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• April 9, 2012 by Jason Hood

  Recent Reading: The Hunger Games

  Mrs. Hood has read all the cool stuff—Twilight series, Harry Potter, etc., and urged me to read The Hunger Games. The three books were my first reads on a Kindle. Page-turning thrillers make good sense on an e-reader, but I’m not sold yet on reading other books in this way.

  If you are on the fence about reading them, The Hunger Games might be worth your attention. (1) Your children and their friends will be likely to read this series. (2) It reads well and maintains its pace. (3) A number of ethical challenges make for interesting case studies worth discussion, particularly since the radical, Christian option (being harmed rather than harming) is not offered in the book (is Rue an exception?).

  But beyond these prosaic reasons, Collins gives a good portrayal of the life and emotions of a teenager. Apart from the usual “which boy” problems, there’s a deeper than anticipated look at teenage self-obsession. Self-focus is tempered by a sense of vocation, and further filtered by a growing awareness of the way one’s life is inextricably connected to others, so that Katniss can’t simply live for herself and her dreams without thinking about others. Katniss weaves through misunderstandings and emotional swings while balancing on a high-wire of self-confidence mixed with self-doubt.

  More importantly, she develops an awareness of the world and its warts and weaknesses, particularly the ability of a corrupt world to employ us as pawns for wicked purposes, and her own capacity for evil and wrongdoing.

  Even in rebellion against tyranny we may, in fact, turn out to be tyrants.

  Less thoughtful than (say) Chronicles of Narnia, more so than Ender’s Game, to paraphrase the book’s conclusion: “there are much worse books to read.”

  Categories: Book Review | Book Reviews | General | Jason Hood | sin

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• March 8, 2011 by Matthew Mason

  Kill sin. Links for Lent.

  Although I’ve been an Anglican for about 16 years, it’s only recently that I’ve been in churches where we take seriously the church year, and the way it is shaped by the gospel events of Jesus’ incarnation, ministry, sufferings, death, resurrection, ascension, and gift of the Spirit. I’m coming to love it, and to value the way I’m reminded of different aspects of the gospel, and the Christian life at different times of the year. Of course, all these things are always true. Every day, and especially every Lord’s Day, we’re to rejoice in the resurrection of Jesus, for example. But it’s great to have a day, Easter Day, the Sunday of Sundays, to really let rip (indeed, to have a season of seven Sundays to do this).

  Again, the day for fighting sin in the power of the Spirit is always today. But many of us find it helpful to take a season of forty days to focus especially on self-examination, killing sin, and renewing our trust in Christ and our commitment to follow him. The following are a handful of helpful resources from friends, colleagues, and a hero, to help with the Lenten journey to the cross and resurrection.

  First, a blog post by my friend and colleague Chuck Colson (no, not that one), on the Lenten Journey, where he outlines what Lent is about.

  Second, a post by my friend Aubrey Spears, who is a true pastor-theologian in the SAET sense, where he exhorts us to use various Lenten disciplines to fight with sin and live for Christ.

  Third, this superb sermon by John Piper is not specifically in anticipation of Lent, but presents a robust, powerful message on putting sin to death. Piper’s own tangible desire for holiness and the death of sin in his life is married to a strong, biblical doctrine of sanctification. Both aspects of the message reminded me why for many years Piper has been one of my heroes. He exhorts us to “act the miracle,” going on the attack with “continuous, sustained, strenuous effort” to kill sin in our lives by God’s grace.  I defy anyone to remain unmoved and unchanged.

  Finally, something a little different.

  Categories: General | sanctification | sin

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• February 8, 2011 by Matthew Mason

  Could Jesus have sinned? And does it matter?

  The question whether Jesus was impeccable (unable to sin) during his state of humiliation (earthly life) looks, at first blush, like an abstract piece of scholasticism that pastors can do without.  But as I pondered it yesterday, I concluded that it makes a good test case for someone’s theological methodology.  The way you tackle it, if not the precise conclusions you draw, also has deep pastoral significance.  The most obvious practical, pastoral issue is, to what extent is Jesus able to sympathise with me as a faithful High Priest when I’m tempted (cf. Heb 2:17f; 4:15)?  As the divine Word, didn’t he have something of an advantage over me in resisting temptation?  This is not a theoretical question.  It’s something two members of my congregation have asked me, as we’ve studied the Apostle’s Creed.

  In what follows, I’ll move in stages from more abstract methodological considerations to more concrete practical implications.  It’s a long post, and requires a bit of moderately heavy lifting.  But I think the practical pay-off is worth the conceptual work.

  (1) The work of systematic theology is, in part, about erecting, or at least recognizing, the boundaries of the playing field of orthodoxy –  it’s there to stop us from straying into error, sometimes serious error.  This question is not just an intellectual exercise, it’s also, as so often, profoundly pastoral.

  (2) The nature of Christian doctrine is what we might call loosely systematic.  Since God is one, all of reality is coherent, as is his word.  Therefore, in order to accord with Scripture and reality, our theology must also be coherent.  Nevertheless, given our finitude, and the noetic effects of sin, we must be wary of drawing our systems too tightly.  The quest for ruthless logical consistency and connectedness, if pursued too hard, ever runs the risk of collapsing into heresy.

  (3)  The best doctrinal formulations will be those that give the fullest account of the entire teaching of Scripture in all its richness and diversity. They will also be pastorally attuned.  However, although Scripture’s richness and diversity is certainly coherent since it is the very words of the One God, it does not always (ever?) have an obviously rigorous and transparent systematic character.

  (4) Not least when dealing with the person of Christ, we need first to affirm that we’re dealing with a deep mystery, something way beyond our ability to grasp.  We have little enough awareness of what it means to be a person with one nature!  We’re in many ways mysterious to ourselves.  This is both inevitable and good – to know ourselves completely would be the way of insanity.  This being so, how much less can we grasp of what it would mean to be a person with an unfallen nature (e.g., Adam in the Garden – what did temptation feel like for him?).  Still less can we really grasp what it means to speak of a divine Person.  Given the Creator-creature distinction, there is always a far greater un-likeness than likeness between God and us.  In speaking of Christ, we are not even simply speaking of a divine Person.  We are speaking of a divine Person who, whilst remaining fully and unchangeably divine, has taken to himself an unfallen human nature.  We cannot remain completely silent on the matter, because that would be to deny God’s self-revelation in Christ.  Nevertheless, we must speak and think with great caution and humility!  Therefore, to misappropriate a line from Wittgenstein, whereof one cannot speak, thereof one must be silent.

  (5) To the issue: could Christ have sinned?  In technical language, was he impeccable, or peccable?  The first boundary to erect is the affirmation that the incarnate Word was fully divine.  In the self-emptying of taking on flesh, the immutable Word laid aside none of the attributes of deity in his divine nature.  And this includes his holiness.  Therefore, he could not sin.  It’s impossible for God to lie (Hebrews 6:18; Titus 1:2).  God is of purer eyes than to look on evil, he can’t even look on wrong (Habakkuk 1:13).  It therefore appears, without further question, that Christ was impeccable.  However, to make this the only boundary in play in considering this question would be to risk running headlong into a docetic Christology.

  (6) We therefore also need to affirm that the Word incarnate had a human nature.  Now, human persons can sin when tempted, even persons with unfallen natures, such as Christ had (cf. Adam in the Garden!)  However, Christ was not a human person (I’ll stick with past tenses, since our discussion is limited to his state of humiliation.)  He was a divine Person with a human nature.  This changes things somewhat, since persons, not natures, sin.  Nevertheless, it’s worth asking the question, without reaching a definite conclusion – since we know that humans, even unfallen humans, are peccable, could a divine Person with a human nature sin in that nature?

  (7) The next step, of vital importance, is to affirm that Christ’s temptations were real.  The temptations of Matthew 4:1-11 are not a charade.  Christ is not play-acting as he interacts with the satan.   In the Garden of Gethsemane, when the satan found his opportune moment to return to Jesus, and Jesus was tempted to avoid the cross, the intensity of his temptations caused him to sweat blood (Luke 22:44).  In fact he’s been tempted like us in every way, although he resisted and remained without sin (Heb 4:15).

  (8) We can go further.  Not only was Jesus tempted in every way like us, he was tempted more than we ever have been or will be.  We can be sure, given the centrality of Jesus’ mission to God’s plan of salvation, that never were satan’s assaults greater than when facing the incarnate Son.  More than this, as C.S. Lewis observed, it’s only someone who’s resisted temptation who knows how powerful temptation really is, because the more you resist, the stronger the temptation becomes.  If you give in straight away, you’ve no real idea how strong temptation can become.  So we can conclude that Jesus, who consistently resisted temptation for 33 years – and most intensely from the time of his baptism until he handed his spirit over to his Father – has endured far greater temptations than we will ever experience.  In comparison with him, we have no idea what real temptation is.  I’ve been seriously tempted, but I’ve never sweat blood!

  (9)  We can, I think, go one step further still.  In Romans 6, Paul says that having been baptized into Christ’s death and resurrection, we have died to sin (v.2-4).  We are therefore to reckon ourselves dead to sin and alive to God in Christ Jesus (v.11).  This is grounded in the fact that when Jesus died, he died to sin, once for all (v. 10).  The implication is that before his death, he was alive to sin.  Which can’t mean that he actually sinned, but must at least mean that the temptations he faced were real, and powerful.  Now, put these things together.  Jesus was alive to sin, but is no longer.  In Christ, we’ve died, and so we are no longer alive to sin (ie, no longer under the power of sin – we can resist it and walk in newness of life).  Therefore, it seems reasonable to infer that it’s easier for Christians to resist sin than it was for Jesus during his state of humiliation.

  (10) We must add to all of this that Luke in particular presents Jesus as the archetypal man full of the Spirit.  He goes out to face the satan in the wilderness full of the Spirit (Luke 4:1-12), and so resisted temptation as a man in the power of the Spirit.  And notice the way, in Luke’s Gospel, Jesus’ ministry begins with Jesus praying and full of the Spirit, whilst the book of Acts (Luke’s sequel to his Gospel) begins with the Church praying, and full of the Spirit (Acts 1:14; 2:1ff; 4:23-31).  In other words, Luke sets Jesus up as the model for us, the model of what a prayerful, Spirit-filled person is and can do.  Thus, to the extent that I fall into sin, I fall short of being a Spirit-filled man.  Nevertheless, some caution is in order.  I remain suspicious that over-pressing this point, and underplaying the reality of the Word’s direct action on his human nature, leads to a species of Nestorianism.

  (11) And, of course, in all of this, the vital thing for our salvation is not so much the question whether or not Jesus could have sinned, but the fact that he didn’t sin.  He was therefore able to offer himself as a lamb without blemish for us, and die as the sinless for the guilty.

  (12) How all this fits together is, as I said, deeply mysterious.  And that’s ok.  We need a system, but one that’s loosely systematic, and that’s able to respect all of the boundaries the Bible lays out for us, and all of the affirmations it makes.  We don’t have to tie together every loose end.  Even if we decide that the Word couldn’t sin, and therefore it was impossible for Jesus to sin (which is, I think, the most plausible position to take), we can’t then decide that therefore Jesus wasn’t really tempted like us.  If we reach that conclusion, we’ve overstepped what the Bible says, and we rob ourselves of genuine comfort.  I think the answer is found in stressing what the Bible stresses, and in trying to keep all these things together somehow.  So sometimes, I need to stress Jesus’ divinity and therefore his utter holiness, purity, power, and difference from me.  He is my Lord, worthy of my undivided worship and devotion. And certainly I need to emphasize the biblical truth that, for all his temptations, he remained unblemished, without sin.   But when I’m tempted, I need to remind myself that Jesus was tempted far more than I, and so he’s able to understand and help me.  And that he resisted temptation in the power of the Spirit and by the word of God, so when tempted I can pray, “Lead me not into temptation and deliver me from the evil one”, knowing that my faithful High Priest is also praying this for me before my Father.  Then, strengthened by his Spirit who now dwells in me (notice how Trinitarian this is!), I can trust my Father’s promises to me in Scripture, resist temptation, and present my members to him as instruments of righteousness.

  Categories: Christology | General | Incarnation | Theological Method | sin

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• January 23, 2011 by Jason Hood

  Not the Way It’s Supposed to Be

  That’s the title of a great book on sin by Cornelius Plantinga, Jr (subtitle: a Breviary of Sin). There’s a short summary of this book in PDF form, 22 pages or so, but the prose is so good don’t let that stop you from reading the larger work. There aren’t many great studies on sin, which is surprising, given the number of theologists who are experts in the field, with plenty of firsthand experience and “research” under their belt.

  Loads of things to reflect on in the book and the pdf. But here’s one interesting, provocative thought:

  a corrupted person turns God’s gifts away from their intended purpose. She perverts these gifts. For example, she might use her excellent mind and first-class education not to extend the reach of God’s kingdom, but just to get rich. She wants to get rich not in order to support terrific projects in the world, but just to move up the social ladder.

  We ordinarily think of a prostitute as someone who rents her body. But a person can also rent her mind for a high hourly rate, and she perverts it if she rents it because she wants to feel superior to the people who bag her groceries and park her car.

  Along similar lines, and also from the Reformed tradition, hear Jamie Smith, Letters to a Young Calvinist, 121: “For Augustine, sin is a matter of how, not what.  ’Things’ aren’t sinful; what’s sinful is how we relate to them, what we do with them.  And this comes down to a matter of what we love and how we love.”

  Categories: General | Jason Hood | sin

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• December 7, 2010 by Jason Hood

  The source of our blockheaded-ness?

  Calvin nails it with a message of despair for the flesh that is a word of hope for the soul.

  Now our blockishness arises from the fact that our minds, stunned by the empty dazzlement of riches, power, and honors, become so deadened that they can see no farther.  The heart also, occupied with greed, ambition, and lust, is so weighed down that it cannot rise up higher.

  In a nutsehll, the whole soul, in a web made of the allurements of the flesh, seeks its happiness on earth.  To counter this evil the Lord instructs his followers in the vanity of the present life by continual proof of its miseries . . .

  We only rightly advance in the discipline of the cross, when we learn that this life, judged by itself, is troubled, turbulent, unhappy in countless ways, and in no respect clearly happy; that all those things which are judged to be its goods are uncertain, fleeting, vain, and vitiated by many intermingled evils.

  From this, at the same time, we conclude that in this life we are to seek and hope for nothing but struggle; when we think of our crown, we are to raise our eyes to heaven.  For this we must believe:  that the mind is never seriously aroused to desire and ponder the life to come unless it is previously saturated with contempt for the present life.

  Calvin, Institutes, III.ix.1

  Categories: Calvin | Jason Hood | sin

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• December 5, 2010 by Jason Hood

  Not the Way it’s Supposed to be

  That’s the title of a great book on sin by Cornelius Plantinga, Jr.  There’s a short summary of this book in PDF form, 22 pages or so.

  There are loads of helpful things to reflect on in this pdf.  But here’s one interesting, provocative thought (not one of his best BTW, lots more that is more clear-cut):

  a corrupted person turns God’s gifts away from their intended purpose. She perverts these gifts. For example, she might use her excellent mind and first-class education not to extend the reach of God’s kingdom, but just to get rich. She wants to get rich not in order to support terrific projects in the world, but just to move up the social ladder. We ordinarily think of a prostitute as someone who rents her body. But a person can also rent her mind for a high hourly rate, and she perverts it if she rents it because she wants to feel superior to the people who bag her groceries and park her car.

  Categories: Jason Hood | sin

  0 Comments