Fellowship series index

 Fellowship series index

• Fellowship builds excellence: Iron sharpens iron
• In fellowship, we join our strengths and supply what is lacking
  
• Fellowship gives hope in adversity
  
• Fellowship create the friend that is closer than a brother
  
• There is fellowship is created by recognizing each others' worth
  
• Fellowship endures past the first test with forgiveness

Fellowship is not an optional part of following Christ. A new command he gave us, that we love each other. We cannot do that alone. 

The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ: Series Index

I know I don't usually post mid-week currently, but I realized I hadn't posted a series index for the grace series I did this summer, and didn't want to have my "once a week" post be only an index to previous posts. 

 The index has a few observations that I don't think made it into the individual posts. 

• The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ - about Christ's central and unique role in grace, and how that challenges our theologies about "prevenient grace" and "irresistible grace"
• Grace from the foundation of the world - how God's goodness is involved in the foundation of the world. Nature is founded on an act of grace. Without grace, nature is not truly itself.
• Grace and faith - God's faithfulness, our faith, and what God has given us in raising Christ from the dead
• Grace and the Trinity - how the act of Jesus' incarnation is an embodiment of God's love; how the sending of the Holy Spirit is to establish grace and fellowship. And so how "Trinity" is about God's love for us and his outreach towards us.
• Grace and a less selfish view of the law - How God's law calls us to participate in God's grace towards our neighbor. The law is in accordance with nature. Its purpose is to establish our grace for others; even for sinners it restrains enmity. The desire to throw off the law is the desire to throw off grace towards our fellowman. This follows from the fact that love is the fulfillment of the law.
• Paradise to the ends of the earth - Eden as a template for how people are to "fill the earth and rule over it", by establishing paradise to the ends of the earth. A continuation of the act of grace begun at creation.  

Jesus, Name above all names: Series index

Here is the index for the series on Jesus, name above all names

• Jesus knows what the kingdom of heaven is like
• Jesus knows what the Last Day will be like -- and what justice looks like
• Jesus' teachings are vivid and personal
• Jesus keeps us honest about our religious pretensions, and about what God desires
• Jesus' morality has a focus: love
• Jesus comes across as more fully human
• Jesus' life is the world's most serious evidence of the supernatural
• Jesus has the highest and most beautiful morality yet articulated by anyone
• Reading Jesus' words is a religious experience
• Jesus rose from the dead

And here is the companion post about how "Jesus, name above all names" is the theme of the evangelists and the epistles, and how our call to evangelize means witnessing to that truth:

• Name above all names: The gospels, the epistles, and what it means to evangelize

On being like God (5), and index

Since the earlier series about being like God, I've noticed how many things I missed. Here are a few of them:

• Those who establish righteousness and justice are walking after God, who gave the Ten Commandments to Israel.
• Those who renew and restore are walking after God, who said, "Behold, I am making all things new."
• Those who establish fellowship are walking after God, who called the twelve apostles, and who sent them out two by two.

Interesting that the verse about "walking after God" (Deuteronomy 13:4) cited in the Talmud on this topic can also be translated as "following God". I have to wonder if Jesus meant to allude to that when he called his disciples saying, "Follow me."

Previously:

• On being like God (introduction)
• On being like God (2) (the sheep and the goats)
• On being like God (3) (creativity)
• On being like God (4) (meditation on other ways)
• On being like God: Hospitality.

Additions:

• On walking after God: Noah and the animals.
• On being like God: Knowing each others' sorrows
• God so loved the world
  

Saints: The missing epistles of the New Testament

The God we proclaim is not an idol carved from stone or an imagined philosophy; he is the Living God. Even his Word is the Living Word; God's full self-expression in this world is not as a book but as a person, Jesus of Nazareth. Christians down through the ages have proclaimed Jesus as the Word of God made flesh. His word is meant to be lived.

We carefully study the letters of Peter and Paul in the New Testament because we think here we have something written by the Spirit of the Living God. There we read:

You are a letter from Christ, the result of our ministry, written not with ink but with the Spirit of the Living God, not on tablets of stone but on tablets of the human heart. (2 Corinthians 3:3)

Consider carefully what Paul is saying. Not all the epistles written by the Holy Spirit are written with ink; not all of God's words are carved on some stone tablet. It is a perfectly legitimate thing to be inspired by those around us who live by the Spirit of God. It is a perfectly Biblical thing to recognize that the Bible is meant to be lived, and to find inspiration in those who live it. More than that, if we read the Bible rightly it writes on our own hearts, so that we may be living letters from God.

Many of us in the west are Protestants, very much put off by Rome. There's some history of antagonism there, a distrust of all things Roman -- including knowing and honoring the lives of saints. Worse, we may not even recognize that God's word to us may be written in the lives of other followers of Christ, may not acknowledge that the word of God may be written on tablets of the human heart. We miss God's message, the people whose lives are epistles from God, but not written with ink. In every age, there are living epistles of the New Testament. In our quest to follow Jesus, these letters from Christ should not be missing.

I will be posting a few things about the living epistles of the New Testament that have inspired me greatly:

• Mary of Bethany
  
• Francis of Assissi
  
• J.R.R. Tolkien
  
• The ten Boom family

(Note: Updated with links to Tolkien and ten Boom.)

Controversies: the list

Updated with links: 02/09/2011

This post is my working draft of the controversies I'd hope to consider. I have some notes but I'd bore everybody if I put those above the list -- so they're below it.

1. The liberal/conservative group of controversies:
a. Creation/evolution
b. Role of women
c. Is heterosexuality normative?
d. Reliability and trustworthiness of the Bible
e. Moral authority of the Bible
f. Models and methods for interpreting the Bible

2. Controversies over the identity of God
a. Can we know God?
b. Who is Jesus?
c. How can Jesus Christ be both God and man?
d. Who or what is the Holy Spirit?
e. Is the doctrine of the Trinity warranted?
f. What is God like?

3. The Catholic/Protestant group of controversies:
a. Scripture, Tradition, and the basis of doctrine
b. Apostolic succession
c. The Bishop of Rome
d. What gives unity to the church?
e. Saints and heroes of previous ages
f. The controversies over Mary
g. Doctrinal development and the faith once given
h. Celibacy and holiness
i. Monasticism and holiness

4. The salvation controversies
a. How are we saved?
b. How do we grow in holiness?
c. How do we deal with sin in our Christian communities?
d. Is there a heaven?
e. Is there a hell?
f. Who is saved?

5. The sacrament/ordinance controversies
a. What is baptism?
b. What is the Lord's Supper?
c. The right place of Other sacraments, rites, or ordinances

6. The liturgical/free-church controversies
a. The lectionary
b. The liturgy and the movement of the Holy Spirit
c. Clerical garb
d. Special offices and the priesthood of all believers
e. The creeds
f. How should we worship?

7. Christianity in the world
a. Is Christianity unique?
b. How should we witness?
c. How should we live out our faith?
d. What is the gospel?

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And here are the introductory notes that would have put any unsuspecting readers to sleep before they reached the list:

Notes:

• This list is likely to be fluid. I use this blog like an on-line notebook at times, and I expect that this post will change as I add or rearrange the material, or add links.
• Looking at my current list, I suppose I'd rather have started with what is now section 2 on controversies over the identity of God. When I set out, starting with Genesis seemed natural, but for most things it's not practical to take them in the order in which they appear in the Bible, since the controversies range all over the place. So I'll finish up the conservative/liberal group of controversies first, then move on.
• I'm aware that my list is weighted towards controversies where I'm more involved. This is not out of any plans to exclude anyone's favorite controversies; it's more a matter of starting with what I know. I can hardly start somewhere besides where I am. I'd be glad for comments on other things to discuss.
• Some controversies could easily fit under more than one heading. I usually grouped them where I thought it would be most helpful to discuss them.

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Edward Babinski has a survey of the diversity of Christianity.

Is the NT reliable? Stock arguments against that I find unconvincing, and why

There are a number of stock arguments circulating among skeptics that target the reliability of the New Testament. I would not ask a skeptic to assume divine inspiration; I simply intend to point out some historical realities in the early Christian church that may not be widely known among skeptics, and how these verifiable historical situations tend to make certain arguments non-starters. These selected arguments are ones that I find glaringly at odds with facts that anyone who took the trouble can easily verify. The remainder of this discussion won't assume anything about the New Testament documents beyond this: that they were in circulation in the early Christian community, that the early Christian community believed them to be honest. That is a fairly minimalist starting point and should allow us to start out on common ground on which both parties agree.

Here are some of the arguments that I intend to review and show why I think they are non-starters.

• The early Christian church was gullible and superstitious; they would have accepted anything.
• The early Christian church was an easy mark for forgeries; all it took to gain acceptance for a document was to tack on the name of an apostle.
• Forgery -- or pseudonymity -- was a widespread and acceptable practice; the early Christian church would not have cared if someone had adopted a disciple's name as a pen-name.
• The Gospel of Luke had to have been written decades after the Gospel of Mark because it would have taken that long for copies of the Gospel of Mark to become widely circulated.
• The appendix to the Gospel of John disproves the traditional authorship of the Gospel of John.
• None of the gospels claims to have been written by an eyewitness.
• The early church lacked our concept of critical scholarship for considering the authorship of a text.
• The early church lacked our concept of critical scholarship for the actual content of the text. They had no way to deal with discrepancies among hand-copied manuscripts.
• The use of prophecies in the New Testament shows that the prophecies were retroactively invented to fit events after they occurred.
• The four gospels now considered canonical were no more viable than the alternative gospel suppressed by the church.

In upcoming posts, I will go into the basic background on each and show why I think that, given the known facts, these arguments are non-starters.

Word Clouds of the Bible: introduction and index

If you haven't seen them yet, there are a collection of "word cloud" posts below for the four gospels.

In the last few years, "word clouds" have become popular. They are an effective way of graphing the frequency of word use in a text. They are often seen on blogs and websites as a quick indication of an author's main interests or main points.

I had a simple question: What happens when you generate a word cloud for the Bible? I wondered what insights might come to light. So far I have done five word clouds (see posts immediately below): one word cloud for each of the four gospels, and a fifth word cloud for all the gospels combined. I was interested to look them over, see connections, see things highlighted, ponder the questions raised.

Word clouds are definitely a limited tool. There is much you cannot tell, a risk of seeing a large count of trees but never actually seeing the word "forest". Still it provides an interesting snapshot of the themes and motifs running through the gospels.

As time permits, I'll continue with other parts of the Bible. (Updates have been made since the original posting. Last update 07/08/2008.)

By the way, my goal as a blogger has been to have my own topic frequency mirror the priorities of the Bible; this will give me a quick way to check myself. It might give us an easy index as to whether a given book has the same priorities as the Bible. I'd be tempted to analyze systematic theologies in that way to make an initial assessment of whether they had their priorities straight. Ah, the possibilities ...

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Links to Bible word clouds:
Matthew
Mark
Luke
John
Combined gospels
Acts
Romans
1 Corinthians
2 Corinthians
Galatians
Ephesians
Philippians
Colossians
1 Thessalonians
2 Thessalonians
1 Timothy
2 Timothy
Titus
Philemon
Hebrews
James
1 Peter
2 Peter
1 John
2 John
3 John
Jude
Revelation

Do Christians Sell the faith short? Part 4: The Table of Contents

Dr. Platypus has written a piece on how Christians sell the faith short, looking at the contents of a church hymnal as a barometer of their beliefs. He's got a point.

On a related note, I have to say: that is my favorite thing about Dietrich Bonhoeffer's Cost of Discipleship. I may not agree with him on every interpretation, but he lets God set the table of contents, as the book moves down the Sermon on the Mount and lets Christ set the agenda for our thoughts.

The Love of God in Christ

I've been participating in some discussions on systematic theology and ordered lists of salvation. It is easy to nitpick someone else's systematic theology, but also unfair to offer only criticisms but no new construction. So over the next few posts, I will sketch out a basic systematic theology. The question I have for myself -- and not for the first time -- is what kind of fool would undertake such a monumental task with the limits that I have? And the answer has not changed much: that the size of the task and my limits are plenty of cause for humility, cause which I would always do well to take seriously. It is one thing to begin with humility, but another to use humility as an excuse for not learning and doing what I can. So I have sketched out a very basic systematic theology and hope to contribute more to the conversation than only criticism.

The Fall and The Need for Redemption
The goodness of God and the goodness of creation
The image of God and the fall of man
Why the wages of sin is death

The love of God in our redemption
The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ and the Fellowship of the Holy Spirit
The Encounter With Christ
Christ: The Power of God for Salvation
Christ: The Author of Faith
Christ: Our Covenant with God
Christ and the Worship of God
Christ and the New Creation within Us
Christ: The Foundation of Baptism
The fellowship of the Holy Spirit

Related Posts (not part of original series)
The stumbling block of the average systematic theology
On the atonement
Does the Athanasian Creed contain a mistake?
God's eternal decrees: The missing decree
Why the true systematic theology must be Christ
The cornerstone of systematic theology
Chosen in Christ
The problem with systematic theology
Ordered list of salvation
Grace and Election founded on Christ
Christ's role in every spiritual blessing
Sacrifice: Death and Redemption
VA Weekly: The Atonement
Omnipotence, Weakness, and the Cross of Christ
Original Sin?
Martin Luther and the Kaiser's Wife (on arguing with Scripture)
Understanding Scripture: Basic standards of interpretation
Comparative Religion: Beginning with Truth and Goodness
Across religions and cultures: Jesus as the shape of hope




Why?
One question still needs asking: Do we really need a new systematic theology? I do not know that very much of what I say is genuinely new; on a topic like this I would not even want to say something without precedent. Still, many popular systematic theologies hold such a small place for Christ, or have such a weak doctrine of creation, that it is difficult to be satisfied that they do justice to God. Some people have given up on theology altogether because its spirit has been so far from the spirit of Christ. And in the interest of fairness, it remains for me to make a contribution. May I make it prayerfully.