Deus Misereatur

Taking God at His Word: Why the Bible Is Knowable, Necessary, and Enough, and What That Means for You and Me by Kevin DeYoung My rating: 5 of 5 stars Newer Christians and older believers, seminary trained pastors and seasoned elders, parents and progeny, find themselves at times becoming stilted and stale when it comes to the Bible. Sometimes it is a result of the hermeneutic of suspicion spreading like a bad flu in our society, and at other times it comes about because of the sheer weariness of life and its disappointments. Like a Vitamin B12 injection comes Kevin DeYoung's newest 128 page paperback, "Taking God at His Word." This short, eight chapter book, is written with the average reader in mind. It reads quickly, yet without sacrificing substance. DeYoung begins "Taking God at His Word" by laying out his overarching intent, "The purpose of this book is to get us to fully, sincerely, and consistently embrace" the enjoyment, trust and longing...

{I love the Reformational-Biblical texture of the Book of Common Prayer. If you follow the church calendar you will enjoy this. And if you don't, I still think you will be edified by the Scripture readings, Psalm selections, Prayers and meditations. Mike} The Second Sunday in Advent. Psalm 120 Ad Dominum WHEN I was in trouble I called upon the Lord : and he heard me. 2. Deliver my soul, O Lord, from lying lips : and from a deceitful tongue. 3. What reward shall be given or done unto thee, thou false tongue : even mighty and sharp arrows, with hot burning coals. 4. Woe is me, that I am constrained to dwell with Mesech : and to have my habitation among the tents of Kedar. 5. My soul hath long dwelt among them : that are enemies unto peace. 6. I labour for peace, but when I speak unto them thereof : they make them ready to battle. The Collect. BLESSED Lord, who hast caused all holy Scriptures to be written for our learning; Grant that we may ...

Today being the feast day of St. Irenaeus, I thought I’d point out that Irenaeus (though not in a perfect way) shows how the Apostolic Tradition is the proclaimed message of the Apostles that was later transcribed into Scripture: “We have learned from none others the plan of our salvation, than from those through whom the Gospel has come down to us, which they did at one time proclaim in public, and, at a later period, by the will of God, handed down to us in the Scriptures, to be the ground and pillar of our faith” (Against Heretics, 3.1.1). Two simple things to notice. First, observe how Irenaeus uses the technical phrase of the body of tradition being passed on, “handed down to us in Scripture”. The Scripture is the “handed down” tradition. Second, this follows the pattern of Paul himself, who wrote, “Therefore, brethren, stand fast and hold the traditions which you were taught, whether by word or our epistle” (2 Thessalonians 2.15). Not only are they (by word or by letter) autho...

One of the primary premises espoused in “The Word of God for the People of God,” is that there is a proper way to approach Holy Scripture. To begin with, the Bible reader needs to come with humility. She is not a technician who manufactures meanings out of Scripture, or manipulates and controls the outcome of this Word of God, but that through Scripture “God “reads” us, reshaping us into Christ’s image by the Spirit’s power” (80). Instead of Christians owning the truth, we are owned by the One who is the truth (82), which means that as the Word of God comes to inhabit us and our cultural context, it will often critique and challenge us and our cultural context (108). Therefore, coming to Scripture in this expectant humility, there is renunciation and transformation, for “reading Scripture is about being mastered by Jesus Christ through a biblical text that functionally stands over us as the word of God, not under us as a word we can control, rearrange, and use for our own purposes” (20...

I ran across this guy while playing online chess. He identified himself as an Orthodox Jew in Canada and asked me a question, “I see you’re a Christian minister. How do you Christians interpret Scripture?” It was an excellent question I thought. We had a nice, short discussion. The major answer I gave him came as a direct quotation from J. Todd Billings’ recent book “The Word of God for the People of God: An Entryway to the Theological Interpretation of Scripture”, Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Co., 2010. Billings writes, “”Jesus was not just a great teacher, nor was he just God with limbs and a mouth. In Jesus, the whole history of Israel--and through Israel, humanity--was recapitulated, or lived again. But this time the one who was true Israel and true human being did not take the path of the first Adam. As the second Adam, Christ was the righteous one, the perfect human covenant partner. But this perfect covenant partner was also the Word incarnate, the one in whom the fullness of d...

“For this reason we also thank God without ceasing, because when you received the word of God which you heard from us, you welcomed it not as the word of men, but as it is in truth, the word of God, which also effectively works in you who believe” (1 Thessalonians 2.13 NKJV). I have a confession to make. I am a catholic. To be sure, a Reformed catholic. That means at least two primary things: (1) I can heartily affirm all of the Apostles’ Creed and the Nicene Creed. (2) Also, I believe what the creeds say when they mention, “I believe in the Holy Ghost, the holy catholic Church.” I believe in one church of Jesus Christ, which Jesus promised would never fade away, nor be destroyed by hell or the devil or rotten and grubby men. Why am I telling you this? Mainly, to correct a terrible misconception. Contrary to popular opinion, the Reformation was not about starting a new, competing church. Nor was it about restoring the supposedly pristinely pure 1st Century Church. Instead, it was ab...

St. Basil was a senior pastor in Christ’s Church during the 4th Century AD. During this stormy time he found himself beset by opponents on several fronts. During one of the conflicts he wrote a short little piece, “On the Holy Spirit”. In this work he strove to counter the pneumatomachoi (fighters against the Spirit). Their position was that the Son was less than the Father and came after Him in time, and that the Spirit was underneath the Father and the Son. While St. Basil was showing that the Father and the Son are “inseparably joined in name and nature” (34), he made a unexpected statement about tradition and Scripture. What is surprising is the position in which he puts tradition: “…therefore we offer the doxology to the Father with the Son. But we are not content simply because this is the tradition of the Fathers. What is important is that the Fathers followed the meaning of Scripture , beginning with the evidence which I have just extracted from the Scriptures and presented...

Origen addresses what has been a common problem through much of Christian history - how to read the Holy Scriptures. In Book 4 chapter 2 of De Principiis (On First Principles) he shows how Jews, heretical sects and the simple plainly miss the point. It is in this chapter that he lays out his own plan for interpreting Scripture, and the pattern he uses is his tripartite view of humanity: Flesh, Soul and Spirit. “One must therefore portray the meaning of the sacred writings in a threefold way upon one’s soul, so that the simple man may be edified by what we call the flesh of the scripture, this name being given to the obvious interpretation; while the man who has made progress may be edified by its soul, as it were; and the man who is perfect and like those mentioned by the apostle: ‘We speak wisdom among the perfect; yet a wisdom not of this world, nor of the rulers of this world, which are coming to nought; but we speak God’s wisdom in a mystery, even the wisdom that hath been hidden...

Clement of Rome (1st Century A.D.) seems to have written as the voice of the (unified?) church in Rome, “The church of God, living in exile in Rome, to the church of God, exiled in Corinth, […]” (Richardson 43). He addressed the church in Corinth about an unhappy situation in which some from within the church have thrown off the legitimate leaders, replacing them with leaders to their own liking: “It is disgraceful, exceedingly disgraceful, and unworthy of your Christian upbringing, to have it reported that because of one or two individuals the solid and ancient Corinthian Church is in revolt against its presbyters. […] The result is that the Lord’s name is being blasphemed because of your stupidity, and you are exposing yourselves to danger” (65). As Clement addressed this problem, he gives readers an insider’s view of how the Church (at least the church in Rome and maybe Corinth) was shaping up. Specifically, how the Church understood itself in the world context, what ecclesiasti...