Natural Theology: its place and purpose

For those who say NT is not a 'salvation' issue.

From Bray, 2012 God is Love: A Biblical and Systematic Theology, p., 27

"Natural theology has its importance and is taken seriously in the Bible,  but it is a preparation for the gospel and not a substitute for it. It gives people enough knowledge for people to be able to respond to the message of salvation, but not enough to work it out for themselves."

Emphasis, mine.

The days of Genesis do this by placing creation and God's direct action in the history that we are in and showing that God is close, active in history, communicative, and personal. And we are connected to him by his word.

Salvation by diagram

I found this neat diagram to explain salvation to the average Joe. Only I don't like it. Penal Substitution cuts no ice with me (or the NT, more importantly). Nowhere is Christ 'punished' for our sins in a pen-sub manner. He takes the punishment that we are under, he even takes our sin. But he is not punished for it, he conquers it.

So, I redraw the otherwise excellent diagram

Chosen?

I commented to a post on FreeGrace blog on Ephesians 1:

You wrote: "Verses 4-6 expound on how the Father is involved in the church’s salvation: He chose us."

They DO NOT. This passage is not about salvation, but about  the blessings from God by our position as saints based on our being 'in Christ'. This phrase or its analogue 'in him' is the drum-beat of the first chapter, and they are all showing that our blessings revolved around our being 'in him'.

The passage is about Christ not about us. It is about us, being regenerated we are 'in Christ' for the purpose that we would be holy and blameless being in him.

Correspondingly, we are not predestined for salvation, but being saved we have a destination previously set by God for those who would be in Christ: adoption as sons!

 Incidentally, if we are talking about salvation, the order of salvation is set out in 1:13, 14:

In him, you also, after listening to the message of truth, the gospel of your salvation—having also believed, you were sealed in him with the Holy Spirit of promise, ¹⁴ who is given as a pledge of our inheritance, with a view to the redemption of God’s own possession, to the praise of His glory.

See the order: Listened--Believed--Sealed (regenerated).

We could set it out thus:

    "In him, you also, after

    listening to the message of truth, the gospel of your salvation—having also

    believed, you were

    sealed in him with the Holy Spirit of promise, ¹⁴ who is given as a pledge of our inheritance,

[For?]

    with a view to the redemption of God’s own possession, to the praise of His glory."

 

Train, educate, or get out of the way!

Great video. I was one of those arrogant Calvinists! Happily no longer, so I know the feeling you are talking about.

What started me on the Calvinist path, many decades ago, was a Bible study group that an old (but not that close) friend invited me to join. In my church I was demographically and intellectually isolated. My friend's group was people of my age and all university qualified. Even here, though, the Calvinism was trickled. Firstly by recommending books (the tedious Puritans), and finally a Bible college where I did some summer courses and made some friends, including with the principal and his son. But what distinguished this church to mine was an emphasis on knowledge, on reading theology and 'pious' conversations about what we read.

My church was intellectually  barren. One deacon in discussion vowed to read the italics in his Bible with due emphasis, not being aware that italicized words were translators' additions. An elder, when I asked about a Schaeffer book, told me it had 'too many big words' (it didn't). In this church I was given youth teaching and 'leading' roles for which I was unequipped and given no training. In fact, no one was trained for anything. This intellectual (knowledge) vacuum made me ripe for not only Calvinism, but would have made me ripe for any cult that promised knowledge of the Bible. It also rendered me useless for the roles given. Note, this was way before the Internet age and resources were hard to find and expensive...and I was not even aware that they might exist.

Here's what I now would expect for all new Christians, or Christians from the age of, say 16: a one year course of maybe fortnightly sessions during school terms on Bible basics, an outline of church history, and a thorough grounding in soteriology, if not Christology at the appropriate level. It might also include 'workshops' on the basic questions Christians get asked. A couple of weekend 'consolidation' conferences could be added in.

Similar, but shorter courses should have been available, perhaps at the denominational/conference level on Sunday School teaching and youth ministry. These being ubiquitous and constant needs in 'volunteer' ministry.

The fact that most churches rely on either a weekly 'talk' (aka the sermon) and other forms of osmotic learning is a real derogation of the duty of the church to make disciples. Our biggest effort should be training to 'make disciples' rather than no training, which makes for ineffectiveness or complete passivity.

How you say it.

My church has started some well thought-out training seminars, brief, but targeted, to help people fine-tune their skills in talking about our faith.

The announcement at this morning's assembly was along the lines of: "we are having a training session for people who are not so confident in communicating the gospel. Please put your hand up if you are planning to attend."

Three people did.

I made the observation to the convenor that no one is going to nominate themselves as lacking confidence. I suggested that playing to people's presumed strengths would be better.

Something like: "We are holding some short seminars to help people fine-tune their skills in gospel conversations. If you could contribute your experience and attend that would be wonderful."

This presumes expertise and experience from the get go, rather than presume a deficiency. Anyone who nominated to attend would feel like they were experts giving a hand and not gormless newbies, lazy for the gospel.

Chance and Necessity?

In a useful article on Wikipedia, this is written about Jack Monod's 'Chance and Necessity':

Chance and Necessity: Essay on the Natural Philosophy of Modern Biology (French: Le Hasard et la Nécessité: Essai sur la philosophie naturelle de la biologie moderne) is a 1970 book by Nobel Prize winner Jacques Monod. Aimed at a general audience, the book describes the basic characteristics of life, reviews findings of modern biochemistry and molecular biology, and argues that life arose by blind chance guided by natural selection, could not have been predicted, and does not have a higher purpose.

It may seem odd, but Isaiah also writes about Chance and Necessity:

But you who forsake the Lord,
Who forget My holy mountain,
Who set a table for Fortune,
And who fill cups with mixed wine for Destiny

                                                             Isaiah 65:11

Now, let's look at some words.

The word translated 'Fortune' in Isaiah is 'Gad', a Babylonian deity, the 'god' of 'fortune'.

'Destiny' in the passage translates 'Meni', the Babylonian 'god' of 'fate'.

Israel forsook Yahweh (the great I AM) for Babylonian imposter gods: demons, perhaps.

Today, modern materialistic naturalism adds a third 'god' Cronus, or Chronos: 'time'. But rather than Chronos representing the destructive ravages of time (see for corroboration Romans 8:18-24, where the creation is subject to corruption and, by implication the ravages of time), it produces benefits!

Here's the connection: modern evolutionary speculation couples 'chance' and a form of 'necessity'* over time; but the great deceit is that here time, instead of  exerting its ravages, does the very reverse and brings about increasingly capable and sophisticated organisms, culminating (so far?) in mankind.

This perhaps represents the greatest vanity: a deceit that instead of time diminishing us (we all die) it paradoxically is the engine of idealist benefit. No 'one' benefits, but things are asserted to get better*. This inverts the ancient's recognition of the true effect of time on events and substitutes a deceit that time makes for the better, denying Sanford's 'genetic entropy', an observable decline to genetic catastrophe.

Now do you understand the parlous implications of Darwinian Evolution? 

Many thanks to M for his insight into this passage in Isaiah.

*Darwin's ideas were congruent with Victorian optimism that saw things inevitably getting better. He mistook the additive growth of knowledge, in line with mankind's imageness of God, with some form of ontological 'progress'. Thus I call his idea a 'mid-Victorian gross-morphology pipe-dream'.

Whence the Trinity?

A lot of scuttlebutt on the Internet seems to assert that the Trinity is 'invented'. But, as Greg Koukl points out, the Trinity is a solution, not a problem.

Bob from Speakers' Corner in the UK put this logical set of Bible references together:

1. There is one God

Isaiah 45:5

“I am the Lord, and there is no other;
Besides Me there is no God.
I will gird you, though you have not known Me;

2. The Father is that God

John 17:1-3

This is eternal life, that they may know You, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom You have sent.

3. Jesus is also called that God

Titus 2:13

looking for the blessed hope and the appearing of the glory of our great God and Savior, Christ Jesus,

4. The Holy Spirit is called that God

Acts 5:3-4

But Peter said, “Ananias, why has Satan filled your heart to lie to the Holy Spirit and to keep back some of the price of the land? ⁴ While it remained unsold, did it not remain your own? And after it was sold, was it not under your control? Why is it that you have conceived this deed in your heart? You have not lied to men but to God.”

5. Christ promises a 'helper'

John 15:26

“When the Helper comes, whom I will send to you from the Father, that is the Spirit of truth who proceeds from the Father, He will testify about Me,

6. The Holy Spirit is the helper promised by Christ

Acts 2:1-4

When the day of Pentecost had come, they were all together in one place. ² And suddenly there came from heaven a noise like a violent rushing wind, and it filled the whole house where they were sitting. ³ And there appeared to them tongues as of fire distributing themselves, and they rested on each one of them. ⁴ And they were all filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak with other tongues, as the Spirit was giving them utterance.

7. Jesus aligns himself with God via the Old Testament

John 8:54-59

Jesus answered, “If I glorify Myself, My glory is nothing; it is My Father who glorifies Me, of whom you say, ‘He is our God’; ⁵⁵ and you have not come to know Him, but I know Him; and if I say that I do not know Him, I will be a liar like you, but I do know Him and keep His word. ⁵⁶ Your father Abraham rejoiced to see My day, and he saw it and was glad.” ⁵⁷ So the Jews said to Him, “You are not yet fifty years old, and have You seen Abraham?” ⁵⁸ Jesus said to them, “Truly, truly, I say to you, before Abraham was born, I am.” ⁵⁹ Therefore they picked up stones to throw at Him, but Jesus hid Himself and went out of the temple.