Word & World 40, 4 (Fall 2020) on Holiness and Discipleship

The latest issue of Word & World, a quarterly journal of theology published by the faculty of Luther Seminary, contains a set of essays on ‘Holiness and Discipleship’.

The contents and downloadable articles are available here.

Asbury Journal 73, 2 (2018)

The latest issue of Asbury Journal is now available, containing the below articles, many engaging with Brent A. Strawn’s book, The Old Testament is Dying (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2017).

From the Editor

Is the Old Testament Dying? An Academic Discussion

David B. Schreiner

Introduction – On the State of the Old Testament: Essays in Review of Brent Strawn’s The Old Testament is Dying

David B. Schreiner

A Précis of Brent A. Strawn’s The Old Testament in Dying

Kimberly Bracken Long

A Response to Brent A. Strawn

Murray Vasser

A Response to Brent A. Strawn

Clinton J. Moyer

On Maladies Canonical, Christian, and Human: A Response to Brent A. Strawn

Brent A. Strawn

The Old Testament’s Moribund Condition: Still Critical

Brad Haggard

The Strangeness of Culture: A Response to Brent A. Strawn 

David B. Schreiner

On the Moding and Diachrony of the Books of Samuel

The three “lamp” passages in Samuel (1 Sam 3:3; 2 Sam 21:17; 22:29) cooperate to establish an inclusio that serves as the hermeneutical lens for the final form of Samuel. Contrary to Graeme Auld, therefore, 1 and 2 Samuel is not necessarily all about David, but rather it’s about David insofar as he is the chief vehicle through which the narrative communicates a particular ideology. To account for this dynamic, there appears to be at least two phases of development within Samuel’s lamp metaphor, the latter of which imported a more critical posture toward the monarchal institution. Moreover, the latter phase of this metaphor’s development appears to have important implications for Samuel’s literary development away from an ancient apology. Alastair Fowler argues that literary genres change through time, and when this happens ideas encroach upon literary forms and become the driving force of the work’s presentation. Synthesizing this framework with some of the ideas of John Van Seters, this essay proposes that the certain phases of Samuel’s literary development may constitute the moding of a royal apology.

Bill T. Arnold

Divine Revelation in the Pentateuch

Studies of divine revelation in the Old Testament rightly focus on Israel’s encounter with God at Mount Sinai recorded in Exodus 19-24 (and interpreted in Deuteronomy 4). But theologians often neglect the earlier expressions of divine self-disclosure, which hold potential to enrich our understanding of this essential Christian doctrine. This paper investigates the ancestral narratives of Genesis (especially Gen 12:7 and 17:1) and the appearance of Yhwh to Moses at the burning bush (Exod 3-4), in order to gain a more complete perception of divine revelation in the Pentateuch, which then offers contributions to Christian theologizing about the doctrine of revelation generally.

Ban Seok Cho

The Nature of the Church’s Mission in Light of the Biblical Origin of Social Holiness

This paper intends to find missiological implications that the biblical origin of social holiness has for the church’s mission. In order to accomplish this purpose, this paper, first, identifies the biblical origin of social holiness in the Old Testament narrative and its development in the New Testament narrative. Then, the relationship between the image of God in Genesis 1 and the development of social holiness in the biblical narrative will be discussed. Lastly, in light of the biblical origin of social holiness, missiological implications for the church’s mission are suggested. The thesis of this paper is that social holiness – as a biblical concept that is theocentric, relational, and missional in nature – provides a biblical framework for the church to integrate different dimensions of its holistic mission. In conclusion, this paper suggests that the church’s mission, in light of the biblical origin of social holiness, is both social and spiritual, involves the whole life of the church (both being and doing), is shaped by the grace of God, and includes creation care/

Features

From the Archives: Soviet Anti-Religious Propaganda Posters

Book Reviews

The entire issue is available as a pdf here.

Credo 8, 3 (2018) on Holiness

The current issue of Credo is available, this one devoted to ‘Holiness’.

According to the blurb:

‘One of the greatest challenges of the Christian life is the pursuit of holiness. Christians tend to compartmentalize life, separating their devotion to God on a Sunday morning from every other facet of their lives. Jesus, however, calls the believer to an obedience that is radical, one that extends to every aspect of life. But what, exactly, does it mean to be holy? How is the Spirit at work within us to conform us to the image of Christ? What does it look like to be set apart, consecrated to God in a way that draws others to the holy God we worship? In this issue, pastors and theologians alike explore the diverse ways scripture describes holiness and the opposition every believer faces to the pursuit of a sanctified life.’

Individual articles, along with interviews and book reviews, are available to read from here.

Holiness 3, 1 (2017) on Holiness and Pastoral Relationships

The latest issue of Holiness, the journal of Wesley House Cambridge is now available online, this one devoted to ‘Holiness and Pastoral Relationships’.

The editor, Andrew Stobart, leads into the theme with a reflection on the Wesleyan Methodist Conference, meeting in Liverpool in 1820, and being faced with a sharp decline in membership. Among the range of measures adopted, ‘increased pastoral intercourse’ with Methodist people ‘at their own homes’ was recognised as an ‘absolute obligation’. The Conference encouraged its ministers to show ‘unremitting diligence’ in conducting pastoral visitation, which included ‘giving seasonable counsel’, ‘exhorting them to a faithful and loving observance of all the duties of personal and family religion’, and ‘kindly inquiry into their Christian experience’.

The entire journal, containing the below collection of peer-reviewed essays, lecture, and short articles, is available as a pdf here.

Bill Mullally

The Effect of Presence and Power in the Pastoral Supervisory Relationship

This article addresses the important elements of presence and power in the pastoral supervisory relationship. It is based on qualitative research, which used a questionnaire methodology with six Methodist ministers, all of whom had taken part in group pastoral supervision for a period of two years. The aim of this research was to gain insight into their experience of the supervisory process. The article explores how an open, authentic and trusting environment can be created within the pastoral supervisory relationship that has regenerative and healing potential, whereby ministers will be better able to face the challenges of ministry. It contends there is a need for well-qualified, skilled and spiritually sensitive supervisory support for ministers. Such pastoral supervisors will understand the dynamics of power and presence to create a sacred space for ministers to ‘come apart and reflect a while’. This covenant relationship creates transformational possibilities for those who commit to the journey.

James Dunn

Why Four Gospels? Why Only Four?

This is a transcript of the 2016 Fernley-Hartley Lecture, which was delivered during the 2016 British Methodist Conference at the Lambeth Mission, London, and is published here with acknowledgement to the Fernley-Hartley Trust. It stands largely unchanged from its first delivery in the hope that the texture and tone of the lecture might also be retained. The article argues that answering the questions ‘Why four Gospels?’ and ‘Why only four?’ provides a clear picture of the character of the gospel of Jesus as ‘the same yet different’, as well as a challenge to today’s Christians to retell the good news in their own contexts with equal or equivalent effect. The article discusses the context in which the four canonical Gospels were recognised, pointing out that the term ‘gospel’ was coined in the process. The distinctive emphases of the Synoptics and John show how the same story can be told differently, an essential restatement of the same message for new and changing audiences.

Christopher Collins

Reimagining Dementia: Seeing Ourselves More Fully in the Dementia-Diagnosed

How does the Church respond to the increasing number of dementia-diagnosed within our communities? This paper argues that the Church inhabits Kitwood’s ‘standard paradigm’ of dementia, which focuses on the loss and decay of the person. This diverts our attention away from a more theologically nuanced understanding of the person and personhood. Using Lartey’s Theological Form model of action and reflection, I will reflect on the pastoral experience of caring for the dementia-diagnosed and seek to promote an alternative theology of personhood as relationship based on Moltmann’s ‘social trinity’ explored through the creation narrative of Genesis 2. This will allow us to develop an alternative model of pastoral care which enables us to see the ‘angelic mission’ of the dementia-diagnosed.

Paul Gismondi

Fear and Faith: Reflections on Ministry and Death

An experience of observing a cremation instigates theological reflection on the fear of death. Using Laurie Green’s model of action to reflection, and then reflection to action, the article moves through three cycles of theological reflection, exploring first the author’s response to the crematorium, then a subsequent encounter with a family during a funeral visit, and finally a conversation with colleagues. Each cycle produces further insights: the universality of death; the particularity of death; and a final glimpse of Jesus in the Garden of Gethsemane. Through this, the author explores the interaction between his fear of death and his faith.

Catherine Minor

Beyond Horror: Mapping the Contours of Holiness in an Acute Hospital

Reflecting on the experience of hospital chaplaincy in an acute hospital in the north-east of England, this article explores the conviction that God is with us both in and beyond horror. Echoes of Scripture are identified in a number of pastoral encounters, which help to illustrate the presence of God in the midst of horror. The work of chaplaincy also points to God’s presence beyond the horror of present pain and death, turning the hospital into ‘holy ground’.

Elizabeth Dunning

A Good Death? Pastoral Reflections on Closing a Chapel

This article reflects on an experience of the closure of a chapel, exploring ways to challenge the assumption that closure is a failure. Noting the lack of intentional resources to aid churches considering closure, the author identifies the Passion and resurrection narratives as a biblical model for the stages of church awareness of change. Reflecting on these narratives enables the closure of a chapel to be considered as a fitting conclusion to work accomplished, as ‘a good death’.

Jane Leach

‘On Visiting the Sick’: The Art of Pastoral Conversation

This article is a transcript of a lecture delivered as part of the first series of Wesley Memorial Lectures given at Wesley Memorial Church in Oxford in July 2016. Originally entitled ‘Speaking of God in Private’, this lecture was followed by a second, ‘Speaking of God in Public’. It is included here as part of the ongoing journal series exploring what the sermons of John Wesley have done for us, and it stands largely unchanged from its first delivery in order to retain its texture and tone. This article addresses the questions of why in Western culture it is a problem to speak of God in personal conversation; why this is true even within some churches; and whether there are any pointers towards how intentional conversation about God might be recovered in the contemporary Western context in the sermon of John Wesley’s of 1786, ‘On Visiting the Sick’.

Janet Morley

‘I believe; help my unbelief!’ A Reflection and Intercession Based on Mark 9:14–29, and on John Reilly’s Painting, Healing of the Lunatic Boy

Gillian Houghton

Reflections on Self Portrait by Eddy Aigbe

Reviews

Knowing and Doing (Winter 2016)

The Winter 2016 edition of Knowing & Doing – ‘A Teaching Quarterly for Discipleship of Heart and Mind’ – from the C.S. Lewis Institute is now available online (here as a pdf), and contains the following articles:

Joel Woodruff

President’s Letter

Joel S. Woodruff, President of the C.S. Lewis Institute, suggests a simple way to bring unity among believers from different churches, races, political parties and professional backgrounds is to share our spiritual journey with others.

Randy Newman

The Gift of Music: Common Grace and Common Ground

Music is a great gift, with the power to take us to another world. Though music can move us so much, it makes a poor god! In this article, Dr. Newman expounds on both the common grace and the common ground that can be found through the gift of music.

Bill Kynes

Growing in Prayer Part 1: Hindrances to Prayer

A life of prayer is something to which we are all called and to which we should all aspire. Dr. Kynes discusses what it would mean for us to devote ourselves to prayer, to ‘pray continually’ as instructed by Apostle Paul.

Sandy Smith

Surprised by Belfast: Significant Sites in the Life of C.S. Lewis, Part 4, Queen’s University Belfast and the Surrounding Area

This final article in the “Surprised by Belfast” series focuses on an area that’s often referred to as the University Quarter. More specifically, Queen’s University Belfast is located in this sector – though C.S. Lewis did not study at Queen’s, his mother did. The fact that Lewis’s mother graduated from Queen’s and attended school at Methodist College is reason enough for Lewis enthusiasts to visit the University Quarter in Belfast.

Thomas A. Tarrants, III

Being Led and Transformed by the Holy Spirit

What does the New Testament mean by the phrase led by the Spirit? What is the fruit of His leading in one’s life? This article explores such questions on being led by the Holy Spirit.

Time with God: An Interview with J.I. Packer

This is an excerpt from an interview with J.I. Packer during a C.S. Lewis Institute event held September 26, 2008. J.I. Packer sat down and answered questions from C.S. Lewis Fellows and pastors in the Washington, D.C. area.

J.C. Ryle

What is True Practical Holiness?

In this excerpt from J.C. Ryle’s classic book Holiness: Its Nature, Hindrances, Difficulties, and Roots, Ryle presents twelve points to create a picture of practical holiness.

Learning from the Christmas Animals

This article highlights C.S. Lewis’s poem, The Nativity. We are reminded that, like Lewis, we should also seek after the strength, patience and innocence symbolized in the animals of the Christmas story as we approach this Christmas season. This is a reprint of December 2014 “Reflections”.

Joel S. Woodruff

Scrooges, Traditionalists and Nicholases

This devotional reminds us that this Christmas season, we are to remember that the Scrooges and Traditionalists are in need of a Savior. We need to commit to be more like St. Nicholas who shared his love for Jesus through both his words and gift giving.

Holiness 2, 3 (2016) on Holiness and Contemporary Culture

The latest issue of Holiness, the journal of Wesley House Cambridge is now available online, this one devoted to ‘Holiness and Contemporary Culture’.

The editor, Andrew Stobart, imagines explaining to John Wesley that ‘by “contemporary culture” we are simply referring – albeit with greater sophistication than we normally muster – to “the world in which we live”, the world within which we attempt to speak to and of and for God’. At once, he notes, ‘Wesley is no longer standing on the sidelines of our topic, but fully immersed in it, offering us an example of how “holiness” and “contemporary culture” are to be related in thought and practice’.

He goes on: ‘Holiness is always a lived entity, generated within the community of Christ, but also informed by and worked out within the cultural structures that provide definition to our daily lives.’

The entire journal, containing the below collection of peer-reviewed essays, lecture, and short articles, is available as a pdf here.

Hilary Brand

Whatever happened to sin? An examination of the word and concept in contemporary popular culture

The concept of ‘sin’ is rarely expressed in today’s popular culture. When the word does appear it is frequently in ironic quotation marks and often used in terms of ‘naughty but nice’, minor misdemeanours, something disapproved of, an outmoded Catholic shame culture, Islamic oppression or fundamentalist extremism. Rarely is it used in the way the Church understands it. By analysing the use of the word in recent news reports and examining its use and absence across the range of twenty-first-century media, this study draws some conclusions about how UK secular society understands the word. It then goes on to explore how some twentieth-century cultural changes have impacted on its understanding, and concludes with some observations on how twenty-first-century Western culture still senses the underlying problem and yearns for a way to express it.

Rebekah Callow

‘Lifting the shell’: expressions of emotion and cross-cultural struggle in international students

Research has shown that while humans around the world hold various emotions in common with one another – sadness, happiness, fear and anger – the expression of these emotions can look different depending on the culture. This article explores the different expressions of ‘struggle’ that arise when a person experiences ‘culture shock’ or ‘culture stress’ due to life in a cross- cultural context. The article argues that in the increasingly international context of higher education, urgent attention needs to be given to these different cultural expressions of struggle, in order to better understand students’ experiences and provide effective coping strategies. Richard Lewis’s cultural model is developed for use in this context. 

Pete Phillips

Wesley’s parish and the digital age?

The following article was delivered as the annual lecture of the Methodist Sacramental Fellowship at the 2016 Methodist Conference in London. Beginning with the original context of John Wesley’s well-known phrase, ‘the world as my parish’, this article explores the digital aspects of our global parish today. Putting the digital age on the agenda of the Church’s mission is seen as a similar response to Wesley’s decision to become ‘more vile’ and enter the world of field preaching. The lecture concludes by offering a fresh approach to Methodist identity magnified by aspects of digital culture, calling for the creation of digital Arminianism, digital field preaching, digital creativity and, ultimately, a digital parish. The article proposes that Methodism embrace a digital social holiness to spread scriptural holiness throughout the geographic and digital landscape.

Anna Robbins

‘It’s always right now’: framing the struggle for meaning in contemporary culture

Late contemporary culture has seen a previously dominant existentialism give way to naturalistic determinism, and yielded a nihilism that is not conducive to human flourishing, as individuals or society. I will seek to frame a discussion whereby the fact of meaning may be posited and discussed in contemporary culture, concluding that Christianity offers a context for exploring meaning in a way that is preferable to other views because it provides a coherent approach to understanding the nature of the human being, and the problems that give rise to a crisis of meaning. The article will also offer several suggestions for further study whereby the work of meaning may be pursued.

Gordon Leah

A reluctant Samaritan: reflections from Carlo Levi’s Christ Stopped at Eboli

Carlo Levi, doctor, organist, painter and political activist, was exiled in 1935 by Mussolini to Lucania, a remote corner of southern Italy. I consider the enormous impact his skills made on the primitive life of the area, and how, when the peasants believed that ‘Christ stopped at Eboli’, the town north of their region, and no Christians or outsiders were interested in them, Levi gradually, through his immersion in their life with practical, undemonstrative service, gave them new hope. Finally I consider the vital importance of practical service as a true reflection of Christ’s active love for a world and for suffering people without other hope.

Richard Clutterbuck

A holiness movement, shaped by mission: encountering God in Oceania

Reflecting on the author’s experience of Christianity in Oceania, this article draws attention to a classic nineteenth-century Methodist text written in the founding years of the Christian mission in Oceania. Letters on Entire Sanctification was written by John Hunt, a remarkable young missionary, published after his early death in Fiji, and can claim to be the first substantial work of Christian theology written in Oceania. Understanding Hunt’s writings in their context helps to define the relationship between holiness and mission, and refocus the Methodist movement as a ‘holiness movement, shaped by mission’.

Rosemary Power

Pilgrims in a barren land: pioneer ministry in rural Ireland

This article considers a pioneer ministry in rural and small-town west of Ireland, at a time of social change and financial crash. It considers what was expected, what actually happened, how the parent de nomination responded, and what on reflection may feed into the wider discussion of new ways of spreading the Christian gospel. This article is a companion to the author’s article ‘Modern pilgrimage in the west of Ireland’, published in this journal (Volume 2, Issue 1, pp. 115–126).

Tom Osborne

‘Pretty amazing grace’: using contemporary popular music in church worship

This article reflects upon the use within corporate worship of music created outside of the church environment. Using the practical experience of producing a Passiontide liturgy that incorporated secular popular music, and the shape of the resulting worship, the article explores the appropriateness of such use and, assuming such use is deemed appropriate, best practice in doing so. Engaging with a range of academic and popular sources, the article sees music as a key component of both church and contemporary cultures and attempts to offer a way of bridging the gap that seems to exist between them.

Tim Macquiban

What have the sermons of John Wesley ever done for us? The Wesleyan legacy in issues of wealth and poverty: reflections on Wesley’s sermon, ‘The Use of Money’

Wesley’s sermon, ‘The Use of Money’, still resonates with our contemporary economic context. After a synopsis of the sermon, this article seeks to set it in its original context, understanding the key marks of Wesley’s approach to poverty: the importance of personal contact with the poor, the importance of thrift, and the importance of indiscrimination, grounded in spiritual egalitarianism. The legacy of Wesley’s advice, both within the early Methodist movement, and as a starting point for critical reflection today, is then considered.

The Bible Project on Leviticus, Romans, Holiness, and Covenants

The Bible Project is continuing to put together a series of helpful short videos, some of which introduce the structure and themes of biblical books, and others of which trace some major themes through the entire Bible.

I’ve just noticed the next Bible book videos have been made available, one on Leviticus, and two covering Romans.

In addition are two others that are new to me in the ‘Themes’ section, one on holiness and one on the covenants.

Check them out from here (click on ‘Videos’ or scroll down to the ‘Videos & Study Guides’ section).

Jason B. Hood on Imitating God in Christ

I recently received a copy of Jason B. Hood, Imitating God in Christ: Recapturing a Biblical Pattern (Downers Grove: IVP, 2013), having had it on pre-order for some time. I’m trying to save it for holiday reading later this summer, but it’s been very tempting to dip into it.

It comes in four parts – Imitating God, Imitating Jesus, Imitating the Saints, Imitation Yesterday and Today – and looks as if it’s seeking to let Scripture set the agenda in its treatment; I suspect it will be an important contribution to current thinking around discipleship, vocation, and sanctification, among other topics. Given what he has written elsewhere, it will almost certainly also address ongoing debates around the appropriateness of ‘moralising’ from Old Testament texts.

Anyway, there are some interviews with Jason Hood here and here which provide a flavour of what to expect.

Here’s a taster from one of them:

‘What’s often missed is that imitation doesn’t start with Jesus. Imitation starts with our identity as God’s image-bearers, made to reflect his character and his creativity. From the very first page of the Bible, humans are imitating God in response to his initiative and his grace. In the gospel we see the restoration of image-bearing in God’s True Image, Jesus his Son. All four gospels, and Paul’s theological explorations, are pretty saturated with the great theme of imitating Jesus and the theology that lies underneath it. Jesus didn’t just come to die and leave us as is; as Augustine says, “Christ, the master of the mint, came along to stamp the coins afresh.”’

Horizons in Biblical Theology 33, 2 (2011)

The latest Horizons in Biblical Theology carries four interesting-looking main essays, with the following summaries:

Nicholas Ansell

On (Not) Obeying the Sabbath: Reading Jesus Reading Scripture

This essay examines the sabbath controversy of Mark 2:23-28 to see how Jesus faces the challenge of biblical interpretation as he models what it means for his disciples to image God in freedom. In dominant approaches to the Gospels, the interpretive process set in motion by this passage, which I characterize as ‘reading Scripture reading Jesus reading Scripture,’ is confined to its earlier stages – a reductionism that calls for hermeneutical reflection. If a narrative has a ‘life of its own’ beyond authorial intention (indispensable though the author may be), can we say the same about a character who is central to a narrative? If so, is ‘the Jesus of Mark’s Gospel’ ‘more than’ the ‘Markan Jesus’ of much scholarly concern? This essay seeks to develop an intertextual, Christocentric hermeneutic by attending to the implicit as well as explicit ways in which Jesus’ reading of Scripture takes place ‘within’ the Gospel narrative.

James E. Robson

Forgotten Dimensions of Holiness

This article explores a sometimes forgotten dimension of divine holiness, divine holiness as love. It starts by reflecting on an apparent incongruity between the New Testament summary of the law, “You shall love your neighbour as yourself” (Lev 19:18) and that verse’s context in Leviticus, where a more probable summary is the call, “Be holy for I, YHWH your God, am holy” (Lev 19:2). It examines the significance of the conjunction of Lev 19:2 and 19:18, and argues that it is appropriate to speak of love as a dimension of divine holiness. In the main part of the article, which looks at the Old Testament more widely, including Exodus, Ezekiel, Isaiah, Hosea and the prayer life of Israel, divine holiness as love is evident on closer examination in three ways: holiness and self-disclosure, holiness and saving activity, and holiness and divine presence.

Yung Suk Kim

“Imitators” (Mimetai) in 1 Cor. 4:16 and 11:1: A New Reading of Threefold Embodiment

When it comes to the language of “imitation” (mimesis) in Paul’s letters (1 Cor. 4:16; 11:1; Phil. 3:17; 1 Thess. 1:6-7; 2:14), divisions among scholars are most clearly manifest. At one end of the scholarly spectrum, Paul follows a Stoic model of imitation, according to which the teacher exhorts pupils to follow him, based upon his authority established (demonstrated) by good conduct. Accordingly, Paul is viewed as an advocate of the Hellenistic ideal of unity at the expense of diversity. At the other end of the spectrum, Paul is seen as a social conservative and an obstacle to true liberation. Here the idea of imitation serves as a means of control and domination of others, as post-colonial and feminist scholars have pointed out. So Paul’s exhortation to “be imitators of me, as I am of Christ” (1 Cor. 11:1) is understood as a demand for sameness, an appeal to copy Paul. However, the language of imitation can be read through the eyes of “embodiment” – a way of life, as an alternate meaning of imitation in 1 Corinthians, which will lead to the involvement of three aspects of God, Christ and the believer. I argue that imitation in 1 Corinthians is neither a copy or sameness nor a type or model to be emulated by the Corinthians. Rather, it should be understood as a way of life rooted in the image of Christ crucified, which plays a central role in the letter, deconstructing abusive, destructive powers in a community and society and reconstructing a beloved community for all.

Mark McEntire

The God at the End of the Story: Are Biblical Theology and Narrative Character Development Compatible?

If the end goal of theology of the Hebrew Scriptures is a description of God and God’s relationship to the world, then the Hebrew Scriptures present us with a dilemma. It is increasingly apparent that the Tanak provides a wide variety of portraits of the divine being. There are two basic possibilities for making use of all of these portraits. The first option is to lay all of them out on a level surface and allow them be in dialogue and tension with one another. The second option is to place these portrayals on a trajectory which gives a position of privilege to those which are at some particular point along the path. Of course there are three choices of trajectory: Historical, canonical, or narrative. The last two differ far more for the Christian Old Testament than for the Tanak. A strictly narrative approach, which reads the biblical story from Genesis to Nehemiah, presents a divine being who is changing and developing as a character, a process which has been well demonstrated over the past decade by Jack Miles, Richard Elliot Friedman, W. Lee Humphreys, Meir Sternberg, Jerome M. Segal, and others. There is general agreement that the divine character portrayed at the end of this narrative trajectory is the one which matches the religious experience of those who were putting the literature, both the individual books and the canon, into its final form. This conclusion would seem to point toward a narrative method of doing theology which gives this endpoint a place of privilege, an observation which raises two questions. First, does this match the actual use of texts by those who are attempting narrative approaches to biblical theology? Second, what role do those portrayals which present earlier stages in the divine character development play in a narrative approach to a theology of the Hebrew Scriptures?

D.A. Carson on 1 Peter 2:9-10

D.A. Carson, ‘“A Holy Nation”: The Church’s High Calling’, in Thabiti Anyabwile et al., Holy, Holy, Holy: Proclaiming the Perfections of God (Lake Mary: Reformation Trust, 2010), 75-89.

As R.C. Sproul explains in the preface, the chapters in this book originated as lectures at the 2009 Ligonier Ministries National Conference in Orlando, where the theme was the Holiness of God (vi).

The table of contents and Sproul’s own contribution – ‘“I am the Lord”: The Only God’ – are available as an excerpt here.

Carson’s chapter is available here.

It amounts to an exposition of 1 Peter 2:9–10, under the following three points:

1. Our Identity as Christians
Our identity as – a chosen people (referring to Isaiah 43:3-4, with Christians now constituting the locus of God’s chosen people), a royal priesthood (reaching back to Exodus 19:5-6), a holy nation (which also has its background in Exodus 19:5-6), a people belonging to God (again, grounded in Exodus 19:5-6), with all these overlapping, and in each case ‘an emphasis on God’s initiative, on supreme God-centeredness, and on the built-in implication of incalculable privilege over against every other form of self-identity’ (83).

2. Our Purpose as Christians
That we may ‘declare the praises of him who called you out of darkness into his wonderful light’ (1 Peter 2:9), language drawn from Isaiah 43:20-21.

3. Our Foundation as Christians
‘Once you were not a people, but now you are the people of God…’ (1 Peter 2:10), this time drawing on Hosea 1-2.

Word for the Week: Whole Life, Whole Bible (12/50) – Holy, Holy, Holy

‘Word for the Week: Whole Life, Whole Bible’, from London Institute for Contemporary Christianity, is a series of fifty emails designed to look at the main milestones of the biblical story, seeking to show how whole-life discipleship is woven through Scripture as a whole, from beginning to end. Here is the twelfth of the fifty emails.

The LORD said to Moses, ‘Speak to the Israelites and say to them: “I am the LORD your God. You must not do as they do in Egypt, where you used to live, and you must not do as they do in the land of Canaan, where I am bringing you. Do not follow their practices. You must obey my laws and be careful to follow my decrees. I am the LORD your God. Keep my decrees and laws, for whoever obeys them will live by them. I am the LORD…”’ The LORD said to Moses, ‘Speak to the entire assembly of Israel and say to them: “Be holy because I, the LORD your God, am holy.”’
Leviticus 18:1-5 and 19:1-2
 
The life of the people of God is to reflect God’s own character. ‘Be holy, because I, the LORD your God, am holy.’

The sheer range of regulations in Leviticus reminds us that the holiness in view touches all areas of life, not just the ‘religious’ ones; that holiness does not entail removal from the world, but presupposes daily living in the world, as part of the rhythm of the week, of the months, of the cycle of the seasons; that holiness is not the preserve of the privileged few, but for all God’s people; that holiness is not a privatised experience, but is bound up with living and working in community.

Nor is holiness about floating free in some ethereal existence untouched by the messiness of life, but is earthed, quite literally sometimes, on the ground, in everyday life: in working crops, maintaining soil, buying and selling goods; in looking after parents, observing sabbath rests, providing for the poor; in how one works, what one eats, who one sleeps with – consciously countering cultural norms in the process, living in the world but not living like the world.

And all carried out as an integral part of our worship of a holy God.

Lest we reduce this to an abstract system of laws, ‘I am the LORD your God’ reminds Israel that redemption comes before regulations, relationship before rules. The law is bound up with a commitment to serve their covenant Lord, to be a distinctive people, and to order their lives with each other appropriately. And all of this for the greater end of fulfilling God’s promises to Abraham and their calling to be a priestly kingdom, for the sake of the world.

And lest we despair that they will never be able to manage it, Leviticus assumes the reality and consequences of sin and makes provision for restoration through sacrifice.

Of course, the new covenant necessarily changes the dynamics and the specifics; but the vocation to be a people set apart for God remains (1 Peter 1:13-16; 2:9-10), and with it the call to do things differently from those around us. As we do so, we can expect that the laws will still shape our moral vision, because they arise out of God’s holy character, and express his mind for his people as they live in the face of the world for the sake of the world.

For further reflection and action:

1. Read through the so-called ‘Holiness Code’ (Leviticus 18-20) and make a summary of the laws contained in it. Perhaps make a note of any surprises, and reflect on them further or in conversation with others.

2. What are some of the implications of the Old Testament law for a biblical worldview? Perhaps think personally about the implications for your own family life, business partnerships, leisure time, etc.

3. How would you respond to someone who claimed that the laws in Leviticus are so buried in the culture of the time that they should be seen of little or no value for today?

4. Follow up the echoes of Leviticus in 1 Peter 1:13-16 and 2:9-10. How does Peter ‘translate’ holiness for the Christians to whom he writes?