Adventageous

Today was the first Sunday in Advent, which is the period defined by the four Sundays before Christmas. While the Advent season itself is not prescribed by Scripture, the concept is very much so. Advent is a time for preparing ourselves for the upcoming celebration of Christ’s birth and all it represents.

Throughout Scripture and life there are times of preparation dictated for momentous events. In Scripture, there are only two days in the week that are given names, the Sabbath, and the Day of Preparation, which is the day before the Sabbath where the people were to make all necessary preparations for food and chores that would not be done on the Sabbath.

Vibrant Dance 2: Panel Discussion 4: Can Young-Earth and Old-Earth Christians Work Together to Build the Kingdom of Christ? What are the foundations for cooperation? What are the current impediments?

{RJW Note:  The fourth and last panel discussion was discussing the tensions among Christians that hold to different views of Genesis, again moderated by Craig Blaising (CB). The panel members were:  TB(eall), JD(uncan), WK(aiser), JR(eynolds), BW(altke), JW(alton). Also Genesis 1 and 2 are abbreviated as G1 and G2 respectively. Again, this post will be in the form of a pseudo-transcript. Due to some duties as a volunteer at the conference, I missed the first 20-25 minutes of this panel. My apologies, however, I think the gist is probably captured here.}

TB:  There are different levels of working together, and so many opportunities to cooperate, but we have need to be aware of and discuss those differences.

JR:  We need to get over worrying about wondering—if you are in love with someone, you are constantly in wonder of them. If you become skeptical or no longer filled with wonder, you no longer are in love {or love is decreasing}. We should always be in wonder about Christ and exploring and asking questions. We need to fight more and support those we agree with in their writing and research; ‘fight’ being a sincere non-acrimonious debate. Need to support young earth creationists with time and treasure to study actual scientific research to see what support exists there. We’re either nasty or wimpy. We need to disagree agreeably and agree disagreeably (i.e., keep things stirred up to keep up the wonder and keep exploring).

Vibrant Dance 2: Blaising: What Is At Stake: A Call For Gracious Discourse

{RJW Note:  This is the text of the first plenary session at this weekend’s Vibrant Dance conference. In an effort to accurately relate the views of the speakers, I tried to obtain their notes and permission to share them directly whenever possible. Every speaker I approached was more than gracious, even giving me from their hands their notes with handwritten modifications. I am most grateful to these gentlemen.

This talk is from Dr. Craig Blaising, the Provost and Executive Vice President of Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary in Ft. Worth, TX. He has very graciously updated and emailed his 45 minute talk to me to share with you. I have only made the most minor of edits to be consistent with the format generally used here, issues of spacing and paragraphs mostly. Below is his text and work, so this amounts to a guest post. Again, I am grateful for his willingness to share it so generously.

Dr. Blaising also served as the moderator for the talks and panel discussion, so this talk served as an introduction and setting of format for the entire conference, so having it verbatim is particularly important.}

The biblical doctrine of creation teaches that God, acting alone, freely, by His own will and power created all things—the entire universe, the heavens, the earth and all that is in them. He brought all of it into being out of nothing—no preexistent material, no prior stuff, matter or energy. And, what he brought into being out of nothing, he has shaped and formed, preserved, ordered and upheld as the world and universe in which we live, inclusive of our very own selves.

            God acted alone in creation

                        I am the Lord, who made all things,

                        Who alone stretched out the heavens,

                        Who spread out the earth by myself.

Neither is the universe or anything in it including ourselves or anything about ourselves an extension or division from, or portion of, God's own being, which is simply to say that there is nothing in and nothing about the universe that is in itself eternal or ontologically necessary—none of its powers, processes, or component parts. No part or aspect of the universe functions as or constitutes its ontological ground. All of it exists by a will and wisdom that is ontologically separate from it.

Left Behind

The “Left Behind” series and the like came to mind this evening. Regardless of your take on their literary quality or theology, they proved to be masterly impactful on not just the church but our society as a whole. I truly believed God worked through them to draw people to Himself. But that’s not what I want to write about.

The thought that has buzzed through my brain this evening is that should the pre-millennial, pre-tribulation rapture view of end times be correct (and that is the direction my theology leans), what will be the impact of my sudden absence?

One might think the same thing about any sudden/accidental death that might remove me from the scene, sure, but I’m being specific here—should millions of people suddenly ‘vanish’ and I were one of them, what would be the response of my colleagues? My students? Others in my community?

Would they be surprised that I was one of those ‘religious’ people? More importantly, as they sifted through all of the competing theories on the cause of the disappearances that would be flooding the news, would their understanding of who I am help draw them to the correct conclusion? Is my life such that my sudden absence would not merely be a significant inconvenience to my department as they cover my classes, not merely possibly sadden a few, but point clearly to the truth of the Gospels and Scripture because I, myself, am one of the missing?

SDG

Universalism?

Yesterday, I suggested that God gives some information to some folks and not the complete story, then gives other, but equally incomplete information to others, with the idea that we pool our knowledge to find more complete understanding and thus bring glory to God. It is an understandable step, then, from that to ‘all roads to God are one,’ so that the exclusivity of the Gospel is weakened.

I do not take that step.

Rather, I see the revelation of God (the Scriptures) to the people of Israel as the linchpin or key to the general revelations that the rest of the world’s cultures have been given. Without something to use as an anchor or framework to hold human knowledge and understanding together, we face the certainty of getting things put together incorrectly, and increasing conflict when the pieces don’t fit together.

I do not believe it is an accident that God placed Israel in the Middle East, near the cradle of civilization, at the crossroads of three continents, so that every culture, whether through trade or war, had to go through that area to reach elsewhere. Israel is at the heart of information exchange for the vast majority of human history, leaving the opportunity for the Jews to witness to the special revelation of God, and in turn apply it to the wisdom and understanding of the nations, and re-disseminate it back to them.

Did they take advantage of the opportunity? Not so well, but not so incompletely either, as their influence has been so much larger than one postage stamp sized country has ever had a right to.

Not only are they placed strategically, but God chose that place for His incarnation, and at a time when the dominance of the Romans lead to an overall peace like the world had never seen, the Pax Romana, with good roads to facilitate a quick spread of the message. There was relative peace, which left people with the luxury of time to consider higher things than mere survival, and the freedom to travel relatively unobstructedly throughout the known world to share it.

Finally, God in the Scriptures repeatedly declares His intent to redeem nations, tribes and tongues; in short, cultures, wisdom, knowledge and understanding. Perhaps, then, we as Christians need to do more listening to others, and filter what we hear through the Scriptures and the indwelt Spirit. Perhaps God is less concerned with conversion and more with redemption. Perhaps if we trusted God’s leading more, and feared going astray less, the power of the Gospel would be more evident, and we would see what real transformation looks like.

Perhaps.

SDG

Solomon Sympathizes

For some strange reason, student stress tends to increase about this time of year. We may need an NIH grant to fund research into why.

Regardless, on the last day of class, I flash the following quote up on the screen to encourage the students that their condition is normal and been around since ancient times. It also introduces Scripture to them in a humorous way, showing the wide variety of ways God knows human life. Feel free to use it yourself, I have no hold on the copyright.

“But beyond this, my son, be warned: the writing of many books is endless, and excessive devotion to books is wearying to the body.”

                                                                          Ecclesiastes 12:12

SDG