Category Archives: People

Cross Vision 13 – Dragon-Swallowing-Dragon Warfare

Walking With Giants Posted on by

Summarising chapter 14

The deliverance at the Red Sea (Ex 14) took place without any human assistance.  It has been argued that God would always have preferred to work that way, if only his people had trusted him.  But does God ever need to resort to violence?

The author of the narrative certainly thought that it was Yahweh, ‘a man of war’ (Ex 15:1), who drowned Pharaoh’s army in the sea.  But our cross-centred hermeneutic determines that we should see this ascription of divine violence to the writer’s fallen and culturally conditioned thinking. …

Cross Vision 12 – Creation Undone

Walking With Giants Posted on by

Summarising chapter 13.

Not all the violence in the OT can be attributed to human agents.

Take the flood, for example.  A cross-centred hermeneutic prompts us to discern Satanic powers using their God-given authority to brng this about.

Scripture assumes as certain solidarity between the human, animal and inanimate kingdoms.  In Gen 6:12f the same word (sāhat) is used to describe human sin, the effect of this on the earth, and the punishment.  This indicates that the flood ‘was an organic, not a judicial, divine judgment’.…

Cross Vision 10 – Doing and Allowing

Walking With Giants Posted on by

In chapter 11 of Cross Vision, Greg Boyd attempts to draw a sharp distinction between what God does, and what God allows.

According to Boyd, this is a distinction which is often obscured in the OT.

In Ex 12:12, for example, Yahweh tells Moses: “I will pass through Egypt and strike down every firstborn of both people and animals”.

In v23 of the same chapter, however, we read, “When the Lord goes through the land to strike down the Egyptians, he will see the blood on the top and sides of the doorframe and will pass over that doorway, and he will not permit the destroyer to enter your houses and strike you down.”…

F.F. Bruce – a ‘liberal evangelical’?

Walking With Giants Posted on by

Frederick Fyvie Bruce (1910-1990) was one of the most distinguished of the evangelical biblical scholars who flourished during the second half of the 20th century.

I have often thought of Bruce as a ‘liberal evangelical’ (whereas I would characterise his fellow-Scot William Barclay as an ‘evangelical liberal’).  Make of that what you will.

In Re-views by an Evangelical Biblical Scholar, Robert H. Gundry ponders Tim Grass’s biography: F.F. Bruce: A Life.

In the process of his review, Gundry summarises the (slightly uneasy?)…

Cross Vision 9 – Self-Punishing Sin

Walking With Giants Posted on by

A precis of chapter 10

A teenager likes loud music.  Supposing he steals records, and is severely punished by his father; that would be judicial punishment.  But supposing his penchant for loud music causes hearing loss; that would be organic punishment.

Divine punishment for sin is usually construed, in Scripture, as organic.  The destructive consequences of sin are built into the sin itself.

Except where it depicts God as violent, the Bible always describes punishment of sin in terms of divine abandonment. …

A theology of creation

Walking With Giants Posted on by

In this interview, D.A Carson points out that whereas for many Christians, when thinking about the doctrine of creation, focus on the age of the cosmos, the theory of evolution, and so on, the Bible itself emphasises other things – especially the implications of creation.

Carson focuses especially on the first two chapters of Genesis.

The following is a precis.

1) God comes first. God is not dependent on us, although Scripture will show that there was a perfection of Trinitarian love in the past. …

Yes, I must learn how to interpret the Bible

Walking With Giants Posted on by

Based on:

Carson, D. A. ―Must I Learn How to Interpret the Bible?  Modern Reformation 5:3 (May/June
1996): 18–22. Updated 2003.

What parts of the Bible are binding mandates for us, what what parts are not?

  • Should we ‘greet one another with a holy kiss’?
  • Should we wash one another’s feet?
  • If the answer to the preceding question is ‘No’, why do we follow the Lord’s command, ‘Do this in remembrance of me’?
  • Should we execute adulters by stoning?
…

Cross Vision 8 – Divine Aikido

Walking With Giants Posted on by

A precis of chapter 9.

This chapter deals with ‘the myth of redemptive violence’.

‘Sometimes love leaves us with no other choice but to let go of a loved one and allow them to suffer the consequences of their own self-destructive decisions.’

Does God resort to violence when dealing with sin?

‘We humans rely on brute force to stop evil only because we lack the character and wisdom to see alternative ways of arriving at peace (Luke 19:42).

…

Richard Baxter on contemplation

Walking With Giants Posted on by

Richard Baxter wrote about contemplation in A Christian Directory and The Saints’ Everlasting Rest.

Following Baxter distinguishes between the contemplative life and the active life:

‘Every active christian is bound to somewhat of contemplation; and all contemplative persons are bound to obedience to God, and to so much of action as may answer their abilities and opportunities. But yet some are much more called to the one, and some to the other; and we denominate from that which is most eminent and the chief.

…

Jonathan Edwards on communion with God

Walking With Giants Posted on by

If George Whitefield was the great evangelist of the Great Awakening in its North American phase, then Jonathan Edwards (1703–1758) was the great thinker.  But he was by no means a detached analyst.  This is clear from his account- especially in his Personal Narrative – of his own spiritual experience.

Like the psalmists of old, Edwards delighted in God’s handiwork in creation:

‘I often used to sit and view the moon, for a long time; and so in the daytime, spent much time in viewing the clouds and sky, to behold the sweet glory of God in these things: in the meantime, singing forth with a low voice, my contemplations of the Creator and Redeemer.

…