Best Christian Books of All Time Review Series: Knowing God Pt. III

Over at InterVarsity's Emerging Scholars Blog I just finished the last of a three part review series on J.I. Packer's Knowing God.  Click here to read it.  

"Packer moves seamlessly from a discussion of judgment and anger to one of propitiation. Propitiation is a fancy word used to deliver the message that an entirely holy, all powerful God can hang out in intimacy with people who, having rejected his help, are anything but holy and powerful."

Quote of the Month about Jesus

The Word we study has to be the Word we pray. My personal experience of the relentless tenderness of God came not from exegetes, theologians, and spiritual writers, but from sitting still in the presence of the living Word and beseeching Him to help me understand with my head and heart His written Word. Sheer scholarship alone cannot reveal to us the gospel of grace. We must never allow the authority of books, institutions, or leaders to replace the authority of knowing Jesus Christ personally and directly. When the religious views of others interpose between us and the primary experience of Jesus as the Christ, we become unconvicted and unpersuasive travel agents handing out brochures to places we have never visited.

~Brennan Manning, The Ragamuffin Gospel

Note:  I really recommend this book, even for those who are not Christians.  It awakens the heart of our truest humanity.

Developing a Study of New Testament Greek: A Very Brief Introduction

If you're interested in the scholarly study of the New Testament and its language, this article is for you.  If not, you may as well go read something about whaling off the coast of Japan or the politics of abortion.

The following article attempts to set up an argument for a particular method of the study of the Greek of the New Testament. In order to reach my conclusion I’ve made use of several arguments which build upon one another, ending eventually with the examination of Relevance Theory, a tool employed by linguists in the study of language and its cognition. I begin with an analysis of a classic argument put forth by Adolf Deissmann on the commonality of New Testament Greek in first century Roman Palestine. Then, building upon that, I analyze James Moulton’s argument for the spoken value of the New Testament, especially with regard to Paul’s epistles. Finally, I examine a recent thesis put forward by a University of Edinburgh scholar of Hellenistic Greek (κοινή) for the value of the linguistic tool of Relevance Theory as it relates to the particle ἵνα ("hina"). This paper is a very brief introduction and therefore moves rather quickly through the arguments here employed. I hope to continue this project as I move forward with my study of the New Testament and its language and social setting.

Click to read more »

Hellenistic Greek: Voice of the Empires, Sound of the Gospels

You never know what you'll find while reading through an article that a lettered Cambridge reverend wrote more than a hundred years ago.  I'm working on a final paper for my studies of Hellenistic Greek, the language disseminated by Alexander the Great, which the sages and the emperors and the peasants alike understood well for nearly a millennia--probably the most widely-known language ever (until the recent explosion of English).  Here's what James Hope Moulton said in 1909 about this language--the language of the New Testament--in a Cambridge publication, Essays on Some Biblical Questions of the Day: By Members of the University of Cambridge.

Literature that could inspire Shakespeare's creations, philosophy instinct with fervour and life, science and history that in faithful search for truth rivalled the masterpieces of antiquity, humour and satire that Aristophanes might be proud to own—all these we see in the books of the Hellenistic age. And then we find that this wonderful language, which we knew once as the refined dialect of a brilliant people inhabiting a mere corner of a small country, had become the world-speech of civilization. For one (and this one) period in history only, the curse of Babel seemed undone. Exhausted by generations of bloodshed, the world rested in peace under one firm government, and spoke one tongue, current even in Imperial Rome. And the Christian thinker looks on all this, and sees the finger of God. It was no blind chance that ordained the time of the Birth at Bethlehem. The ages had long been preparing for that royal visitation. The world was ready to understand those who came to speak in its own tongue the mighty works of God. So with the time came the message, and God's heralds went forth to their work, "having an eternal gospel, proclaim unto them that dwell on the earth, and unto every nation and tribe and tongue and people." 

Dallas Willard: One Who Knows His God.

Dallas Willard 

Dallas Willard died this morning after announcing Stage 4 Cancer on Monday.

Dallas--a USC Professor of Philosophy, a man whose writing has greatly magnified my view of beauty and goodness and hope in this life, and a lover and beloved of God--awakened early this morning into the full experience of the brilliantly abundant life with God.  His last two words were,

“Thank you.”

This morning, as his life-light dawned into full day, I think Dallas was welcomed into rest and love and praise by the voice of God; a voice which he once described as recognizable through its "spirit of exalted peacefulness and confidence, of joy, of sweet reasonableness and of goodwill."

And I think the voice sounded something like this: "Well done, good and faithful servant."


Here's something he wrote about the intersection of God and love and death, from Hearing God, 1984:

"Thomas à Kempis speaks for all the ages when he represents Jesus as saying to him, 'A wise lover regards not so much the gift of him who loves, as the love of him who gives. He esteems affection rather than valuables, and sets all gifts below the Beloved. A noble-minded lover rests not in the gift, but in Me above every gift.' The sustaining power of the Beloved Presence has through the ages made the sickbed sweet and the graveside triumphant; transformed broken hearts and relations; brought glory to drudgery, poverty and old age; and turned the martyr's stake or noose into a place of coronation.

As Saint Augustine has written, when we come to our final home, 'there we shall rest and see, see and love, love and praise.  This is what shall be in the end without end.'  It is this for which the human soul was made."

Thank you, Dallas.

Grace, Gift and the Apostle Paul's Interpreters

Over at The Jesus Blog Chris Keith has written a short post outlining a couple of arguments by John Barclay, a brilliant New Testament scholar, concerning the meaning of the Greek word charis, which is usually translated "grace" (χάρις).  It's just the beginning of a discussion which I'd imagine will have great influence in the coming years.  Click here to head over to The Jesus Blog.

A Universal Letter to Fathers And Sons: Parenting Christian Children.

"Spiritual Warfare" by Ron DiCianni

Fathers, 

if you don’t like the way your son walks, do not say to him, “Walk like a man.” 

Instead, learn to hear his heart.  Learn who he is.  What makes him tick?  What saddens him, and why?  What is it for him to be who he was created to be?

The Father in heaven and our King, Jesus, have shown us the way of raising successful men—men who die having really lived.  Men who die having loved honorably, spoken truthfully; men who die having cared for the wounded and the needy and the heartbroken and the sick and the dying and the orphaned; men who die having lived as Jesus lived.  Men who don’t stop living even when they die.  

We’re raising up immortals.  Heroes. 

Sons of God.

Do not say to him, “Walk like a man.”  Tell him that he is a man.  Tell him what the goodness of God looks like and find it in him.  Pray for him. 

Let him catch you with your hands raised on the crest of a mountain, enjoying the presence of the Living God. 

Teach him like Jesus teaches his own—graciously, wisely, thoughtfully and spiritually.  

Love him like God loves his own, in order that one day God might love the world through him. 

When you fail him, ask him for his forgiveness and tell him that you’re learning too.

Tell him what makes you tick.  Tell him about your dad.  What was it like for you to be a son?  What is it like now, being a son of The Father?

Tell him that you love him and that you trust him.  Let him know you. 

And when discipline comes, he’ll trust you through it.

While doing these things, you’ll notice his gate improving.  Confidence will fall into his steps.  You’ll begin to enjoy the way that he walks.  He’ll start walking like his King.  He’ll walk like a man.

This is how my Father in Heaven loves me.

"For you have not received a spirit of slavery leading to fear again, but you have received a spirit of adoption as sons by which we cry out, 'Pappa! Father!'"  Romans 8:15