aesthetic reflections, and is well worth the read.

Over the next few posts, I will try to share a few biblical meditations on some of the things I found in Scripture that stirred my heart, and I hope they will stir your as well.

Soli Deo Gloria, dss

For Your Edification (7.27.12)

/ davidsschrock

For Your Edification is a weekly set of resources on the subjects of Bible, Theology, Ministry, and Family Life.  Let me know what you think or if you have other resources that growing Christians should be aware.

BIBLE & THEOLOGY

Kingdom Through Covenant.  Justin Taylor, Vice President of Editorial at Crossway and blogger extraordinaire, has posted the first two chapters of the new book,  Kingdom through Covenant: A Biblical-Theological Understanding of the Covenants.  This book is a landmark work on the covenants of the Bible (Adam, Noah, Abraham, Moses, David, and the New Covenant).  Peter Gentry and Stephen Wellum are the authors of this book, and they have wed their systematic and exegetical expertise to provide a comprehensive reading of the whole Bible.

I encourage you to take the time to pick up this big book and test their proposal.  I think they are right on as they put the Bible together, and that this book has the potential to provide a more exegetical, biblical-theological reading of Scripture than either Dispensationalism or Covenant Theology.

Physical Theology: The Bible in its Land, Time and Culture.  Dr. John Monson, who grew up in Israel, is Associate Professor of Old Testament and Semitic Languages at Trinity Evangelical Divinity School (TEDS).  Earlier this year, he gave a compelling lecture on the space and time found in the Bible.  His academic and personal experience in Israel, give him a strong understanding of the land in Israel and how it relates to our understanding of God’s plan of redemption.  By the way, to add credibility to his qualifications, he also dated a girl from Bethlehem named Mary.

For more on a theological understanding of the land in the Bible, see O. Palmer Robertson, Understanding the Land of the Bible.

FAMILY, CHURCH, & MINISTRY

Gay Is Not The New Black.  Voddie Baucham writes persuasively why making homosexuality normative in American life and politics is not the next step in the Civil Rights movement.  Categorically, definitionally, historically, and legally, Baucham shows why arguments for gay ‘rights’ do not parallel the rights once restricted to blacks.  He concludes,

It is very important for those of us who oppose the idea of same-sex “marriage” to do so not because we wish to preserve our version of the American Dream, but because we view marriage as a living, breathing picture of the relationship between Christ and his church (Eph. 5:22ff), and because we know that God has designed the family in a particular way. While the design of the family promotes human thriving (Gen 1:27-28), the testimony points people to their only hope in this life and the next. As a result, silence on this issue is not an option.

Unfortunately (and quite ironically), many Christians have been bullied into silence by the mere threat of censure from the homosexual lobby. “Oppose us and you’re no better than Gov. Wallace, Hitler, and those homophobes who killed Matthew Shepard!” is their not-so-subtle refrain. Consequently, we spend so much time trying to prove we’re not hate-filled murderers that we fail to recognize that the Emperor has no clothes. There is no legal, logical, moral, biblical, or historical reason to support same-sex “marriage.” In fact, there are myriad reasons not to support it. I’ve only provided a few.

Baucham’s article is an important and well-informed read.  One that you need to read to equip yourself against the ascending onslaught for ‘gay marriage’ and against biblical Christianity.

Culture Wars.  While you are at it, you should also read Owen Strachan’s article on why the ‘gay marriage’ issue is so radically different than the abortion issue and why Christians cannot ‘opt out’ of taking a biblical stand.

How to Comfort Bereaved Parents.  Jill Sullivan, a 40-something mother in Arkansas, who lost her daughter in 2009, has written a helpful and compassionate article on how to minister to families in the church who have lost children.  I have a feeling that her words while particularly applicable to the grief that accompanies the untimely death of a child, but her wise words of comfort are also applicable at any time that someone is experiencing the loss of a loved one.  Take time to read it, and to pray for those who you know who have lost parents, siblings, or children in this year.

The Greatest Love Story Ever Told.  On the same blog that published Jill Sullivan’s piece, Trevin Wax also posted one of my blogs, “The Greatest Love Story Ever Told.”  Taken from a sermon I preached last year on Revelation 19, I explore the beauty of heaven and how every love story on earth is but a lesser version of the greatest love story of Jesus Christ dying for his bride and defeating his enemies.  Check it out.

For Your Edification, dss

An Appreciation for the Erudition and Evangelism of Stephen Wellum

/ davidsschrock

Today, the CredoMag blog posted a link to the faculty address given by my friend and mentor, scholastic supervisor and former Sunday School teacher, Stephen Wellum.  The faculty address concerns the biblical-theological implications of Christ’s priesthood and New Covenant mediation on the extent of the atonement and Baptist ecclesiology.  This is an extrapolation of his larger biblical-theological work with Peter Gentry, Kingdom Through Covenant, that Justin Taylor linked to yesterday: Covenants in Biblical and Systematic Theology.

Let me encourage you to check out his lecture and to read the appreciation that Matt Barrett and I wrote up for one of many gifted professors at Southern Seminary.

You can read the whole thing here.

Soli Deo Gloria, dss

The Bible Says It, That Settles It

/ davidsschrock / 1 Comment

Maybe you have heard the phrase, “The Bible says it, I believe it, that settles it.”

Until a few months ago, I had not observed the great error contained in that phrase.  However, thanks to one of the senior saints at our church, I was informed of its self-centeredness.  On the occasion that someone wryly quoted that phrase in a small group Bible study, this seasoned lady kindly replied that actually if the Bible says it, that settles it.

Continue reading →

Moving Beyond a ‘Plain’ Reading of Scripture

/ davidsschrock / 2 Comments

In theological debate, a plain and straightforward reading of Scripture is often adduced as a compelling “biblical” argument.  However, a straightforward reading of Scripture is often in danger of reading the Bible out of context, by truncating or removing texts from their original contexts.  In this way, many “biblical” arguments turn out to be exercises in theological redaction and atomistic hermeneutics.

This is the point that Lee Gattis makes in his recent book on the extent of the atonement.  He writes,

Continue reading →

Robert Letham on Union with Christ

/ davidsschrock

Robert Letham’s Union with Christ is a good overview of a subject that is vital for understanding how we receive all the benefits Christ procured through earthly life and death.  One of the things I appreciate about his approach is the way he defines “union in Christ” in covenantal categories.  Even if appeals to the classical “covenant of grace” / “covenant of works” approach to the biblical covenants, his approach rightly assigns “union in Christ” to a covenantal concept.

Of late, I have heard some people speak about “union in Christ” and Christ’s mediation (a la 1 Timothy 2:5) without paying attention to the biblical idea of the covenants.  Letham corrects this sort of approach.  He shows how “union in Christ” cannot be explained our understood apart from understanding Christ as a “covenant head” and someone who is united to us in a “covenantal” relationship.  Here is how he summarizes his understanding of Union in Christ:

Continue reading →

For Your Edification (7.14.12)

/ davidsschrock

For Your Edification is a weekly set of resources on the subjects of Bible, Theology, Ministry, and Family Life.  Let me know what you think or if you have other resources that growing Christians should be aware.

BIBLE & THEOLOGY

The Danger of Pragmatism.  Jared Wilson, “Gospel-centered” blogger, pastor, and author, provides a helpful look at pragmatism and its deletrious effect on biblical truth and faithful ministry.

Pastor Wilson lists six symptoms of pragmatism and seven ways churches and pastors can regain a biblical ministry.

Six Symptoms of Pragmatism

  1. Pastors increasingly hired for their management skills or rhetorical ability over and above their biblical wisdom or their meeting of the biblical qualifications for eldership.
  2. The equation of “worship” with a creative portion of a weekly worship service.
  3. The prevalent eisogesis in classes and small groups.
  4. The vast gulf between the theological academy and the church.
  5. Biblical illiteracy.
  6. A theologically lazy and methodologically consumeristic/sensationalistic approach to the sacraments.

Seven Ways  to Fight Pragmatism

  1. Pastors must study and read, and read and study.
  2. Expository preaching.
  3. Pastors must bridge that gulf between the theological academy and the church.
  4. Churches should identify those with the spiritual gifts of teaching and leadership and make sure they are both discipled and discipling, mentored and mentoring.
  5. Impress upon every minister of the church the need for doctrinal soundness, especially those planning and leading “worship.”
  6. Recapture a vision for truth that makes the goal of theology a deeper relationship with God and greater affection for Christ.
  7. Recover the centrality of the Gospel.

Let me encourage you to read the whole blogpost and ask the question: Are you being shaped more by the pragmatic culture around you, or are you being shaped more by God’s truth?

Continue reading →

To What End Is The History of Israel?

/ davidsschrock

John Bright, a noted Old Testament scholar who influenced the likes of Graeme Goldsworthy, concludes his massive book, The History of Israel, with these insights about the history of Israel:

The history of Israel would continue in the history of the Jewish people, a people claimed by the God of Israel to live under his law to the last generation of mankind.  To the Jew, therefore, Old Testament theology finds its fruition in the Talmud.  The hope of the Old Testament is to him a thing yet unfulfilled, indefinitely deferred, to be eagerly awated by some, given up by others (for Jews are probably no more of one mind where eschatology is concerned than are Christians), secularized and attenuated by others.  Thus the Jewish answer to the question: Whither Israel’s history?  It is a legitimate answer and, from a historical point of view, a correct one–for Israel’s history does continue in Judaism.

But there is another answer, the one the Christian gives, and must give.  It is likewise historically legitimate, for Christianity did spring from the loins of Judaism.  That answer is that the destination of Old Testament history and theology is Christ and his gospel.  It declares that Christ is the awaited and decisive intrusion of God’s redemptive power into human history and the turning point of the ages, and that in him there is given both the righteousness that fulfils the law and the sufficient fulfillment of Israel’s hope in all its variegated forms.  It affirms, in short, that he is the theological terminus of the history of Israel.  It is on this question, fundamentally, that the Christian and its Jewish friend divide. . . . History really allows no third answer: Israel’s history leads straight on to the Talmud—or the gospel.  It has in fact led in no other direction (John Bright, The History of Israel, 2nd Ed., 467)

Whether one is inclined to affirm Covenant Theology or some form of Dispensationalism, three things stand out in this quote and are worth noting about the relationship between Israel and the Church.

Continue reading →