revelation – Christ the Truth

Three Ground Rules For Understanding Revelation 4

GlenJanuary 10, 20174 Comments

As I prepare a sermon on Revelation 1 for this weekend it strikes me that three lessons from this chapter should be followed by any would-be interpreter.

1. The Bible interprets the Bible

Not the newspapers. Not modern resonances. There's a reason Revelation comes at the end of the Scriptures. It picks up and weaves together themes and allusions from every other biblical book. We don't need to go outside the Scriptures to interpret them. Very often we don't need to go outside the chapter. Stick to the Bible. The Bible will interpret the Bible.

2. The context is suffering

In particular it's the suffering of John, the seven churches of Asia and the other witnesses to Christ known to John. The context is not comfortable 21st century theorists, but suffering believers. And in the first instance, they are believers of the 1st century who need comfort there and then. If they somehow thought that the kings of Revelation 17 were the EU, how exactly would that be a comfort? And how would that be a comfort to the millions of non-western believers today suffering for their faith?

3. The point is Christ

It's the Revelation of Jesus Christ, not the Revelation of eschatological timetables. Jesus is the centre. Focus on Him and His comfort in suffering and you won't go too far wrong.

Calvin and Barth on revelation: An imagined conversation 14

glenscrivNovember 8, 201214 Comments

What do I know but...

CALVIN: Above all we must recognize that God stoops to reveal Himself.

BARTH: Above all we must recognize that God stoops to reveal Himself.

CALVIN: No but it's a stooping revelation.

BARTH: Yes but it's a stooping revelation.

CALVIN: But what we see is God in His condescension.

BARTH: Amen! We see God in His condescension.

CALVIN: But we can't know God except that He accommodates Himself to us.

BARTH: Yes but we do know God as the One who accommodates Himself to us.

CALVIN: In all humility we cannot presume to know God apart from His condescension.

BARTH: In all humility we cannot presume that God is any other than the One who condescends.

CALVIN: No but when He condescends He clothes Himself in a character foreign to Himself. (see here or here)

BARTH: ... And how do we know that it's foreign to Himself?

By the way, I love em both. I love Calvin when he sounds like Barth and Barth when he sounds like Calvin. But on this issue - if I've understood them both (which I may not have!) - I'm with Karl.

Revelation and Faith according to The Nativity 4

GlenDecember 24, 20104 Comments

I've only caught snatches of the BBCs Nativity, but two scenes interested me.

When Gabriel appears to Mary he doesn't tell her the news. There are no words from on high here. No, no, that would be oppressive and authoritarian. Instead he invites Mary to look within to the Holy Spirit, and the Spirit gives her an experience of the truth. A very modern (or should that be 'post-modern') take on revelation.

And faith? Well the Magi (from a very brief viewing) seem pretty much in the dark about the whole thing. Only one of them has any kind of certainty about what they are seeking. And even he keeps his cards close to his chest. They seem a lot more sure about the astronomy than about the Child. And what really matters is the journey.

Now, back to preparing our own nativity...

A conversation between Calvin and Barth on revelation 22

GlenAugust 15, 201022 Comments

CALVIN: Above all we must recognize that God stoops to reveal Himself.

BARTH: Above all we must recognize that God stoops to reveal Himself.

CALVIN: No but it's a stooping revelation.

BARTH: Yes but it's a stooping revelation.

CALVIN: But what we see is God in His condescension.

BARTH: Amen! We see God in His condescension.

CALVIN: But we can't know God except that He accommodates Himself to us.

BARTH: Yes but we do know God as the One who accommodates Himself to us.

CALVIN: In all humility we cannot presume to know God apart from His condescension.

BARTH: In all humility we cannot presume that God is any other than the One who condescends.

CALVIN: No but when He condescends He clothes Himself in a character foreign to Himself.

BARTH: ... And how do you know that it's foreign to Himself?

Who do you like in this battle of the reformed giants?

Evangelists and Apologists note: The six things that have already happened

GlenFebruary 13, 2010Leave a comment

Through Christ, the Triune God has already revealed Himself unmistakably in every aspect of creation so that humanity is without excuse.
Against Christ, humanity has taken knowledge into its own hands and so barred the door against all claims from above.
In view of Christ, God has handed humanity over to its chosen futility, locking the door from His side too.
In Christ, God has entered this prison and manifested His eternal glory in time and space, even in human flesh.
As Christ, humanity now has a perfect mind with which to comprehend God (and everything else) - one that is not only human but also in God.
Out of Christ, His Spirit has been poured to incorporate us into the Man who knows.

This is what has already happened.

Here's what happens when we forget 1:

We think:

That the universe is basically mute (when actually it's preaching day and night)
That humanity is not really deaf - they're listening hard but the sermon's too quiet
That we, therefore, have to piece together proofs to amplify the sermon
That 'evidence' for God exists only in some limited aspects of the creation (e.g. fine-tuning)
That there are certain obvious pointers to "God" but 'Jesus' and 'Trinity' are actually pretty obscure
Therefore, that evangelism is a three-part process from creation to God to Jesus. (It's the very opposite!)

Here's what happens when we forget 2:

We think:

That humanity (or at least some humans) are actually truth seekers
That the mind is somehow less fallen than the rest of the person (rather than the centre of our enmity)
That fallen humanity is genuinely questing after the capital-T Truth when it makes its enquiries
That the way forward is to agree to their own systems of truth verification
Therefore that we need to find 'evidence' to submit to their systems

Here's what happens when we forget 3:

We think:

Perhaps if our faulty grasping after knowledge was the problem, our true grasping after knowledge will be the solution. (Instead we should realize that the grasping was the problem!)
If we now reason properly we can reverse the fall. (But no, God has confirmed our decision and locked the door from His side).
Maybe God is pleased by our efforts to ascend to knowledge (rather than thwarting them - catching the 'wise' in their craftiness)
Maybe God will aid our efforts to shepherd an unbeliever up the mountain. (In His grace, He might aid the unbeliever but not our efforts)

Here's what happens when we forget 4:

We think:

Christ is the cherry on the epistemological cake.
We can (or even should) should reason from creation to Christ (rather than Christ to creation).
Christ is one relevation among many (rather than the one Lens through which all must be seen)

Here's what happens when we forget 5:

We think:

There remains within Adamic humanity a capacity for knowing God (rather than realizing that this capacity lies in Christ alone).
That the quality of our conversion, or ongoing knowledge of God, finally depends on our own reasoned response to God. (At base it relies on Christ's reasoned response to God).
Christians are rational individuals raised to a higher intellectual plain (rather than fools united to a Person who is Wisdom).
Once we have come to Christ we can know God autonomously. (No, only in Him by the Spirit can we go on knowing God)

Here's what happens when we forget 6:

We think:

Maybe we need Jesus to bring us to God, but it's up to us to get to Jesus. (No, it's the sovereign work of the Spirit through the gospel word).
Maybe there are ways and means to get to Jesus apart from the Spirit-empowered word. (No. While the whole universe screams 'Jesus is Lord', the Spirit unblinds our eyes to these things only as He shows us Christ in the word).

.........................................

So then, these six events have already happened. Acting like they haven't happened or they need bolstering by our own efforts betrays the gospel that we proclaim.

The only thing that needs to happen now and the only thing that can happen now to remedy our situation is for the Spirit to sweep the unbeliever up into the Son's knowledge of the Father.

And, lest we divorce the Spirit from the word, the only means by which the Spirit does that is the gospel word.

So get proclaiming.

Christ Alone, Grace Alone, Revelation Alone

GlenSeptember 22, 2009Leave a comment

I'm halfway through Mike Reeves' excellent lectures on a theology of revelation. Go and listen now if you haven't done already.

Maybe I should put them somewhere prominently and permanently on the blog because they explain much better than I can the thinking behind 'Christ the Truth'.

To be an evangelical theologian is to have your method entirely shaped by God's coming to us in Jesus. Just as we are saved through God's grace alone by Christ alone, so we know God by God's grace alone and through Christ alone. This being the case, we need to be saved from our 'wisdom' every bit as much as we need to be saved from our 'works.'

Anyway, all these sorts of thoughts were circling through my head when I came across this quote posted on Tony Reinke's blog. It's all about how we should 'restore the bridge' from classical literature to Christ!

“What then shall we say if we would restore the medieval bridge from Homer, Plato and Virgil to Christ, the Bible and the church? Shall we say that Christianity is not the only truth? Certainly not! But let us also not say that Christianity is the only truth. Let us say instead that Christianity is the only complete truth. The distinction here is vital. By saying that Christianity is the only complete truth, we leave open the possibility that other philosophies, religions and cultures have hit on certain aspects of the truth. The Christian need not reject the poetry of Homer, the teachings of Plato, or the myths of the pagans as one hundred percent false, as an amalgamation of darkness and lies (as Luther strongly suggests), but may affirm those moments when Plato and Homer leap past their human limitations and catch a glimpse of the true glory of the triune God.

I reject the all-or-nothing, darkness-or-light dualism that Luther at times embraced. But I also reject the modern relativist position that truth is like a hill and there are many ways around it. Yes, truth is like a hill, but the truth that stands atop that hill is Christ and him crucified. To arrive at the truth of Christ, the people of the world have pursued many, many different routes. Some have only scaled the bottom rim of the hill; others have made it halfway. But many have reached the top and experienced the unspeakable joy that comes only when the truth they have sought all their lives is revealed to them. …

If we are to accept these verses [Romans 2:14-15] in a manner that is in any way literal, we must confess that unregenerate pagans have an inborn capacity for grasping light and truth that was not totally depraved by the Fall. Indeed, though the pagan poets and philosophers of Greece and Rome did not have all the answers (they couldn’t, as they lacked the special revelation found only in Jesus), they knew how to ask the right questions—questions that build within the readers of their works a desire to know the higher truths about themselves and their Creator.”

—Louis Markos, From Achilles to Christ: Why Christians Should Read the Pagan Classics (IVP Academic 2007), pp. 13-14

How do you think your mild-mannered correspondent reacted?

Well - go and see. Here's a selection of my many comments!

I enjoy the blog. I hate this quote.

Christ and Him crucified does not sit atop a hill as though waiting for natural man to ascend! The Truth steps down to meet us in ignorance, just as the Life steps down to meet us in death. And besides, which natural mind has ever drawn near to the crucified God? Such truth has only ever appeared as folly to the world, yet this *is* the power and wisdom of God.

This quote is epistemological Pelagianism. Salvation and knowledge go together. We must oppose synergism in the one as strongly as we oppose it in the other. No wonder Luther shows the way. We’d do well to heed his cautions...

It is incontestably and trivially true that pagans can write meaningful novels, develop life-saving medicine, pursue world-enlightening science, make correct philosophical and moral observations. And it’s equally true that pagans can work for peace, give blood and generally be very, very nice people. No-one’s saying unbelievers can’t say true stuff, just as no-one’s saying unbelievers can’t do good stuff. The trouble comes when someone tries to co-ordinate nature and grace in either knowledge or salvation. Whenever the natural is seen as a stepping stone into grace alarm bells must go off. Whenever co-ordination, stepping-stones, bridges, spectrums, pilgrimmages, ascents up hills are discussed flags have to go up...

Truth is relative – relative to Christ, the Truth (good name for a blog I reckon). His subjectivity is the one objectivity. There are therefore whole worlds of understanding that make some kind of sense within their own terms of reference and which make some kind of sense of the world but are falsely related to the true Logos. Therefore in toto and at root they are utterly false. And there can be no bridge between these worlds and the world in which Christ crucified is central. There can only be redemption from these worlds. Such a redemption will require wholesale rethinking (metanoia – change of mind)... 2 Cor 10:5!...

I’m happy to call any number of pagan statements ‘true’ – just as I’m happy to call any number of pagan actions ‘good’. (For me this parallel between knowledge and salvation is key.)

It allows me to say:

1) such ‘truth’ or ‘goodness’ is of great benefit to the world.

2) such ‘truth’ or ‘goodness’ can be truly seen by the regenerate as evidences of common grace.

but,

3) such ‘truth’ or ‘goodness’, viewed from the pagan themselves, does not lead towards but away from Christ and Him crucified.

A pagan’s goodness leads them away from the grace of Christ, a pagan’s wisdom leads them away from the revelation of Christ...

I could tell you all sorts of propositions that surrounded my saving faith in Christ, but I’d be reflecting back on a miracle. I wouldn’t be telling you the natural steps that secured salvation any more than the servants at Cana would be telling you how *they* drew wine out of those stone jars.

Just as there are no discrete human deeds that add up to divine righteousness, so there are no discrete human understandings that add up to divine knowledge. All must be of grace, all must be of revelation.

So there. I also discuss Acts 17 and Romans 2 a bit. And there's even some good points made by other bloggers! Common grace really is astounding ;-)

Thawed out Thursdays

GlenJuly 2, 2009Leave a comment

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!

A theology of preaching – part 6 (final part) 2

GlenJune 20, 20092 Comments

Christ must be proclaimed biblically.

Nothing has been said yet about the character of the preacher. This has been deliberate. It’s not the character of the preacher but the character of the word that is determinative. It’s not ultimately the skills, gifts or even godliness of the preacher that will bring the word home to hearers. The Second Helvetic Confession continues its article on preaching by saying...

... the Word itself which is preached is to be regarded, not the minister that preaches; for even if he be evil and a sinner, nevertheless the Word of God remains still true and good.

Whatever we say about the character, gifting or expertise of the preacher it must begin with these immovable indicatives. The preacher is, first, recipient (and a thoroughly unworthy recipient) of God’s overflowing revelation. We gratefully hear this word, knowing its divine source and character. Preachers though find themselves carried along in the same movement to testify to this same Word that holds them captive.

Thus the preacher is never a person capable of preaching. Really the true mark of the preacher is that they are incapable of doing otherwise.

“If I say, "I will not mention him, or speak any more in his name," there is in my heart as it were a burning fire shut up in my bones, and I am weary with holding it in, indeed I cannot.” (Jeremiah 20:9)

Conclusion

This paper has sought to provide an answer to the ‘How can?’ of preaching. Hopefully, along the way, some of the ‘How to?’ has been addressed as well. Yet, in the end, a true understanding of preaching should always propel us to the most urgent question: ‘How can we not?’

“I am compelled to preach. Woe to me if I do not preach the gospel!” (1 Cor 9:16);

“Since we have the same spirit of faith according to what has been written, "I believed, and so I spoke," we also believe, and so we also speak.” (2 Cor 4:13)

“The love of Christ controls us … Therefore, we are ambassadors for Christ, God making His appeal through us… (2 Cor 5:14-21)

The whole paper is here.

A theology of preaching – part 5

GlenJune 19, 2009Leave a comment

Christ must be proclaimed biblically

Hopefully it is not a new thought that Christ is the Word of God. Perhaps, though, it is a new thought to consider preaching as the word of God. Therefore some may wonder whether we have lost the vital importance of Scripture as the word of God.

Absolutely not. Without Scripture we have no Christ. Without Scripture we have no preaching. Yet here is the irony. When the preacher is viewed simply as ‘explainer and applier’ of God’s word (the bible), this results in a lower view of Scripture.

If preaching is simply explanation and application of the bible then it’s difficult to avoid the impression that the Bible stands in need of our interpretive and psychological expertise: the Bible needs explaining as an obscure text and it needs applying as a distant text. On this understanding preaching either doubts or dilutes the authority of the Bible. It doubts it if the preacher ‘comes between’ word and congregation as the word’s helper. It dilutes it if the preacher ‘comes between’ simply to pass on Scriptural information. In either case we are left with this question: Why should the preacher even attempt to offer words in addition to the written word? If, as the reformers contended so fiercely, the Bible is perspicuous, why should the preacher take up thirty minutes of the service but the Bible reading only three? If all that can be called ‘word of God’ exists in the Scriptures alone, how do we dare to embellish with our own blessed thoughts?

Here is the problem: if the preacher is reduced to a bible-expert we inadvertently reduce the bible to a difficult text. And simultaneously the preacher is raised up to stand in the gap. The ‘scholarly’ among us will dissect and expose the text with expert exposition. The ‘dynamic’ among us will ‘enliven’ the Word with rhetorical flair, persuasive apologetics and well-aimed application. However, in either case, whether as explainers or appliers, preachers become essential aids for a word that seems less than ‘living and active.’

In all this we communicate the idea that the bible is actually obscure, boring, weak, vague and disjointed. So then the preacher’s task is making the obscure clear; making the ancient relevant; enlivening the dead letter; making pointed application where we find the bible too vague and providing cohesion to the disjoined Scriptures – bringing things back to ‘the gospel’ or ‘the kingdom’ or ‘the cross’ etc. Yet the bible is already perspicuous, already living and active, already a persuasive word, already a pointed (application-making) address, already a witness to Christ.

Perhaps the greatest need for preachers today is to understand the significance of this ‘already.’

We think of the bible as an obscure and distant text given to the individual believer for the sake of their personal morality. On this understanding the preacher comes along merely to strengthen Scriptural admonishments to piety. Yet the bible was not given for the prayer closet but the pulpit. The Scriptures are the Spirit’s living testimony to the Son, addressed to the church and intended for proclamation to the world.

What then is the role of the preacher? We don’t ‘stand in the gap’. We stand in a stream. We don’t draw out the living waters. The Scriptures overflow. Already the written word has this out-going character. God’s word cannot be chained (2 Tim 2:9). Preaching is simply the expression of the Scriptures’ own uncontainable witness.

A theology of preaching – part 4

GlenJune 18, 2009Leave a comment

Go to theology network for the full paper on preaching. I'll post it here in chunks. Be great to talk about it if you want to comment.

We've made the claim that preaching is God's word when Christ is proclaimed biblically. Now we will tease out some implications of this central conviction:

Christ must be proclaimed biblically.

We proclaim Him (Colossians 1:28). The point of the sermon is not to inspire certain feelings, to convey certain doctrines, to enjoin certain ethics, to dissect certain passages. The point of the proclaimed word is precisely the point of the written word – to witness the eternal Word (See John 5:36-47). We don’t preach Luke or Ecclesiastes. We preach Christ from Luke or Ecclesiastes.

Perhaps the Lord’s Supper provides a helpful analogy (it too is proclamation – 1 Cor 11:26). Just as the point of communion is the receiving of Christ by faith, so the point of the sermon is the same. He is as vital for sinners as bread to the famished. He is as available to sinners as the bread on the table. And in preaching, as in the sacraments, He is handed over to sinners for their nourishment. Where Christ is received by faith, proclamation has done its work. Where Christ is not graciously held out to the congregation the preacher has spoken in vain and the people go hungry.

What does this mean for the ‘application’ of the sermon

Often ‘application’ is taken to mean distilling the text into timeless doctrinal propositions to be turned into contemporary moral injunctions.

preaching 1

Application on this understanding is a discrete portion of the sermon. Once the preacher is done explaining, then come exhortations about our practical response. Usually the application is something along the lines of ‘read your bible, pray, evangelize.’ Occasionally it’s ‘Give money, cut out the porn, volunteer more.’

Now besides being a suspect view of sanctification, this betrays a deficient view of revelation. Here the bible is ‘God’s instruction manual for life.’ The preacher is the expert coach. And Christ? Where is Christ on this understanding?

On the analogy with communion, such preaching is like the minister pressing into our hands not bread but a ‘To do’ list. We leave the communion rail (or rise from the sermon) not so much savouring Christ as resolving to improve. Not glorying in His work but plotting our own.

But what if we took to heart the theology of revelation outlined here? In that case application would be by the pointed driving home of the gospel.

On this model, application is not what we must do on account of the word. Rather, application is what the word itself is doing to us and in us. The Word is being applied to our hearts in lively, surprising, evocative, nourishing ways to the end that He might be trusted. We hear in order to believe (Rom 10:14). This is the work of God – faith (John 6:29). The work of God for which the preacher aims is not so much what the congregation will do on Monday morning having been inspired by the word. The work of God is what God Himself does to the congregation right there in the Sunday sermon.

Application then is the Spirit’s work in driving home the Christ whom we proclaim. It is a work which we cannot perform as preachers but to which we are called nonetheless. In prayerful dependence we follow the way of witness in the Scriptures as they point to Christ. And we point, too. With excitement, with passion, with entreaty. And we say as Moses did regarding the bronze serpent: Look and live!