Stuff

Around the theology blogs today

The people over at Emergent No have made a counter-response to a defence of the Emergent church by some of the most influential people within it. The response by Emergent No was rather dishonest I thought and so I was a bit ungracious in my comments which I shouldn't have been. I would urge everyone to read the actual response from the Emergent Church rather than Emergent No's summary of it however.

Jollyblogger has another post on Hebrews 6 and the assurance of salvation, Mike at Eternal Perspectives has a rather interesting Theology and Apologetics test you can take, and Andy Goodliff has a review of his dad's book With Unveiled Face.

Beginning with Christ

In the post I wrote yesterday I mentioned that I found it incredible how people manage to discuss Christian theology and God with absolutely no reference to Jesus Christ whatsoever. It seems that Michael Spencer has had a similar thought, read his excellent article here.

Calvinism v Arminianism, for ever and ever, Amen.

Adrian has a post that quotes Spurgeon on prayer and then offers a challenge to Arminians to respond. Of course these things tend to turn into the same old debates about Calvinism and Arminianism.

As someone who is neither Calvinist or Arminian, I find these discussions rather fascinating for a whole number of reasons, partly because both sides frequently just attack cartoon versions of their opponent's position, but also because some of the presuppositions that both sides bring are frankly bewildering. People who have a theological position - even one based on scripture - seem to simply think that it will suffice to turn a theological and biblical viewpoint into an unquestionable dogma that can never be questioned, improved upon, or reformed. Even if a theology is biblical, that does not excuse someone from continued inquiry into their position, from further study, and from facing tough questions about their own position from those who disagree with them. Hurling proof texts around is not a substitute for exegesis and neither is being 'biblical' a shortcut to humility and to being correct.

I wonder how many Calvinists or Arminians have actually read Calvin or Arminius? I wonder how many TULIP fans are aware that Calvin never taught limited atonement? Or that the preaching of TULIP caused a pastoral crisis that threatened to cripple the faith of thousands of believers in Britain throughout the 1700s and 1800s because it is impossible for one to be assured about one's salvation?

I also wonder whether either side has considered that may both be quite severely wrong in many areas of their theology and that both their reading of scripture and theological positions are not above correction, and that God's Spirit may in fact have much more to teach us?

What's what this week

The latest Christian Carnival is up over at A Physicist's Perspective. There are lots of entries as always but a couple that have caught my eye include Rebecca's post on the sovereignty of God and John's post on Purgatory. I've also come across another Chris who does some decent blogging on intelligent design and creation issues over at Absolute Wisdom. Happy reading!

N T Wright on Justification in Paul

In my last post on N T Wright I looked at his ideas about Paul’s doctrine of righteousness and where it departed from traditional Reformed ideas about justification by faith and the imputation of righteousness, based on recent historical research into precisely what 1st Century Judaism looked like. Against Reformed theology, Wright insists that the Judaism of Paul’s day was not a religion of self-help ‘works’ righteousness and that Paul was not proposing salvation by ‘grace’ as opposed to a salvation by ‘works’. Wright argues that the Jews did believe in salvation by grace, but that one showed that one was saved by zealously observing the Torah (‘the works of the law’) and would thus be declared righteous and vindicated in God’s final judgment.

Crucially for Paul however, the raising of Jesus from the dead showed that it was he – not those zealously observing the law – who had been vindicated by God and declared to be righteous. Paul then has to radically reconsider who God’s people are, and concludes that those who God will vindicate (the righteous) will be those who believe the Gospel of Jesus Christ and have faith in him, not those who insist on zealously observing the works of the law. Faith in Jesus Christ is now the badge of those who are God’s people, not zealous Torah observation.

That’s a brief summary of Wright’s position. I summarised his teaching on the righteousness of God in my previous post here. This post will look at Paul’s doctrine of justification according to Wright in his book What St Paul Really Said

Recommended sites

Just a quick post for now. I've recently discovered the blog of Andy Goodliff who blogs about a lot of theological issues and is particularly knowledgable about the works of British theologian Colin Gunton who tragically and suddenly died before being able to complete his work.

Emergesqu e also has a rather useful link to this page where you can download mp3 recordings of N T Wright's Romans lectures given in 2000 at Regents College in Vancouver.

This week I'm hoping to post another summary of N T Wright's theology of justification in Paul (almost done) and finish off a rather length post on Paul Fiddes' critique of the doctrine of penal substitution. Whichever one I finish first will end up being submitted to this week's Christian Carnival, which is being held at A Physicist's Perspective. I'm also way behind on my Mark's Gospel studies and I want to post a review of Keith Ward's excellent book What The Bible Really Teaches: A Challenge to Fundamentalism as I've recently finished reading it. Essentially Ward argues that 'Bible-believing' Christians are actually extremely selective about which parts of the Bible they believe and that the Bible doesn't actually teach many of the major doctrines they hold as being central. The book was pitched at the academic market and so I think the people who would have actually benefited most from the book won't really be aware of it, so I'll do what little I can to help redress the balance.

In the meantime here's the review that the Times Literary Supplement gave the book.

Links