World of Fridays

Breaking Election News

This just in…No matter who wins the election, Jesus will still be King.

Just thought a little perspective would be helpful.

The Long-Awaited NT Wright Interview

NT Wright is an insightful and somewhat controversial New Testament scholar. His views on the so-called New Perspective on Paul, and its implications for the doctrine of justification, have drawn criticism from many circles. At the same time, however, many thoroughly orthodox pastors and theologians have found Wright’s writings to be a breath of fresh air.

In all the debate surrounding his views, it seems like it has taken way to long for some basic questions to be asked and answered. I have no idea why it has taken so long to for someone to simply ask him some very basic questions, but Trevin Wax finally did:

Trevin Wax: You have said in many of your books that justification is not how one becomes a Christian but a declaration that one is a Christian. What language do you use to explain how one becomes a Christian?

N.T. Wright: Let’s be clear about this because many Christians in the evangelical tradition use words like “conversion,” “regeneration,” “justification,” “born-again,” etc. all as more or less synonyms to mean “becoming a Christian from cold.” In the classic Reformed tradition, the word “justification” is much more fine-tuned than that and has to do with a verdict which is pronounced, rather than with something happening to you in terms of actually being born again. So that I’m actually much closer to some classic Reformed writing on this than some people perhaps realize.

Let me put it like this. In Paul (and this is really a Pauline conversation, after all), what happens is that the word of the gospel is announced. That is to say, Jesus Christ is proclaimed – one-on-one or in a large meeting or out on the street or whatever, and even though that message is crazy (and Paul knows it’s crazy; he says it’s folly to Gentiles and a scandal to Jews), some people find that it grabs them and they believe it. This is bizarre. I shouldn’t be believing this. A dead man got raised from the dead and he’s the Lord of the world. I really shouldn’t believe this, but it does make sense. And it finds me and I can feel it changing me. Paul’s analysis of that is that this is the power of the word (he has a strong theology of the word), and another equal way of saying it for Paul is that this is the Holy Spirit working through the gospel. He says, no one can say that Jesus Christ is Lord except by the Holy Spirit.

So, the Holy Spirit is the One who through the Word does the work of grace which is the transformative thing, and the first sign of that new life is faith.

Now then, the point of justification is not God making you right. The irony is that some of my critics at this point have accused me of a sort of semi-Pelagianism. But that’s precisely what I think I’m not doing. The verdict of justification is God saying over faith, “This really is my beloved child.”

Now part of the difficulty we face is that because different Christian traditions have used the word “justification” to denote either different stages within that process or sometimes the whole process itself. (Hans Kung’s book on justification is really a book on how to be a Christian from start to finish. And so for him, justification means the entire process: from being a total pagan to being a finally saved Christian, and that’s really not helpful in Pauline terms, but there’s been a lot of slippage.) So when people say, “he says that justification is this, but I’ve always thought it was that” it’s probably because we’re denoting a different point in the process.

My only agenda here is to be as close as I can possibly get to what Paul actually says. And I really don’t care too much what the different later Christian traditions say. My aim is to be faithful to Scripture here.

Read the whole interview here.

To summarize…
What is the gospel? The declaration that Christ is lord.
What is justification? The declaration that a person is in the right as far as God is concerned. This is God’s future verdict, which is brought forward into the present.
How does a person become a Christian? By responding to the proclamation of the gospel with faith. But, technically speaking, this is not the same thing as justification, which is God’s declaration.

I haven’t read any of Wright’s academic works or his works on the NPP, so I may be missing something, but all that he says in this interview sounds pretty darn orthodox to me.

My Hermeneutic

I recall having an interview a number of years ago for an internship at a youth group in which the youth group pastor told me he had about 5 passages of the Bible that he used as a hermeneutic to interpret the Bible. At the time I thought it was kind of a strange idea. But now, several years later, I would like to revise that opinion, for I have arrived at such a position myself.

A hermeneutic is a way of interpreting or explaining (in this case) the Bible. It is not so much a method as a framework or grid or point(s) of reference against which to interpret a specific passage. Everybody has a hermeneutic, whether or not they know it, so it’s a good idea to be conscious of what one’s hermeneutic is. Here’s mine…

• Luke 24:27 – “And beginning with Moses and all the Prophets, he interpreted to them in all the Scriptures the things concerning himself.” 
This passages teaches that the purpose of all of Scripture is to point us to Christ, not to teach behavioural principles, etc. Scripture is the story of God’s work in redeeming his fallen creation, and central to this story is the redemptive work of Jesus.
• Galatians 2:14 – “But when I saw that their conduct was not in step with the truth of the gospel, I said to Cephas before them all, ‘If you, though a Jew, live like a Gentile and not like a Jew, how can you force the Gentiles to live like Jews?’” This passage teaches that the real problem in our lives is our failure to believe the gospel. When Peter was being a racist, Paul doesn’t tell him to stop breaking the no-racism rule; Paul tells him he is not living in line with the gospel. This means that underlying every sin is the deeper sin of failure to live in line with the gospel. The implication is that the way to deal with sin in our lives is not to try harder to do what is right, but to come to a deeper understanding of the gospel.
• Jeremiah 17:9 – “The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately sick; who can understand it?” 
This passage tells me that I will always try to trick myself into believing that I can be my own saviour. Because of this, it is not enough to simply explain what a passage of Scripture means; it also has to be applied to the experiential issues of identity and self-perception.
• 1 Corinthians 1:18 – “For the word of the cross is folly to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God.” Here we see the radical antithesis between a gospel-centred worldview and the worldview of the unbeliever. This means that as Christians live lives in response to the gospel, they do so in a distinctly Christian way. This also means that there is no neutral ground between Christians and non-Christians from which we can reason about the existence of God and the truth of the Bible.
• 2 Corinthians 5:21 – “God made him who had no sin to be sin for us, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.” 
I can never get enough of this verse. It teaches that the entirety of Christ’s life and death were substitutionary. He lived the life I can’t, and died the death I deserve, and I receive the credit. Righteousness is not a word that is used much today, at least not in positive terms. But the concept of righteousness in Scripture is all about acceptance. Everyone today is looking for acceptance. This verse teaches that we are accepted by the God of the universe, not because of anything we have done, but because of Christ. This means that our acceptance is deeper than anything we could have earned ourselves, and, because Christ’s work is done, it means our acceptance will not erode or pass away.

Taken as a whole, these passages provide a framework for interpreting any passage of Scripture. Every passage is pointing to the redemptive work of God in Christ. Every passage uncovers some area of sin in my life, and points me to the gospel to find healing and acceptance with God. Because my heart is deceitful, I will often devise ways to obey the Bible which rest upon my own pride, not on God’s grace, and being aware of this deep-rooted tendency makes me even more aware of my need for a Saviour. When I respond in obedience to God’s grace I should not be proud of what I have managed to accomplish, because I know that change is a gradual process by which God’s grace wears away at the areas of my life that have not been fully redeemed.

Obviously, this is not an exhaustive account of what these five verses teach, nor is it a complete disclosure of all the background I bring to the task of interpreting a passage of Scripture. However, what this framework provides is, 1) a pretty good idea of what a particular passage of the Bible is saying as I begin to study it, and 2) a safety net, so that if my interpretation and application is not in line with what I have said here, I know I have veered off course, and need to take another look.

2008 Reading List

Here are several books I want to read this year. Invariably I will not get to all of them, and will read many that are not on the list. I’m keeping a list of books I read throughout the year, and thought it would be interesting to make a companion list of books I want to read, and compare them at the end. So, books I want to read in 2008…

1. Lesslie Newbigin, The Gospel in a Pluralist Society. It’s kind of cheating to put this on the list, since I’m about 4 chapters away from finishing, but I’ve wanted to read this for years, and have thoroughly enjoyed it thus far.
2. John Piper, Desiring God. I’ve had this on my shelf for years. I have a feeling I won’t love it the way many do, but I have been pondering the concept of “Christian hedonism” for a while, and am curious to see what Piper says.
3. Tim Keller, The Reason for God: Belief in an Age of Skepticism. No explanation necessary.
4. Abraham Kuyper, Lectures on Calvinism. Again, this is cheating, because I’m reading this with a friend with whom I have breakfast every week. But this is another that has been on my reading list for a long time, so I’m eager to get to it.
5. Cornelius Plantinga, Not the Way It’s Supposed to Be. I read this a couple of years ago and have wanted to reread it since.
6. David Bosch, Transforming Mission. Another that has been working its way to the top of the list for a while.
7. N.T. Wright, The New Testament and the People of God. I own the first 3 volumes in Wright’s Christian Origins series, and have not read more than the introduction of any of them. They are massive! So I figure getting through volume 1 would be a good goal for the year.

Well, I’ll leave it at that. I’m sure I’m leaving something out that I’ll want to add later.

Welcome

Hello, and welcome to my blog.

My name is Bryce. I am a Christian, husband, father and pastor. I currently live in Pasadena, CA.

I am starting this blog to encourage myself to reflect thoughtfully on life. I will write about issues related to Christianity, the gospel, mission, books, film, culture, ministry, justice, and whatever else occurs to me.

My writing is biased, and incomplete; at times sarcastic, self-deprecating and critical; hopefully insightful, redemptive and winsome.

Please stick around, check back often, and join in the discussion.