Holy Spirit

Image-Bearers Make Peace

/ davidsschrock

Blessed are the peace-makers, for they shall be called sons of God. (Matthew 5:9) 

The Bible says that those trusting in Jesus Christ are being conformed into his image on daily basis.  Consider:

For those whom he foreknew he also predestined to be conformed to the image of his Son, in order that he might be the firstborn among many brothers (Rom 8:29)

And we all, with unveiled face, beholding the glory of the Lord, are being transformed into the same image from one degree of glory to another. (2 Cor 3:18)

Seeing that you have put off the old self with its practices and have put on the new self, which is being renewed in knowledge after the image of its creator (Col 3:9-10)

Biblically speaking, Christians are those who have been born again (John 3:1-8) and are now being conformed, transformed, and renewed as image-bearers of our Creator and Savior, Jesus Christ.  But make no mistake, this is not a passive work.  While God forms us, He simultaneously fills us with His Spirit, so that we might have power and desire to live as his children.

And one of the ways we do that is to be peace-makers (Matt 5:9).  In our marriages, schools, workplaces, friendships, and especially in the church, God’s children do not break peace, fake peace, or take peace.  They make peace!  This month, may we together ask God to fill us with us his Spirit so that we might be peace-makers. According to his Word, lets fight to make peace.  In so doing, we show ourselves to be the children of God, children who are day-by-day growing in Christ-likeness.

For His Renown, dss

The Ways of Our God: God’s Order (1)

/ davidsschrock

In The Ways of Our God: An Approach to Biblical Theology, Charles Scobie subdivides his multithematic approach into main four categories: God’s Order; God’s Servant, God’s People, and God’s Way.  Under each banner, he writes five chapters, and today we will consider his first section in his “sketch of biblical theology.”  For sake of space, let me list the headings and provide a few reflections.

  1. The Living God.  Scobie begins with God and His revelation in creation and history.  According to the Scriptures, Scobie argues that God is King, and taking his cue from the Decalogue and the Shema, he outlines his chapter with three concepts that establish “the very core of the OT understanding of God” (107).  These are the self-revelation of God’s Name(s), the unitive oneness of God, and the personal nature of God.  He examines each of these as they are initially proclaimed in the OT and more fully developed in the latter prophets and in the NT.  One of the highlights from this chapter is the way that each section (i.e. Proclamation, Promise, Fulfillment, and Future Consummation–also the framework of every other chapter) concludes with an explanation and affirmation of the Scripture’s canonical development at each stage of revelation.  In a chapter focusing on Theology Proper, he argues for Scripture’s essential role in revealing the one, true, and living God.  Additionally, Scobie emphasizes God’s relationship to both the created order and the historical order–this is expanded in chapters 2-3.
  2. The Lord of Creation.  Scobie writes this chapter out of a concern that biblical theology and recent biblical studies have devalued God’s relationship to creation, and have focused only on God’s role in the historical order.  He illustrates this by referring to those who begin their BT with Exodus and not Genesis; however, as he points out, this misses the way in which the canon is itself telling the story of God as Creator and Redeemer.  Scobie shows convincingly that God loves creation and has made creation for our enjoyment and his glory (cf. John Piper, “The Pleasure of God in His Creation” in The Pleasures of God).  He shows where creation is emphasized in the OT (Gen. 1-11; Pss. 8, 95, 104, 148; Isaiah; and the wisdom literature–Job 38-39; Proverbs 8), and argues that the NT maintains the same view of creation as the OT, only adding Jesus’ instrumental role in its creation and maintenance (John 1:1-3; Col. 1:15-20; Heb. 1:1-3).  He introduces the distinction between apocalyptic eschatology which is alligned with God’s created order and prophetic eschatology which corresponds with redemptive history.  Just as the Bible begins with creation (Gen. 1-2), it ends with new creation (Rev. 20-22), and thus all the Bible is looking forward to the renewal of this fallen world. 

    His concluding application section would make the editors of the “Green Letter Bible” happy; it shows how the Bible does address many environmental concerns, but in a Donald Miller, Blue Like Jazz, sort of way, Scobies goes too far concerning the ways in which consumerist evangelicals have neglected the environment and are in need of confessing our “guilt for the ecological crisis” (186-87).  The ‘guilt’ rests not with Western evangelicals, but with the whole Adamic race. In the end, this chapter is a helpful commentary on what the Bible says about creation and its place in biblical theology.

  3. The Lord of History.  Scobie begins with a cursory review of the books of the Bible, and then proceeds to walk through the stages of redemptive history, before highlighting six ways in which God has worked in history.  These six characteristics of salvation history are (1) divine intervention, (2) [appointing] divinely inspired leadership, (3) salvation & judgment, (4) providence, (5) blessing, (6) and suffering love (198-202).  Scobie does not retain God’s work in history to veiled acts of redemption, though, he also posits that God has worked in history through revealing himself by speaking to his people (202-04).  Thus, redemptive acts of God are only recognized and understood when God also inspires a biblical author to interpret the meaning of the event (i.e. the exodus, the Babylonian exile, or the crucifixion).  The chapter is a helpful summary of salvation history, though he is theologically imprecise when speaking of God’s “suffering love,” a term most often associated with Jurgen Moltmann, and more recently Richard Bauckham, that ascribes suffering to the divinity of the Godhead, instead of assigning suffering to Christ’s humanity.  (For more on this see my post, Can God Suffer?).
  4. The Adversary.  Scobie presents a very balanced survey from the biblical text that walks through the Scriptures highlighting the passages of Scripture that concern the enemies of God, reprobate angels, and Satan himself.  He avoids the two extremes of spiritual warfare fanaticism and the modern mindset that makes the devil a cartoonish fable.  He chastens those who like Greg Boyd attempt to say too much about Satan and are required to import ideas from other Ancient Near Eastern contemporaries.  However, he shows the reality of the demonic realm and of the antichrist.  Like all of his chapters I have read thus far, his biblical content presents a helpful catalog of all the applicable texts on the subject.
  5. The Spirit.  Scobie is open to the continuous presence of miraculous gifts today because there is no hermeneutical reason, he says, to deny their continuation (296).  However, in his explication of this subject, Scobie is unfortunately imprecise and inconsistent.  In one place he states that “Christian baptism confers the gift of the Spirit” (283), yet later as he makes his summary he says “all believers receive the gift of the Spirit when they become Christians” (296).  I guess you could ask, “What makes someone a Christian,” but it seems that he inconsistently attributes the giving of the Spirit to baptism, and blurs the transitional period of Acts with what is now normative in the church today.  Like in chapter 2, Scobie emphasizes the Spirit’s role in and with creation, appealing to the Eastern Ortohodox tradition which includes Psalm 104 in its daily liturgy (295).  He spends little time on the revelation of the Spirit and its inclusion in the Trinity, because as he believes, the Bible gives triadic data but not trinitarian doctrine (297).  On the whole, this chapter shows a developing continuity throughout the Bible for the doctrine of the Spirit, but its synthesis leaves a lot of questions unanswered because of such short statements on things like tongues, the gifts, and the relationship of baptism to the Spirit.

More than a quarter of the way through this massive volume, I am pleased to report that the reading has been edifying and that any serious student of the Bible would be rewarded by reading it.

Sola Deo Gloria, dss

The Trinity in Biblical Theological Perspective: A Mystery without mysterion

/ davidsschrock / 5 Comments

(This is an excerpt from a recent paper I wrote, “The Trinity in the Old Testament: A Present But Elusive Mystery.” It suggests that the development of the Trinity in the Bible follows a mystery-revelation pattern.)

Mystery without mysterion

In his essay entitled “Mystery and Fulfillment” in Justification and Variegated Nomism, vol. 2, D. A. Carson includes a section called “Mystery without mysterion,” where he asserts that the idea of mystery—something hidden now revealed (cf. Matt. 13:10-17, 34-35)—can occur in NT literature in places where the word, mysterion, is not used explicitly.  He suggests this to be the case in fourth gospel where “although John never uses the term mysterion he sometimes provides fresh revelation that has clearly been hidden in time past, but which is some how said to be connected to the very Scriptures in which it has been hidden (e.g. John 2:19-22).”[1]  From this general description, Carson references Philip Kramer’s 2004 dissertation on the subject,[2] and produces four criteria to evaluate mystery-language:  “(1) [the] referent mysterion is the gospel or some part of it; (2) the disclosure of this mystery may be traced, at least in part, to the Christophany Paul experienced on the Damascus Road; (3) the text makes it clear that this mysterion was once hidden but is now revealed; (4) the Old Testament Scriptures constitute the medium in which the mysterion was hidden and by which it is revealed.”[3]  This taxonomy fits very well when applied to the Trinity’s development from the Old Testament into the New Testament. 

First, as John Piper has proclaimed, “God is the Gospel!”[4]  There is no part of the gospel that is not Trinitarian, and each member of the Trinity functions in their unique role to call, atone, and regenerate (cf. Eph. 1:3-14).  Moreover, in the Old Testament, the characteristics ascribed to the Father, the Word of God, the Spirit of God, and the coming Messiah are consistent with the Incarnation and Pentecost.  In other words, what was foretold through types, shadows, and veiled allusions, is now manifest in Jesus and the Spirit.

Second, the Trinity is defined and explained by the life, death, and resurrection of Christ and the arrival of his Spirit.  In fact, without these, the verbal expressions of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit are incomplete, at best.  For instance, the union of three persons is most clear in passages like John 14:16-17 where Jesus says, “I will ask the Father, and He will give you another [of the same kind] Helper…the Spirit of Truth” (cf. John 15:26).  Though Kramer’s criterion delimits the disclosure of the mystery to Paul’s Damascus road experience, this restriction is too narrow.  While it fits his specific subject in Galatians, it should be broadened across the New Testament.  It should be remembered, Paul had a Damascus road experience because he was lacking the necessary apostolic ‘credentials’ that all the other disciples received (cf. Mark 3: 13-14; Acts 1:21-22).[5]  Consequently, the corroborating NT evidence is not isolated to one man’s encounter with Jesus, it is the composite person and work of Jesus Christ that makes sense of the Old Testament in general, and the Trinity, in particular.  In this Augustine was right, “[God’s] grace hid itself under a veil in the Old Testament, but it has been revealed in the New Testament according to the most perfectly ordered dispensation of the ages.”[6]  Therefore, recognizing the Trinity in the OT depends upon NT Christology.[7]

Third, the doctrine of the Trinity was hidden in the OT and revealed in the NT.  While the component parts were scattered throughout the OT, the necessary historical events (i.e. Incarnation and Pentecost) were lacking to make sense of the mysterious pluralities, theophanies, and eschatological promises.  Even into the church age, it took over three centuries to sort out the biblical doctrine of the Trinity and its ontological entailments.  Yet, this should not be surprising.  It is the natural state of affairs with biblical mysteries.  Proverbs 25:2 enlightens us, “It is the glory of God to conceal things, but the glory of kings is to search things out.”  Likewise, 1 Corinthians 2:7 says, “We impart a secret and hidden wisdom of God, which God decreed before the ages for our glory.”  It is the wisdom and glory of God to hide his Triune nature from those without the Spirit, and to reveal himself to those united to Christ—it should not be forgotten that these are NT realities.[8]

Fourth, New Testament authors consistently appeal to the Old Testament to explain the rise of Trinitarian thought, thus proving the mysterious nature of God’s hiddenness and revelation in the OT.  Moreover, traces of the Trinity in the OT are not scant.  Rather, the most illustrious Trinitarian passages in the NT are often dependent upon or giving explanation to OT passages (cf. Matt. 28:18-20 –> Dan. 7:13-14; 2 Chronicles 36:22-23; Num. 6:22-26; John 1:1-18 –> Gen. 1:1; Ex. 19-20; 1 Cor. 8:1-6 –> Deut. 6:4).  Thus it seems that in God’s wise providence he has revealed his Triune nature perfectly and progressively, and as we study his Scripture we have the blessed privilege of seeing his mystery and revelation, ultimately revealed in and through Jesus Christ (John 1:18; Heb. 1:1-2).

Tomorrow, I will post a reflection on these intertextual considerations.    Until then, may we take this Lord’s Day to worship the God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit.

Sola Deo Gloria, dss

[1] D.A. Carson, “Mystery and Fulfillment” in Justification and Varigated Nominianism: The Paradoxes of Paul, vol. 2, ed. D.A. Carson, Peter T. O’Brien, and Mark A. Seifrid (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2004), 424. 

 

[2] Philip Kramer, “Mystery without mystery in Galatians: An examination of the relationship between revelatory language in Galatians 1:11–17 and scriptural references in Galatians 3:6–18, 4:21–31” Ph.D. diss., Trinity Evangelical Divinity School, 2004

 

[3] Carson, “Mystery and Fulfillment,” 425, footnote 91.

 

[4] John Piper, God is the Gospel: Meditations on God’s Love as the Gift of Himself (Wheaton: Crossway Books, 2005).  

 

[5] The requirements outlined by Peter in Acts 1 make more sense in light of this mysterion discussion, that the mysteries of the OT, which foretold the gospel (Gal. 3:8), could only be understood through a comprehensive knowledge of Jesus Christ (cf. Luke 24:25-27, 44-49).  This is complicit with Paul’s apostolic ministry which faithfully expounded the OT Scriptures (cf. Acts 17:2).

 

[6] Augustine, “A Treatise on the Spirit and the Letter” in Anti-Pelagian Writing, Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, American ed., vol. 5 (United States: Christian Literature, 1887; reprint, Peabody, MA: Hendrickson, 2004),  95.

 

[7] Alec Motyer puts it this way, “It was Jesus who came from the outside as the incarnate Son of God, Jesus who was raised from the dead as the Son of God with power, who chose to validate the Old Testament in retrospect and the New Testament in prospect, and who is himself the grand theme of the ‘story-line’ of both Testaments, the focal-point giving coherence to the total ‘picture’ in all its complexities” (Look to the Rock: An Old Testament Background to Our Understanding of Christ [Grand Rapids: Kregel, 1996], 22).

 

[8] For more on the condition of the believer in the OT, see Jim Hamilton, God’s Indwelling Presence.

 

Father, Son, & Holy Spirit by Bruce Ware

/ davidsschrock

trinity_wareIn six biblically-saturated, clearly-articulated chapters, Southern Seminary professor Bruce Ware develops an historical, biblical, and practical look at one of the church’ most mystifying doctrines–the doctrine of the Trinity.  Father, Son, and Holy Spirit is densely packed with biblical data, but clearly outlined to help provided an accessible grip on the uniqueness of each member of the Godhead.

Written at a popular level, Ware argues for unity and diversity, harmony and distinction, authority and submission between the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit.  He follows the Western understanding of the relationship; God is one substance, in three persons; the Father sends the Son, and the Father and the Son (i.e. filioque) send the Spirit.  Ware uncovers the biblical data for these doctrines, but the strength of the book is its attention to application and the direct relationship that the Trinity must have in the church, the home, and in gender relations–hence, the subtitle, Relationships, Roles, & Relevance.

Consider the applications of each chapter:

On the Father: Marvel at the wisdom, goodness, care, and thoroughness of God’s authority; marvel at the perfection of his fatherhood; marvel at the wisdom of his divine delegation; marvel at his unsurpassing supremacy and glory; and look for ways to emulate and incorporate these fatherly traits.  In a world that despises and undermines authority, show gracious servant leadership that sacrifices yourself for those you are responsible to lead or oversee.

On the Son: Marvel at the submission of the Son to the Father for all eternity; marvel at the submission to the Spirit while on the earth; marvel at the relational love between Father and Son.  Personally, I sense this last application whenever I watch, hold, and care for my son.  What a gift that God would let us know the kind of Father-Son intimacy in our own families.

On the Holy Spirit: Be instructed by the Spirit’s humble willingness to participate in the Trinity virtually unnoticed without recognition or overt honor; ponder the willingness of the Spirit to assume authority over the son for a season and then to gladly relinquish that authority when Christ ascended to the right hand of the Father.  Most Christians will never be known, their names never documented by a biography or publicized for their great achievements.  They will be simple people who live lives depending on Jesus life, death, and resurrection.  In this, they are leading exemplary Spirit-filled lives.  I look forward to meeting those men and women. I want to be one of them.

On the Trinitarian Community:  Human relationships model the Triune relationship; the relationality of the Trinity calls for the creation of genuine Spirit-wrought community; the Trinity demonstrate equality in essence and eternal authority-submission that neither demeans nor devalues.  In this, America’s egalitarian church needs to be corrected.  It is wrong thinking to assert leadership and authority equals value.  Children are under their parents authority, but they have the same worth before God.  The authority-submission structure of the Trinity must overrule our culturally-determined proclivities.  Resultantly, husbands and wives must learn from the Trinity how to lead with love and submit with gladhearted respect, and churches must take God at his Word that men are to lead in the church and women are not to teach or have authority over men (cf. 1 Cor 11:4-6; 2 Tim. 2:12-15).  This is not a social construct.  This is a Trinitarian directive. 

In short, Bruce Ware’s book is a great introduction to the Trinity, especially for those who want to see how “Theology Proper” and “speculative” theology impacts our daily lives.  Father, Son, and Holy Spirit shows how the doctrine of the Trinity has everyday relevance and import. 

May we marvel at God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit, and may our minds and lives be transformed accordingly.

Sola Deo Gloria, dss

The iBible (3): Personal Illumination and Incredible Praise

/ davidsschrock / 1 Comment

Personal Illumination: Finally, we arrive at the place where believers read the Bible today, and we must admit that the authenticity of history and the authority of Scripture is not enough to for modern readers to “get” the message. We know this because too many biblical scholars are incredulous agnostics and ardent opponents of the faith. The Scriptures which are “living and active” (Heb. 4:12), must be accompanied by the work of the Spirit in order to be believed. This is process of Spririt-wrought instruction is called illumination.

On the road to Emmaus with two of his disciples, Jesus had to open their eyes in order for them to see all things concerning himself in Scriptures (Luke 24:27, 31), and today Jesus is still opening blinded eyes. Without this spiritual illumination, no one can see to repent and believe (like Lydia in Acts 16). This is the work of regeneration (John 3:3-8) that overcomes the faith-denying blindness of sin and Satan (2 Cor. 4:4). When Paul speaks about this in relation to understanding the Scriptures in 1 Corinthians 2:10-16, he says, “The natural person does no accept the things of the Spirit of God, for they are folly to him, and he is not able to understand them because they are spiritually discerned” (v. 14). However, “[Christians] have received not the spirit of the world, but the Spirit who is from God, that we might understand the things freely given us by God. And we impart this in words not taught by human wisdom but taught by the Spirit, interpreting spiritual truths to those who are spiritual” (v. 12-13).

Consequently, the final stop in God’s process of life-giving revelation is that of personal saving faith accomplished by a divine illumination of our souls. Paul captures this re-creative vision in 2 Corinthians 4:6 when he says, “For God, who said, ‘Let light shine out of darkness,’ has shone in our hearts to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ.” In this way, illumination comes full circle. God who originated the world with a command for light to burst forth from darkness, performs the same miracle in every regenerated soul. At the sound of his voice, we who have ears to hear the gospel of Jesus Christ experience the resurrecting, illuminating experience of new creation (like Lazarus in John 11). The result of this monergistic illumination is that all who have eyes of faith to see will place faith in the message of the gospel which has gone into and is now going to the ends of the earth (cf. Rom 10:13-18). Moreover, walking in this light produces overwhelming joy in the revealed message that was initiated in heaven, sent to earth through divine intervention, inscripturated through years of inspired men preaching and recording the words of God, and deposited in hearts as the illumination of God himself (cf. James 1:18). This leads to one final “I”.

Incredible: Rumination on this process of revelation must result in praise and adoration. Remove anyone of these steps and the gospel would be neutered. Its potency would be lost. Apart from God’s redemptive intervention in space and time, there would be no historic foundation for the faith once delivered to the saints (Jude 3); without the Spirit’s work in the Old Testament (2 Pet. 1:19-21) and the New (cf. 1 Thess 1:5; 2:13; 2 Pet. 3:16; 1 John 4:6; Rev. 22:18-19), there would be no sure word in which we could believe; and without the active work of the Spirit illuminating darkened minds, there would be no regenerative vision that induce cries of “Abba, Father.” For only as the Triune God has planned, personalized, and implanted truth in the hearts of believers, is the effect of the gospel sure to bring about salvation to all those for whom Christ died.

Indeed, the message of Jesus Christand God’s method of revelation is incredible! Accordingly, the responsibility of the church to guard this deposit is immense. From all angles, detractors who would limit the Bible’s inspiration, inerrancy, or its authority must be repudiated (cf. Tit. 1:10-16). For if the Scriptures lose their veracity or their infallibility, then the good news they impart is, at best, damaged and, at worst, destroyed. Tampering with or denying the doctrine of Scripture imperils the gospel and all those who believe it. This is the work of Satan and has been seen in every age of the church. Like all those generations who have shed blood for the Bible’s preservation, we too must fight to protect it—its history, its inspiration, its transmission, and its illumination. Only then can forthcoming generations join with us and praise God for his iBible–inspired, inscripturated, infallible, inerrant, illuminated, and incredible!

Sola Deo Gloria, dss.