Can We Still Believe the Bible, a book review

by John Vlainic

I was very pleased recently to happen upon a book which takes on the difficult issues we face today from both the secular world on the left and the ultraconservative church world on the right.

Like you, I am around people who are confident that “educated people all know that the Bible is no longer as trustworthy as Christians used to believe,” and people who are calling every Christian who does not unpack things the way they do as “liberal” and unfaithful.  If either kind of person were willing to do some reading, here is the book I would give them.  And even if they aren’t open, this one really helps me!

Craig L. Blomberg, Can We Still Believe the Bible?  An Evangelical Engagement With Contemporary Questions  (Baker, 2014)

So what is the book about?

Let me quote the author (pp. 7-8).  [My “translations” for you of what the six topics involve are in this blue font]:

There are some areas where a curious phenomenon has occurred over the past generation. I am thinking of areas of scholarship where new findings, or at least much more intense study of slightly old discoveries, have actually strengthened the case for the reliability or trustworthiness of the Scriptures, even while the most publicized opinions in each area have claimed that there are now reasons for greater skepticism!

Six in particular have captured my attention enough for me to devote some specialized study to them. They involve textual criticism [methods used to try to determine what the original texts of the Bible writers were – and how changes appeared in different copies over the years], the canon of Scripture [which special books are seen as acceptable to be included in the library we call “the Bible” (and why the ones chosen were)], the proliferation of English (and other) translations of the Bible [which of the many translations today can be trusted, and why], the doctrine of biblical inerrancy [the belief that the Bible can be trusted, especially using the word “inerrant” – see the Free Methodist approach below], the diversity of literary genres among books or sections of books that appear to many as historical narrative, and the manifestations [whether or not all the biblical materials that seem, at first glance, to be telling us exactly “what happened” are “historical” in the way we moderns use that word], and meanings of the miraculous [understanding the bible miracles, including, DID THEY ALL HAPPEN?].

Sadly, there has also been a backlash in each of these six arenas. A handful of very conservative Christian leaders who have not understood the issues adequately have reacted by unnecessarily rejecting the new developments. To the extent that they, too, have often received much more publicity than their small numbers would warrant, they have hindered genuine scholarship among evangelicals and needlessly scared unbelievers away from Christian faith. As my Christian eighth-grade public school history teacher, Dorothy Dunn, used to love to intone with considerable passion, after having lived through our country's battles against both Nazism and Communism: "The far left and the far right—avoid them both, like the plague!”

So you can see why a Free Methodist, who has little use for left wing skeptics and for right wing over-simplifiers, would like Blomberg’s approach.  Blomberg is on the spectrum where the people who teach in our denominationally-related colleges, universities and seminaries are.  That is why I share with you the links to Ben Witherington’s (from Asbury Seminary, one of our foremost Wesleyan biblical scholars) blogs on this book.  Witherington, of course, wants to nuance a few things Blomberg says slightly differently, but is extremely enthusiastic about the book’s value and wisdom.

This book will help you in responding to people, widely reported in the secular media (on the far “left”), who glibly assume the Bible cannot be trusted, and also in responding to people, widely reported in the religious media (formed on the far “right”), who are inclined to misunderstand good scholarship and fight the wrong battles about the Bible.

If I may think back to my days in the parish, I can think of two groups from your church this book can really help.

I remember students going off to University and coming back and telling me their profs teach (or imply) that real “scholarship” does not support what the Bible claims.  This book can help them to see how false this notion is.

As well I was aware that many of my people continually read what an old friend and pastor termed “pablum” – Christian books whose authors treat the Bible as a how-to-manual for complex disciplines like psychology, sociology, economics, politics, or any other major discipline typical of university curricula.  Tons of those books (and now web sites) are in use by our people.  Blomberg will help your people to read and think more discerningly.

I had one area of slight dis-ease with this marvellous book as I read it.  The author still wants to identify himself as believing in the “inerrancy” of the Bible, though he (rightly, I think) wants to qualify this word in several ways.  I understand his need to connect to this audience, but by the time Blomberg has redefined “inerrant” I agree with him, and, as evidenced on the web, many “inerrantists” are livid!

I think he would have been better off to drop the word, and to use language like that of our Free Methodist Article of Religion (which intentionally avoids the word “inerrant” – because it means so many different things to so many different people).  Here is the wording from ¶108 of our Manual:

The Bible is God’s written Word, uniquely inspired by the Holy Spirit. It bears unerring witness to Jesus Christ, the living Word. As attested by the early church and subsequent councils, it is the trustworthy record of God’s revelation, completely truthful in all it affirms. It has been faithfully preserved and proves itself true in human experience.

The Scriptures have come to us through human authors who wrote, as God moved them, in the languages and literary forms of their times. God continues, by the illumination of the Holy Spirit, to speak through this Word to each generation and culture.

The Bible has authority over all human life. It teaches the truth about God, His creation, His people, His one and only Son, and the destiny of all humankind. It also teaches the way of salvation and the life of faith. Whatever is not found in the Bible nor can be proved by it is not to be required as an article of belief or as necessary to salvation. 

Blomberg clearly shares this confidence in the scriptures with us, though he chooses not to drop the word “inerrant”.  Yet he helps us with those (on the far “left”) who do not share our confidence in the Scripture and with those (on the far “right”) who say with vigour that they do – but without carefully looking at what the Bible actually says!

In the end, I would agree with Scot McKnight’s blurb on the back cover, where he says that this book is the finest example of how to defend the Bible.

When Helping Hurts

A book review by John Vlainic

 

Even though I remember thinking of myself as from a “poor” family when I was a child, I know that I, even then, was part of the “rich” of the earth.
 
  I am realizing that my formation to this point in life has rather poorly equipped me for serious obedience to the concern throughout scripture that God’s people share themselves and their resources with the poor. Sometimes, I have tried to be gracious about it, and said, “That’s something another part of Christ’s body does well.”  
 
As well, I have seen attempts at helping, which seemed, even to me, to likely be counterproductive in the long haul.
   
How good, then, to learn of a wonderful introduction to the matter which strikes me as:

• biblical (with a special focus on Christ as King and Christ’s Kingdom, and on the over-arching grand Story of the Bible)
• humble (the authors admits many of their own errors, and are gracious throughout); there is tremendous humility here!
• in touch with “systems” thinking  
• aware of how “culture” works in human life
• clearly “both/and” in tone
• nuanced (i.e. they do not pretend that issues are simpler than they are)

It is: Steve Corbett & Brian Fikkert, When Helping Hurts: How To Alleviate Poverty Without Hurting the Poor (Moody Publishers, 2009).

 

They blew many of my assumptions about ministry to the poor, the nature of poverty, and so much more right out of the water. The more I listened, the more I realized how little I know about this. I learned much about a host of kinds of paternalism well-meaning Christians like me engage in.

 

One of the ways in which the authors are most helpful is in unpacking the real dangers (and potentials) of the short term missions trip that is so popular these days. If you want to do short term missions without doing long-term harm, pick up this book. It will raise a host of new (and good) questions. This book is revolutionary in my thinking. I hope that time will tell that changes will have taken place in my living and serving.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Great Introduction to Paul (& Christian Thought)

by John Vlainic

N. T. Wright has a relatively small, readable survey, Paul In Fresh Perspective (Fortress Press, 2005). This one is not for those who love exploring footnotes. But it does contain many careful distinctions about Pauline and Christian thought.

As with Wright’s Evil and the Justice of God, this book is extremely helpful in getting at the “big picture” of the whole of scripture, even while it touches on many particulars.

Wright provides (gracious) corrections to popular teachings among evangelicals (and many Free Methodists too??). Here are some of them, posed as questions.

CROSS: What “freight does the word “CROSS” cary for Paul?

ELECTION: How has Paul reshaped and reworked the election of Israel?

JUSTIFICATION: Does Paul use “justification” to refer to how a person gets saved, or to something else?

HOLY LAND: What does Paul understand as “Holy Land” now? Has the old covenant to Israel been replaced?

RAPTURE: What did Paul mean in his one use of a “rapture” image for when Christ appears?

APOCALYPTIC: What is “apocalyptic” and how does Paul use it?

PISTIS CHRISTOU: Does Paul think we are justified by “faith in Christ” or by “the faithfulness of Christ”? [e.g. Galatians 2:16]

JESUS AND PAUL: Different or same or ________?

CHRIST AND THE EMPIRE: How would Paul feel about our passive, relatively submissive reading of Roman 13? What does the Gospel say to pagan culture?

ETHICS: How does Paul understand ethics for Christians – rules to be kept?

Contents

Preface

Part I THEMES
1 Paul's World, Paul's Legacy
.....1. The Three Worlds of Paul
.....2. Fighting over Paul's Legacy: Perspectives Old, New and Different


2 Creation and Covenant
.....1. Creation and Covenant in the Old Testament
.....2. Paul: Three Central Passages
..........(i) Colossians 1.15-20
..........(ii) 1 Corinthians 15
..........(iii) Romans 1-11 3. Evil and Grace, Plight and Solution
.....4. Conclusion: Jesus within Creation and Covenant


3 Messiah and Apocalyptic
.....1. Introduction
.....2. Jesus as Messiah in Paul
.....3. Apocalyptic in Paul


4 Gospel and Empire
.....1. Introduction
.....2. Caesar's Empire and Its Ideology
.....3. Jewish Critique of Pagan Empire
.....4. Paul's Counter-Imperial Theology
.....5. Conclusion


Part II STRUCTURES
5 Rethinking God
.....1. Introduction
.....2. Monotheism: The Jewish Roots
.....3. Monotheism and Christology
.....4. Monotheism and the Spirit
.....5. Scriptural Roots, Pagan Targets, Practical Work
.....6. Conclusion

6 Reworking God's People
.....1. Introduction
.....2. Election: Jewish Views of God's People
.....3. Election Reshaped around Jesus
.....4. Election Reworked around the Spirit
.....5. Redefinition of Election Rooted in Scripture
6. Conclusion

7 Reimagining God's Future
.....1. Introduction
.....2. Jewish Eschatology in the First Century
.....3. Eschatology Reimagined around the Messiah
.....4. Eschatology Reimagined around the Spirit
.....5. Eschatology in Context
.....6. Conclusion

8 Jesus, Paul and the Task of the Church
.....1. Introduction
.....2. Jesus and Paul
.....3. The Work of an Apostle
..........a. Servant, apostle, set apart
..........b. Redefinitions in practice
.....4. Conclusion: Paul and the Task of the Church

Notes / Bibliography / Indexes

Invocation and Assent (A Book Review)

by Rob Clements

VICKERS, Jason E

Invocation and assent: the making and remaking of Trinitarian theology.

Grand Rapids, MI: Cambridge: Eerdmans, 2008

224p.

ISBN     

978-0-8028-6269-3, £15.99

Without question there has been a considerable resurgence of interest in the doctrine of the Trinity in recent decades. A growing list of English-speaking theologians—T. F. Torrance, Colin Gunton, Miroslav Volf and Stanley J. Grenz, to name but a few—have made creative use of certain ontological understandings of the Trinity to provide a foundation for their wider theological reflections and social ethics. More recently, The Shack, a bestselling work of fiction by William Paul Yong (that portrays God the Father as an African American woman among other things) has brought the doctrine of the Trinity back into popular discourse worldwide.

Upon first glance, one might be tempted to lump Jason Vicker's Invocation and Assent: The Making and Remaking of Trinitarian Theology into the same category of Trinitarian hysteria, but this would be a mistake. Invocation and Assent is, in fact, an historical study of the process through which the doctrine of the Trinity became neglected by Western theologians in the first place, with special emphasis on the role that late seventeenth-century English Protestant theologians played in its demise. Specifically, Vickers argues that the earliest (that, is pre-Nicean) "rules of faith" were liturgical in nature and had a specific function within Christian community ("Invocation") and these "rules of faith" where not specifically designed to answer ontological questions regarding the immanent Trinity that later creedal affirmations would require of them.

Following the Reformation, Protestant theologians in attempting to navigate a middle way between Catholicism and Unitarianism would come to replace such "rules of faith" with the entire canon of Scripture arbitrated by reason alone ("Assent"). Vickers points to archbishop William Laud (1573-1645), as a pivotal figure in this transition, who, in responding to Roman Catholic challenges regarding personal assurance of salvation, laid the groundwork for a new conception of salvation in English Protestantism. "Instead of salvation having primarily to do with the invocation of the trine God in repentance, demon exorcism, baptism and the Eucharist, and in worship thanksgiving and praise, it now had to do with the cognitive or rational activity of giving assent to propositions contain in or deduced from Scripture" (p. 45). This was further enforced by writers such as John Locke, who set in motion a "minimalist way of thinking about Christian doctrine" as an irresolvable puzzle. Not surprisingly, Vickers (a professor of Wesleyan studies at United Theological Seminary in Dayton, Ohio) discovers that despite the marginalization of Trinitarian theology in scholastic circles, Trinitarian worship was revitalized in English Protestantism during the eighteenth-century through liturgical means in the hymns and prayers of Charles Wesley.

Cognizant that his study has only begun to unravel some of puzzling aspects of how Trinitarian theology has evolved, Vickers concludes his study with a chapter on the "The Work of Trinitarian Theology Today" where he attempts to lay some ground rules for future endeavors pasted on the history of the doctrine.

It would be fair to say that Invocation and Assent successfully demonstrates that the disconnection between Trinity and Christian life in English Protestantism preceded Friedrich Schleiermacher's influence and is largely due to combination of Sola scriptura and hyper-rationalism in the late seventeenth century. It also fills an important gap in the literature, which should be of interest to anyone studying the development of Trinitarian theology, as well as those studying the context into which eighteenth-century evangelicalism took root. 

For those of us Protestants who wish to recover a wider ecclesiology and avoid some of the dangers of the sola Scriptura approach, however, it remains to be seen whether the "canonical theism" which Vickers alludes to in this book and advocates elsewhere (see William J. Abraham, Jason E. Vickers and Natalie B. Van Kirk, eds. Canonical Theism: A Proposal for Theology [Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2008]) can ultimately avoid the kinds of abuses which spawned Protestantism to resort to such principles—but at least we can thank him for pointing out a number of historical pitfalls in this study so as not to repeat them.