I'm back home in Germany at the moment spending time with my family and Bryony. Since I typed my dissertation in January I've been suffering with really bad shooting pains as I type. It's gotten quite bad again in the last few days so I'm taking a short break from typing blog posts until my hands feel better. I'm still reading blogs and comments but I need to have short break from typing.

Dear God,

I know that with you there is no favouritism, but if just this once you could make sure that Barnsley win the League One play-off final tomorrow, I'd be really, really grateful.

Also, if you could make sure that Swansea start Tom Williams at left-back because he used to play for us and he was RUBBISH, and I mean really bad.

Amen.

UPDATE: God answers prayer! Though not without putting me through 2 hours of emotions and tension before finally vindicating his chosen team in a penalty shoot out. Go here to witness the most tense 5 minutes and 26 seconds of my entire life.

Tonight it has been decreed that Derek and I shall venture out to an Emerging Church service run by Sanctus. I've never attended an EC meeting before, so I'll post some thoughts when I get back. I have read A New Kind of Christian though, and I liked it. Plus if it puts me at odds with Emergent No (again), I'm probably doing something right.

Update: I'll post my thoughts on the service later on tomorrow, but Derek has done a good review here. I actually had a really good time. The best bit was where we burned the effigy of Calvin and danced naked in the woods around a picture of Brian Maclaren.

Despite what you might read on many evangelical blogs, it seems that not all Roman Catholics eat babies and worship the Pope.Furthermore, some Roman Catholics are actually rather good at theology. In fact, dare we say it, many of them are infinitely better at theology than most of their Reformed detractors. On occasion I do derive a certain sadistic pleasure from watching the writers over at Pontifications wiping the floor with the odd snotty-nosed evangelical upstart in rather the same way that my cats like to play with mice before biting their heads off. In both cases there is often blood on the floor afterwards.

I rather enjoyed this recent post criticising Calvin's doctrine of election and the damage it has on the assurance of the believer. Since Calvinism argues for a double predestination whereby God has freely chosen to damn some individuals whilst electing to save others, it is technically impossible for a Calvinist preacher to say to an individual "God loves you" since the individual in question may well have been chosen for damnation. Rather like dirty water flowing the wrong way back up a blocked drain, this doctrine of double predestination in turn affects our doctrine of God. Since God in his sovereignty always accomplishes what he wills to accomplish, the fact that some people are not saved is evidence that God does not actually want to save them. Going further back still, this means that God does not even love the non-elect, because if he did love them, he would want to save them, but since they are not saved, that means that God doesn't love them either. God in fact loves only the elect, since they are the only ones who are saved. Witness this theology in action as one of the Pyromaniacs attempts to argue that kosmos ("world") means "the elect" in John 3:16. Nil points for exegesis or understanding the etymology of kosmos, methinks.

In the individual life of the believer, this theology raises difficulties when one asks about the assurance of one's own salvation.I don't think there is a believer at one time or another who hasn't wondered about their salvation or not, and as a young teenage Christian I was no exception. The Reformed system holds that since salvation is by the decree of God, you cannot lose your salvation, though in practice this may prove small comfort to the troubled believer since it does not really answer the question about assurance, but simply asks it in a different way. Instead of asking "can I lose my salvation?" (No, because it is an irrevocable gift of God) the question simply becomes "well, am I one of the elect then?" (You are - but only if you persevere to the end). The trouble is that in the present, you can never be completely certain that you will not fall away at some point in the future, which will have meant that your faith was never genuine in the first place. The questions raised by a nagging conscience then lead only to introversion: Am I saved? Am I one of the elect? What if I fall away in the future? And so on. Much of the introspection of Puritanism has its origins in this theology.

Yet for all its weaknesses, Calvin's system is an attempt to reconcile God's salvific will with the fact that not everyone is saved, and that the final judgment appears to have a double outcome. Calvin locates the reason for the division in the decree and will of God, whereas Arminianism has tended to answer the same question in the opposite way. Arminianism still holds to a double outcome of judgment, but this outcome has its origins not in the will of God (as with Calvin) but in the sphere of human decision. Your salvation and assurance now depend not on the will of God, but on a human decision. Yet in both theory and practice this approach does not offer any real assurance either. How many decisions do you have to make to be confident that you are saved? Who said you were free to choose God in the first place? I personally loathe this system as with hindsight it ruined my confidence and assurance for the early part of my Christian life after I read Once Saved, Always Saved? by David Pawson, in which Pawson argues that salvation is hard to get, and even harder to keep, and that most people, even most Christians will be ultimately be lost to eternal conscience torment since they have not been obedient enough (as I recall, even one unconfessed sin was enough to bring you perilously close to losing your salvation - no wonder it made me neurotic). I re-read the book earlier this year and found it to be so downright awful in its use of scripture and grasp of theology that I had to laugh, but it did a lot of damage to my tender young faith in my early teens.

I can see the arguments for both the Calvinist and Arminian position, yet both have one major flaw in common in that neither of them offer complete assurance in the present. A Calvinist never completely knows if he or she is truly one of the elect, and an Arminian can never be completely confident in his or her "saving" decision or subsequent obedience. This flaw is, I think, really only a symptom of a bigger problem with both systems which is namely that their Christology is inadequate, so much so that it would seem that Christ makes little difference to the legitimate questions raised by the troubled conscience of the believer. To either the Calvinist who wonders if he is truly elect, or the Arminian who wonders if he has been obedient enough, their questions inevitably lead away from Christ on to their own experience and "performance", and neither offer any genuine comfort.

These questions are not a million miles away from the young Martin Luther, who famously agonised about his salvation. Was he one of the elect or not? How could he be righteous before God? Luther, as many people still, was asking questions about his salvation without reference to Christ. Luther's wise mentor, Johann von Staupitz, advised him to focus on the sufferings of Christ when considering the question of election and damnation. Even 30 years later, Luther could admonish others: "Why do you torment yourself with such speculations? Look upon Christ - there thine election is assured for thee?" All questions about salvation are not to be answered in the realm of human experience, but in the person and work of Jesus Christ. Doubts and troubled consciences are to be resolved Christologically, not agonised over in the human heart. Christ is the representative and High Priest of all of humanity, and he answers all questions about our righteousness and election. Here's Luther again:

"If Thou must look upon hell and the eternity of torment, and election too, look not in thyself, not in those who are damned...Look upon the heavenly picture of Christ who for thy sake descended into hell and was forsaken by God as one eternally damned, as he said on the cross,"O my God, why hast thou forsaken me?" See, in that picture thy hell is conquered, and thy uncertain election made sure...Seek thyself only in Christ and not in thyself, so wilt thou eternally find thyself in him."

A Christological answer is the only satisfactory answer to the question of election and assurance. Christ is the sacrifice not only for the sins of the church, but for the entire kosmos (1 John 2:2). This reason is, in short, why I favour Barth' system to either Calvin's or that of Arminius. In Christ, the representative human being, all of humanity is made elect. On the cross, all of humanity is damned and rejected, but this is the means by which all humanity is raised to life in the resurrection. Hidden in the kernel of God's judgment is his will to bring life and reconciliation, and both election and reprobation take place not in two separate groups of humanity, but in Christ himself. Thus he is the basis for preaching the Good News to all with confidence that it is intended for all, and so also it is Christ who liberates the individual from the trap of introspection.

I thought I'd write another post on inerrancy and inspiration following some of
the comments on this post.It'll probably end up turning into 3 or 4 posts, but
we'll see how it goes. Since a doctrine of inspiration is the prerequisite of a
doctrine of inerrancy, I'll begin by looking at the idea of inspiration in some
depth first.

Historically the church has always affirmed that the scriptures were inspired by
the Holy Spirit, althoughinspiration finds its most prominent and vocal defenders
in the evangelical stream of Christianity. Generallyspeaking, the evangelical
viewpoint regards inspiration as the basis for a doctrine of inerrancy, and thus
for the authority of scripture. Debates on inspiration can get bogged down in
that they rarely get beyondarguing that the Bible is inspired, full stop, without
giving a theological rationale for the doctrine or the phenomena of inspiration.

Perhaps a reason for this is the rise of critical methodologies in biblical studies
that have made ideas of inspiration and inerrancy inaccessible to more precise
and scientific exegetical methods such as historical, redaction, and textual
criticism. A quick glance at Mark 6:17 in a Greek New Testament will reveal
numerous variant readings of the text which stem from a correction of the
earlier manuscripts. This redaction probably arose out of the very awkward
fact that no matter how confidently Mark 6:17 states it, historically Herodias
was not the wife of Herod's brother Phillip. Textual and historical criticism
causes significant problems for many evangelical understandings of inerrancy
(even in the "original autographs") purely on the basis that it demonstrates
that the Bible is not free from error in everything it teaches, however many
declarations we publish saying that it is.

Which version of Mark 6:17 was inspired? The original, the final redaction,
or all readings of the text? If we affirm with 2 Tim 3:16 and church tradition
that all scripture is inspired and accept that Mark 6:17 (for example) is too,
what do we do with a doctrine of inerrancy when there are quite clearly
errors in the biblical texts as we now have them?

The aim of this post is to look at the theological and biblical rationale for
the doctrines of inspiration and inerrancy rather than analysing specific
texts that might be not be error-free, so I'll move on and simply point out
that historical-critical methods call into question some traditional notions
of inerrancy.

Biblical Perspectives on Inspiration

Church tradition has always made 2 Tim 3:16-17 the hub of discussions
about inspiration and inerrancy:

"All Scripture is God-breathed and is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting and training in righteousness, so that the man of God may be thoroughly equipped for every good work."

The notorious problem with interpreting this text is precisely how
much theology one reads into the term "God breathed". It is a big
leap of logic to deduce from the term "all scripture is God-breathed"
that then all scripture is verbally inspired and free from error in
everything it teaches. Let us be clear that 2 Tim 3:16-17 does not
say that, and we should try to avoid using this as a proof-text to
support a doctrine that is infinitely more complex than the author
of this verse could ever have imagined, and almost certainly not what
he had in mind when he wrote it.

So what did he have in mind? The verse is certainly very difficult to
interpret (compare numerous different translations and
commentators!) but we can at least make a little headway.
The verse is located in a short pericope (2 Tim 3:10-17) that exhorts
Timothy to steadfastness and perseverance in his teaching, and reminds
him that the scriptures (hiera grammata) he has been taught from his
youth (3:15) are useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting and training
in righteousness. The phrase hiera grammata (better translated as
"sacred writings") occurs neither in the LXX or anywhere else in the
New Testament. Its only other occurences are in Hellenistic Jewish Literature
(Philo, Life of Moses 2:292, Josephus, Antiquities of the Jews, 10:210) where
it denotes the Old Testament, and there is no immediate reason to assume
that Paul (leaving out issues of authorship for now) considered the term to
mean anything different, and more likely builds on the fact that Timothy has
already been instructed in the OT scriptures from his youth, as was
customary for Jewish men of the time (Aboth 5:21).

Thus far there is nothing in this section of Timothy that is at odds with
any other Rabbinic thoughts on scripture, but Paul breaks with Rabbinic
norms by pointing out in 3:15 that the usefulness of scripture is because
it points to salvation in Jesus Christ. It is only through him that scriptures
cohere and make sense, and the scriptures reveal the salvation that is to
be found in him. Much of my disagreement with John has been over the
relationship between Christ as the Word of God and scripture as the Word
of God,and while this verse hardly puts the matter beyond doubt it does
force us to consider scripture in a Christocentric manner, but I digress.

We next arrive at the tricky statement in 3:16a: "All scripture is inspired
by God..." (pasa graphe theopneustos kai...). There are numerous
questions that this text raises. Given that 3:15 refers to the Old
Testament, and this is expanded upon in 3:16-17, what are we to
understand by "all scripture"? All the Bible as we now have it 2000 years
later? Almost certainly not. An even more difficult issue still is how to
translate theopneustos - is it to be read in an active or passive sense?
It is a predicate or an attribute of scripture? And so on.

Pasa graphe ("all scripture") can be translated in several ways, since
graphe can denote either the entirety of scripture, or simply a specific
book or passage of scripture. The absence of the article he before
graphe might suggest that pasa graphe is better rendered as "every
passage/all passages of scripture" rather than simply "all scripture".

The key term theopneustos ("God-breathed" - NIV) has no parallels
anywhere in either th NT or LXX. It originates in pre-Christian Greek
literature, and can be rendered in either a passive or active sense.
Understood in an active sense we would understand the verse to
mean that scripture is filled with the breath of God, and that scripture
is inspiring. However, the normative reading throughout the history
of the church has been to take theopneustos in a passive sense.
That is, that scripture is inspired by God.

The language of theopneustos originates not in the OT but in ancient
Greece, where it described the activity of an ancientprophet giving
utterances in an ecstatic frenzy, although the biblical understanding
of divine inspiration is somewhat different. The Jewish tradition
viewed the prophets as divinely inspired men (e.g. Josephus, Against
Apion 1:37; Philo, De specialibus legibus 1:65; 4:49) and Christianity
continued this Jewish doctrine, as we can see in 2 Peter 1:21 and
also in the early fathers (Justin, Apology 2:9; Athenagoras, Supplicatio 9;
Theophilus, Three Books Addressed to Autolycus, 2:9). All of this put
together leads me to think that a better reading of 3:16 is "every
passage of scripture is inspired".

Yet as English-speakers we face a difficult problem in rendering
the Greek. To make sense in English we need to insert the verb
"to be" somewhere in the sentence, but there is no such equivalent
in Greek. So where do we put it? Given that the inspiration of
scripture was a given for Timothy anyway (he had been studying them
his whole life of course) there could have been little need for Paul to
inform him that "every scripture is inspired", and so it is possible to
read the verse as "every inspired scripture is..." instead, although this
reading might imply that some scriptures are not inspired, which has
problems of its own. My own preference is for option one: "every
scripture is inspired", which may not be as redundant as it seems since
Paul uses this as a basis for the main thrust of his argument, that
scripture is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting and training in
righteousness.

The only other NT text that comes close to 2 Tim 3:15-17 in terms of
its theology is 2 Peter 1:20-21, and it is somewhat less difficult to
translate:

"Above all, you must understand that no prophecy of Scripture came about by the prophet's own interpretation. For prophecy never had its origin in the will of man, but men spoke from God as they were carried along by the Holy Spirit."

The context of this verse is as part of a passage that attempts
to shore up the hope of its readers. Beginning with the
transfiguration tradition, Peter (issues of authorship
notwithstanding once again) then begins to discuss ton prophetikon
logon - "the prophetic word" (v. 19). This term occurs in both
Philo and the Apostolic Fathers not simply to denote the prophets
(as distinct from the law) but the entire OT scriptures. Peter upholds
the authority of ton prophetikon logon because they have begun
to be realised and established in Jesus Christ, in contrast to the
false prophets who speak from their own imagination and distort
both the OT and Christian writings (2 Pet 3:3,16). Their "inspired"
teaching is not validated by the person of Christ, and comes only
from their own imagination. Having established that true scripture
is inspired by the Holy Spirit, it becomes clear to Peter's readers
that the reason one cannot just interpret the scriptures in any
way one wants is because the scriptures come from the Holy
Spirit and are validated and fulfilled by Christ.

The inspiration of prophets and prophetic writings was universally
accepted by both Jews (including Philo,Josephus, and Qumran - where
it was believed that God also supplied the correct interpretation) and
the Early Church (see Matt 22:29, Rom 1:2, Mark 12:26, Luke 1:70, and
so on). Both Jews and Christians alike affirmed the inspiration of
scripture, yet this is still miles away from modern constructs of
inspiration and inerrancy. Undoubtedly both Jews and Christians
saw the prophetic utterances as originating with God, and that the
OT was a written record and interpretation of these divinely-inspired
prophetic speeches, but that is not the same thing as affirming that
the texts we now have are divinely-uttered. The Bible contains
records of divinely-inspired speech, interpretation and commentary
upon it. God is not given as the source of all passages of scripture.
Luke claims that his sources are the result of eyewitnesses
and his own investigation (Luke 1:1-4), for example.

That's all I want to write on the subject for now, though I plan to
write one more post on the history of the doctrine of inspiration,
and another on the theology of inspiration over the next few days.

What's everyone going to read this summer? I have plans to read far more books than I'll probably have time for, but as long as I'm unemployed and the dole money continues to dribble in then I plan to read the following:

The Person and Place of Jesus Christ - P. T. Forsyth

The Historical Figure of Jesus - E. P. Sanders 

The Trinity - Hall & Olson

The Essence of Christianity - L Feuerbach

Holiness - J Webster

The Mediation of Christ - T F Torrance

The Work of Christ - R S Franks

Living the Christian Story - J Colwell

Evil and the God of Love - J Hick

Jesus and Judgment - M Reiser

 Any others to recommend?

P T Forsyth's Magnum Opus The Person and Place of Jesus Christ is top of my summer reading list. Richard's love of Forsyth has rubbed off on me, and I've also enjoyed ploughing through The P T Forsyth files, which is certainly one to add to your blogroll. Here's PTF:

"The evolutionary idea is certainly compatible with Christianity; but not so long as it claims to be the supreme idea, to which Christianity must be shaped. Evolution is within Christianity, but Christianity is not within evolution. For evolution means the rule of a levelling relativism, which takes from Christ His absolute value and final place, reduces Him to be but a stage of God's revelation, or a phase of it that can be outgrown, and makes him less of a Creator as it ranges him vividly in the scale of the creature. There is no such foe to Christianity in thought today as this idea is; and we can make no terms with it as long as it claims the throne. The danger is the greater as the theory grows more religious, as it becomes sympathetic with a Christ it does not worship, and praises a Christ to whom it does not pray.

To say that evolution is God's supreme method with the world is to rule out Christ as his final revelation. It is to place Christ as but a point in the series, and to find Him most valuable when he casts his thoughts forward from himself which is a greater revelation which is bound to come if evolution goes on. But when Christ's finality is gone, Christianity is gone."

1. It's fiction.

2. That's it.