Books

« Previous Entries

Another good book on Hebrews - 3 October 2009

Simon J. Kistemaker, Hebrews (NTC). Energetic, insightful, non-technical, less detailed than Bruce or Lane, but very readable.

Here’s a quick taster. Having observed the faith-hope-love triad in Heb 10:22-25 (p. 286), he says:

One of the first indications of a lack of love toward God and the neighbor is for a Christian to stay away from worship services. He forsakes the communal obligations of attending these meetings and displays the symptoms of selfishness and self-centredness. (p. 290)

Only by faith - 18 August 2009

Paraphrase of Edwards, Justification by Faith Alone, pp. 151ff.

Having considered what justification is, let’s think now about what it means to say that justification is only by faith. Then we’ll think about what it means to say that justification is not by our own goodness.

The problem with understanding the meaning of ‘justification by faith’ is that it’s hard to pin down what ‘by’ means.

Some have tried to clarify matters ‘by saying that faith is the condition of justification’ (p. 152). Though this is true in one sense, it doesn’t get us very far, because the word ‘condition’ is itself ambiguous. It can mean subtly different things in different contexts, and these differences can cause great confusion.

For example, in one sense, ‘Christ alone performs the condition of our justification’ (p. 151). So how can our faith be a further ‘condition’ of justification?

More confusingly still, if we take ‘condition of justification’ to mean ’something indispensable, without which we shall not be justified, and with which we shall be justified’, then lots of other things could legitimately be called ‘conditions of justification’ as well. The Bible says that ‘love to God’, ‘love to our brethren’, ‘forgiving men their trespasses’ (p. 152), and many other things besides, are also conditions of justification in this sense. Clearly the phrase ‘condition of justification’ is inadequate to describe the ‘particular influence that faith has’ (p. 153) in justification.

Others have tried to clarify the relationship between faith and justification by calling faith ‘the instrument of our justification’ (p. 153). Unfortunately, this explanation has been misrepresented and ridiculed by others, who have wrongly understood it to mean that faith is the instrument God uses to justify us, rather than the instrument we use to receive justification.

On the other hand, perhaps some confusion is understandable. For those who describe faith as the instrument by which we receive justification also identify faith as the act of receiving justification. That doesn’t work. It’s a bit like confusing your journey to work (the act) with the car you drive in (the instrument).

In any case, even those who describe faith as an ‘instrument’ speak of it, strictly speaking, as ‘the instrument by which we receive Christ’ rather than ‘the instrument by which we receive justification’ (p. 153). But we’re in danger of getting ahead of ourselves.

So then, what does ‘by’ mean in the phrase ‘justified by faith’? Let’s take a step back for a moment. God has sent ‘a Mediator’, Christ, who ‘has purchased justification’ (p. 153). Surely the most obvious thing to say is this: Faith is the thing that makes it right in God’s sight that some people (i.e. believers; those with faith) rather than others (i.e. unbelievers, those without faith) should have justification assigned to them. Faith is the ‘qualification’ (p. 153) that makes it appropriate in God’s sight that ‘we should be justified’ (p. 154).

God doesn’t do anything randomly. Everything in the way that God has set up the world fits together perfectly in line with his wisdom. And God in his wisdom says that faith and justification ‘match’. They fit together, so to speak, such that it is right (i.e. ‘proper’, ‘meet’, ‘fit’, p. 154) for those who have faith to be justified.

This distinguishes faith from all the other things which can rightly be described as conditions of justification (love for God, love for other believers, and so on). For though all these things are ‘inseparably connected with justification’ (p. 154), only faith qualifies us for justification in this special and unique sense.

Setting the wheels in motion - 17 August 2009

Paraphrase of Edwards, Justification by Faith Alone, p. 149ff.

We are justified only by faith in Christ, and not by any manner of virtue of goodness of our own.

In the following pages we’ll explore this statement in five steps:

1. Explain what this statement means.

2. Prove that this statement is true.

3. Show what place ‘evangelical obedience’ (p. 149) has in justification.

4. Answer objections.

5. Reflect on why this issue matters.

Let’s begin with what justification is. ‘A person is said to be justified when he is approved of God as free from the guilt of sin, and its deserved punishment, and as having that righteousness belonging to him that entitles to the rewards of life’ (p. 150).

Justification has both positive and negative aspects. Negatively, it means that a person is regarded as being not guilty of sin. Positively, it means that a person is righteous in God’s sight, and is therefore ‘entitled to a positive reward’ (p. 150).

Justification therefore includes the forgiveness of sins, but it’s more than this. After all, Scripture says that a person can be ‘either justified or condemned’ (p. 150) – there’s no middle ground. Justification leaves us in the right with God, not in some kind of neutral moral ground.

For an illustration, consider Adam. In order to be justified, he would have needed to ‘[finish] his course of perfect obedience’ (p. 150). Only then would he have ‘fulfilled the righteousness of the law’ (p. 150). He wasn’t justified when he was first created, and it would not have been enough for him to hang around doing nothing!

Or, for another illustration, consider Christ. He ‘was not justified until he had done the work the Father had appointed him, and kept the Father’s commandments, through all trials’ (p. 150-151). He was finally justified ‘in his resurrection’ (p. 151).

Let’s think a bit more about the resurrection as Jesus’ justification. 1 Peter 3:18 says that Jesus was ‘quickened by the Spirit’; 1 Timothy 3:16 says he was ‘justified in the Spirit’ (p. 151). This was the moment when Jesus’ suffering and humiliation ended, when his exaltation began, when God granted his ‘reward’ (p. 151).

Now, what happens when a believer is justified? Simply this: we share in the justification of Jesus. We are ‘admitted to communion’ (p. 151) with him, and so we share in his reward. For Jesus did not die and rise merely as a private individual; he is the head and representative of all who believe in him. So he was raised to life not merely for his justification, but also ‘for our justification’ (p. 151; Romans 4:25).

X-ray questions - 13 August 2009

One of the most perceptive chapters in David Powlison’s Seeing With New Eyes, appropriately entitled ‘X-ray Questions’, contains a series of questions designed to expose what’s really going on in our hearts. The idea is to mull over each question (honestly) for a while, and then look up the Bible references that follow. As you’d expect, there’s plenty of food for thought.

It’s tempting to think that exercises like this are really only for ‘desperate cases’ – Christians suffering under really serious trials, or stuck in patterns of really destructive ungodliness. But this is a mistake. It would do none of us any harm to chew over questions like these from time to time.

Here’s an example.

1. What do you love? Hate? (p. 130)

So, what’s the first thing that pops into your head? Honest, now. Love – proper cappuccino with an extra shot; hate – cheap instant with powdered UHT. Or maybe (this’d probably be better): love – talking to people who really understand me? Playing with the kids at church? Or maybe better still: love – a good solid sermon; the book of Ephesians. All good things. Great things. Really great Christian things.

And then you look up the Bible references.

And he said to him, ‘You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind. This is the great and first commandment. And a second is like it: You shall love your neighbour as yourself.’ (Matthew 22:37-39)

It’s not that we don’t believe it. It’s not that we don’t really love God. It’s just, well, we just didn’t think of it. Mention ‘love’, we don’t immediately think ‘the Lord our God’. We think ‘creation’; the Bible says ‘Creator’. We think ‘provisions’; the Bible says ‘Provider’. We think ‘good Christian stuff to enjoy and do and be blessed by’; the Bible says ‘The One who gives to all people life and breath and everything else’.

And then the ‘love your neighbour as yourself’ bit. Here ‘love’ means something subtly different from ‘love’ when we say ‘I love coffee’ or ‘I love Ephesians’. When I ‘love’ Ephesians, I love what I receive from/through/in it. Not bad, obviously – that’s what it’s there for. But when I love my neighbour, I’m giving what (s)he needs from me. In the one case, I love to get; in the other, I love to love.

Seeing through new eyes - 13 August 2009

David Powlison understands a good deal about what makes Christians tick. More to the point, he understands how to help us tick better. He understands how to help us grow in maturity and Christlikeness, whether through particular trials, specific crises of ungodliness, or just the normal ups and downs of the Christian life.

Powlison’s book Seeing with New Eyes is unsettlingly insightful. It’s basically about bringing the Bible to bear on our all-too-human messed-up-ness.

He’s brutally honest in the way he refuses to ignore the issue of human sin, even when addressing the trials of the Christian life. This sets apart genuinely Christian counselling from every secular alternative. Here he is quoting Dietrich Bonhoeffer:

The most experienced psychologist or observer of human nature knows infinitely less of the human heart than the simplest Christian who lives beneath the cross of Jesus. The greatest psychological insight, ability and experience cannot grasp this one thing: what sin is. Worldly wisdom knows what distress and weakness and failure are, but it does not know the godlessness of man. And so it also does not know that man is destroyed only by his sin and can be healed only by forgiveness. (Powlison, Seeing, p. 12)

Painful. But ultimately liberating. Once we face our hidden ungodliness head-on, we’ll be able to start thinking clearly about living as disciples of Jesus in what is, after all, a fallen world.

It’s not that there’s some simplistic connection between sin, on the one hand, and trials, unhappiness, or whatever on the other (You’re having a hard time, so you must have done something really bad). Nope (Luke 13:2-5; John 9:2-3).

Rather, the point is that Jesus Christ is always trying to re-shape us more in his image. Our heavenly Father loves us so much, and loves us so wisely, that he values our sanctification infinitely more than our comfort. He ‘disciplines the one he loves’ (Hebrews 12:6), and occasionally discipline hurts a bit. But if we’re alert to what God is doing, then we’ll be best placed to take advantage of even the most painful situations to grow more like Jesus, which wouldn’t be a bad thing (James 1:3-4).

Edwards on justification by faith alone - 11 August 2009

I was talking with a friend the other day about this and that, and was reminded how much I love Jonathan Edwards’s Justification by Faith Alone.

Written in 1738 to counter the growing threat of Arminianism in New England, it is a work of theological genius. It combines many of Edwards’s greatest gifts – theological precision, philosophical sophistication, thoughtful exegesis – with an additional trait not displayed in some of his other works: it’s short. Well, short-ish.

You can even read it free online at the Jonathan Edwards Center.

In this and a few future posts, we’ll be working through Edwards’s work by paraphrasing/summarising a chunk at a time. Text in quotes is taken directly from the Yale edition; page references in brackets.

Edwards, Justification by Faith Alone, p. 147ff.

‘To the one who does not work but trusts him who justifies the ungodly, his faith is counted as righteousness’ (Romans 4:5).

Four important things flow from this verse:

1. When God justified a person, he doesn’t have regard for any moral goodness in that person. For God ‘justifies the ungodly‘ (Romans 4:5). So, ‘immediately before’ (p. 147) God justifies us, he obviously isn’t looking at us and thinking, ‘Hey, look at how godly (s)he is!’ It’s like when God gives sight to the blind: immediately before they receive their sight, they can’t see.

2. When this verse talks about ‘the one who does not work’ (Romans 4:5), it not just talking about the ceremonial law. It’s talking about all ‘works of morality and godliness’ (p. 148), because ‘the ungodly’ and ‘the one who does not work’ clearly mean the same thing.

3. The ‘faith’ (Romans 4:5) spoken of here is not just another word for obedience. Striving for obedience in order to be justified is a very different from trusting in a God who justifies the disobedient.

4. The very fact that the justified person’s faith is ‘counted’ (Romans 4:5; i.e. ‘imputed’) ‘for righteousness’ (p. 148) demonstrates that God regards the justified person as having no righteousness in himself. Yet the consequences of this imputation for the justified person ‘are the same as if he had righteousness’ (p. 148). The context points in precisely this direction (v. 4 – the ‘gift’; v. 6 – ‘righteousness apart from works’; vv. 7-8 – ‘blessed are those whose lawless deeds are forgiven … against whom the Lord will not count his sin’).

This all boils down to a simple one-liner: ‘We are justified only by faith in Christ, and not by any manner of virtue of goodness of our own‘ (p. 149).

Crank it up, John - 28 June 2009

Having arrived, a little exhausted, at the end of chapter 7 of John C. Lennox’s God’s Undertaker, you might be forgiven for expecting a gentle drift to the conclusion. Not a bit of it.

Chapters 8 to 12 crank up the pace about 3 gears, as Lennox moves from DNA and genetics to the science uniquely equipped to analyse it – a science for which he, as a mathematician, is admirably equipped as a guide – the science of information.

For a living cell is not merely matter. It is matter replete with information. (p. 126).

Or again, Bernd-Olaf Küppers (yup – his real name):

The problem of the origin of life is clearly basically equivalent to the problem of the origin of biological information. (p. 139).

And that information, says Lennox, must have come from somewhere.

Particularly striking is Lennox’s potent demonstration of the question-begging so rampant in many contemporary analogies for evolution (pp. 156ff.). Richard Dawkins, for example, in his book The Blind Watchmaker, attempts to demonstrate how evolution can produce incredibly improbably biological structures by drawing an analogy with a team of monkeys typing at random to produce a ‘target phrase’, in this case Shakespear’s ‘Methinks it is like a weasel’. Dawkins succeeds, at a first glance, in showing how the probability of producing this phrase can be reduced from 1 in 10,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 (yup – 40 zeroes) to around 1 in 43. Neat, huh? Suddenly writing plays for a living looks like a workable career option.

Well, not quite – don’t give up your day job. Listen to Lennox:

What … does he mean by introducing a target phrase? A target phrase is a precise goal which, according to Dawkins himself, is a profoundly un-Dawinian concept … the very information that the mechanisms are supposed to produce is apparently already contained somewhere within the organism, whose genesis he claims to be simulating. The argument is entirely circular. … For their plausibility, then, Dawkins’ analogies depend on introducing to his model the very features whose existence in the real world he denies. (pp. 158-159).

Oops.

Resuscitating Paley - 26 June 2009

About 10 years ago I had the privilege of meeting Bruce Winter, the former warden of Tyndale house in Cambridge.

You know how it is when someone says something that sticks with you?

Well, we were talking about science and Christianity, and Bruce said something like this: ‘I think William Paley’s work on design in nature would be worth another look. I have a feeling there’s more to it than some people think.’

William Paley was an 18th-century theologian and naturalist, who argued that the appearance of design in nature implied the existence of a Designer, just as the intricate engineering of a watch implies the existence of a watchmaker. He has been criticised – ridiculed even – by many modern scientists, who have argued that evolution can account for the apparent ‘designed-ness’ of the natural world.

Well, finally someone has brought Paley back to life. And would you believe it, the caricatures painted by unbelieving scientists are, well, caricatures. Paley’s argument from design is just a little more sophisticated than you might think. A lot more sophisticated, actually.

God’s Undertaker, pp. 78-84.

No rational explanation…? - 24 June 2009

The rational intelligibility of the universe implies that a rational Mind lies behind it (John C. Lennox, God’s Undertaker, pp. 58-62).

Accordingly, many unbelieving scientists who spend time thinking about such matters cannot explain why the universe should be intelligible at all. Here’s Eugene Wigner (yes, that’s right, that Wigner – let the reader understand), for example:

The enormous usefulness of mathematics in the natural sciences is something bordering on the mysterious, and there is no rational explanation for it … it is an article of faith. (God’s Undertaker, p. 60, italics added)

Nobody knows - 23 June 2009

The first 4 chapters of John C. Lennox’s God’s Undertaker cover some fairly well-trodden methodological and philosophical ground, though with glittering clarity and fresh insights on almost every page.

Chapters 5 to 7 focus more specifically on evolutionary biology – conceding ground where appropriate while simultaneously asking some probing questions – on the fossil record, irreducible complexity, and especially the origin of life (as opposed to its subsequent development). Here’s Stuart Kaufmann, for example:

Anyone who tells you that he or she knows how life started on the earth 3.45 billion years ago is a fool or a knave. Nobody knows. (p. 126)