Category Archives: Theology

First principles

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‘In all arts and sciences, logic, physic, mathematics, there are some praecognita, some rules and principles that must necessarily be known for the practice of those arts; so, in divinity, there must be the first principles laid down. The knowledge of the grounds and principles of religion is exceedingly useful.

(1.) Else we cannot serve God aright. We can never worship God acceptably, unless we worship him regularly; and how can we do that, if we are ignorant of the rules and elements of religion?…

Re-imagining TULIP

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Anyone who has a smattering of theological knowledge will have heard of the TULIP acronym:-

T = total depravity
U = unconditional election
L = limited atonement
I = irresistible grace
P = perseverance of the saints

As a summary of Calvinistic beliefs, it is pretty inadequate.  For one thing, it is couched in terminology that almost entirely negative, and therefore does not lend itself to the heartfelt doxology that good theology should always engender.  For another thing, it was never intended as a summary of Calvinism, but rather as a response to the ‘five points of remonstrance’ that the followers of Arminius had previously raised against the prevalent Protestant theology of the day.  …

Experimental knowledge

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No, this is not another post about science and faith, but a quotation from Puritan Thomas Brooks about the importance of what these days we might call ‘experiential’ knowledge of Christian truth:-

A man that hath that experimental knowledge that accompanies salvation, will from experience tell you, that sin is the greatest evil in the world, for he hath found it so, Rom. 7; that Christ is the one thing necessary, for he hath found Him so, Ps 27:4; that the favor of God is better than life, for he hath found it so, Ps 63:3; that only pardoning mercy makes a man happy, for he hath found it so, Ps 32:1,2; that a wounded spirit is such a burden that none can bear, for he hath found it so, Pr 28:14; that an humble and broken heart is an acceptable sacrifice to God, for he hath found it so, Ps 51:17; that the promises are precious pearls, for he hath found them so, 2 Pet 1:4; that the smiles of God will make up the want of any outward mercy, for he hath found it so, Ps 4:5-8; that only communion with God can make a heaven in a believer’s heart, for he hath found it so, Ps 48:10; that if the Spirit be pleased and obeyed, He will be a Comforter to the soul, for he hath found it so, Jn 15:1-14.
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An evangelical approach to the Bible

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To be an evangelical is to seek to be true to Scripture because of the conviction that to be true to Scripture is to be true to Christ. A contemporary evangelical approach to Scripture has the possibility of combining appropriate pre-modern, modern and postmodern elements.

1. It will be pre-modern in the sense that it submits to the will of God as revealed in the text and thus puts the human will and its capacity for detached reason or local special pleading under that authority.…

Tom Wright – an outline of his theology

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This is a summary of a summary. Based on Stephen Kuhrt’s helpful outline, here are the main themes and emphases in Wright’s thinking.

History

Wright is a historian, and he is very keen to place the story of the Bible in general, and the story of Jesus in particular, in historical context.  He has a high level of confidence that the events recorded in the Gospels ‘really happened’.  He emphasises the importance of understanding Jesus (and Paul and others) in the light of their Jewish backgrounds.  …

Theology must be both critical and confessional

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Scholarly approaches to biblical studies are often characterised as either critical or conservative.  ‘Critical’ would be seen either as ‘progressive and open-minded’ or ‘radical and sceptical’, whereas ‘conservative’ would be viewed as either ‘faithful to the historic faith’ or ‘traditionalist and close-minded’, depending on the observer’s own point of view.

However, I think that to pitch ‘critical’ and ‘conservative’ as polar opposites is a mistake, because it sets up a false dichotomy.

The approach to be preferred, I think, is not ‘either critical or conservative‘, but ‘both critical and confessional‘.  …

Do we have ‘free will’?

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C.H. Spurgeon had a portrait of John Gill, Baptist preacher and commentator, in his vestry.  The portrait, says Spurgeon, ‘represents him after an interview with an Arminian gentleman, turning up his nose in a most expressive manner, as if he could not endure even the smell of free-will.’ (Commentating and Commentaries, p9)

Spurgeon himself, as a good Calvinist, had a similar distaste for the notion of ‘free will’.  I must say that I sometimes feel that an appeal to free will is used too glibly by preachers in order to explain away some of the tougher points of Christian doctrine and experience.…

‘Total depravity’ – an historical note

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In Evangelical Truth (p87) John Stott highlights a report, commissioned in 1945 by the then Archbishop of Canterbury, Geoffrey Fisher and written by a group of Anglican Catholics with the aim of examining the causes of the current deadlock in Catholic-Protestant dialogue.

The report is entitled Catholicity: A Study in the Conflict of Christian Traditions in the West, and is available in full here.  The authors accused evangelicals of emphasising the doctrine of grace in such a way as to sacrifice the doctrine of the image of God:-

What was sacrificed…was the Biblical doctrine that man was made ‘in the Image of God’, and that this ‘Image’, though defaced by sin, substantially remains in fallen man, and is effectually restored by Baptism into Christ.
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Don’t keep it (too) simple, stupid

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I came across the following:-

We, as Christians, tend to complicate our faith.  We use words like ‘sanctification’ when we mean ‘growing’ or ‘substitutionary atonement’ instead of ‘Christ died for us’.

(Rob Wilkins, ‘The profound simplicity of love’, in Willow Creek magazine, January/February 1991)

Can you spot the problem here?  ‘Growing’ does not mean the same as ‘sanctification’.  ‘Growing’ can be predicated of many different things (trees, toe-nails, debts, and so on), whereas as ‘sanctification’ refers specifically to growth in holiness (but is that another ‘complicated’ word that Wilkins thinks we should eschew?).  …

Must God punish sin?

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Few Christians are willing to do any sustained thinking about sin.  Of course, evangelical preachers will mention it from time to time.  After all, they need to convince their hearers that they are ‘sound’.  But they will feel under intense pressure from those same hearers to move quickly and as smoothly as possible from anything to do with sin and judgment to a positive and uplifting message about God’s love.

The fact is, that for most modern Christians the doctrine of the love of God has become the one great ‘givens’, the unargued and unarguable axiom. …