Pray for our Holiday Club

Tuesday-Friday 10-12:15

5-11 years of age

Joseph in Egypt.

Thank you!

Why Government should not be involved in Education

I mean any government, not just Stalinists masquerading as 'social democrats'.

http://www.lambdassociates.org/blog/decline.htm

This is terrifying. I think it's probably true as well. 2 examples:

1) A friend of mine lectures in Classics at the University of Exeter, which is, according to the government, one of the top classics institutions in the country. He says he has final year students, who will get 2:1s or even Firsts, to whom he would not even give an O-Level pass if it was up to him.

2) I compare my two degree courses. I read History at Oxford, and was awarded an academic scholarship. I also read Theology at Oak Hill Theological College (an associate college of Middlesex University).
If I told you that for one of these degrees I did approximately 18 hours work a week, which I could have done in my sleep, and for the other, I did about 40 hours a week, much of which was mind-bendingly tough, you would probably guess the wrong way round.
Guess which institution has the least government involvement?

Of course it all stands to reason. If 50 years of state education has produced such hopelessly-equipped school leavers, it's not fair to punish them for governments' failings. Obviously, universities must be dumbed down too.

Anyone for Fudge?

That's right. The US House of Bishops has spoken, and what a clever bunch they are.

See here for their statement.

Here for Church Society's response.

Here for more links.

Markan Son Sandwich

Preparing a study on Mark 1:1-13.

Helpful stuff from the Revd Matthew Mason on John's dress and diet.

In vv. 9-13 it looks like we have a sandwich, one of Mark's favourite items of food.

In v. 9, Jesus is baptised. Strange! This is a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins (v. 4), so Jesus doesn't need that. Perhaps he is identifying with Israel from the off. He is becoming Israel, and in bearing Israel's sin, he needs this baptism.

In v. 12 he is driven out into the wilderness for 40 days to be tempted by Satan. Sounds familiar! Jesus is again Israel, but whereas they succumbed to temptation in 40 years of wilderness, Jesus is faithful in 40 days.

In the middle, the Father announces, "You are my Son, whom I love; with you I am well pleased." A parallel and contrast to Ex 4:22, Israel God's firstborn son, who turns out not to be terribly pleasing.

This goes with the quotes from Mal 3 and Isa 40 in Mark 1:2 to portray Jesus as the faithful Israel restored from exile.

As requested

As Michael has requested in response to the last post, the best I can do at the moment is to direct you to David Field's various links and posts. Many are deliberately provocative, and I suspect some (including Michael) will not appreciate the tone, but the substance is, I find, persuasive.

Welfare is all part of my forthcoming posts on taxation and the place of the state (after October half-term), though Jam has some useful starters.

Michael, thank you for your patience, as you endure my passing remarks without yet seeing my full rationale.

Chuffed...

Yes, just 3 months into ministry and I've got my first letter published in the Church Times!

Sadly you need to be a subscriber to view it online. It was a response to a scurrilous attack by Stephen Bates against Christian Reconstructionism (and lots of other people he doesn't like).

A couple at church yesterday morning mentioned they'd seen my letter "in Jezebel's Trumpet". Nice!

After advice from my esteemed colleagues, here it is:

Sir,

Having enjoyed William Whyte’s review of The Expansion of Evangelicalism, it was ironic then to read Stephen Bates on the Religious Right. Whyte observes that “Evangelicalism was not homogenous.” Mr. Bates then proceeds to lump together Christian Reconstructionism, tele-evangelists, the Republican Party, unfortunate examples of evangelical hypocrisy, and Evangelicals generally.

To consider just one of these, even within Christian Reconstructionism, there is diversity. There are different attitudes to the legal status of other faiths. There are different applications of Old Testament Law to the judicial system. No Reconstructionist expects this to happen in 20 years, as Mr. Bates seems to suggest. Postmillenial in outlook, Reconstructionists expect this sort of state to be possibly centuries in the making. Further, the growing movement of ecclesial rather than political Reconstructionists expect this will take place as a result of large-scale Christian conversion, within the democratic process, not to be enforced by some coup d’etat.

Finally, Mr. Bates attacks the focus on homosexuality rather than divorce or poverty. If he would read the work of Jordan, Leithart, Wilson, Bahnsen et al., he would find that fidelity in marriage, love for your wife, care for your family, takes up considerably more space than any discussions of homosexuality.

He would also find that the opposition of the Institute for Christian Economics and others to state intervention, welfare and ‘fair’ trade, which he may mistake for unconcern for the poor, is prompted by a thoroughgoing desire to follow biblical (and therefore truly effective) means for the alleviation of poverty.

Yours faithfully,
Neil Jeffers

So much to read...

How in parish ministry can one keep reading a good range of books, which aren't directly related to sermon study?

One way might be to set myself a ridiculously ambitious target. So here's a list of books I'm aiming to read/re-read in the next, what shall we say, two years (grouped for convenience):

Biblical Studies
J. B. Jordan, Through New Eyes

Covenant Theology
O. P. Robertson, The Christ of the Covenants

H. Witsius, The Economy of the Covenants Between God and Man

Ecclesiology
T. Bradshaw, The Olive Branch

E. P. Clowney, The Church

P. J. Leithart, The Kingdom and the Power

J. M. Frame, Worship in Spirit and Truth

J. J. Meyers, The Lord’s Service

Soteriology
J. Edwards, The Freedom of the Will

R. B. Gaffin, Resurrection and Redemption

J. Murray, Redemption Accomplished and Applied

J. Owen, The Death of Death in the Death of Christ

Preaching
R. Bewes, Speaking in Public Effectively

S. Greidanus, The Modern Preacher and the Ancient Text

J. Hughes, Expository Preaching with Word Pictures

H. W. Robinson, Expository Preaching

Ethics
G. L. Bahnsen, Theonomy in Christian Ethics

W. G. Strickland ed., Five Views on Law and Gospel

O. M. T. O’Donovan, Resurrection and Moral Order

O. M. T. O’Donovan, The Desire of the Nations

V. S. Poythress, The Shadow of Christ in the Law of Moses

J. M. Frame, Medical Ethics

Family
D. Wilson, For a Glory and a Covering

R. K. &. B. Hughes, Disciplines of a Godly Family

N. Piper, Treasuring God in our Traditions

D. Wilson, Future Men

Counselling
J. Adams, Competent to Counsel


Wish me luck!

If I hear one more person say...

... that the Jubilee is about political economy and the redistribution of wealth, I shall point them very forcefully to this excellent comment and indeed to everything Ros has ever written to do with the land (or anything else, as Ros's work is always insightful, heart-warming and, of course, carefully distinguished).

Poetic justice

Preaching on Exodus 12 this Sunday as the first in a series on penal substitution in the OT (contra Steve Chalke et al.).

How beautiful the justice of the Passover is.

In Exodus 1:16, the Egyptians have sought the death of every son born to Israel.

In 4:22, we discover that the Israel Pharaoh has been oppressing is God's "firstborn son". We also have a forewarning of the Passover in 4:23.

In the Passover, every house in Egypt loses its firstborn son, while the firstborn sons of the firstborn son (Israel) are delivered by God's provision of a blood substitute.

Notice the mercy as well. In retribution for 1:16, God could quite fairly have killed every son of Egypt. He chose only to kill the firstborn.

What a just and merciful God we serve!

Pre-Holiday Rant

Off on holiday to take James to the land of his fathers (Ulster).

No posting until September.

So let me just get this off my chest.

John Redwood, in the process of defending his proposals for abolishing inheritance tax (hurrah!) argued that he wants to "tax the rich more as well." What he meant was: free people from silly taxes which disincentivise productivity (like inheritance tax), let them produce more wealth, and then of course they will pay more income tax.

Whatever one thinks of the detail, why the nasty rhetoric. Modern political consensus is that the rich must be bled dry. Why? Do they receive a higher level of service for their greater contribution? No. Do they receive thanks and the plaudits of society for their generous (enforced) giving? No. Do they have a covenantal/familial duty to provide for the rest of the population of their nation-state? No.

Two possibilities:

1. Christians read 1 Tim 6:18 and wrongly arrogate that to the state. No. If the rich are miserly and trust in their wealth, God will call them to account. Not every sin is a crime.
2. The politics of envy. You're rich, I'm not. It's not fair (Rubbish. It's not equal - equality and fairness are not the same thing). You must have come by your wealth by some shady means. You must be punished for being rich.

Neither is right. So, politicians, lay off the wealth-producing, job-creating, service-providing, non-welfare-dependent rich for a bit, why don't you?

Predestination and Human Choice

So many (both opponents and supporters of predestination) struggle to maintain both God's complete sovereignty and man's complete responsibility.

Part of the problem is that it is treated as a zero-sum game. If God's got 100% of the control, then man has nothing left.

J. K. S. Reid, who is by no means infallible (he is worryingly Barthian in many places), makes this devastatingly brilliant observation in his Introduction to his translation of Calvin's Concerning the Eternal Predestination of God. Read it frequently and carefully - it is dense and complicated, but brilliant.

Philosophically, when we deal with the relation of a finite magnitude to a greater but also finite magnitude, the independence of the one is conserved only at the expense of the other; when we deal with a really infinite magnitude and its relation to a finite magnitude, this is no longer the case. Theologically, God is not simply the magnification of man, and His qualities are not simply the qualities of man increased to the power of n. If this were true of Him, then predetermination would be merely determination on a greater, grander scale, and there would be even less hope of securing the independence of the finite magnitude which man is. But just because He is really infinite, the Predestination of which He is the author does not rob man of his independence and therefore of his responsibility.

The Unmerciful Servant

I have found Don Carson's EBC Commentary on Matthew to be variable in quality, largely I think due to the limits of the series. However, on the Parable of the Unmerciful Servant in Matt 18, it is full of insight.

Note:

1. Jesus' hyperbole (humour?). The first slave owes 10,000 talents, possibly around 1 billion dollars in contemporary value. Clearly, no master would allow a servant to run up this sort of debt, even if the servant was a "high-ranking imperial civil servant." The story is not meant to be 'realistic.' It demonstrates the incomparable magnitude of man's debt to God.
2. The second servant owes a significant debt. 100 denarii was probably 100 days' wages for a soldier or labourer. In one sense, the first servant might be rightly angry at not being paid back, if he himself had not just been forgiven a ridiculously sized debt.
3. The first servant abuses his position. "Even an inexpensive slave sold for five hundred denarii, and it was illegal to sell a man for a sum greater than his debt." Yet this is what happens.
4. In v. 34, the first servant is handed over not to the jailers (NIV), but to torturers, until he pays back what he owes. We've already seen that he will never be able to do that. Let the reader understand, he is being handed over to be tortured for ever.

Thank you, Don. Now I just have to put it into a sermon!

Thank you Father for such astonishing love; thank you Jesus for accomplishing such forgiveness; thank you Holy Spirit for calling me to receive it.

All off to Heathrow?

NB: I am not a scientist!



As a balanced response to this, take a look at a variety of links, thoughts and articles from David Field.

Is the Church of England hierarchy really anti-evangelical?

Answer: Yes.

To see the disturbing results of the survey conducted by the Association of Ordinands and Candidates of Ministry (AOCM) during my Chairmanship, click http://www.aocm.org.uk/ and click on the link at the bottom of the page.

Is darkness neutral?

Last week on camp we did Bible studies in Genesis 1-3 and Revelation 22.

Following my previous post, let me highlight that this is a tentative suggestion.

For the first time I noticed the disruption in the pattern "And God saw that it was good." Usually, this phrase summarises God's judgement on a whole series of creative acts (1:10, 12, 18, 21, 25).

In 1:3, if it anticipated the other instances we might expect, "God called the light 'day', and the darkness he called 'night'. And God saw that it was good." But, the phrase comes earlier. Specifically, we are told that light is good, but we are told nothing evaluative about darkness. What do we make of this?

Is it the case that darkness is bad? Can anything in God's original creation be bad? I doubt we would be comfortable saying this.

Is darkness neutral? Is anything morally neutral? Again, I feel uncomfortable with this.

Is darkness less good? Perhaps. In 1:2, we have darkness and no light. I assume, though we're not told, that creation is good even in its formless and dark state. But the clear message of Genesis 1-2 is that order and form and fullness are better than disorder and emptiness. Just as creation without man is good, but with man, it is very good, perhaps we may say, creation with light is better, more good, than without?

Of course, the new creation has no darkness at all (Rev 22:5).

In biblical theology, darkness (John 3:19) comes to be wicked, through association with sin and contrast with light. Must that mean darkness is bad in the beginning?

Thoughts please?

Disciplines of a Godly Blogger

You may be familiar with Kent and Barbara Hughes' terrifying books:

Disciplines of a Godly Man
Disciplines of a Godly Woman
Disciplines of a Godly Family

They are immensely challenging, and helpfully highlight that true freedom and true discipline are companions rather than opponents.

As I embark on the blog, I thought it would be helpful to me to lay down some blogging disciplines, most of which are plain, Spirit-wrought Christian virtues (in no particular order).

1. Aim to edify believers and/or evangelise unbelievers with every post.
2. Assume everyone is reading. Tim Keller says of church services that they should speak to the Christian, assuming that the unbeliever is listening in. So a blog may address a particular audience, but with the awareness that anyone can and may read it.
3. Avoid personal attacks. If they are justified on rare occasions, don't say what you wouldn't say to someone's face.
4. Don't criticise someone or something you wouldn't criticise elsewhere.
5. A blog post is not a journal article or doctoral thesis. Therefore, ideas which are not fully-researched are legitimate. However, speculative, uncertain thoughts should be flagged as such to the reader.

That'll do for now.

Distingu-what?

An odd name to launch on the blogosphere. Where does it come from?

Dorothy L. Sayers, in her 1947 lecture in Oxford, "The Lost Tools of Learning" comments on the oft-mocked question of how many archangels could dance on the point of a needle:

Scorn in plenty has been poured out upon the mediaeval passion for hair-splitting; but when we look at the shameless abuse made, in print and on the platform, of controversial expressions with shifting and ambiguous connotations, we may feel it in our hearts to wish that every reader and hearer had been so defensively armored [sic] by his education as to be able to cry: "Distinguo."

[HT: David Field]

Distinguo is simply the Latin for "I distinguish." More than anything, my training at Oak Hill taught me that many questions could be answered, many controversies reconciled, and many heresies avoided, if only we approached questions with careful distinctions. This is true of the whole of life, not just theology (though, of course, theology properly understood is the whole of life).

I hope my posts, and readers' comments (yes, all three of you), will always cry "Distinguo."