Through A Glass, Dimly

Michael Patton at Parchment and Pen has posted an email from one of his readers, who is struggling with the question of suffering, and whether God is there.  My comment ended up being too long to post, so I’m posting it here.

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Hmm…

First, I would encourage anyone struggling with suffering  anyone who may struggle with suffering anyone to listen to D.A. Carson’s two sermons On Evil and Suffering (pt 1, pt 2). (I just found online notes on both the first and the second sermons.) I think his insights are very helpful for learning to think “Christianly” about suffering–in the way that sustains you in very hard times.  (Note: One point he makes is that it’s important to think about these things before we encounter suffering–it’s much harder to process these things when you’re in the midst of it.)

Second, you (the writer of the email) said:

I found it ironic that your biography page on the Parchment and Pen blog lists “A Mighty Fortress” as, apparently, a song that you like. I’ve reached the point where I just can’t sing that song, because it feels so false. I used to think that God would essentially protect his children from any major suffering, but I now realize that that is not true.

I agree; it is not true that God will protect his children from any major suffering. If you have been taught to expect that God would, that’s not good.  I don’t think that is what God has promised us.

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I spent some time commenting in another Parchment & Pen entry, “An Emerging Understanding of Orthodoxy“. Michael Patton showed some interesting diagrams to illustrate both progressive revelation, and progressive understanding. The latter has to do with development of doctrine–as time has progressed, the way that Christians articulate doctrine has also changed. How do we take that? Does it mean that truth is changing? Does it mean that the earlier Christians got it wrong and we have to correct them? Eastern Orthodox deny that doctrine can develop; does it mean that we’re wrong, because we disagree with Tradition? How do we balance the need for reform and discovery with respect for those who have gone before? How do we ensure that we provide a place for Christians to ask questions in a healthy, cautious manner?

The post is good, and there’s some good discussion in the combox. Patton discusses the issue in terms of doctrine going through a process of “maturing”. In the early church we may find immature doctrine, still going through the process of significant refinement in the way it was articulated. And as time progresses, and our doctrine has “matured”, it has also stabilized–it’s not going to change significantly, even as we continue to learn and refine and mature.

I’ll try to summarize some of my contributions in a numbered list. First, a little more introduction:

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I want to point you all to a new series on Eastern Orthodoxy over at Parchment and Pen. (I’ve posted some comments, asking questions about his statements on the canon of Scripture.)  Dr. Bradley Nassif, who contributed to the book Three Views on Eastern Orthodoxy and Evangelicalism, describes the content of the first three posts:

it is my conviction that there was and is a continuous and consistent tradition of apostolic faith passed down through the centuries, and that the Orthodox Church most faithfully embodies it – at least on a formal level. I’d like to share just two examples that illustrate how the Orthodox Church has maintained its unbroken succession with Christian antiquity, and reveal why it is particular attractive to an increasing number of Christians. Today I’ll speak of Scripture; next blog, I focus on the role of history. The third blog to come, however, will put the Orthodox Church under the microscope of an evangelical critique.

I’m looking forward to the third blog. I’ll be quite interested to see how he articulates the issues, and responds to them.

The posts so far are:
Upcoming Posts on Eastern Orthodoxy (by Michael Patton)
Why Eastern Orthodoxy? Part 1: Introduction (by Dr. Nassif)

The comment section of Dr. Nassif’s first post has the questions I asked him about the canon. (As before, I used the name Jugulum.) It’s an interesting subject–I think it’s one of the hardest for Christians to wrestle with, and it may be the most neglected subject in evangelical teaching in general. (Update: To clarify, I actually asked him some probing questions, rather than simply questions for information.  I asked him a bit about his view, how he handles the OT canon, and whether he’s be consistent in the claims he makes about the Orthodox Church and the NT canon.)

My goodness, two posts in one day? After two weeks of silence? What’s gotten into me?!?

So, here’s the issue: Does 1 Thessalonians 5:21 tell us to abstain from everything that even appears evil to some people? That’s how people sometimes read the KJV translation: “Abstain from every appearance of evil.”

In an entry at Parchment and Pen, Dr. Dan Wallace–author of the standard text Greek Grammar Beyond the Basics, and chief translator of the New English Translation (with its wonderful footnotes)–explains why it doesn’t. In modern English, it says something closer to “Avoid every form of evil.”

Not only that, but in context, it looks like it’s talking about false teaching & prophecy. The ESV says:

Do not quench the Spirit. Do not despise prophecies, but test everything; hold fast what is good. Abstain from every form of evil. 1 Thes. 5:19-22

“Abstain from every form of evil” is the counterpart to “hold fast to what is good”, and both refer back to “test everything”.

There’s an interesting discussion at the Internet Monk’s blog, based on a recent broadcast of the White Horse Inn. (Links further below.) It’s very meaty and edifying, and is related to some of what I said in my last entry. (OK, so practically everything in theology is connected. But the connection here seemed particularly strong.)

Note: The following intro is sprinkled with links to Scripture references. They’ll pop up in a new window, and I tried to keep them concise (just a couple or a few verses each), so I hope you’ll take the time to open them up as you read–and get the richness of God’s word from the source, rather than just from this faulty conduit.

In the last entry, I mentioned how the Spirit works in God’s children, teaching us that we are sinners, showing us our need, and pointing us to Christ and to what he did for us. When Paul taught about the way that God convicts us of our sin, he emphasized the role that the written Law plays. All of us (even we Gentiles) do have God’s Law written on our hearts, so that we have an instinctive understanding of morality–against which we sin. But Paul says that a function of the written Law is to increase our sin–when we see the written Law, it confronts us with our sin. And not only that, but our rebellious nature is such that when we hear a command, “Don’t do this,” we may be more likely to commit that very sin!

The Law points us to our need, and to our utter inability to satisfy its righteous requirements that are based in the very nature and character of God. So when Christ comes, we fall at his feet, and know that we can only be justified by faith. Apart from our working.

That’s part of the reason that Christians struggle with the awareness of our own sin. The Law teaches us sin more clearly. Sin abounds, so that grace may abound to those who believe. And those who believe are exhorted to present ourselves as slaves to righteousness. But…As his children whom he disciplines, with the Spirit in us moving us to delight in God and his law, we struggle with our sin even more. Realizing the need to assure us in our struggle, Paul wrote Romans 8. In this life, in this unredeemed flesh, the struggle makes us look ahead in hope to the promised renewal of our bodies and all creation. God is our adopted Poppa, he has given us the Spirit to guarantee our inheritance, the Spirit helps us in our weakness, God uses everything that happens to our good, and nothing will separate us from his love. (And notice: In our struggles–both against persecution & suffering and against our own weakness–God promises that he will bring us through. God is moving heaven and earth so that those whom he calls and justifies, he will also sanctify and glorify. And nothing can stop his determined effort! Our security and our perseverance stands in the strength of the Creator God.)

OK, so, that was the introduction.

On to the links, with a (much briefer) description of the broadcast and discussion.

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The sermon this week at church, the latest in a series on the person and work of the Holy Spirit, dealt with the subject of assurance. The pastor preached from Romans 8, with the central verse 15, “For you did not receive the spirit of slavery to fall back into fear, but you have received the Spirit of adoption as sons, by whom we cry, “Abba! Father!””.

It got me thinking about a conversation I had a month or so ago, with someone who was not feeling at all assured. And then this morning, the book I’m reading touched on the same topic. So, I’d like to share from the book by Sam Storms, Signs of the Spirit: An Interpretation of Jonathan Edwards’s “Religious Affections”.  I found out about this book by listening to Storms’ appearance on Converse with Scholars, about which Carrie Hunter said, “He discussed the wonderful language Jonathan Edwards used to show how we as believers can see the true marks of the Holy Spirit in our own lives as well as in the lives of others.” I’m enjoying it very much; it’s edifying, concise, and quite readable.

As I was reading this morning, I came to a passage that deals with some elements of the false assurance felt by those whose faith is not authentic, and with why Christians may still struggle with assurance:

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Michael Patton posted on the subject of once-saved-always-saved, discussing the problem of false assurance that some people have based on a memory of “walking the aisle”. It’s personal for him, because his father may have that kind of false assurance. He started by saying, “I have someone who is very close to me who will not be broken. I don’t really know how I desire him to be broken, but conversations with him are always very frustrating.”

In the comments, someone named Scott Gray found that statement disturbing. It smacked of coercion to him. Particularly because he rejects that idea that a relationship with God requires salvation.

I exchanged some comments with him (my username: Jugulum). After I pointed him back to some sermons by the apostles in Acts, he said:

i did read the acts passage you pointed out, but i don’t see much connection to the original post topic. could you explain, please? how do you think the acts text pertains to cmp’s original post?

This morning, I wrote the following response, discussing the nature of the gospel, our need for salvation, some implications for assurance of salvation, and the nature of what Christ did, reconciling the world to himself. (You can go back to get the context, if you like.)

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Tim Challies, Christian blogger, recently came out with his first book, The Discipline of Spiritual Discernment. It received some strong endorsements–from Al Mohler, Nancy Pearcey, Mark Dever, and a foreword from John MacArthur. (My copy is on its way from Amazon, to find its place on my bookshelf among the many other wonderful books I should really get around to reading some day.)

He just completed a “blog tour“, in which he went around to a number of popular Christian blogs, answering questions about his book and the subject of discernment. There’s some good reading. (And I think I’ll have to add some of these blogs to my RSS reader.)

My favorite stop on the tour, I think, was the final one, at SharperIron. He answered the following challenging, meaty questions. (I’ll include excerpts from his answers, to tease you into going and reading the whole interview. )

• How does Scripture tell us to view discernment as a step of rational thought guided by the Holy Spirit, rather than a supra-rational sixth sense?
  • “The Bible, though, teaches that discernment is a skill and that it is a practice of the mind more than the “heart” or “spirit.” Hebrews 5:14 tells us that discernment is a skill that is developed by constant practice and Romans 12:2 says that, in order to be men and women of discernment, we must have our minds renewed. In these passages and others we see that discernment is more than intuition and more than new revelation.”
• If I use my knowledge of Scripture to judge some action as evil, and this discernment seems clear, how should I view my brother who does not make the same discernment?
  • “So when you judge an action to be evil or wrong, you will first want to see just how important an issue it is. If it is an issue that strikes right to the heart of the faith, you will want to address the issue immediately and firmly, though always with love and humility. It may require church discipline or disassociation. But if you find it is a second or third-level issue, you will want to first affirm your common fellowship and from there seek to understand whether this disagreement must preclude you from close fellowship or if it is a disputable matter than should not inhibit close communion.”
• In the same situation, how should I treat my discernment when no one around me agrees?
  • “It may be that God is using this issue to move you out of a dying church; of course it may also be that Satan is using the issue to use you to divide a God-honoring church. So proceed humbly, cautiously, prayerfully and with a heart saturated with Scripture.”
• What about if I discern an action to clearly be good, how then should I view my brother who judges that to be evil?
  • “Assuming that this is not a first-level issue, this may well represent a time to express humility and a time to keep in mind the “weaker brother” principle. […] We do such things as an expression of love for our brothers and sisters in the Lord and as proof of a God-given desire to esteem others higher than ourselves. We build true Christian unity by humility.”

I’ve been thinking about posting some entries on the inerrancy of Scripture. But recently, the blogger Tim Challies has started a fairly thorough series on the subject. It has three entries so far: Are there Errors in the Bible?, What Does “Inerrant” Mean?, and Errors and Contradictions in the Bible. So, I’m going to be lazy–er, I mean maximize my resources, and just recommend them to you.

Another blogger, Michael Spencer (from the Internet Monk), posted a reply to something Challies said. Spencer denies inerrancy–though I haven’t been able to make out quite how or why. He affirms inspiration, but thinks the term “inerrancy” requires so many qualifications and clarifications and exceptions, that it’s not a meaningful word. But it’s not clear to me whether it’s just the word he has a problem with, or the definition. Does he disagree with the doctrine itself, or just the term?

So, I posted some comments in his entry. The second one got long, so I split it up in half. But then I couldn’t post the second half–his server keeps rejecting the message. I emailed him, and we think it’s due to some technical weirdness with character encodings. So, I’ve decided to post my comment here, and then post a link to it in his comment section. I can’t guarantee how much sense it will make to you, unless you go read his entry.

Here goes!

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Dan Phillips had a very interesting post over at the Pyromaniacs blog. It involves this verse:

When Jesus saw him lying there and knew that he had already been there a long time, he said to him, “Do you want to be healed?”
(John 5:6)

Dan looks at the issue, “Doesn’t that look like a dumb question? Isn’t it obvious the guy would want to be healed?” He comes up with an interesting possibility for why Jesus asked the question. And whether he’s right about that or not, I thought his observations were very insightful, edifying, and convicting. It involves asking, “Are you really willing for God to change you? Do you want to become healthy, or are you too attached to the way you are?”

 

 
Meanwhile, I got a compliment from a well-known scholar today! At the Parchment and Pen blog, Dan Wallace posted an entry on textual criticism–the study of places where the New Testament manuscripts differ from one another. Dan Wallace is a big-name Greek scholar. He wrote a major Greek grammar textbook, Greek Grammar Beyond The Basics, and he’s one of the top 10 scholars in textual criticism. (I think there are 11 in the world. ) He wrote a good review of Bart Ehrman’s book, Misquoting Jesus, a NYT best-seller that tries to argue that we can’t have confidence that our Bible is the same as the original. He also cowrote a book as a response, called Reinventing Jesus.

Anyway, Wallace has been writing a series of posts to introduce people to textual criticism and talk about various issues. I posted some comments in today’s entry with the username “Jugulum”, replying to some questions that someone asked. Then later, Wallace posted his own answer. And when he did, he also said, “BTW, Jugulum has given excellent responses to your questions. I don’t know who he or she is, but I like what s/he has to say!”

Cool. I love the internet.