Greg Boyd’s conundrum

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Greg Boyd’s ‘conundrum’ is addressed in two books – the longer The Crucifixion of the Warrior God and the shorter (but still substantial) Cross Vision.  It is the latter of these two books that I am currently working through.  But it is the Introduction to the former that contains a succinct statement of the ‘condundrum’ that motivated the writing of both books:

‘How are we to reconcile the God revealed in Christ, who chose to die for his enemies rather than to crush them, with the many OT portraits of Yahweh violently smiting his enemies?

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Cross Vision 3 – A cruciform through-line

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Summarising chapter 3 of Greg Boyd’s Cross Vision: How the Crucifixion of Jesus Makes Sense of Old Testament Violence (Fortress Press, 2017).

What do we think about a wife who is repeatedly and viciously attacked by her husband, and yet stands by him because she is convinced that ‘He loves me’.

Why do so many Christians confess that ‘God is love’ and yet believe that he does hurtful things to people (such as predestining large numbers of them to eternal punishment)?…

Mt 5:38 – “An eye for an eye”

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Matthew 5:38 “You have heard that it was said, ‘An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth.’ 5:39 But I say to you, do not resist the evildoer.”

The so-called lex talionis is found in Ex 21:24; Lev 24:19–20; Dt 19:21.

According to Greg Boyd (Cross Vision), this is the most ‘astonishing’ example of Jesus repudiating an OT law.  This law required a person’s punishment to correspond to the severity of their crime. …

Cross Vision 2 – The unveiling

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Summarising Chapter 2 of Greg Boyd’s Cross Vision: How the Crucifixion of Jesus Makes Sense of Old Testament Violence (Fortress Press, 2017).

Are all the parts of the Bible equally true and authoritative, or is it right to privilege the teaching of Jesus over that of the Old Testament?

We unconsciously do the latter when we refrain from stoning disobedient children.  But, also, we have the explicit teaching of Jesus himself, who said that he had ‘a greater witness than John [the Baptist]’ (Jn 5:36). …

Cross Vision 1 – The elephant

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Beginning to work through Greg Boyd’s Cross Vision: How the Crucifixion of Jesus Makes Sense of Old Testament Violence (Fortress Press, 2017)

Summarising the Introduction: Something Else Must Be Going On

Suppose I happen to spot my wife in a public place, behaving in an aggressive and hurtful manner.  Given how well I know her, how long I have known her, and how trustworthy her character, I would not conclude that she was, after all, an aggressive and hurtful person. …

The gospel of ‘expressive individualism’

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Vaughan Roberts, in ‘Together in Faith and Love?‘:-

The difference between the moral instincts of contemporary society and the traditional teaching of the Church flows from two different worldviews, both of which could be called gospels, because each claims to present good news which offers an alternative path to freedom and fulfilment. The gospel of ‘expressive individualism’, to use the sociologist Charles Taylor’s term, prizes authenticity as its core value. Jonathan Grant has expressed it well:

‘Modern authenticity encourages us to create our own beliefs and morality, the only rule being that they must resonate with who we feel we really are.

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Eph 1:13f – ‘The seal of the promised Holy Spirit’

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1:13 And when you heard the word of truth (the gospel of your salvation)—when you believed in Christ—you were marked with the seal of the promised Holy Spirit, 1:14 who is the down payment of our inheritance, until the redemption of God’s own possession, to the praise of his glory.

Compare the same passage in the Authorised Version:

‘In whom ye also trusted, after that ye heard the word of truth, the gospel of your salvation: in whom also after that ye believed, ye were sealed with that holy Spirit of promise, Which is the earnest of our inheritance until the redemption of the purchased possession, unto the praise of his glory.

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The doctrine of election: practical relevance

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The doctrine of election, far from being an embarassment or an encumbrance, has a number of practical implications:

1. In Eph 1:3ff, it prompts Paul to issue an invitation to praise.  ‘Blessed is the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly realms in Christ.  For he chose us in Christ…’

2. In Rom 8:33, it leads to assurance and encouragement.  ‘Who will bring any charge against God’s elect?…

Prov 29:18 – ‘Where there is no vision, the people perish’

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As Jared Wilson remarks, this verse (in the wording of the Authorised Version) is widely misunderstood and misapplied in the evangelical world.  With it we baptise and bless our dreams, our plans, our ‘visions’.

Consider this:

‘In companies without a vision people come to work, they do stuff all day, they meet, they go home. In sports teams without a vision, people come to training, they train, the go home. In life, people without a vision, do stuff, go home and drift aimlessly in the winds of life through to death.

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Romans 1:16 – Is the gospel ‘dynamite’?

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Rom 1:16 – ‘I am not ashamed of the gospel, for it is God’s power for salvation to everyone who believes, to the Jew first and also to the Greek.’

Because the Gk word for ‘power’ is ‘dunamis’ (from which we get the word ‘dynamite’), preachers have sometimes announced that according to this verse the gospel is the ‘dynamite’ of God unto salvation.  But this is exegetically naive, for several reasons.

Firstly, to make this connection is to commit the ‘root fallacy’ (the fallacy that the meaning of a word can be explained in terms of its original meaning.…