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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 15, 2012 by Matthew Mason

  Church of the Barefoot Runner

  

  (Not my foot)

  In the past few weeks, in lieu of any theological heavy-lifting, I’ve been reading a lot about barefoot running. As with most things, I’m more theorist than practitioner – it’s so much more fun to read about running than actually to run. But I’ve noticed some interesting parallels between barefoot running and the church.

  The barefoot running community is full of barefoot evangelists, eager to show and tell the benefits of a barefoot lifestyle.

  There are barefoot churches, where people in a particular neighbourhood assemble once a week to experience the joy of running together unshod.

  There are (many) credobaptist barefoot runners, who all have their own personal barefoot testimony, which all sound…remarkably alike. “Once I ran in shoes and suffered from plantar fasciitis, anterior shin splints, patella tendonitis. Then I read Born to Run and accepted barefoot running into my heart. Now I run 60 miles a week injury-free.”

  Then there are the paedobaptist barefoot runners, who emphasize that they were born without shoes, already members of the barefoot covenant community, and who sincerely hope their children will never know a day apart from being barefoot.

  There’s jargon that’s impenetrable to the outsider but much loved by the insiders (cadence, loading rate, impact transient). Better yet, some of it is Latin technical vocabulary that people have been using since the days when people actually knew what Latin words meant (plantar fascia,  patella tendonitis, anterior, posterior).

  There are barefoot fanatics, who habitually use extreme hyperbole – shoes as foot coffins, anyone? – and treat people who disagree with them as idiots.

  There are the liberal barefoot runners, who claim the name barefoot but own and wear any number of $150 “barefoot” running shoes.

  Then there are the mainliners, who prefer the adjective “minimalist”, and emphasise that the issue isn’t running barefoot per se, but barefoot running style, and any kind of shoe is fine if it works for you.

  In contrast, some barefooters are culture warriors, faithful Davids fighting the demonically inspired conspiracy of Nike, with its evil cultural influence and billions of dollars.

  There’s the barefoot Bible. (Have you read Born to Run?)…

  …and barefoot conferences, like the NYC Barefoot Run, where runners can meet and learn from barefoot celebrity teachers like Christopher McDougall, Dr. Phil Maffetone, and Barefoot Ken Bob Saxton …

  …and barefoot blogs (with plenty of pointless arguments in the comments), podcasts, how-to books. Though so far no-one seems to have tried a multi-site video-linked barefoot event.

  There are even a few barefoot pastor-theologians, who are MDs and runners, and who shepherd their local barefoot community and research and write for a wider barefoot audience.

  Categories: General | Matthew Mason

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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

  2 Comments

• 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 8, 2012 by Gerald Hiestand

  A Taxonomy of the Pastor-Theologian: Or Why PhD Students Should Consider the Pastorate as the Context for their Theological Scholarship

  Below is the intro paragraphs to a draft of an essay I’m writing on the pastor-theologian; click on the link at the bottom for the full essay.

  The sub-title of this essay may sound a bit naive. In what sense could the pastorate ever be a legitimate context for robust theological scholarship—especially the sort of theological scholarship that would justify the time and effort needed for acquiring a PhD? And indeed, incredulity here would not be without warrant. The announcement by Tom Wright regarding his retirement from the See of Durham to take up an appointment at the University of Saint Andrews offers us a telling glimpse into the contemporary working relationship between theological scholarship and the pastoral ministry. Announcing his career move, Wright stated,

  This has been the hardest decision of my life. It has been an indescribable privilege to be Bishop of the ancient Diocese of Durham, to work with a superb team of colleagues, to take part in the work of God’s kingdom here in the north-east, and to represent the region and its churches in the House of Lords and in General Synod. I have loved the people, the place, the heritage and the work. But my continuing vocation to be a writer, teacher and broadcaster, for the benefit (I hope) of the wider world and church, has been increasingly difficult to combine with the complex demands and duties of a diocesan bishop. I am very sad about this, but the choice has become increasingly clear.[1]

  As Wright’s example shows, modernity has not been kind to the theological vocation of the pastor. The local church—in the main—is no longer fertile soil for the sort of robust theological engagement pastors once offered the larger church. Instead, our contemporary ecclesial context has largely pushed the pastoral office toward “practical” duties such as leadership, organizational administration, pastoral care, and counseling. To be sure, all of these represent necessary and historic pastoral responsibilities. But amidst the inevitable pragmatism of ecclesial ministry, the church has lost sight of the need for her pastors to function—collectively—as a body of theologians.

  Such has not always been the case, of course. One need only think of history’s most important theologians to be reminded that the pastoral office was once capable of robust theological production. The heritage of pastors such as Irenaeus, Athanasius, Basil, Augustine, Anselm, Luther, Calvin, Edwards, Wesley, etc., all demonstrate the viability—indeed desirability—of uniting ecclesial ministry and robust theological scholarship. But the pastor-theologian is no longer the norm; he has been replaced by the professor-theologian.  This transition has not been without effect on the health of the Church or her theology, notably in two primary ways.

  First, as theologians moved from the pulpit to the lecture halls the theological water level within the pastoral community—and thus our congregations—fell considerably. The collective capacity of the pastoral community to think deeply and carefully about the crucial social, cultural, and theological issues facing the church has waned. A vapid pragmatism has been the inevitable result. And the cultural moment in which we find ourselves—particularly in the post-Christian west—exacerbates this theological deficiency. If there was ever a time when the church needed a pastoral community able to construct and articulate theological leadership on sexual ethics and anthropology, surely this is it. Yet the pastoral community—in the main—is largely incapable of providing such leadership. Consequently, local churches—and the congregants who inhabit them—now suffer from a sort of theological anemia not representative of our past. It should not surprise us that the near universal removal of our theologians from the pastorate to the academy has resulted in a deep and chronic theological deficit within our churches.[2]

  In the second place, not only has the church become theologically anemic, but theology itself has become, in many instances, ecclesially anemic. With the rise of the university in the eleventh and twelfth centuries, Christian theology began to suffer the loss of a distinctly ecclesial voice. Our theologians no longer live and breathe in an ecclesial environment. The academy, not the church, sets the agenda (and establishes the rules of engagement) for broader theological discourse. Joseph Ratzinger (then Cardinal, now Pope), in his The Nature and Mission of Theology, draws upon the work of Italian historian G. Alberigo, and observes insightfully,

  ….at the close of the twelfth century theology rushed as impetuously as a flash flood from its traditional centers — the bishop’s residence, the monastery and the chapter of the canons regular — to a new, ecclesiastically neutral center, the university, and in doing so radically altered its spiritual and scientific complexion….The orientation of theology toward a scientific status initiated a movement tending to divorce theology from the life of the Church: an ever more pronounced ‘hiatus develops between the Christian community and the institutional Church on one hand, and the guild of theologians on the other. The fact that the university became the new seat of research and of the teaching of theology without a doubt enervated its ecclesial dynamism and furthermore severed theology from vital contact with spiritual experiences.’[3]

  Ratzinger’s observation that contemporary theology is often “enervated of its ecclesial dynamism” is correct. Theologians now often find themselves absorbed in academic discussions that at times are only tangentially related to explicit ecclesial concerns. The inevitable result is a theological project that often fails to terminate in doxology and true Christian formation. As Ratzinger goes on to observe, “A theology wholly bent on being academic and scientific according to the standards of the modern university, cuts itself off from its great historical matrices and renders itself sterile for the Church.”[4] The situation is perhaps not as dire when one considers the professors of Christian colleges and evangelical divinity schools; many such professors operate self-consciously as theologians and scholars of the church, and their theological context provides the freedom to reflect this commitment.  Yet the methodological agnosticism of the wider university is not without effect, even in the divinity schools. It does not take one long to note the difference between the earnest, pastoral tone of a Calvin or Luther, and the more “disinterested” tone one often finds in a contemporary evangelical academic journal of theology. Theological scholarship—when considered within the wider university setting—has become overtly academic in ways not always helpful to ecclesial ministry.

  What can be done to correct these twin problems—the theological anemia of the church, and the ecclesial anemia of theology? Recognition of the problem is not new. But despite our best efforts to redress the dilemma, the problem remains. I’m convinced the chronic nature of this problem is connected to the issue of social location. Whatever the limitations of postmodernity, it has properly reminded us that social location plays a key role in theological formation. The questions that need answering, the issues that need solving, largely emerge out of the soil of the vocational grind that constitutes a theologian’s life context. And it bears observing that the academy and the church represent two distinct social locations. Simply put the theological questions that press in upon a professor are not always the same set of questions that press in upon a pastor. It is, I contend, simply asking too much of academic theologians to be sufficiently aware of and driven by the questions of a social location that they do not vocationally inhabit. We need a new way forward, which, as we will see, is in many respects a way back.

  Given the current bifurcation between the academy and the church, it is time to ask the emerging generation of theologians to once again consider the pastorate as a viable context for their future theological scholarship. This single move addresses both issues raised above. More theologians in our pulpits will deepen the theological integrity of our churches, while at the same time adding an ecclesial voice to evangelical theology. There are, of course, many challenges here. As Wright’s story reveals, the institutional structures of the church do not often lend themselves to theological scholarship. And the theological/scholarly methodology of the modern research university does not often lend itself to the sort of theological project a pastor would be interested in pursuing. These are legitimate concerns, but we leave them aside here for an issue that I believe is more foundational: charting a new vision for the pastor-theologian. If a new generation of pastor-theologians is the answer to the theological deficit of the church and the ecclesial deficit of theology, then it will be necessary to articulate a precise and robust vision of the pastor-theologian.

  As we will see, contemporary notions of the “pastor-theologian” are insufficient for addressing the twin concerns raised in this essay, and actually serve to perpetuate the bifurcation plaguing the academy and the church. To move forward, we must deconstruct the dominant understandings of the pastor-theologian with a view to articulating a fresh vision. From what I can observe, the term “pastor-theologian” conveys two basic meanings: the pastor-theologian as local theologian, and the pastor-theologian as popular theologian. While I affirm the legitimacy (indeed necessity) of each of these paradigms, this essay will argue for a more robust, historic understanding of the pastor-theologian: the pastor-theologian as ecclesial theologian.

  We begin with an assessment of the contemporary identities of the pastor-theologian.

  Read the whole paper here…

  ---

  [1] http://thegospelcoalition.org/blogs/justintaylor/2010/04/27/n-t-wright-leaving-durham-appointed-to-chair-at-st-andrews/.

  [2] Certainly the sky is not falling in every quarter. But evangelicalism, when considered broadly, demonstrates a disturbing lack of theological depth at the congregant level. David Wells, in his now classic, No Place for Truth: Or, Whatever Happened to Evangelical Theology (Grand Rapids, Mich.: Eerdmans, 1993), rails against the secularizing tendency of modernity, noting in particular its deleterious effects on the theological integrity of evangelicalism, and especially pastoral ministry. Wells draws a sharp and compelling connection between the demise of the pastor-theologian and the pragmatization of the pastorate. See his entire work, but especially 218-57.

  [3] Joseph Ratzinger, The Nature and Mission of Theology: Essays to Orient Theology in Today’s Debate (San Fransciso: Ignatius Press, 1995), 115-16. Ratzinger is drawing from Alberigo’s “Sviluppo e caratteri della teologia come scienza,” in Cristianesimo nella storia II [1990]: 257-74.

  [4] Ibid., 116. Ratzinger’s concerns are hardly isolated. For similar sentiments germane to biblical studies, see Craig Bartholomew’s, “Table in the Wilderness? Towards a Post-Liberal Agenda for Old Testament Study,” in Making the Old Testament Live: From Curriculum to Classroom, eds., R. Hess and G. Wenham (Grand Rapids, Mich.: Eerdmans, 1998), 19-47. Voicing sentiments similar to Bartholomew’s, Kevin Vanhoozer laments the bare historicism that plagues much of the academic biblical studies guild, noting that there is a “near consensus among biblical scholars that there is no place for doctrine in the exegetical inn….One is hard pressed to say which is uglier: the ditch separating theory and practice or the ditch that separates exegesis and theology.” The Drama of Doctrine: A Canonical Linguistic Approach to Christian Theology (Louisville Ky.: Westminster John Knox, 2005) 20. Alister E. McGrath makes similar observations regarding the discipline of theology in his, “Theology and the Futures of Evangelicalism,” in The Futures of Evangelicalism eds. Craig Bartholomew (Leicester, England: Inter-Varsity Press, 2003) 17-29. For a look at the historic church/academy disconnect in North America, see Donald M. Scott, From Office to Profession, The New England Ministry 1750-1850 (Pa.: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1978), 124-25; Gary Scott Smith, “Presbyterian and Methodist Education,” in Theological Education in the Evangelical Tradition (ed. D. G. Hart and R. Albert Mohler, Jr.; Grand Rapids, Mich.: Baker Books, 1996), 88-93, and Gerald Hiestand, “Pastor-Scholar to Professor-Scholar: Addressing the Theological Disconnect between the Academy and the Local Church,” in The Westminster Theological Journal, vol. 70 (2008), 360-66.

  Categories: Ecclesial Theology | General | Gerald Hiestand | Pastor-theologian

  12 Comments

• 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

  2 Comments

• May 5, 2012 by Gerald Hiestand

  Academic Systematicians and Ecclesial Systematicians (And Gadamer)

  In his recent post, “A Call and Agenda for Pastor-Theologians,” Doug Sweeney offers fourteen theses on theological education, the academy and the pastor-theologian. Number seven reads as follows:

  7. Nor will we always need academic, systematic theologians to do all the heavy theological lifting for God’s people.

  We are not often explicit about this, but systematic theology, insofar as it is distinguished from biblical, historical, philosophical, psychological, and intercultural theology, is the work of generalists, people who synthesize the findings of those in the other scholarly disciplines and neither have nor require a methodology of their own. They put the big picture together and apply it to our lives. They don’t require the resources or the structures of the academy to do this kind of work (though they do need very good libraries). In fact, the people best suited to synthesize our knowledge of God and his ways in the world today, applying this knowledge to the empirical realities we face, are pastor-theologians.

  Sweeney’s comments here are both helpful and generous. The pastoral office is capable of theological scholarship, and we serve the church poorly when we forget this. To be sure, there will always be a need for academic systematicians. I am not here suggesting (nor is Sweeney) that academic systematicians be replaced by ecclesial systematicians. The academic vocation offers the academic theologian time and resources that the ecclesial theologian will not be able to match. (The contract of one research professor I know includes thirty-two weeks a year for study and writing.) When functioning in service of the church, the ability of an academic systematician to produce technical work that engages with a wide range of conversation partners is a great value to Christian theology, and a tremendous resource for ecclesial theologians. Given the rise of the modern research university, as well as the development of the specialized guilds, it is no longer realistic to expect pastor-theologians to flourish wholly independent of the academy.  The fields have simply become too specialized and the secondary literature too vast.

  Yet Sweeney is correct that it serves the church poorly when we rely exclusively on academic theologians, to the exclusion of ecclesial theologians. What the ecclesial theologian loses in research time and institutional support is compensated for by the shaping influence of the pastoral vocation. As Vanhoozer rightly observes, “The church is less the cradle of Christian theology than its crucible: the place where the community’s understanding of faith is lived, tested, and reformed” (Drama of Doctrine, 25). The pastoral vocation raises questions that are not always congruous with the questions of the academy, pushing the ecclesial theologian into the exploration of issues that remain underserved in contemporary theological discourse. And beyond this, the grind and press of pastoral care forces one to grapple in deeper ways with one’s theological conclusions. One’s theodicy is deepened (and confronted) when one has to conduct the funeral of a six week old baby who was accidentally killed by his own mother when she shifted in her sleep. And one’s theology of marriage is pressed and shaped in profound ways when one has to provide counsel to a husband whose wife is on her third affair, or to a woman whose husband has left (for the fourth time) because of drug addiction. And one’s anthropology and views on gender are forced beyond the facile when one has to help a man wrestle through the question of gender identity. One cannot help but be shaped in profound ways by the steady rhythm of such experiences, and consequently one’s theology is likewise shaped.

  Pastors are not, of course, the only Christians called upon to give counsel and care in the face of such circumstances. But without question the vocational Sitz im leben of the pastorate uniquely tests and shapes one’s theology in ways the vocational context of the academy does not. The church will continue to need the vital contributions of academic theologians, but ecclesial theologians are uniquely positioned, as a matter of vocation, to produce ecclesially sensitive, field-tested, theological work that deepens faith and nurtures the church.

  One thinks here of the work of Hans Gadamer, who dispenses with modern notions of objectivity, as well as the corresponding post-modern epistemic despair associated with this loss, and instead argues (rightly, in my mind) that one’s immersion in a given social location is the very means by which one is able speak intelligently about that social location in the first place. Modern attempts at distance are futile; post-modern despair about such futility is misplaced. Subjective placement within a context (in this case, the church) is not a liability, but indeed a necessity for properly understanding that context.

  Categories: Ecclesial Theology | General | Gerald Hiestand | Pastor-theologian

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• May 4, 2012 by Gerald Hiestand

  SAET Stuff Around the Web

  Doug Sweeney (Senior Mentor in the Second Fellowship) has a nice post on the pastor-theologian here. This looks to be a modified reprise of the comments he offered at the 2009 SAET Symposium on the Pastor-Theologian. Good stuff.

  Andi Buyers, who visited with the SAET a few years back and is now a PhD student at Durham, has a begun a series that springboards off of Doug’s post. Looks like it will be worth following.

  And in other news, I just noticed this nice article in Themelios from Douglas O’Donnel (Second Fellowship) on how to interpret the Song of Songs.

  Categories: General | Gerald Hiestand

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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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