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• May 16, 2012 by Jason Hood

  Bible and Jesus FAQ

  This week’s Sunday assignment is a bit different. I have two sessions with the high school kids, a sort of “Bible and Jesus FAQ.” This week they turned in questions to the youth ministers:

  • 1. Where did Cain get his wife?
  • 2. If God knew Satan would turn evil, why was he created?
  • 3. Are people pre-destined to go to heaven or hell?
  • 4. How do we know the Bible is accurate?
  • 5. How did the Bible become 1 book and how did they decide which ones went into the Bible?
  • 6. What is the most important thing in the Bible?
  • 7. Why do we worship God since we haven’t seen Him?
  • 8. Where was Jesus the 3 days between his death and resurrection?
  • 9. What are the “Lost Gospels” and why didn’t they make it into the Bible?
  • 10. Which came first…chicken or the egg?
  • 11. How would you explain “evolution” from a creationist viewpoint?
  • 12. Why isn’t much of Jesus’ childhood included in the Gospels?
  • 13. What does Jesus look like?
  • 14. When will Jesus come back on earth to take all his believers?
  • 15. Where did God come from?
  • 16. Can you explain the Trinity and how it works?
  • 17. How do people know when God has spoken to them?
  • 18. Why didn’t Jesus marry?
  • 19. When God spoke to people in the Bible does it mean out loud?
  • 20. How do we end up with peoples on the North American continent with histories dating back longer than the Bible dates the earth being?
  • 21. Why would God create people knowing they would go to hell?
  • 22. What is the point of prayer is God already knows the plan?
  • 23. How did we determine the 10 commandments are still important to follow as Christians, but not the rest of the Mosaic Law?
  • 24. What happened to Jesus’ flesh when He ascended?
  • 25. How do you explain the 2 billion year old rocks found on Iceland?
  • 26. How do we know our religion is the right one?
  • 27. Where did hell come from?

  Categories: Apologetics | General | Jason Hood | discipleship

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• May 10, 2012 by Jason Hood

  How Not to Argue for Premillennialism

  The Evangelical Free denomination recently modified its doctrinal statement, led by Greg Strand, Bill Kynes, and others. They did a fine job on this, and you can read the results in the book Evangelical Convictions.

  The Canadian branch recently revised their doctrinal statement also and eliminated the requirement of premillennial eschatology in keeping with essentials. The Americans attempted the same but were unable to do so (see Strand’s interview with Ed Stetzer). Too many of the older guard of that denomination have been taught that amil and postmil views were tantamount to liberalism. For instance, the postmil approach was favored by social gospelers who failed to take human sin seriously; the amil interpretation of Revelation (which is suspicious because it takes a symbolic approach and therefore, so the argument runs, does not take scripture literally) has been favored by non-evangelical interpreters in recent years.

  Admittedly, guilt by association is rhetorically powerful; but it’s also about the worst argument imaginable for a doctrine. It fails to note that the modern missionary movement spearheaded by Carey, Judson, and others was fueled by postmil expectation; and something like the amil position was held by Augustine, Aquinas, Bernard, Luther, and Calvin.

  Should we associate premil theology and interpretation with, say, Jim Jones or David Koresh?

  Categories: Bernard | Calvin | Eschatology | General | Jason Hood | Martin Luther | Revelation | Thomas Aquinas | biblical studies

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• May 9, 2012 by Jason Hood

  Worthy…

  …of a few moments:

  Robert Gundry’s review of Tom Wright’s “translation” for Books and Culture online. Gundry is clever and never one to pull punches. However I think his assertion that people don’t know they’re reading translations (loose or otherwise) is a bit over-done.

  A new 3D IMAX production features Jerusalem and Israel; there’s a beautiful seven minute preview.

  If you’re grading papers like I am this week, this video may be helpful.

  Great advice on marriage from a counselor (really, from the Bible).

  Categories: General | Jason Hood

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• May 7, 2012 by Jason Hood

  Why you should never own a pet deer

  I’ve been greatly enjoying Allan Eckert’s The Frontiersmen, an “epic of violence and vengeance” that tells of the settling of Ohio and Kentucky. It’s a riveting and vivid read, providing fast-paced yet deep portrayals from a variety of perspectives. (Warning: the book is graphic and not suitable for youngsters, and is not entirely historically accurate.)

  Many of the stories become life lessons, if you will. Take for instance the tale of Colonel Alexander McGee, a British handler for the Shawnee and other tribes. The British paid handsomely for (white) scalps and live American prisoners even after the end of the Revolutionary War and provided weapons and ammo so that the tribes would continue to be a thorn in the side of the young USA.

  McGee was stationed near Detroit and played a leading role in the chain of supply. Tribal warriors witnessed his bravery on many occasions and, noting that he always emerged unscathed, stories began to spread that he was protected by Moneto (God). He became even more legendary thanks to a remarkable pet deer that followed him like a dog. The deer, too, was seen as somehow connected to Moneto.

  But then, one morning while McKee was dressing, something came over the animal. As McKee bent over to thrust his leg into his trousers, the fully antlered buck charged and caught him squarely in the bare behind. It might have been uproariously funny, except for the results.

  The antler struck so hard that it punctured his femoral artery, and within minutes McKee was dead. (Life lesson: never let your pet deer spear your rear.)

  This event was so strange that it was regarded as a heavenly sign by the tribes, which, coupled with major defeat earlier that same year, led them to sue for peace. Ten tribes signed the Greenville Treaty of 1795, carving up much of Ohio (and what would become Detroit and Chicago) for the US and white settlers while leaving a stretch of land and hunting rights in the hands of the tribes.

  (Apparently the treaty was later revised so that the tribes wouldn’t even make money off the names of their sports teams: Cincinnati Reds, Cleveland Indians, Columbus Blue Jackets [named after a famous chief of the Shawnee], Chicago Blackhawks, etc.)

  Categories: General | Jason Hood

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• May 7, 2012 by Jason Hood

  Scaring this Biblical Scholar Straight

  In a few hours, I’ll enter the classroom to teach Ecclesiastes. I’m well-armed with quotes from Luther and Ellul, literary outlines from A. G. Wright and Phil Long. I’ve mined insights from Craig Bartholomew and Brevard Childs (who compares the relationship between Ecclesiastes and Proverbs to the relationship between James and Romans/Galatians) and Sinclair Ferguson and Peter Kreeft and Pascal. I’m familiar with Michael Fox’s take. I know how Ecclesiastes was used in Jewish tradition (the season of rejoicing in the Feast of Tabernacles). I’m prepared to discuss authorship and date, and I can wax on hebel and the fear of YHWH until Jesus returns.

  And yet . . . I’m simply not ready. There’s nothing, not even Revelation, that troubles me like this book. I tremble in my easy chair (a strange image, I know, but it can happen). I wonder at the sheer quantity of insight I’ve missed (what have I missed by not reading Barry Webb’s Five Festal Garments or Peterson’s Five Smooth Stones?!?) I fret over whether or not my students will actually get anything out of this book, or out of my teaching. Some fool will be checking email or FB or John Piper’s blog, and will probably get more out of that than she could out of my lectures. Dang it. A prof in a neighboring classroom will be entirely off topic, regaling the class with his personal life, and probably providing some sort of insight that changes someone’s life.

  Meanwhile, I’m stuck with Ecclesiastes, slugging away at The Matrix.

  And then I recognize. It’s not about me. It’s about fear, faith, and faithful obedience. I can’t guarantee results, but I can enjoy this moment, this text, these students and these fantastic conversation partners from throughout history. I can fear YHWH, teach his word as best I can, and trust him with the results . . . results that may not be in keeping with my course goals, or even Qohelet’s goals (or is it the narrator?!?) . . . results I may never get to see.

  And that’s how I discovered I was ready to teach this book: the moment life imitated art Ecclesiastes.

  Categories: General | Jason Hood | Theological Education

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• May 3, 2012 by Jason Hood

  The Normal Christian Life (in the OT)

  In Christ we find ourselves as fellow travelers with the faithful people of God in the Old Testament. Many of them lived their whole lives without ever seeing or hearing a great prophet like Moses or Isaiah; without ever being witness to one of the great signs and wonders of redemptive history; having no contact with God’s miraculous deeds other than the recital of these things by their elders and by attending the rituals of the tabernacle or temple.

  Their lives were lived sometimes in humdrum sameness from day to day; sometimes facing the mysteries of suffering without answers. They sharpened their thinking in much the same way we do by contemplating the wisdom that came to be enshrined in the wisdom books of the canon. Their guiding light in prophetic revelation and the fear of the Lord was but a pale shadow of what we see in Jesus.

  But, it nevertheless pointed them to their Creator God who established order, judged sin, ruled sovereignly over the world, made them responsible for their actions, established his covenant of grace and salvation with his people, and led them towards the full light of Christ, our wisdom.

  G. Goldsworthy, “Wisdom and Its Literature in Biblical Theological Context,” SBJT 15 (2011), 53.

  Categories: General | Jason Hood | wisdom

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• May 2, 2012 by Jason Hood

  Reading in Layers: Aslan’s Eucharistic Table?

  Reflecting earlier this week on Lewis and Aslan and the Stone Table, I wound up tweeting, “It’s never dawned on me before today: Aslan’s stone *table* is a eucharistic thing (Low church = slow church I guess).” This garnered some discussion on my FB page. Some pointed out other ways in which the “table” should be interpreted, perhaps implying that more than one allusion wasn’t possible.

  But “pictures are worth a thousand words,” not least because they can unveil more than one dimension. It’s often difficult for contemporary people to think or read in “layers,” and we must guard against “over-reading,” but Scripture (and Lewis) are probably best appreciated in this way.

  This Sunday evening I’ll be preaching on Matt 28:16-20, which possesses not so much one OT allusion as a whole network of passages and concepts (Gen 1:26-28; 12:1ff; 49:8-10; Dan 7; etc.), in so doing providing a fitting conclusion to the OT story (1:1-17), of which the expanding reign of King Jesus is a great new stage.

  I’d say that Lewis was probably also interested in multiple allusions. Clearly Lewis is interested in the destruction-fulfillment of Law in death, and the stone-as-Mosaic-law being broken. I think it’s possible that, in the midst of that allusion, he mentions table and in so doing doubles down on allusions. I find it hard to imagine that a high-church Anglican like Lewis would miss the chance to create a eucharistic association between table and sacrifice.

  (Richard Hays has noted some “guidelines” for determining the likelihood of allusions, so as to limit the tendency to read allusions into a text which an author did not intend. In this instance, a google books search shows that Paul Ford and Bruce Edwards have also proposed the association; I am unaware of any “table of the law” theme in Lewis that would otherwise account for the use of the word “table”; he was “high church” Anglican; he is elsewhere interested in Eucharistic imagery; etc.)

  Categories: C. S. Lewis | Eucharist | General | Hermeneutics | Jason Hood | Richard Hays

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• April 30, 2012 by Jason Hood

  Success as Judgment

  There were no good guys on WWII’s Eastern European front. In a war between Communism and Fascism, Hitler and Stalin (who split Poland between them), no one was remotely close to fighting on the side of righteousness and truth. Hitler butchered Jews, among others; Stalin butchered everyone.

  But Russia earned Anglo-American sympathies because of two principles: (1) “the enemy of my enemy is my friend” ; (2) Hitler was the aggressor, and everyone sympathizes with someone defending their mother, even if that mother is a whorish hammer and sickle.

  In a recent piece there’s an illustration of a third principle that turned the war Russia’s way:

  “Kiev,” Stahel concurs, “was uniquely Hitler’s triumph.” His strategy had been bitterly opposed by his senior generals before the event. But he had been aided and abetted by the intransigence of Stalin, whose dismissal of his own senior generals and insistence on defense [of Kiev] at all costs made a major contribution to the German victory [thought at the time to be a near-guarantee of German success in the war against Russia].

  The two dictators drew opposite conclusions from the outcome of the battle. Stalin belatedly recognized that it would in the future be wiser to leave matters largely to his generals. Hitler saw his triumph as a vindication of his own strategic genius, brushing his generals aside with ever-growing, ever more thinly veiled contempt. Yet as Stahel notes, the victory was Pyrrhic, the triumph illusory.

  Here’s the principle: sometimes success is not a reward, but God’s way of making us more in love with ourselves, so that we possess an even greater commitment to our own folly for our destruction. God’s justice is profound: it leads him to shatter the proud with the wrecking ball of their erstwhile glory.

  Categories: General | History | Jason Hood | justice

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• April 29, 2012 by Jason Hood

  The Key to Interpreting Biblical Prophecy

  Or at least, one of the most important keys: when the OT prophets speak to their audiences, they often speak of an ongoing redemptive process that began in their era and continues forward to our own and beyond to New Creation.

  Willem VanGemeren, Interpreting the Prophetic Word, was one of my favorite textbooks in seminary, and now I get to return the favor for my OT students. Here is one gem of an observation, from p. 316:

  [T]he new covenant is an eschatological reality whose fulfillment takes place in the progression of redemption, including the postexilic era, the renewal of covenant in Jesus Christ, and the present church age.

  He then cites Calvin at length:

  Hence the Prophet here intimates that God’s favor would be certain, because he would not only give leisure to the Jews, when they returned, to plant vines, but would also cause them to enjoy the fruit in peace and quietness. . . . He extends God’s favour to the country and the villages, as though he had said, that the land would be filled with inhabitants, not only as to the fortified towns, but as to the fields…Now, were one to ask, when was this fulfilled? We must bear in mind what has been said elsewhere,—that the Prophets,…included the whole Kingdom of Christ from the beginning to the end. And in this our divines go astray, so that by confining these promises to some particular time, they are compelled to fly to allegories; and thus they wrest, and even pervert all the prophecies. But the Prophets, as it has been said, include the whole progress of Christ’s Kingdom when they speak of the future redemption of the people. The people began to do well when they returned to their own country; . . . It was, therefore, necessary for them to look for the coming of Christ. We now taste of these benefits of God . . . We hence see that these prophecies are not accomplished in one day, or in one year, no, not even in one age, but ought to be understood as referring to the beginning and the end of Christ’s Kingdom.

  Calvin is commenting on Jer 31:5, 24 (emphasis is WVG’s). We can also cite similar comments from Calvin’s commentary on Isaiah 52:8.

  When he restored the Jews to liberty, and employed the ministry of Zerubbabel, Erza, and Nehemiah, these things were fulfilled. Yet at the same time they ought to be continued down to the coming of Christ, by which the church was gathered out of all parts of the world. But we ought also to go forward to Christ’s last coming, by which all things shall be perfectly restored.

  Categories: Biblical Theology | Calvin | General | Jason Hood | Kingdom of God | biblical studies | kingdom | prophecy

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• April 27, 2012 by Jason Hood

  Forgotten Factors in the Rise of Calvinism (2)

  Yesterday’s post identified two positive factors that contributed to the advance of Calvinism. However, other factors that had more to do with non-Calvinist options.

  (3) Market share. Hansen points out similar themes in his book. In particular the decline in (a) robust orthodoxy in mainline churches and seminaries and (b) dispensationalism left behind (sorry) a void, and Reformed campus ministries and church plants were in place to fill it. I know many who went to college over the past twenty years, encountered Reformed theology in RUF, InterVarsity, Campus Crusade, or Campus Outreach and could not bring themselves to return to weak churches with little or no teaching on grace or on orthodox Christianity. As a result the Reformed church plants in my area and elsewhere are full of young adults who grew up in Methodist and Baptist churches, went to college, and asked John Calvin into their hearts.

  (4) Lack of Competition, at least when it comes to making a theological case from the Bible. There are plenty of Christians who aren’t Calvinists, and plenty of work done to present Arminian, Wesleyan, Roman Catholic, or other views. But these attempts are often grounded in philosophy or emotion. If they include biblical exegesis, they seldom focus on it. I’m always struck by the fact that few people–even those with seminary educations–have even heard of the approach to election in Rom 9-11, etc. called “corporate election” (and I’ve heard the same from other Reformed and Arminian friends).

  One major exception was produced my teacher I. Howard Marshall: Kept by the Power of God (1967) addressed Calvinism by challenging a certain notion of perseverance (“once saved, always saved”) on exegetical grounds. It was highly influential, turning erstwhile Reformed thinkers like Scot McKnight and Clark Pinnock (who was responsible for the book’s publication in the USA in the 1970s) away from Calvinism, and is arguably one of the three most influential NT dissertations in the last half of the 20th century (Martin Hengel and Richard Hays would be the other, although I could be missing something important). Marshall wrote a follow-up essay a few years later, available online.

  Categories: Calvinism | General | Jason Hood

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