Triablogue

When seconds count, police are minutes away

2013-05-22T17:27:00.000-04:00

Britain has tough gun control laws, unlike us trigger-happy Americans. Leave it to the authorities to keep us safe:

http://townhall.com/tipsheet/katiepavlich/2013/05/22/whoa-soldier-beheaded-by-radical-muslims-praising-allah-n1603743

http://news.sky.com/story/1094437/woolwich-assailants-filmed-hacking-attack

Is Adam just a symbol?

2013-05-22T16:39:00.003-04:00

Difficult Scriptures: Romans 5:12-17

16 May by Jeff Dunn

12 When Adam sinned, sin entered the world. Adam’s sin brought death, so death spread to everyone, for everyone sinned. 13 Yes, people sinned even before the law was given. But it was not counted as sin because there was not yet any law to break. 14 Still, everyone died—from the time of Adam to the time of Moses—even those who did not disobey an explicit commandment of God, as Adam did. Now Adam is a symbol, a representation of Christ, who was yet to come. 15 But there is a great difference between Adam’s sin and God’s gracious gift. For the sin of this one man, Adam, brought death to many. But even greater is God’s wonderful grace and his gift of forgiveness to many through this other man, Jesus Christ. 16 And the result of God’s gracious gift is very different from the result of that one man’s sin. For Adam’s sin led to condemnation, but God’s free gift leads to our being made right with God, even though we are guilty of many sins. 17 For the sin of this one man, Adam, caused death to rule over many. But even greater is God’s wonderful grace and his gift of righteousness, for all who receive it will live in triumph over sin and death through this one man, Jesus Christ. (Romans 5:12-17, NLT)

So, we have Paul writing that Adam is a symbol of Christ who was yet to come. Does this symbol have to have been real? Does our faith hang in the balance as to whether or not we believe in a historical Adam?

I normally don’t answer my own Difficult Scriptures question, but today I will, and then stand aside to hear your thoughts. To give my answer, I will have to lean heavily on what I learned from Michael Spencer about reading the Bible.

The Scriptures were given us for one reason, and one reason alone: To point us to Jesus. When we try to use the Scriptures to prove other points, we are going outside of the scope of its purpose. The story and symbol of Adam show us “little Adams” to be sinners in need of redemption. Redemption comes in Christ’s death and resurrection. If I focus on whether or not Adam is/was real, I take my eyes away from what God intends me to look at: Jesus. So I guess I’m saying it does not matter to me whether or not Adam was really real. The story of Adam points me to a very real Jesus.

Now, your thoughts?

http://www.internetmonk.com/archive/difficult-scriptures-romans-512-17

This is one of the dumber things I’ve read lately, and the competition for dumb is ferocious. I don’t know if Jeff Dunn normally reasons at this level, or if he felt the importance of the issue merited a special kind of stupid.

i) To begin with, he apparently hangs his argument on a pop English translation. But typos doesn’t mean “symbol.” A type denotes an OT person, place, institution, or event that prefigures a counterpart in the Messianic age. A factual relation.

ii) However, even if it did mean “symbol,” that’s ambiguous. Even though all metaphors are symbolic, not all symbols are metaphorical. A symbol can be a real spacetime object. It’s not just a literary device.

iii) As for “pointing us to Jesus,” if that’s all that matters, why does Jesus need to be real? After all, you can point someone to a fictitious superhero.

iv) If all that matters is looking at Jesus, then who needs the Christian afterlife? As long as you were looking at Jesus when you died, you can pass into oblivion looking at Jesus.

v) Notice Jeff doesn’t make an effort to seriously exegete Rom 5:12-21. Instead, he superimposes an extraneous grid on the passage. Disregard the specific claims of the text and retreat into the mock piety of “looking at Jesus.” This is just an obvious rearguard maneuver by someone who’s lost faith in historical revelation.

Protective mothers and abortive mothers

2013-05-22T16:12:00.000-04:00

This is what motherhood is supposed to be:

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/05/22/megan-futrell-infant-baby-died-oklahoma-tornado_n_3320390.html?view=print&comm_ref=false

Is John Piper the next Pat Robertson?

2013-05-22T15:47:00.003-04:00

John Piper’s recent tweet on the Oklahoma tornado has provoked a knee-jerk response. There’s even a malicious effort to create a defamatory narrative about Piper as another Pat Robertson.

Now, I don’t think it’s necessary for Piper to comment on every natural disaster that comes down the pike. It would make more sense for him to have a general treatment which he refers people to when tragedies like this take place. After all, natural disasters happen repeatedly, so it’s not as if you’re going to have something new to say about every new catastrophe.

Likewise, I don’t think Twitter is the best medium for commenting on natural disasters. And quoting Job without context invites ambiguity.

That said, I don’t share the outraged reaction to his tweet.

On his Facebook wall, Jeremy Pierce is making some customarily judicious observations on this manufactured controversy. There are also some judicious comments on Denny Burk’s post.

http://www.dennyburk.com/jobs-suffering-and-ours/

All Scripture is God-breathed

2013-05-22T13:23:00.001-04:00

The part of 2 Tim 3 that everyone likes to quote and that becomes the bedrock of their doctrines of scripture is, “All scripture is inspired by God and profitable for teaching, reproof, correction…”

Scripture is God-breathed. Yes!

But wait! There’s more!

Or, perhaps better put–wait, you forgot a part!

The verse before this presents a significant qualification: “From childhood you have known the sacred writings which are able to give you the wisdom that leads to salvation through faith that is in Christ Jesus.”

Did you see it?

Scripture isn’t just “good.” Full stop. It is good for a particular purpose. That purpose is Christological. Scripture is not rightly read as scripture when it is given its historical, scientific, or critical meaning. It is not rightly read as scripture until it is read as a witness to, or cultivating a wisdom that inclines us toward, the crucified and risen Christ.

In Romans, Paul says similar things: the righteousness of God (in the crucified and risen Christ) is borne witness to by the Law and the Prophets; Christ is the end/goal of the Law.

Paul is faithful in what he says about Adam, not because he rightly identifies Adam as the biological precursor of all subsequent humanity, but because he sees in Adam a way to understand how the crucified and risen Christ is the beginning of God’s plan for a new humanity at the acme of new creation.

What did God breathe? Words of wisdom. Words of wisdom that lead to salvation. Words of wisdom that lead to salvation through faith in Christ.

If we read and find only words of science or dogma or ethics or history, the Bible has not yet become for us the living and active and inspired word of God.

http://www.jrdkirk.com/2013/05/05/what-exactly-did-god-breathe/

Before commenting on the specifics, I’d like to make some general observations about 2 Tim 3:15-16:

i) It’s often thought that because v15 refers to the OT, v16 must have the same referent. However, there may be a progression in Paul’s argument, where v16 is more general than v15.

ii) Apropos (i), Paul evidently uses “Scripture” in 1 Tim 5:18 to designate a saying from the Gospel of Luke. Moreover, Paul regards his own teaching as divinely inspired and divinely authoritative (e.g. 1 Cor 2:13; 14:37; 1 Thes 4:2). Therefore, there’s no reason to think Paul is restricting Scripture in v16 to OT Scripture.

iii) Of course, liberals generally deny the Pauline authorship of the Pastorals (Luke Timothy Johnson is a notable exception). But that creates a dilemma for the liberal. If the Pastorals weren’t written by Paul, but by a later author, then wouldn’t that be even more reason to think v16 might include NT writings as Scripture? After all, the liberal argument is that the Pastorals, being so much later, reflect a more advanced ecclesiastical and/or theological outlook. So that would fit with a retrospective canonical consciousness.

If, on the one hand, Paul wrote the Pastorals, then we know Paul regarded his own Gospel as direct divine revelation (e.g. Gal 1). But if (ex hypothesi), on the other hand, Paul didn’t write the Pastorals, then these would reflect further theological development–in which case there would be nothing anachronistic about the author treating NT writings as Scripture.

iv) There’s a question about whether pasa should be rendered as “all” or “every.” But it makes no ultimate difference whether Paul is attributing inspiration to Scripture collectively or distributively, for it amounts to the same thing.

v) There’s a question as to whether the clause should be rendered “Every Scripture is God-breathed, and useful for…” or “Every Scripture that is God-breathed is useful for…”

Major commentators like Mounce, Marshall, and Towner argue for the former construction.

vi) What does Paul mean by the compound “God-breathed”? I can think of two related reasons:

a) It triggers associations with the Spirit of God as the agent of revelation and inspiration.

b) It evokes Scripture as divine speech. The spoken word, committed to writing.

As for Daniel Kirk’s contentions:

i) To say that Scripture is useful for leading readers to salvation is not to say that Scripture is only good for that particular purpose. It’s not an exclusive or contrastive claim.

ii) The doctrine of the plenary verbal inspiration of Scripture isn’t confined to a single prooftext like 1 Tim 3:16. Rather, it’s a theological construct, with many lines of evidence.

iii) The fact that in the Pastorals, Paul appeals to historical precedents like the Exodus, the life of Abraham, and Korah’s rebellion, explodes Kirk’s false dichotomy between historical knowledge and soteriological knowledge.

iv) Paul sets his teaching in contrast to his opponents, who retail in “myths” (1 Tim 1:4; 2 Tim 4:4; Tit 1:14). As Towner explains:

The term “myth” has a long history of use prior to the NT, through which it comes to mean a fable or far-fetched story, often about the gods; most importantly, it can stand as a category meaning essentially falsehood (109).

So it would run counter to the polemical perspective of the Pastorals to treat the account of Adam as a fictional story.

"Retributive violence"

2013-05-22T12:25:00.001-04:00

Peter Enns has a blind post:

But what about God’s retributive violence–where God exacts swift judgment in the form of physical brutality against his own people for disobeying?

The question that is as old as the Christian faith is: “How does all this square with how Jesus speaks of God?” The key word here is forgiveness. The issue is not simply that Jesus says we should forgive each other. Rather, by forgiving each other we reflect the heart of God.

Of course, for both the Old and New Testaments, there are other examples we could look at. But the point remains: If Jesus and the Father are one (John 10:30), how can we hold all this together? How can these two views of God be reconciled? Are they even supposed to be reconciled?

One answer will not do, and we need to nip it in the bud: “God can do whatever he wants to, and that includes mercilessly punishing sinners among his own people by killing them.” That misses the entire point. The issue here is how God himself is portrayed differently in the Old Testament and then in the New.

http://www.patheos.com/blogs/peterenns/2013/05/is-god-out-to-get-you-of-forgive-you-retributive-violence-and-the-gospel/

What’s blind about this supposed dichotomy is that, on the one hand, the OT has a great deal to say about God’s mercy, compassion, and loving kindness, while–on the other hand–the NT (including the Gospels) has a lot to say about God’s retributive eschatological judgment. So the dichotomy between a merciless God of the OT and a merciful God of the NT is illusory–and obviously so.

The Failure Of Naturalistic Theories To Explain The Shroud Of Turin

2013-05-22T05:59:00.000-04:00

Here's a thread discussing the failure of various naturalistic theories to explain the Shroud of Turin. We don't just need to explain how the image could have been produced, but also why it happened with Jesus in particular and not with other individuals, the timing of the image formation (around the time when other evidence suggests Jesus was resurrected), and how the removal of the body from the Shroud didn't do more to disturb the bloodstains and damage the cloth. I think that Jesus' resurrection is the best explanation for the totality of the phenomena. But what I want to highlight here is something Barrie Schwortz wrote in the comments section of the thread linked above. Schwortz is an advocate of the view that the Shroud image formed as a result of a Maillard reaction, and Ray Rogers held the same view, yet Schwortz writes:

Ray Rogers told me personally that he believed, “Something else was at work with the Maillard reaction,” but he didn’t know what that was and didn’t live long enough to explore it.

Keep in mind, too, that the Shroud would still have high evidential significance for Christianity even if some natural process, like a Maillard reaction, explains the Shroud or part of it. The cloth would still give us evidence for Jesus' existence, the accuracy of early Christian accounts of his death, etc.

Rogue government

2013-05-21T15:04:00.001-04:00

http://www.politico.com/blogs/media/2013/05/sharyl-attkissons-computers-compromised-164456.html

Obama's Kulturkampf

2013-05-21T14:22:00.000-04:00

http://www.patheos.com/blogs/geneveith/2013/05/irs-also-targeted-religious-groups/

Center for A-Lincolnism Studies

2013-05-21T12:48:00.002-04:00

https://www.facebook.com/alincolnism