Wonderful Lesslie Newbiggin lecture on Nihilism. Nihilism as the fruit of a divorce between faith categories and certainty/knowledge categories. And it started a lot sooner than Kant. Go listen.
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Passover is…
... the ultimate plague (i.e. judgement) (Ex 11:1)
... judgement upon the gods (Ex 12:12)
... the defeat of the Enemy (Ex 6:1)
... liberation from slavery to overlords (Ex 13:14)
... liberation to the service of the LORD (Ex 8:1)
... the cause of unparalleled sorrow for the enemies (Ex 11:6)
... the cause of great joy for the redeemed (2 Chron 30:21)
... the distinction between the LORD's people and the world (Ex 11:7)
... in darkness (Deut 16:6)
... a sacrifice (Ex 12:27)
... substitutionary (Ex 12:13)
... bloody (Ex 12:13)
... a sign for the LORD's people (Ex 12:13)
... for the LORD Himself to see (Ex 12:13)
... to be memorialized in perpetuity (Ex 12:14)
... community-defining (Ex 12:47)
... open to non-covenant people (Ex 12:49) but...
... for those who enter the covenant and own its sign (Ex 12:48)
... time renewing (Ex 12:1)
... the ultimate revelation of the LORD (Ex 6:7)
Any more??
What is the cross? The same.
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Bad news for England
Australia's batting looks fragile and apart from Lee the bowling seems toothless. So I was relieved to watch this the other day:
And just a reminder of what Warne can do
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Uj8Kn0a_tNA
If cricket's not your thing, I'm sorry. I really am sorry.
Here - watch Robert Webb flashdancing...
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Thawed out Thursdays
The dumb thing about blogging is that you're always burying your old stuff with whatever nonsense occured to you in the shower that morning. Almost 500 posts on it occurs to me that newer is not necessarily better and, apart from Bobby, I'm not sure how many of you were following the blog from the beginning. So because of that (and because I'm lazy!), I'll repost some older stuff. Probably not every Thursday, but getting old stuff out of the freezer on Thawsdays appeals to me. Anyway, here's my third ever post. It's called:
God is not revealed in His Twin
This should be very obvious, but we easily forget it. Even in the verses that most directly uphold the full and complete revelation of the Father in the Son, the differentiation of Father and Son are also prominently in view:
"Anyone who has seen me has seen the Father" (John 14:9)
"The Son is the radiance of God's glory and the exact representation of his being, sustaining all things by his powerful word. After he had provided purification for sins, he sat down at the right hand of the Majesty in heaven." (Heb 1:3)
"He is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn over all creation." (Col 1:15)
"...see the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ, who is the image of God... For God, who said, "Let light shine out of darkness," made his light shine in our hearts to give us the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Christ." (2 Cor 4:4-6)
The Father is perfectly revealed, not by His Twin, not by a Clone, but by Someone who is His Complement. The Father is revealed in His Son, the Firstborn, His Image, His right-hand Man-Priest. Self-differentiation is at the heart of God's revelation. Jesus is not the same as His Father and yet fully reveals Him. More than this - this difference is of the essence of the divine self-disclosure. Self-differentiation in communion is the being of God - all of this is perfectly revealed in, by and through Jesus of Nazareth.
Now to say that Jesus is other to His Father is not an Arian position. On the contrary this is a determination to see Jesus' revelation as a full disclosure of the life of God. It was Arius who would leave us short of full revelation in Jesus. Here we are embracing the otherness of Father and Son as the very deepest revelation of the divine nature. It is because of His equality with the Father that Christ's otherness must be taken as part and parcel of the divine revelation. Because Jesus fully reveals the divine life by speaking of Another, thus He is not obstructing our view of this Other. Rather the interplay of He and the Other are constitutive of the divine life which He reveals. Arius is refuted at the deepest level, and all by heeding this simple truth: God is not revealed in His Twin but in His Son.
This should be so obvious and plain and yet so many take their opposition of Arius in precisely the opposite direction. Their first and fatal move is to maintain that homo-ousios commits us to three-fold repetition. They assume Father and Son are identical from the outset - all in the name of Nicene orthodoxy (of course ignoring 'God from God...'). Now when they approach the eating, sleeping, dying, rising Jesus they must account for these differences while upholding that the Father and Son possess identical CVs. What to do with the discrepancies? Simple. Ignore the fact that Nicea pronounced the homo-ousios on Jesus of Nazareth and instead attribute all discrepancies to a human nature that is distanced from His divine nature.
The cost of such a move? Immediately, the otherness of Jesus is not revelatory of the divine nature, in fact it impedes our view of God. Now to see Jesus is not to see divine life, but merely human. We have in fact lost the one Image, Word, Representative and Mediator of God. Jesus of Nazareth has become, to all intents and purposes, homoi-ousios with the Father. Question marks hover over everything we see in Jesus as to whether or not this reveals the divine life. We have returned to Arius's problem via another route - we are left short of full revelation in Jesus.
Now if we took seriously the fact that God is not revealed in His Twin but in His Son we would be saved from all of this. Christ's humanity neither commits us to an eating, sleeping, dying, rising Father, but nor does it distance us from a true revelation of God. Instead Christ's eating reveals a Father who provides in our frailties, His sleeping reveals a Father who protects in our weakness, His death reveals a living, judging Father, His resurrection reveals a justifying, reconciling Father. We see into the very heart-beat of the eternal trinity when we see Jesus of Nazareth in all His glorious humanity.
And all because we have remembered the simple adage: God is not revealed in His Twin, but in His Son!
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Apologetic Christianity
In a Christian book shop this morning they were promoting a new apologetics book with the strapline:
Why God probably exists. Why Jesus is probably divine.
Hardly the language of revelation (i.e. of the gospel!)
The book consisted of four theistic proofs, a couple of chapters on Jesus and then some answers to thorny questions. An epilogue asked readers for their verdict on Jesus.
I mean really. What the?? You might as well say,
Here's little Jesus. He stands in the dock, but thank God he's got some excellent advocates called apologists. And they can prove there's a good chance He's God (and don't forget God probably does exist after all). So won't you please find in favour of the defendant?
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How are you?
How do you answer that question? You're going through the mill all week, sipping a cuppa after the service, and someone asks cheerily 'How are you?' What do you say?
We've had experience of chronic illness for many years now. I confess that when people ask about it we don't really know what to say. I know other friends who have degenerative illnesses. And every week the questions come at church 'How are you? Any progress?' And they answer 'Yes indeed - the illness has progressed... and barring divine intervention it will continue to progress.' The person frowns and asks 'So the doctors haven't helped?' And of course the doctors have helped... as much as they can. But...
- ...'Oh, because I read in 'Chintz!' magazine about a woman who recovered after eating a diet of Goji berries and Quinoa - perhaps you could try that.'
- 'Maybe!'
- 'Give that a go and let me know next week.'
- 'Look forward to it!'
Don't get me wrong, I know the trouble from the other end. In our home group we have a woman who's struggled with insomnia for 50 years. Fifty years! But when she reveals this, what is our response?
"Have you tried a hot bath with a drop of lavender?"
"Long walks in the sea air."
"Listen to the shipping forecast"
"A drop of badger blood on the pillow..."
She shows extraordinary patience, listening to our home spun wisdom for a good quarter of an hour. Eventually she says, "I have struggled with this for 50 years you know".
Hmmm.
Our trouble is we don't know what we can offer unless it's a quick fix. So when we run out of fixes all we can think to do is offer prayer. Which is good I suppose. But even then - what's our goal? The fix! And how are we treating the other person? What are our interactions all about? Solving problems?
Here are some questions for us:
Can we handle sickness that doesn't yield to the quick fix?
Can we face the struggles that aren't solved by the tried and trusted common sense we take pride in?
Can we enter into the struggles of others and not make 'the fix' into the goal?
Can we simply journey with others in their mess and allow the Spirit to encourage us both in the Christ who is known best in the storm?
And, on the other end of things, when people ask us about our long-term stuggles, what can we say?
I've recently taken to one particular line that I picked up in a Tim Keller sermon, I'd love to hear any you have. His was this:
- How are you?
- Nothing a resurrection won't fix!
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Golden-Blogger does it again
They called the early church's greatest preacher John 'Chrysostom' meaning 'John Golden Mouth'. He reigned supreme in the style of preaching from that era which involved weaving together a rich tapestry of biblical images. These preachers simply inhabited and spoke the language of the Scriptures, fitting together themes from all corners of the canon.
Friends, Golden-Blogger is among us. And his name is Dev.
Go and read Redemption through Exile. And, if you're not a regular reader - get cracking on the others!
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Gonna mess you up
There are two things that will really mess you up in life. Getting married and becoming a Christian. You can poodle along quite contentedly before either of these states. But once you enter marriage, or once Christ enters you - life as you know it is over.
I know a good number of people who have developed and/or exacerbated serious emotional and psychological problems upon entering one or both of these states.
How come? Well here's one thought. In both you have the unconditional presence of another. Not even your sins can keep people at bay now. In fact now sins just become the occasion for a much deeper engagement. Conditionality used to keep your sins underground and your critics distant. When things were conditional you knew that the presence of love in your life was directly related to your ability to keep unloveliness hidden. Now you have unconditional - and therefore inescapable - presence.
Ironically it's not law that shines a torchlight into our basements. It's grace. There's no hiding place from unconditional love.
Barth used to say 'God's grace shatters men.' George Hunsinger wrote a book on Barth's theology called 'Disruptive Grace.' That's the true nature of covenant relationships. Yes they are the context in which true growth and godliness occur. But only because first of all they totally mess you up.
What do we expect in Christian discipleship? What do we expect in marriage? I say prepare for massive disturbance - and I mean disturbance in the fullest sense of the word.
Ten words on the preached word
Just some fairly random thoughts on what I'd like to see more of in my own preaching and the preaching of others...
- Thou shalt worship Christ from the pulpit. The priestly task of declaring the gospel of God (Rom 15:16) entaileth a twofold direction to the sermon. The preacher not only standeth before a congregation to declare truth, but before the Lord to worship Him. Of course 'worship' does not mean putting on airs - feigning the manner of a Cranmer, Spurgeon or Piper. It does mean happy and humble gratitude in the presence of Jesus. And of course this twofoldness is accomplished in one and the same task - proclaiming 'Worthy is the Lamb.'
- Thou shalt communicate, through both content and style, a tangible sense of the newness of God's revelation. May such phrases as these perish from our lips: 'Of course we all knoweth do we not...' We really do not knoweth. We need to be toldeth. Hence preaching. Therefore preach with eager and childlike enthusiasm for the surprising and always disruptive grace of God.
- Thy tone shalt be declarative and devotional.
- Thy method shalt be expositional and christocentric. (Of course expositional does not necessitate 'verse by verse')
- Thy fevered entreaty shalt not be 'DO' so much as 'LOOK'.
- Thou shalt not apologize for the word, whether for its supposed harshness or obscurity or backwardness or unbelievability. In truth the word is capable of defending itself on all these counts.
- Thou shalt not go searching for illustrations. Thy passage no doubt has plenty of good ones of its own. Anyone that spendeth time looking for stories to 'lighten up their talk' must be cut off from the congregation.
- Thou shalt not go searching for jokes. There is no doubt plenty of humour in the Scriptures themselves without you searching lamepreachergags.com. Anyone found guilty of the needless and clumsy insertion of 'a joke' shall be stoned to death. Show no mercy.
- Thou shalt not preach that 'Christ is God'. Thou shalt preach that God is only and always the God revealed in Christ.
- Thou shalt not lift up the Lamb because thou art supposed to but because thou canst do no other.
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99 Balloons
I'm absolutely blown away by this.
What gets me is the combination of sadness without any self-pity.
It's utterly tragic but not told as a tragedy. Somehow the whole thing is a celebration shot through with praise, thanksgiving and gospel hope.
Praise Jesus.
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