So I'm almost done with study on Revelation. It needs some revision but this is merely a getting thoughts out, not so much writing a book. I'm waiting for a book called, "Persian Springs" to deal with the last part of the Revelation series. But until then I have already lined up two more studies.
The first of the two will be on sex. After reading "Sex God" by Rob Bell and thumbing through other books on sex and Christianity, I have found that no one really deals with this stuff dead on. I was very disappointed with "Sex God" because Bell just never seemed quite there and seemed more concerned about making controversial statements that makes the starbucks crowd (who I am one of) go crazy (which it did not for me). I'm hoping to deal with some of the following questions (as well as any other questions someone might want to insert): Why is sex limited to marriage? Why is it such a big deal? Why is "because God said so" a sufficient reason, if it is one? Hopefully I can get through this as to why sex is important, why it is costly, why it exclusive. I just can't wrap my head around it at the moment, it seems like the whole topic is vague and weak at best in Christianity; so we'll see.
The second study will be on Faith. The more I've been studying it the more I realize how little I have. I'll talk about what faith really is, and how it effects every moment and aspect of our lives; so much so it scares me. So I hope this all works out. It should be fun to think these things through and see how real they really are.
One last thing I'll mention in passing. It amazes me in my own life and everyone else's that I have seen how much we have, in this generation especially, seperated truth from life. Our beliefs have become privatized severly as I am failing to see many christians letting their beliefs effect the way they live. Simple example: everyone speeds. No one goes the speed limit anymore. If that is the law and it is not in contradiction to God's law then we should follow it. Every time I see an SUV speed by me with a fish emblem or a Christian sticker on it, I feel ashamed. I'm not saying I don't fail in this because I do in almost every area and that is the problem. I do not recognize the need to have what I belief about my life and the actually living to be connected. This is a big problem in my life, I needs to be dealt with.
Monday, July 30, 2007
Thursday, July 19, 2007
General Revelation (Natural and Moral Revelation)
I want to discuss the next two revelations together because when you put these two together they greatly aid in the answer a very perplexing soteriological question: “What about the people who have never heard?” Whenever I hear a sermon on the gospel that focuses on the universality of the gospel (anyone who wants it can have it by accepting its message – not to be confused with exclusivism and universialism of salvation that states that all people of all worldviews will eventually be saved), they seem to skip over this question. Now I understand this to an extent because the people who have heard do not need to worry about this in a direct way. But this is important to acknowledge and discuss for the sake of the integrity of the gospel. If this is not answered, then we have millions upon millions of people ignored by this central matter in Christianity. Therefore, the natural revelation and the moral revelation (both are known together as general revelation) play an important role in God’s revelation to man.
The once championed atheist, Anthony Flew, stunned the philosophical world when he declared his recent turn to theism. He said he made this move because of the perplexing matter of not having an intelligent being behind such a complex universe. He recognized that there is someone who has to be at beginning of this all. I remember back in high school my friend was studying the first people to inhabit what is now the U.K. and these people apparently worshiped the creator god, who brought everything into existence. These all speak of a few of verses in the book of Psalms:
“The heavens declare the glory of God;
And the firmament shows His handiwork.
Day unto day utters speech,
And night unto night reveals knowledge.
There is no speech nor language
Where their voice is not heard.
Their line has gone out through all the earth,
And their words to the end of the world.” – Psalm 19:1-4 (NKJV)
There is a language that the world speaks to man and which every tongue can understand. This language speaks of purpose, design, beauty, and harmony that need a mind behind it. This is God’s revelation to man through nature. It does not preach the gospel, does not even preach about God’s character; but it does preach that there is a God. How does that justify anything since the gospel is not even known? I will get to that in a minute. First we must understand that there is a natural revelation of God, and that this revelation is enough to assume such the existence of a creator God:
“For since the creation of world His invisible attributes are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made, even is eternal power and Godhead, so that they are without excuse, because although they know God, they did not glorify Him as God, nor were thankful, but became futile in their thoughts, and their foolish hearts were darkened.” – Romans 1:20-21 (NKJV)
Here we see a difficult thing to grasp. Nature has shown God’s power and His Godhead (Godhead meaning his divine nature and thus greater than man). And many, unlike the above mentioned settlers of the U.K., did not glorify God and be thankful (this understood mostly as giving homage to God for understanding that he created everything and thus your life). Now this still seems harsh considering how many cultures started worshipping cats, elephants, and other natural things instead of making the logical connection that the originator of the world could not be from the system of the world. This is why the above verses mentioned people becoming futile in their thoughts. Man is therefore without excuse or without a defense in light of nature before them. Now again, this will better make sense and more just later. For now, let’s just understand what the natural revelation is, how it works, and what it reveals.
Immanuel Kant said that there were two things that always left him in awe: the starry heavens above and the moral law within. He recognized from mere sight that the starry heavens above are much greater than what he knows on earth. Moreover, he realized that man is naturally born with an idea of right and wrong and he could not grasp how this happens. Kant was a devote churchman his whole life and understood where this moral law came from. But for man who has no revelation from God cannot attribute this moral law to the Christian God. Once they here the gospel they can realize it but there is no connection there until then. The moral revelation is that the natural sense of right and wrong, of conscience is a revelation of God. This is a very indirect revelation however. This revelation does not necessarily make a connection to morality and a higher power, but it does make a connection from morality to judgment:
“For it is not the hearers of the law who are righteous before God, but the doers of the law who will be justified. For when the Gentiles, who do not have the law, by nature do what the law requires, they are a law to themselves, even though they do not have the law. They show that the work of the law is written on their hearts, while their conscience also bears witness, and their conflicting thoughts accuse or even excuse them.” – Romans 2:13-15 (ESV)
I like the Message paraphrase of these verses; they give a clear understanding of what all is implied here:
“Doing, not hearing, is what makes the difference with God. When outsiders who have never heard of God’s law follow it more or less by instinct, they confirm its truth by their obedience. They show that God’s law is not something alien, imposed on us from without, but woven into the very fabric of our creation. There is something deep within them that echoes God’s yes and no, right and wrong. Their response to God’s yes and no will become public knowledge on the day God makes his final decision about every man and woman.” – Romans 2:13-15 (The Message)
Here is the implication of the moral law: that when man follows the natural moral law they affirm God because it is not something imposed upon them but something innate within. It is in their very essence to see right and wrong, and while this does not automatically make you think of a higher power it does make you indirectly affirm that God is needed. I believe that someone who follows the law that is written on their heart would love the Christian worldview. It makes perfect sense why we are moral when we learn we made in God’s image. So the moral revelation of God is not necessarily revealing an affirmative belief that God is existent, but it does affirm, by submitting to this moral law within, that there is a God that made you that way. The way you live affirms God’s existence in this case. This is not the place to go into the argument from morality for the existence of God because it does not really matter in this case. The bottom line is that the law that God gave to Moses and the Israelites was based on his very nature and goodness. So when we follow this unaware of the law of Moses we are none the less excused by acknowledging this law as real and innate by the way you live.
Now this does not say much still does it? We still have people not knowing of God, their sinful nature, Jesus’ replacement on the cross, and his resurrection. So how can these people who just see nature and say, “Well no one I know could have made this happen. It must be someone greater than I am,” or follow this moral law that is natural to them get into heaven if they do not recognize their hopeless state?
“Therefore you are inexcusable, O man, whoever you are who judge, for in whatever you judge another you condemn yourself; for you who judge practice the same things. But we know that the judgment of God is according to truth against those who practice such things.” – Romans 2:1-2
Here we find a very important qualifier - God judges according to truth. The word truth here can be better translated as evidence. What this is saying is that God judges according to how much he has given you. As the old parable says, “To whom much is given, from him much will be required.” (Luke 12:48) The people who never had the opportunity to hear of Christ will not be damned for not hearing it, but will be judge by what was given to them through creation and the moral law. Now no one knows exactly what is taken into account and how much weight does a certain revelation hold, but God will not be unjust since he will judge you according to how much he has given you. God is very concerned with the people who will never hear as well:
“The God who made the world and everything in it, being Lord of heaven and earth, does not live in temples built by man, nor is he served by human hands, as though he needed anything, since he himself gives to all mankind life and breath and everything. And he made from one man every nation of mankind to live on all the face of the earth, having determined allotted periods and the boundaries of their dwelling place, that they should seek God, in the hope that they might feel their way toward him and find him. Yet he is actually not far from each one of us.” – Acts 17:24-27 (ESV)
God is very concerned with every human being and has prepared each persons time and place on earth in history so that they would be able to seek him better. He is a sovereign God who has put care into every individuals place in history so that they might be able grope after him if they chose to. There are many theories that can go into this in detail but the important thing to realize is that God has not neglected anyone but has actually tried his best to draw is free creations to Him. As God said to Abraham, “Shall not the judge of the earth do right?” We trust God to be just, not blindly, but in the light of what he has revealed to us and the justice he has showed in every aspect in our lives and in his relation with man. I have no doubt that everyone who has been judged by God will feel that either they have been fairly judged or God has been to gracious to them. God has reached out to every person who has ever lived through the Scriptures, a Christian, nature, the moral law within, or through divine revelation, which will be discussed next. And people will be judge according to how much evidence or how much has been revealed to them by God. He has put each person in a specific place in history not to neglect them but to draw them to him, and we trust God to be just in his judgments because he was proved himself trustworthy. General revelation (natural and moral revelation) is very real and spoken of in the Scriptures, and it helps us understand God’s call to the lost much more completely.
The once championed atheist, Anthony Flew, stunned the philosophical world when he declared his recent turn to theism. He said he made this move because of the perplexing matter of not having an intelligent being behind such a complex universe. He recognized that there is someone who has to be at beginning of this all. I remember back in high school my friend was studying the first people to inhabit what is now the U.K. and these people apparently worshiped the creator god, who brought everything into existence. These all speak of a few of verses in the book of Psalms:
“The heavens declare the glory of God;
And the firmament shows His handiwork.
Day unto day utters speech,
And night unto night reveals knowledge.
There is no speech nor language
Where their voice is not heard.
Their line has gone out through all the earth,
And their words to the end of the world.” – Psalm 19:1-4 (NKJV)
There is a language that the world speaks to man and which every tongue can understand. This language speaks of purpose, design, beauty, and harmony that need a mind behind it. This is God’s revelation to man through nature. It does not preach the gospel, does not even preach about God’s character; but it does preach that there is a God. How does that justify anything since the gospel is not even known? I will get to that in a minute. First we must understand that there is a natural revelation of God, and that this revelation is enough to assume such the existence of a creator God:
“For since the creation of world His invisible attributes are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made, even is eternal power and Godhead, so that they are without excuse, because although they know God, they did not glorify Him as God, nor were thankful, but became futile in their thoughts, and their foolish hearts were darkened.” – Romans 1:20-21 (NKJV)
Here we see a difficult thing to grasp. Nature has shown God’s power and His Godhead (Godhead meaning his divine nature and thus greater than man). And many, unlike the above mentioned settlers of the U.K., did not glorify God and be thankful (this understood mostly as giving homage to God for understanding that he created everything and thus your life). Now this still seems harsh considering how many cultures started worshipping cats, elephants, and other natural things instead of making the logical connection that the originator of the world could not be from the system of the world. This is why the above verses mentioned people becoming futile in their thoughts. Man is therefore without excuse or without a defense in light of nature before them. Now again, this will better make sense and more just later. For now, let’s just understand what the natural revelation is, how it works, and what it reveals.
Immanuel Kant said that there were two things that always left him in awe: the starry heavens above and the moral law within. He recognized from mere sight that the starry heavens above are much greater than what he knows on earth. Moreover, he realized that man is naturally born with an idea of right and wrong and he could not grasp how this happens. Kant was a devote churchman his whole life and understood where this moral law came from. But for man who has no revelation from God cannot attribute this moral law to the Christian God. Once they here the gospel they can realize it but there is no connection there until then. The moral revelation is that the natural sense of right and wrong, of conscience is a revelation of God. This is a very indirect revelation however. This revelation does not necessarily make a connection to morality and a higher power, but it does make a connection from morality to judgment:
“For it is not the hearers of the law who are righteous before God, but the doers of the law who will be justified. For when the Gentiles, who do not have the law, by nature do what the law requires, they are a law to themselves, even though they do not have the law. They show that the work of the law is written on their hearts, while their conscience also bears witness, and their conflicting thoughts accuse or even excuse them.” – Romans 2:13-15 (ESV)
I like the Message paraphrase of these verses; they give a clear understanding of what all is implied here:
“Doing, not hearing, is what makes the difference with God. When outsiders who have never heard of God’s law follow it more or less by instinct, they confirm its truth by their obedience. They show that God’s law is not something alien, imposed on us from without, but woven into the very fabric of our creation. There is something deep within them that echoes God’s yes and no, right and wrong. Their response to God’s yes and no will become public knowledge on the day God makes his final decision about every man and woman.” – Romans 2:13-15 (The Message)
Here is the implication of the moral law: that when man follows the natural moral law they affirm God because it is not something imposed upon them but something innate within. It is in their very essence to see right and wrong, and while this does not automatically make you think of a higher power it does make you indirectly affirm that God is needed. I believe that someone who follows the law that is written on their heart would love the Christian worldview. It makes perfect sense why we are moral when we learn we made in God’s image. So the moral revelation of God is not necessarily revealing an affirmative belief that God is existent, but it does affirm, by submitting to this moral law within, that there is a God that made you that way. The way you live affirms God’s existence in this case. This is not the place to go into the argument from morality for the existence of God because it does not really matter in this case. The bottom line is that the law that God gave to Moses and the Israelites was based on his very nature and goodness. So when we follow this unaware of the law of Moses we are none the less excused by acknowledging this law as real and innate by the way you live.
Now this does not say much still does it? We still have people not knowing of God, their sinful nature, Jesus’ replacement on the cross, and his resurrection. So how can these people who just see nature and say, “Well no one I know could have made this happen. It must be someone greater than I am,” or follow this moral law that is natural to them get into heaven if they do not recognize their hopeless state?
“Therefore you are inexcusable, O man, whoever you are who judge, for in whatever you judge another you condemn yourself; for you who judge practice the same things. But we know that the judgment of God is according to truth against those who practice such things.” – Romans 2:1-2
Here we find a very important qualifier - God judges according to truth. The word truth here can be better translated as evidence. What this is saying is that God judges according to how much he has given you. As the old parable says, “To whom much is given, from him much will be required.” (Luke 12:48) The people who never had the opportunity to hear of Christ will not be damned for not hearing it, but will be judge by what was given to them through creation and the moral law. Now no one knows exactly what is taken into account and how much weight does a certain revelation hold, but God will not be unjust since he will judge you according to how much he has given you. God is very concerned with the people who will never hear as well:
“The God who made the world and everything in it, being Lord of heaven and earth, does not live in temples built by man, nor is he served by human hands, as though he needed anything, since he himself gives to all mankind life and breath and everything. And he made from one man every nation of mankind to live on all the face of the earth, having determined allotted periods and the boundaries of their dwelling place, that they should seek God, in the hope that they might feel their way toward him and find him. Yet he is actually not far from each one of us.” – Acts 17:24-27 (ESV)
God is very concerned with every human being and has prepared each persons time and place on earth in history so that they would be able to seek him better. He is a sovereign God who has put care into every individuals place in history so that they might be able grope after him if they chose to. There are many theories that can go into this in detail but the important thing to realize is that God has not neglected anyone but has actually tried his best to draw is free creations to Him. As God said to Abraham, “Shall not the judge of the earth do right?” We trust God to be just, not blindly, but in the light of what he has revealed to us and the justice he has showed in every aspect in our lives and in his relation with man. I have no doubt that everyone who has been judged by God will feel that either they have been fairly judged or God has been to gracious to them. God has reached out to every person who has ever lived through the Scriptures, a Christian, nature, the moral law within, or through divine revelation, which will be discussed next. And people will be judge according to how much evidence or how much has been revealed to them by God. He has put each person in a specific place in history not to neglect them but to draw them to him, and we trust God to be just in his judgments because he was proved himself trustworthy. General revelation (natural and moral revelation) is very real and spoken of in the Scriptures, and it helps us understand God’s call to the lost much more completely.
Tuesday, July 17, 2007
The Living Revelation
“I like your Christ, I do not like your Christians.”
- Mahatma Gandhi
“If you Christians want me to believe in your redeemer, you will have to look more redeemed.”
- Friedrich Nietzsche
There are five gospels: Matthew, Mark, Luke, John, and the Christian. And some people will never read the first four.”
- Gipsy Smith
“I have met a lot of purported Christians in my day, and while there are a large number who are genuinely kind people, there are an equally large number who are paranoid, hateful, despicable abominations of human beings. I know not to fight fire with fire, but a part of me deep down inside is deeply, fiercely angry with these people. How dare they claim to be followers of a loving God when all they do is hate? How dare they profane such a perfect concept with their pitiful, petty, ignorant complaints? How dare they try to tell me that they are better people than I?”
“One of the biggest tenets of Christianity is that all people are equal before God… Nobody is better than anybody else. And yet, so many followers are full of pride and hubris and the honest belief that they are somehow better than everybody else. How can they justify this? How do they? Have they ever actually thought about anything, or are they actually the brainless robots I perceive them to be?”
I found this last quote on a blog. It’s interesting and eye-opening, and leads us to the second part of this series of God’s revelation to man. Jesus warned us of this multiple times in the gospels. He warned us that if we do not connect truth to the way we live, the gospel to the way we carry ourselves the very thing we believe becomes deniable. The realities of the gospel must reach our everyday lives – our moment-by-moment lives – or we lose our greatest influence in this world today. This postmodern generation needs more than any other generation in history a living example of God and His work. It is not that we now deny beliefs as worthless, but we do deny beliefs that do not practically affect our lives as worthless. This is the second revelation God gives to man, and the most influential in these times: Christians. We are the living revelation to man.
Jesus said: “A new commandment I give unto you, That ye love one another; as I have loved you, that ye also love one another. By this shall all men know that ye are my disciples, if ye have love for one another.”
- John 13:34-35
Here is where it starts, the way treat one another gives people the right, which is given by God, to judge Christians. As the blogger said hurtfully above, Christians are not acting like Christians. I travel a lot playing music for youth camps and conferences and one of the saddest things I hear too often is that the youth groups are worse than any other group that these camps and hotels host. They call them spoiled, selfish, careless of others in the hotel and even the property, and many other complaints. What we find then are people looking at this and saying, “If that is a Christian then I don’t want to be one nor let my children be one.” Christians like to point the finger at the devil and “sinners” for pulling people away from the church and away from God, but I think we need reexamine this and look at the sinners from within the church that have pushed people away by the way ignore their beliefs and not apply them to their lives. Jesus goes farther though:
“That they all may be one; as thou, Father, art in me, and I in thee, that they also may be one in us; that the world may believe that thou hast sent me.”
- John 17:21
Now Jesus really starts to show the true responsibility of Christians. If the Christian is not in unity with his fellow Christians, people can begin to look at the church and say it is all fairy tales. From my own experience I have found that the church has somehow hurt the people who are hateful towards the church. This is not always, but more times than not this is the case. The way we live directly affects the gospel message and the credibility of it; that is a scary thought. We need to realize that what the Bible says has direct impact on the very way I live moment-by-moment. And from there, the Bible is very clear that the way I act has a direct impact on the way the world views, not just me, but God Himself. Christianity is not a vacuum that we leap into that is completely separated from life in the real world.
“You are the salt of the earth; but if the salt loses its flavor, how shall it be seasoned? It is then good for nothing but to be thrown out and trampled underfoot by men. You are the light of the world. A city that is set on a hill cannot be hidden . . . Let your light so shine before men, that they may see your good works and glorify your Father in heaven.” (Matthew 5:13-14, 16 NJKV)
Notice that Jesus said you ARE the salt and light, not should be but are. It is an indicative statement. That is who the Christian is, not who he should be. This is our nature that we must follow and live up to. We are to be the light among the darkness. We are to show that Christ is real in our lives and the result is that men will be able to see God in his glory. Ravi Zacharias, who is one of the most influential Christian apologists today, has admitted that his biggest struggle with Christianity and the hardest question for him to answer about Christianity is why so many Christians do not live with this supernatural transformation that they claim. Christians are losing their reputation and prestige much like Israel did when they began to forget that their lives reflected God on earth (Amos 5:2). The Christian is the living revelation that God has to man; Jesus was clear about that. God has declared his followers as evidence to his gospel’s reality, as his message to the world of how he is real, and as his very word in practical, tangible form. The living revelation to the world is what is killing Christianity right now. We must stay strong and obedient to God to show the world the reality of the gospel. God has given man his word through the Scriptures and gave man a propositional, testable, and powerful revelation in these Scriptures. Christians are the ones that show this revelation in living, tangible form. When we fail in this area we fail in showing God to be relevant to us. The Scriptures are relevant to this world whether or not we live it, but if we do not live it Jesus said himself that the world will not be easily acceptable to it. The living revelation of Christians is what will snatch a searcher long before he is able to think through the theology. C. S. Lewis said theology is practical; it is livable, and if we cannot demonstrate it then the world sees no real power in Scriptures, unless they spend the time to take it on without taking on its followers. Who wants that?
I do want to add that this is not hopeless. I know many Christians who truly show the power of the gospel through their lives. To the skeptic I want to say that while there are Christians who live inconsistently with the Scriptures, you must not take that as the final word. Augustine said that we must not judge something by its abuse. Take Jesus on and see how he lived and what he said. I believe if you do that you will find that the behavior of some purported Christians is completely inconsistent with what Jesus really says. A Christian, as the Gipsy Smith quote at the beginning implied, has a burden upon him to be that first testimony but the Christians is far from the truth. Jesus is the truth, the best a Christian can do is demonstrate this truth. The Christian truly is the living revelation to man, but he is at best a revealer and at worst a roadblock - never a falsifier.
- Mahatma Gandhi
“If you Christians want me to believe in your redeemer, you will have to look more redeemed.”
- Friedrich Nietzsche
There are five gospels: Matthew, Mark, Luke, John, and the Christian. And some people will never read the first four.”
- Gipsy Smith
“I have met a lot of purported Christians in my day, and while there are a large number who are genuinely kind people, there are an equally large number who are paranoid, hateful, despicable abominations of human beings. I know not to fight fire with fire, but a part of me deep down inside is deeply, fiercely angry with these people. How dare they claim to be followers of a loving God when all they do is hate? How dare they profane such a perfect concept with their pitiful, petty, ignorant complaints? How dare they try to tell me that they are better people than I?”
“One of the biggest tenets of Christianity is that all people are equal before God… Nobody is better than anybody else. And yet, so many followers are full of pride and hubris and the honest belief that they are somehow better than everybody else. How can they justify this? How do they? Have they ever actually thought about anything, or are they actually the brainless robots I perceive them to be?”
I found this last quote on a blog. It’s interesting and eye-opening, and leads us to the second part of this series of God’s revelation to man. Jesus warned us of this multiple times in the gospels. He warned us that if we do not connect truth to the way we live, the gospel to the way we carry ourselves the very thing we believe becomes deniable. The realities of the gospel must reach our everyday lives – our moment-by-moment lives – or we lose our greatest influence in this world today. This postmodern generation needs more than any other generation in history a living example of God and His work. It is not that we now deny beliefs as worthless, but we do deny beliefs that do not practically affect our lives as worthless. This is the second revelation God gives to man, and the most influential in these times: Christians. We are the living revelation to man.
Jesus said: “A new commandment I give unto you, That ye love one another; as I have loved you, that ye also love one another. By this shall all men know that ye are my disciples, if ye have love for one another.”
- John 13:34-35
Here is where it starts, the way treat one another gives people the right, which is given by God, to judge Christians. As the blogger said hurtfully above, Christians are not acting like Christians. I travel a lot playing music for youth camps and conferences and one of the saddest things I hear too often is that the youth groups are worse than any other group that these camps and hotels host. They call them spoiled, selfish, careless of others in the hotel and even the property, and many other complaints. What we find then are people looking at this and saying, “If that is a Christian then I don’t want to be one nor let my children be one.” Christians like to point the finger at the devil and “sinners” for pulling people away from the church and away from God, but I think we need reexamine this and look at the sinners from within the church that have pushed people away by the way ignore their beliefs and not apply them to their lives. Jesus goes farther though:
“That they all may be one; as thou, Father, art in me, and I in thee, that they also may be one in us; that the world may believe that thou hast sent me.”
- John 17:21
Now Jesus really starts to show the true responsibility of Christians. If the Christian is not in unity with his fellow Christians, people can begin to look at the church and say it is all fairy tales. From my own experience I have found that the church has somehow hurt the people who are hateful towards the church. This is not always, but more times than not this is the case. The way we live directly affects the gospel message and the credibility of it; that is a scary thought. We need to realize that what the Bible says has direct impact on the very way I live moment-by-moment. And from there, the Bible is very clear that the way I act has a direct impact on the way the world views, not just me, but God Himself. Christianity is not a vacuum that we leap into that is completely separated from life in the real world.
“You are the salt of the earth; but if the salt loses its flavor, how shall it be seasoned? It is then good for nothing but to be thrown out and trampled underfoot by men. You are the light of the world. A city that is set on a hill cannot be hidden . . . Let your light so shine before men, that they may see your good works and glorify your Father in heaven.” (Matthew 5:13-14, 16 NJKV)
Notice that Jesus said you ARE the salt and light, not should be but are. It is an indicative statement. That is who the Christian is, not who he should be. This is our nature that we must follow and live up to. We are to be the light among the darkness. We are to show that Christ is real in our lives and the result is that men will be able to see God in his glory. Ravi Zacharias, who is one of the most influential Christian apologists today, has admitted that his biggest struggle with Christianity and the hardest question for him to answer about Christianity is why so many Christians do not live with this supernatural transformation that they claim. Christians are losing their reputation and prestige much like Israel did when they began to forget that their lives reflected God on earth (Amos 5:2). The Christian is the living revelation that God has to man; Jesus was clear about that. God has declared his followers as evidence to his gospel’s reality, as his message to the world of how he is real, and as his very word in practical, tangible form. The living revelation to the world is what is killing Christianity right now. We must stay strong and obedient to God to show the world the reality of the gospel. God has given man his word through the Scriptures and gave man a propositional, testable, and powerful revelation in these Scriptures. Christians are the ones that show this revelation in living, tangible form. When we fail in this area we fail in showing God to be relevant to us. The Scriptures are relevant to this world whether or not we live it, but if we do not live it Jesus said himself that the world will not be easily acceptable to it. The living revelation of Christians is what will snatch a searcher long before he is able to think through the theology. C. S. Lewis said theology is practical; it is livable, and if we cannot demonstrate it then the world sees no real power in Scriptures, unless they spend the time to take it on without taking on its followers. Who wants that?
I do want to add that this is not hopeless. I know many Christians who truly show the power of the gospel through their lives. To the skeptic I want to say that while there are Christians who live inconsistently with the Scriptures, you must not take that as the final word. Augustine said that we must not judge something by its abuse. Take Jesus on and see how he lived and what he said. I believe if you do that you will find that the behavior of some purported Christians is completely inconsistent with what Jesus really says. A Christian, as the Gipsy Smith quote at the beginning implied, has a burden upon him to be that first testimony but the Christians is far from the truth. Jesus is the truth, the best a Christian can do is demonstrate this truth. The Christian truly is the living revelation to man, but he is at best a revealer and at worst a roadblock - never a falsifier.
Monday, July 16, 2007
The Written Revelation
If you ask a religious scholar what a revelation means in religion, he would most likely say something like:
“A revelation is when a higher power communicates to a mortal (most likely human) through a vision, dream, trance, miracle, inspiration, stream of consciousness, meditation, prayer, reading a “holy book”, or maybe even simply a natural object or action that relates something much more meaningful to the observer.”
The Christian would agree with this academic definition, although reluctantly. Any devote follower of any worldview hates to hear their experiences and beliefs expressed so coldly, but let’s not fight that frivolous battle. This is the study of how the God of the Bible reveals Himself to man. This is for the Christian and non-Christian alike. Through this little series, the Christian will find better understanding of his beliefs, and the non-Christian will hopefully find answers to questions about Christianity and its followers.
The first and most authoritative way God reveals Himself to man is through the Scriptures. Christians should rely on the Scriptures more than experience, worship, or even prayer. It is the basis for every belief. It is how we know who Jesus is and what He has done. This why it is important to start with the primary revelation of God to man because we sift every other revelation through the Scriptures to judge all experiences and actions according to what we know as truth. Scripture is not just stories; it is propositional and up for scrutiny. The Koran is above scrutiny, but the Bible is open to all who wish to challenge it, and it has yet to lose this 1500-year fight.
When a Christian says the Scriptures are God’s revelation to man they usually rely on the a verse in 2 Timothy to support this proposition: “All Scripture is given by inspiration of God. . .” (NKJV 2 Tim. 3:16a) This means that God has given the ideas and propositions to the men writing the Scriptures; these men did not make these ideas up but they were given to them by God. Now obviously you would think Paul here is speaking of the Old Testament and not the New Testament for this very writing is part of the New Testament and surely he did not consider his little letter to Timothy to be Scripture. However, this objection holds little ground when we look at another letter that Paul wrote to the Corinthians. A simple phrase sheds a lot of light on this matter: “Now concerning virgins: I have no commandment from the Lord; yet I give judgment as one whom the Lord in His mercy has made trustworthy.” (NKJV 1 Cor. 7:25) Here we have Paul saying that this time around he does not have a commandment from the Lord or he does not have anything on this matter that Lord has inspired him to write about. This simple clarification gives us the understanding that Paul was aware of God’s inspiration in his very writing. So to say that this verse excludes the New Testament is not coherent with other parts of Scripture.
The inspiration of the Scriptures is a hotly debated topic. This is not the place to go into every objection, but I will bring up a couple. With these couple of basic answers to objections on the inspiration of the Scriptures, you will see evidence outside of the Bible that gives reason to believe 2 Timothy 3:16. For it is merely circular reasoning to say that the Bible is God’s revelation to man because the Bible says so. This reasoning is only valid when outside reasoning and evidence can support it, or if the Bible itself is found blameless. Hopefully this will not make you think that I am denying faith for reason, but merely showing how Divine inspiration is experientially and empirically seen and verified.
One popular objection to the Bible is the exclusivity of some verses. Some verses are the only ones that say certain important things. The Gospels especially have many stories and sayings of Jesus that are not repeated. This is not much of an objection however. David Fischer said in his book “Historian’s Fallacies” that to prove the nonexistence of something you cannot bank on the fact that there is no supporting evidence; you must give an affirmative proof or evidence that it cannot or did not exist. Silence is not a proof of anything for so many obvious reasons. So to base that a certain verse is put in there for the author’s own reasons on no supporting evidence is merely assumption. Be very clear that I am not talking about the interpretation of the verse or story (most theologians will cross-reference verses for accurate and coherent interpretations), but whether or not the very existence of the verse can be legitimized as true and accurate, and not some invention of the author.
Another objection to Scriptures and their inspiration is the assembly of the canon in face with so many gospels and books to be chosen. The general rule that was used for the assembly of the canon of Scripture was aposticity. Aposticity is the property of a book as being written by an Apostle. With the Apostle’s were the Apostle’s doctrine (Acts 2:42) which was the doctrine they learned from Jesus directly. The fact that over twelve people learned this directly from Jesus gives a much greater buffer from inaccuracy than if Jesus had one follower. What we find is the only four gospels actually written by four of the original twelve share remarkable coherency. I do not have time to go into individual contradictions that come up and how these contradictions are dissolved by closer examination of the language, semantics, contexts, etc. For more on that read Blomberg or Bruce. Aposticity also dictates that the book must have been written within a hundred years of Jesus’ life. This gives even less possibility for error. In the Jesus’ time, he was called a rabbi and he used many rabbinic methods of teachings such as parables and so on. It is by most scholars understanding that Jesus and his disciples, being Jews, focused on accurate remembrance of teachings by way of the Oral Tradition. Most scholars say that the Oral Tradition in Jesus’ time preserved the teachings by four generations before the story started to deviate from the original. This gives plenty room for aposticity to be an accurate measure of Jesus’ true teachings. Furthermore, the New Testament has nine different writers who all wrote the same doctrine within the first hundred years after Jesus’ death; many of whom were his direct students under strict Jewish Oral tradition. We do not go through this so that we can make it look like that the Scriptures were divinely inspired; we do this that we can distinguish between false teachings and true teachings. We find, not surprisingly, that the gospels and books written later that the first century A.D. begin to be incoherent, and the Apostle’s were the purest vessels to use so as not to begin to corrupt what had been written. Christianity needed a strong foundation before it could stand so it needed its inspiration and guidance of God in the very first accounts and books, not the ones 200 years down the line.
This discussion can go on for much longer but this gives a starting point to understanding the written revelation God gave to us through the Scriptures. I am no expert in New Testament scholarship so to get a better understanding you should read Blomberg or Bruce. But this written revelation is vital for a Christian. It is the sifter and guide to all that is pronounced by people. It is God’s very word to man and is the first or primary source for God’s word to man. From here on out we begin with more experiential and existential ways God reveals Himself to man, but all of them are based in Scripture.
“A revelation is when a higher power communicates to a mortal (most likely human) through a vision, dream, trance, miracle, inspiration, stream of consciousness, meditation, prayer, reading a “holy book”, or maybe even simply a natural object or action that relates something much more meaningful to the observer.”
The Christian would agree with this academic definition, although reluctantly. Any devote follower of any worldview hates to hear their experiences and beliefs expressed so coldly, but let’s not fight that frivolous battle. This is the study of how the God of the Bible reveals Himself to man. This is for the Christian and non-Christian alike. Through this little series, the Christian will find better understanding of his beliefs, and the non-Christian will hopefully find answers to questions about Christianity and its followers.
The first and most authoritative way God reveals Himself to man is through the Scriptures. Christians should rely on the Scriptures more than experience, worship, or even prayer. It is the basis for every belief. It is how we know who Jesus is and what He has done. This why it is important to start with the primary revelation of God to man because we sift every other revelation through the Scriptures to judge all experiences and actions according to what we know as truth. Scripture is not just stories; it is propositional and up for scrutiny. The Koran is above scrutiny, but the Bible is open to all who wish to challenge it, and it has yet to lose this 1500-year fight.
When a Christian says the Scriptures are God’s revelation to man they usually rely on the a verse in 2 Timothy to support this proposition: “All Scripture is given by inspiration of God. . .” (NKJV 2 Tim. 3:16a) This means that God has given the ideas and propositions to the men writing the Scriptures; these men did not make these ideas up but they were given to them by God. Now obviously you would think Paul here is speaking of the Old Testament and not the New Testament for this very writing is part of the New Testament and surely he did not consider his little letter to Timothy to be Scripture. However, this objection holds little ground when we look at another letter that Paul wrote to the Corinthians. A simple phrase sheds a lot of light on this matter: “Now concerning virgins: I have no commandment from the Lord; yet I give judgment as one whom the Lord in His mercy has made trustworthy.” (NKJV 1 Cor. 7:25) Here we have Paul saying that this time around he does not have a commandment from the Lord or he does not have anything on this matter that Lord has inspired him to write about. This simple clarification gives us the understanding that Paul was aware of God’s inspiration in his very writing. So to say that this verse excludes the New Testament is not coherent with other parts of Scripture.
The inspiration of the Scriptures is a hotly debated topic. This is not the place to go into every objection, but I will bring up a couple. With these couple of basic answers to objections on the inspiration of the Scriptures, you will see evidence outside of the Bible that gives reason to believe 2 Timothy 3:16. For it is merely circular reasoning to say that the Bible is God’s revelation to man because the Bible says so. This reasoning is only valid when outside reasoning and evidence can support it, or if the Bible itself is found blameless. Hopefully this will not make you think that I am denying faith for reason, but merely showing how Divine inspiration is experientially and empirically seen and verified.
One popular objection to the Bible is the exclusivity of some verses. Some verses are the only ones that say certain important things. The Gospels especially have many stories and sayings of Jesus that are not repeated. This is not much of an objection however. David Fischer said in his book “Historian’s Fallacies” that to prove the nonexistence of something you cannot bank on the fact that there is no supporting evidence; you must give an affirmative proof or evidence that it cannot or did not exist. Silence is not a proof of anything for so many obvious reasons. So to base that a certain verse is put in there for the author’s own reasons on no supporting evidence is merely assumption. Be very clear that I am not talking about the interpretation of the verse or story (most theologians will cross-reference verses for accurate and coherent interpretations), but whether or not the very existence of the verse can be legitimized as true and accurate, and not some invention of the author.
Another objection to Scriptures and their inspiration is the assembly of the canon in face with so many gospels and books to be chosen. The general rule that was used for the assembly of the canon of Scripture was aposticity. Aposticity is the property of a book as being written by an Apostle. With the Apostle’s were the Apostle’s doctrine (Acts 2:42) which was the doctrine they learned from Jesus directly. The fact that over twelve people learned this directly from Jesus gives a much greater buffer from inaccuracy than if Jesus had one follower. What we find is the only four gospels actually written by four of the original twelve share remarkable coherency. I do not have time to go into individual contradictions that come up and how these contradictions are dissolved by closer examination of the language, semantics, contexts, etc. For more on that read Blomberg or Bruce. Aposticity also dictates that the book must have been written within a hundred years of Jesus’ life. This gives even less possibility for error. In the Jesus’ time, he was called a rabbi and he used many rabbinic methods of teachings such as parables and so on. It is by most scholars understanding that Jesus and his disciples, being Jews, focused on accurate remembrance of teachings by way of the Oral Tradition. Most scholars say that the Oral Tradition in Jesus’ time preserved the teachings by four generations before the story started to deviate from the original. This gives plenty room for aposticity to be an accurate measure of Jesus’ true teachings. Furthermore, the New Testament has nine different writers who all wrote the same doctrine within the first hundred years after Jesus’ death; many of whom were his direct students under strict Jewish Oral tradition. We do not go through this so that we can make it look like that the Scriptures were divinely inspired; we do this that we can distinguish between false teachings and true teachings. We find, not surprisingly, that the gospels and books written later that the first century A.D. begin to be incoherent, and the Apostle’s were the purest vessels to use so as not to begin to corrupt what had been written. Christianity needed a strong foundation before it could stand so it needed its inspiration and guidance of God in the very first accounts and books, not the ones 200 years down the line.
This discussion can go on for much longer but this gives a starting point to understanding the written revelation God gave to us through the Scriptures. I am no expert in New Testament scholarship so to get a better understanding you should read Blomberg or Bruce. But this written revelation is vital for a Christian. It is the sifter and guide to all that is pronounced by people. It is God’s very word to man and is the first or primary source for God’s word to man. From here on out we begin with more experiential and existential ways God reveals Himself to man, but all of them are based in Scripture.