I’m reading and thinking through Matthew’s gospel at the minute and it’s quite obvious that the concept of the kingdom of heaven is one of the key emphases of his book. Even at the very start, Jesus is introduced to the reader as the Messiah, the son of David. There is no doubt that the stage is being set for the introduction of one who is a King. The King is born in accordance with ancient prophecy and even the Jewish leaders recognise that the future King of Israel will be born in Bethlehem. He is preceded by a herald called John who announced to the nation that the kingdom of heaven has come near and that they must repent in preparation for the kingdom. So far so good. But this kingdom… what is it? For many years I simply assumed that this was some sort of “spiritual kingdom” which had no physical manifestation. But as I read various literature I discovered that such a view made nonsense of a Scriptural view of this kingdom.

Alva McClain in his excellent work, “The Greatness of the Kingdom”, describes eight distinct views on what the kingdom is. Such variety is a testimony to the confusion which exists as to this important doctrine.

The first is the National Kingdom Idea which is primarily a Jewish idea which identifies the kingdom of God with the nation of Israel. Then there is the Celestial Kingdom Idea which suggests that the kingdom of God refers to the reign of God in heaven. The Ecclesiastical Kingdom view identifies the Church with God’s kingdom. This view was espoused by the Roman Catholic Church and seems to be still the popular view despite dissent from certain theologians such as Hans Kung. This view then spread into Protestantism during its formation and was espoused in a sense by various Reformers. The Spiritual Kingdom view refers to the idea that the kingdom is God’s rule in the heart’s of people. It is an idea of the kingdom which makes it a soteriological concept. This view distinguishes between the Church and the kingdom but believes that the Church is one of the most effective ways for the establishment of this kingdom on earth. Then, the Moral Kingdom view is the idea that the kingdom of God is the moral rule of God over humankind. However this idea is drawn mainly from the philosopher Immanuel Kant. The Liberal Social-Kingdom view sees the kingdom as the “progressive social organisation and improvement of mankind”. The Modern Eschatological-Kingdom view, as McClain called it, is perhaps not so modern anymore and was propounded by liberal theologians such as Albert Schweitzer who argued that Christ’s concept of the kingdom was a literal kingdom which he intended to establish on earth but apparently Jesus’ expectations of the second coming were not fulfilled and he then began to arrange to get himself executed.

That’s seven of the views so far. But there’s another one. This is what McClain calls the Millennial Kingdom view. This is the view that sees the kingdom of God as a literal kingdom which will be established on earth for a thousand years. I contend that this view is the Biblical one.

These eight views however, are not mutually exclusive. G.E. Ladd in some very influential writings among evangelical circles, believed a combination of the Spiritual Kingdom view and the Millennial Kingdom view. He suggested that the kingdom offered by Jesus was a spiritual one while still maintaining that there would be a literal millennial kingdom (although he did waver on whether or not the kingdom would last for precisely a thousand years or instead, a long time).

In my next post I’ll talk about why I think the Millennial kingdom view is the one most often presented in Scripture and indeed, the one offered by the Lord Jesus Christ to the nation of Israel. Having said that, the Scriptures do sometimes speak of the rule of God presently in various ways and at some stage I’ll take a look at some relevant passages.

Perhaps this has been available before now but today I noticed that bible.org have a large collection of literature by John Walvoord online. This should be worth reading.

http://www.bible.org/author.php?author_id=224&scid=0 

It’s been way too long since my last post. I apologise for that. However, now that exams are over I should have more time to read, think and blog.

Over the past few days I’ve been thinking about the importance of expository preaching. Expository preaching is, quite simply, preaching the word of God verse by verse and chapter by chapter. It’s the type of preaching actually that recognises that God didn’t give us verses - God gave us books. And expository preaching realises that these books have valuable messages that need to be conveyed to today’s world. Topical preaching is quite different from expository preaching. Now I appreciate the great value of topical preaching and in no way do I suggest that it is a bad practice but it can become easy in topical preaching to pick verses out of context and mix them together to support one’s predetermined theology. In expository preaching, it isn’t as easy to do that because the preacher becomes aware of the need to see each sentence in its context. Expository preaching then, is simply preaching the word of God through each of the different books that God has given us.

Why have I been thinking about this? Well, when I have been looking at a few different churches recently I have been struck by the absence of expository preaching. Instead it is replaced by messages with a few verses thrown in for good measure. But I don’t want to go to church to hear what some person thinks I need to hear - I want to go to church and hear the voice of God. I want to know that fellow believers will bring to me the word of God. It’s not that I simply want to go to church and be fed and give nothing back. It’s not that. But I want to be part of a community of believers who appreciate the need for the sharing of God’s word among each other. And that’s something that’s hard to find. When I meet with other believers I want to find encouragement. Perhaps at other times I need to be rebuked. But when I seek encouragement, I want to be encouraged from the word of God. When I need to be challenged or rebuked, I want to hear it from God. So when I see a church that has become accustomed to giving God’s word second place, it makes me sad. And it makes me sad to see that so many churches have displaced the priority of God’s word and instead have devoted their attention to preaching their own messages.

So I’m still searching…

I just thought I should say Merry Christmas to everyone! Have a great time with your friends and family and above all, let us take time to remember the Lord Jesus Christ “who, though he was in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, but made himself nothing, taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men. And being found in human form, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross. Therefore God has highly exalted him and bestowed on him the name that is above every name, so that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.” That God should take upon himself humanity and be born in a feeding trough so that he could ultimately go to the cross to redeem us is something that takes my breath away.

Blessings,

Andrew

It was largely through the writings of Brevard Childs at Yale University in the 1980s that a new approach to Scripture developed. Then, as now, the Scriptures were often viewed through the lenses of redaction criticism, source criticism, form criticism and so on, but while such approaches might carry with them an aura of scholarship and intellectual rigor, they had little or no value for the Church. The community of faith largely could not benefit from these approaches to Scripture no matter how valid or invalid they are. Childs and others who recognised this, while not discarding the old critical methodology, chose to read the Scriptures in a different way. What they realised was that the Scriptures, as we have them today, are of value in their present form having been arranged and recorded for the edification of future generations of believers. This approach came to be known generally as canonical criticism and it emphasised the unity of the books of the Bible and indeed the entire Bible itself. Rather than reading the Bible atomistically, canonic critics read the Bible as a collection of carefully arranged books that carried a message not only to their original audiences, but to all future generations for whom the books had been collected and preserved.

It’s something that the evangelical community has recognised to an extent for a long time but I find that there are still important lessons that we can learn from canonical criticism. Put it this way, even to this day I can pick up books and commentaries that argue that some books of the Bible have little or no structure. The canon critic, due to his assumptions that the book has been carefully arranged and that it is a unity, will think twice before arriving at such a conclusion. Perhaps it is more a testimony to a writers ignorance of the structure of a Biblical text when he reaches the conclusion that it has little or no structure, than it is to anything else. Thus I find that the canon critics’ approach to Scriptures is one which we ought, perhaps, to consider carefully. Consider for example, the book of the Psalms. The introduction of form criticism (basically this is categorising literature into different types) of the Psalms by scholars such as Mowinckel, has led many scholars to treat the Psalms rather atomistically. Consider even Fee and Stuart’s comments on the Psalms in “How to Read the Bible for All Its Worth”. Stuart outlines how each of the different Psalms can be considered as a different types including Lament Psalms, Thanksgiving Psalms, Hymns of Praise, and so on and even though he warns that “the Psalms [i.e. the individual psalms] are to be treated as wholes, not atomized into single verses or thought of… as so many pearls on a string”, Stuart fails to treat the structure of the Psalter itself with any great significance. Rather, each Psalm is taken separately with little relationship to the other. But are there not some clear indications within the Psalter itself that it is a carefully organised book? Why does the book of Psalms have five divisions? Why does the Psalter open with a Psalm that functions almost like a prologue for the whole book? Psalm 1 opens with the contrast between the righteous and the wicked. The wicked will be destroyed by Yahweh while the righteous will be preserved by him. The second Psalm then introduces the Lord’s Son who stands as Yahweh’s representative on the earth. He is the epitome of the righteous man in Psalm 1 while the wicked are those who refuse to submit to God’s anointed king. And so, just as the way of the wicked will be destroyed in Psalm 1:6, the ways of those who refuse to kiss God’s son will be destroyed in Psalm 2:12. Psalm 2 introduced the theme of opposition to the Davidic king but Psalm 3 makes this more explicit when David cries out to help from Yahweh as he flees from his own son. I could continue on doing this and trying to link each of the Psalms together thematically as indicated by the repetition of both keys thoughts and expressions but I just want to illustrate that maybe the Psalms contain more than what commonly meets the eye. Maybe there is a structure to these Psalms that we have missed very often. Also, the titles of the Psalms? Stuart dismisses them as non-canonical but perhaps this is too hasty. The canon critic will respect these titles and will understand them to be a significant feature of the text that needs to be integrated into the understanding of the text.

While I am very fond of a more canonical approach to Scripture, there is always the charge of eisegesis (reading into the text our own ideas). At what stage does canonically reading Scripture cease to be a valid exegetical approach? Are some of these structures in the Biblical text more in the eye of the beholder than in the text itself? This is an important question and one that I find hard to answer. But overall, I think that the canonical approach to Scripture is one which ought to make us think more carefully about the structure and unity of the Biblical text than we frequently have.

If you’re interested, have a listen to Gordon Wenham’s lectures on the Psalms: 1) Reading the Psalms Ethically, 2) Reading the Psalms Messianically, and 3) Reading the Psalms Canonically. He talks quite a bit about the canonical approach in each of the lectures and I found them rather enlightening. Certainly, they have stimulated my thinking about this whole issue.

So what does everybody think about it all?

Jeremy has tagged me to reveal seven lesser-known things about myself! Tricky, tricky thing to do! Here goes:

1) I have a passion for photography! I’ve worked my way up from a film compact through film SLRs through digital compacts until my present pride and joy (Nikon D50 Digital SLR). Sadly though, I haven’t been taking many photos recently because the weathers a bit dull and besides, my fingers would get frozen! But when I get out with my camera it is wonderful! It justs makes you look at the world in a very careful way. You begin to notice things that you never notice otherwise… the texture on a leaf, the colours reflected on still water, the subtle variations in colour in the trees in a wood… it’s good!

2) Like Jeremy, I love reading but buy more books than I can read! Nothing beats sitting down with a nice mug of coffee and a good theology book. Now I do enjoy reading novels but they become problematic when they are wildly interesting… it simply means that I fail to do anything else but sit and read for hours and hours! So they tend to get relegated to holidays only! But books are good. At the minute I’m enjoying Eugene Merrill’s latest book, “Everlasting Dominion: A Theology of the Old Testament” and it’s fascinating!

3) I love computers and technology! For a while I dabbled in programming with C, C++, Java and more recently VB.NET but with school behind me it hasn’t received very much attention. Linux used to run on my other hard drive but with the steady encroachment of large files I felt the need to abandon it and defect to using Windows as my main Operating System. Ah well.

4) A passion for coffee needs to go in here somewhere. Where would the world be without coffee? I investigated the other day whether Starbucks make a better Latte than the local coffee shop (Clements) but to my deep sorrow, the Starbucks coffee was emphatically not as good as the one from Clements. The Starbucks one didn’t have much froth in it and it also tasted a bit weaker (despite the fact that I ordered an extra shot of espresso in it - as I always do!). So I’ve concluded that I shall hereafter buy my coffee from Clements.

5) One thing I really don’t like is verses… and chapters. Really! I remember the old days when most Bibles were printed with each verse printed on a new line as if it was a different paragraph. What were they thinking? There is no doubt in my mind that such a practice is destructive and damaging to the way many people read the Bible. Fortunately some Bibles printed the verses normally and shrank the size of the horrid verse numbers. That was nice for a while but I couldn’t help but think how nice it would be if I could simply read the Bible without numbers sticking all over it and subject headings splashed through the text. Fortunately the kind people at IBS have commenced the Books of the Bible Project in which they print the Bible as plain, paragraphed, single-column text. And it’s so refreshing to read! I love my copy! I know we need verses sometimes for referencing things but I sometimes wonder if we might be better off without them a lot of the time.

6) I have four lovely sisters aged from 6 to 17. They’re wonderful and keep life about the house full of activity!

7) Last but not least, I am afflicted with the awful curse of procrastination! I’ve got a lab report due on Friday but I suppose most of the work will be done on it on Thursday! I’ll need to work on fixing my procrastination!

I think I have to tag three people now, so I’ll choose:

• Rose from Rose’s Reasonings
• Ender from Absolutely Free Grace
• Matthew the Dyspraxic Fundamentalist

God bless,

Andrew

As always, I enjoyed reading the latest issue of Grace In Focus (the newsletter from the Grace Evangelical Society) but it was  Bob Wilkin’s article on the Bereans that really caught my attention. In the article (which will probably appear on the GES website soon), Wilkin uses the examples of the Bereans to show how we should approach Scripture. Rather than simply arguing for tradition for tradition’s sake, we should diligently search the Scriptures to find out what they say.

The article made me think about my own approach to Scripture and how it is sometimes flawed. One truth that has repeatedly came into my mind over the recent days is the fact that no matter what I believe, my belief will not change anything. Yes, it does seem rather axiomatic but it is so easy to forget. Sometimes I so desperately want the Bible to teach a certain thing that I would like to “creatively re-interpret” the difficult passages away. But then I remember that it’s not worth trying to make the Bible say what I want it to say - because at the end of the day, what I believe won’t change the truth.

Sometimes the search for truth will involve us accepting beliefs that we would rather not believe. Sometimes the search for truth will jar with tradition and with what we want to believe. But we need to follow the Scriptures where they lead. What we want them to say doesn’t matter. Some people believe in a pre-tribulation rapture, not because they have carefully thought about what the Scriptures teach, but because that’s what they’ve always believed and it is certainly a pleasant doctrine to believe. Maybe the pre-trib position is correct, but whether we want it to be correct or not doesn’t matter. And if we labour to prove that the Scriptures teach that doctrine with blinders on to prevent us seeing any other view, then our approach is fatally flawed. Let us be subservient to the Word of God and let us diligently seek to follow and believe what it says no matter where it leads. Let us leave our emotions at the door. Let us leave traditions at the door. Then let us diligently seek to know the truth of God by seeking to understand what his word says, and what it means.

“Now the Berean Jews were of more noble character than those in Thessalonica, for they received the message with great eagerness and examined the Scriptures every day to see if what Paul said was true.” (Acts 17:11, TNIV)

 —

NB: My use of the pre-trib rapture example was only chosen because it is a controversial subject that often gets tied up with tradition and emotions. My use of this example in no way should suggest that that doctrine is wrong. It is merely the principles by which some people arrive at that doctrine that I am condemning.

In a wonderful letter to his friend Marcellinus, Athanasius tells of a conversation he had with with an old gentleman about the Psalms. In the discourse, the gentleman says some excellent things that are worth reading. Constantly he reminds Athanasius that the Psalms are wonderful representations of the emotions and events we experience in every avenue of our lives:

“So then, my son, let whoever reads this Book of Psalms take the things in it quite simply as God-inspired; and let each select from it, as from the fruits of a garden, those things of which he sees himself in need. For I think that in the words of this book all human life is covered, with all its states and thoughts, and that nothing further can be found in man. For no matter what you seek, whether it be repentance and confession, or help in trouble and temptation or under persecution, whether you have been set free from plots and snares or, on the contrary, are sad for any reason, or whether, seeing yourself progressing and your enemy cast down, you want to praise and thank and bless the Lord, each of these things the Divine Psalms show you how to do, and in every case the words you want are written down for you, and you can say them as your own.” (Letter of Athanasius to Marcellinus)

How important is it that we clearly delineate the content of saving faith? For me, it’s a central issue. We need to make sure that when we present the gospel, the message we communicate is one that clearly defines what a person must believe in order to be saved.

For years, I was uncertain about exactly what a person had to believe in order to get saved. In my early Christian experience, I believed that to get saved, a person must believe that Christ died for their sins upon the cross, that he rose again the third day and that believing that, they were saved. If you had asked me about other beliefs, I wouldn’t have been sure whether to put them into the category of “beliefs necessary for salvation” or some other category. But something always niggled me… I honestly couldn’t find anywhere in Scripture that set forth this message as the essential content of saving faith. Perhaps 1 Corinthians 15:1-8 was the passage that I held most strongly to in order to support this view:

“Moreover, brethren, I declare to you the gospel which I preached to you, which also you received and in which you stand, by which also you are saved, if you hold fast that word which I preached to you—unless you believed in vain.
For I delivered to you first of all that which I also received: that Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures, and that He was buried, and that He rose again the third day according to the Scriptures, and that He was seen by Cephas, then by the twelve. After that He was seen by over five hundred brethren at once, of whom the greater part remain to the present, but some have fallen asleep. After that He was seen by James, then by all the apostles. Then last of all He was seen by me also, as by one born out of due time. “

But really, did a person have to believe all that to be saved? Did a person have to believe that Christ was buried, that he was seen by Cephas, then by the twelve? What if a person didn’t believe that Christ appeared to over five hundred brethren at once? Why didn’t people preach all these truths in their gospel messages?

Furthermore, the condition for salvation in these verses to “hold fast the word that I preached to you.” Now if the salvation here is justification, then we can only be assured of our salvation when we die - for who knows, perhaps we might stop holding fast to this message. It wasn’t a very good foundation for building my content of saving faith.

Some years later (and several months ago) I went through a difficult time. To be honest, I wasn’t sure what a person had to believe to be saved. I spent long hours thinking about it, reading about it and asking question about the essential content of saving faith. When I suggested at one stage that the essential content of saving faith was believing the truth of Christ’s words, I was launched into a sea of confusion - because nearly every “Christian” who goes by that name believes that Christ spoke the truth. Furthermore, what if someone misinterpreted something that Christ said - does that count as denying the truth of his words? What if they really badly misinterpreted something? It was a dead-end street. I could only hope that I had believed enough to get saved. But such a view provided no basis of assurance. Thus it was soon rejected.

If a person is to be sure that they have eternal life then the content of their faith must be simple. A God who desires all people to be saved will not make the message of life so complicated that simply people cannot understand the way of life. But what was that content? I had already read Zane Hodges’ views on the matter: that all who believe in Jesus for eternal life have eternal life. Those views kept on presenting themselves to me. I had several difficulties with them but eventually I came to the point where I realised that what Zane Hodges’ was saying was totally Scriptural. I came to understand that everyone who simply believes in Jesus Christ for their eternal wellbeing can be assured of that. It was simply, it was clear and above all, it was a firm basis for assurance of salvation. I could simply rest on the promise of Jesus that “whoever believes in Me, has eternal life.” (John 6:47)

The issue of the essential content of saving faith is fundamentally important. It is on this foundation that our assurance will either stand or fall. So we need to be clear. It is only when we clearly delineate a Biblical content of saving faith that people can be sure that they are saved. It’s not a matter of allowing people to believe whatever else they want and still be saved - it’s a matter of being able to know that you are saved. And this knowledge must come through God’s word - not tradition, not man’s words - but through God’s word. In his gospel, John writes that “these things are written so that you might believe that Jesus is the Messiah, the Son of God [cf. John 11:25-27] and that by believing you might have life in his name.” Thus John’s purpose is to bring people to faith in Christ for eternal life. His is the only explicitly evangelistic gospel and his is the gospel that is replete with assurances that whoever believes in Jesus has eternal life.

My point in this is simply to point out that it’s important to make sure that we have a strong Biblical content of saving faith that is clearly delineated for without this, assurance is less than certain.

Any thoughts?

Hi everybody,

Just finished my Malachi essay. Don’t know whether it’s any good or not though! You can have a read if you want here.

Blessings,

Andrew.