Tom Wright's "Surprised by Hope" - 5/5

I've put up some of my favourite moments from Tom Wright's wonderful book, Surprised by Hope, as item 63 HERE

There's a lot of really, really good stuff in this book. In addition to the extracts below, I especially enjoyed moments on epistemology of love, parousia, "salvation", cremation, rewards, paradigm shifts, Sundays, ascension, John 14, purgatory, creation and judgment. The overall thesis is compelling and it's mystifying that so many evangelicals just don't get it, not least in view of the fact that the thesis is so patently a resurrection thesis.

Surprised by Hope.

Well worth reading.

Tom Wright's "Surprised by Hope" - 4/5

I've put up some of my favourite moments from Tom Wright's wonderful book, Surprised by Hope, as item 63 HERE

It's incidental to Wright's main purpose but I loved this moment:

Wittgenstein's most famous book, the Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus, was first published in 1921, and remains one of the most seminal and provocative texts of philosophy not only of the modern period, but, some would say, ever. Wittgenstein orders his remarks with a severe and logical numbering: 1; 1.1; 1.11; 1.12; 1.13; 1.2; 1.21; then 2; and so on. Number 1 takes only half a page, whereas 2 takes five pages, 3 takes nine, and so on. There are six sections in all, ending with a subsection numbered 6.54. Then, tellingly, section 7 consists of a single sentence: "What we cannot speak about, we must pass over in silence."

Wittgenstein, of course, was Jewish, and a man of amazing cultural and aesthetic awareness. He had perfect musical pitch and a perfect architect's eye. He also had a strong mystical streak. I can't claim to understand all the main six sections of the Tractatus, but I think I know what Wittgenstein was doing at this point. I think he was consciously modelling Genesis 1: knowledge, like creation, starting small but pregnant, developing in complexity until the full height of the sixth day, the day when humans are created in God's image. Then, on the seventh day, a silence: a rest, a pregnant pause -- in other words, a sabbath. 252

Tom Wright's "Surprised by Hope" 3/5

I've put up some of my favourite moments from Tom Wright's wonderful book, Surprised by Hope, as item 63 HERE

Another favourite extract below. I wrote a "paper" all about this:

Not the least lash lost

Here's what Tom Wright says on pp.219-20:

But what we can and must do in the present, if we are obedient to the gospel, if we are following Jesus, and if we are indwelt, energised and directed by the Spirit, is to build for the kingdom. This brings us back to 1 Corinthians 15.58 once more: what you do in the Lord is not in vain. You are not oiling the wheels of a machine that's about to fall over a cliff. You are not restoring a great painting that is shortly going to be thrown on the fire. You are not planting roses in a garden that is about to be dug up for a building site. You are -- strange though it may seem, almost as hard to believe as the resurrection itself -- accomplishing something which will become, in due course, part of God's new world. Every act of love, gratitude and kindness; every work of art or music inspired by the love of God and delight in the beauty of his creation; every minute spent teaching a severely handicapped child to read or to walk; every act of care and nurture, of comfort and support, for one's fellow human beings, and for that matter one's fellow non-human creatures; and of course every prayer, all Spirit-led teaching, every deed which spreads the gospel, builds up the church, embraces and embodies holiness rather than corruption, and makes the name of Jesus honoured in the world -- all of this will find its way, through the resurrecting power of God, into the new creation which God will one day make. That is the logic of the mission of God. God’s recreation of his wonderful world, which has begun with the resurrection of Jesus and continues mysteriously as God's people live in the risen Christ and in the power of his Spirit, means that what we do in Christ and by the Spirit in the present is not wasted. It will last all the way into God's new world. In fact, it will be enhanced there. I have no idea what precisely this will mean in practice. I am putting up a signpost, not offering a photograph of what we will find when we get to where the signpost is pointing.

Tom Wright's "Surprised by Hope" - 2/5

I've put up some of my favourite moments from Tom Wright's wonderful book, Surprised by Hope, as item 63 HERE

It's fun reading Tom Wright - he is a very good communicator:

• A suggested change to the misleading "and take me home" line in the great "How great thou art" hymn:

When Christ shall come, with shout of acclamation,
And heal this world, what joy shall fill my heart.

• Christians have often gone along with the general idea of "progress", but, though it sometimes runs on parallel lines to Christian hope, it comes from a different origin and veers off towards a very different destination -- just as the trains that run from London to Manchester coincide for a stretch with those that run from Southampton to Newcastle, but start and finish somewhere very different. 99-100
  

• The fact that I have written books about Jesus without mentioning it [the return of Christ] doesn't mean I don't believe in it; when a football commentator goes through a whole game without mentioning cricket, that doesn't mean he doesn't believe it exists, or that he doesn't rate it highly as a sport. 138
  

• Paul was good at richly mixed metaphors: in the next chapter, 1 Thessalonians 5, he says that the thief will come in the night, so the woman will go into labour, so you mustn't get drunk but must stay awake and put on your armour. As the television programmes say, don't try that one at home. 144
  

• But the deeper, underlying point is that the adjectives of this type, Greek adjectives ending in –ikos, do not describe the material out of which things are made, but the power or energy which animates them. It is the difference between asking on the one hand "is this a wooden ship or an iron ship?" (the material from which it is made) and asking on the other "is this a steam ship or a sailing ship?" (the energy which empowers it). 168
  

• Dust we are, and to dust we shall return. But God can do new things with dust. 170
  

• One of the greatest problems of the western church, ever since the Reformation at least, is that it hasn't really known what the Gospels were there for. 215
  

• But we don't live in the garden of Eden, and art which attempts to do so quickly becomes flaccid and trivial. (The church doesn't have a monopoly on kitsch or sentimentalism, but if you want to find it the church may well be the easiest place to start.) 235
  

• There is one God, and he is our God. Transcendence; intimacy; celebration; covenant. These are the roots of biblical prayer. 290

Tom Wright - "Surprised by Hope" 1/5

I've put up some of my favourite moments from Tom Wright's wonderful book, Surprised by Hope, as item 63 HERE (I blame you James O for my guilt feelings at this moment!).

It really is a superb piece of work. Before popping some top highlights on the blog, I'll just mention my five disagreements / disappointments:

• Death before the fall. I wish that he had insisted on quotation marks around pre-fall “death”. He speaks of "death, which was always part of the natural transience of the good creation …”. It's true that he clearly states that it gained a second (painful and penal) dimension with sin (106), and, on p.259, writes that, “Sin is the root cause of death; if death has been defeated, it must mean that sin has been dealt with.” Nevertheless, those quotation marks would have helped.
  

• His assertion that, “ despite widespread opinion to the contrary, during his earthly ministry Jesus said nothing about his return.” (p.137). He is very clear indeed that he believes in the future climactic second coming of Christ to judge the world and renew all things, it’s just that whereas I think many of the statements of Jesus himself in his earthly ministry which some Christians reckon to refer to his second coming are actually about something else (usually about AD70), Wright thinks that that is the case with all of Jesus’s statements in his earthly ministry. I disagree with his reading of Matthew 25.
  

• Those in hell as no longer human. Wright speaks of “ultimate dehumanization” (192) and says that, "After death they become at last, by their own effective choice, beings that once were human but now are not, creatures that have ceased to bear the divine image at all. With the death of that body in which they inhabited God's good world, in which the flickering flame of good that had not been completely snuffed out, they pass simultaneously not only beyond hope but also beyond pity." (195). I think that unless, even in the most attenuated sense, those in hell are human then there is insufficient personal identity between those who sinned and those who are being punished for that punishment to be just.
  

• The five pages about the “massive economic imbalance of the world” (pp.228-32) are very weak indeed and highly irritating. Doug Wilson has written a powerful rebuttal of these pages (and of the hand-waving evasions which Wright gave in his recent interview with Trevin Wax in which he seemed to assume that Wilson was some right-wing American trying to avoid engagement with economics and politics). See entries between 6th April and 10th May 2008 in Wilson's "NT Wrights and Wrongs" category. Wright comes across at his weakest in these pages and at these moments.
  

• While ruling out the idea of purgatory and therefore of praying for the dead in that way, and also ruling out any idea of seeking the saints’ intercession, Wright does seem to think (p.184) that there is “no reason why we should not pray for and with the dead, and every reason why we should - not that they will get out of purgatory, but that they will be refreshed, and filled with God’s joy and peace. Love passes into prayer; we still love them; why not hold them, in that love, before God?" I see no Scriptural warrant for this whatever.

Narnia's secret

(HT Brian Nolder, I think).

You think you know the Narnia Chronicles?

Then you'll be sceptical about and intrigued by this statement:

In 2003, Michael Ward discovered the secret key to the Chronicles of Narnia, a key no one had found before: Each of the seven planets of the ancient celestial hierarchy provides the atmospheric superstructure for each of the seven books in Lewis' series of children's books.

Now try reading Michael Ward's article in Touchstone:

Narnia's Secret

Or Nathaniel Peters' review in First Things:

The Music of the Spheres

What a joy!

Covenant and election again

I'd forgotten this paragraph, which I posted nearly two years ago, but I stumbled across it just now and I find that it nicely explains why I think that trying to move from an assertion that the New Covenant is to be identified with the big-E Elect to an assertion about the legitimate subjects of baptism is an attempt to cross the Creator-creature divide.

In order to understand what baptism actually brings into effect, our thinking must be continually guided, as Cornelius Van Til insisted, by the Creator/creature distinction. Translated into sacramental theology, the Creator/creature distinction means that we must distinguish between membership in the covenant and eternal election to salvation. Election is the Creator's business; the covenant is the creature's business. God orders all things after the counsel of his own unconditioned will; we are to order our lives and the church in conformity with the demands, signs, and sanctions of the covenant. The Creator saves sinners; the covenant signs and seals that the church administers are means of blessing. The Creator's plans and works cannot be resisted; the church's administration of the covenant can be resisted. One cannot be eternally elect and fall from grace; but one can enter into the covenant and apostatize. The distinction between covenant and election is basic to the Reformed theology of baptism and the Lord's Supper. Baptism is a covenant administration. It is not a guarantee of eternal salvation; instead it is a sign of the covenant. What baptism actually brings into effect is entrance into the covenant and the covenant community of the church. Because the baptized person becomes a member of Christ's body, he is identified with Christ. The baptized person is, covenantally speaking, a Christian. True, the baptized person may not persevere in the faith. He may taste of the heavenly gift and fall away (Heb. 6). The backslidden Christian had real life, a real participation in Christ, and the powers of the age to come. Yet his was a temporary not an eternal participation in Christ. Ultimately (in terms of election), he goes out from Christ because he is not really of Christ (1 Jn. 2:19). Though covenant and election must be distinguished, they ought not to be separated. By persevering in faithfulness to the covenant (which is possible only in the power of the Spirit), one works out his election with fear and trembling. By the power of the Spirit, the covenant signs and seals and the Word lead men and women into saving fellowship with God. Engrafted into Christ and his church, by baptism, a child may grow quickly, only later to wither and die. Or, the elect baptized child may grow to produce fruit 30-, 60-, or 100-fold (Mt. 13). In the meantime, even the reprobate receives non-salvific blessing from baptism and membership in the church." Peter Leithart, Daddy, Why Was I Excommunicated?

The heart of the matter

In the week that the UK has, in the debates and decisions on the HFE Bill, given further evidence of its hatred of God's ways, its moral blindness, and its apostate rush to destruction, how could a Christian blogger spend time posting on

• 1st century micro-geo-politics
• a sermon outline for Isaiah 50.4-9
• 17th century views of infant baptism
• a Christian holiday organization
• bible teaching podcasts for teenagers
• and an audio Greek NT
  

?

What sort of way of looking at the world would account for this?

What relationship must there be in a such a blogger's mind about "politics," the church being the church as it ought to be, and teaching the Bible?

More pointedly, what's the relationship between a church which excludes children from the life in the covenant and a nation which excludes the unborn from life in the world?

You'd have to believe that the world was organized zonally, that baptism forms a new civilization, that right and faithful celebration of the Lord's Supper is a profoundly political act (see, esp. Leithart's Against Christianity) and that clear Bible teaching for all sorts and conditions of Christians is a necessary step to reform. It's all in The Blenheim Lectures (free to download).

None of which is to say, for a moment, that I doubt the faithfulness and usefulness of lobbying, protesting, informing, campaigning, speaking up outside and inside Parliament and so on. It is to say that while such proper Christian activity endeavours to apply brakes to our national rush to destruction, there's another focus of attention needed in order actually to change direction.

Take a look

Items of interest:

• New edition of Henry Hazlitt's great book, Economics in One Lesson
  

• Upper-case distinction: an outbreak of big-Es, big-Rs, and big-Bs in

  • Comment on Jeremiah 31 from Neil Jeffers and Matthew Mason

  
  

  • Comment on "hypothetical warnings" from Neil Robbie and James Oakley (see comments)

• Daniel Kirk's essays on the imputation of active obedience: essay 1 and essay 2. (HT - Barb)
  

Free Online Audio Greek NT

Recent Oak Hill graduate and all-round hero Andy Martin has now completed his reading of Matthew's Gospel in the

Free Online Audio Greek New Testament.

and I have put it online.

If you know Andy then thank him for it and be an encouragement to him as he continues with this project.