Category Archives: Theological Issues

Posts on theological issues not in other categories

Results of being filled with the Spirit

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In a comment (the fourth one) on his own blog Mike Aubrey, while making a technical point about the participles in the Greek text of Ephesians 5:19-21, brings out some important teaching about the Holy Spirit:

Most believe that the participles denote the result of the command to “be filled with the Spirit.” … In fact, as far as I am aware every single interpreter of Ephesians since Markus Barth has taken the participles of 19-21 as participles of result rather than imperatival (key words: “as far as I am aware”).

But Mike also argues that there cannot be a break between verses 21 and 22:

What I found was that there is absolutely no other instance where an ellided clause either begins a new pericope or sentence – much less imply a change in mood.

In other words, as I understand Mike’s argument, this passage and what follows up to 6:9 should be understood as follows (adapted from TNIV, 5:22-6:9 abridged):

Do not get drunk on wine, which leads to debauchery. Instead, be filled with the Spirit, with the result that you will:

  • speak to one another with psalms, hymns and songs from the Spirit;
  • sing and make music from your heart to the Lord;
  • always give thanks to God the Father for everything, in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ;
  • submit to one another out of reverence for Christ:
    • wives, submitting yourselves to your own husbands as you do to the Lord …
    • husbands, loving your wives, just as Christ loved the church …
    • children, obeying your parents in the Lord …
    • fathers, not exasperating your children …
    • slaves, obeying your earthly masters …
    • and masters, treating your slaves in the same way. …

This doubly nested list may not be the normal way of laying out a Bible translation, but it does seem to reflect Paul’s intention here, at least on Mike’s exegesis.

If Mike is correct, this implies that we Christians are not to put our effort into doing these good things like submitting to one another, still less into making others submit to us. Instead we are to allow ourselves to be filled with the Holy Spirit, and as we do so the Spirit will produce in our hearts these good fruits, of worship and thanksgiving and also of the mutual submission which is, or should be, characteristic of the Christian life.

The Church of England upholds the uniqueness of Christ

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After last week’s outbreak of unity, more good news from the Anglican churches. Some of you will think “Of course, this is what any church would do”. Others of you, the more cynical, might be amazed. But, as The Times, in an article by Ruth Gledhill (see also her blog post about the debate), and Thinking Anglicans report, the General Synod of the Church of England has today approved (by 283 votes to 8 with 10 abstentions) a private member’s motion on the uniqueness of Christ in multi-faith Britain.

In fact technically the motion, as printed in full by Thinking Anglicans, does not quite affirm the uniqueness of Christ, but it does “warmly welcome” a long paper by Martin Davie (I haven’t read it!) which concludes, very sensibly,

The Church of England, and Anglicans more generally, have also taken the traditional doctrines of the Trinity and the incarnation as their basis for interfaith dialogue, holding that Jesus is the source of salvation for all people everywhere (whether they are yet aware of the fact or not), but also holding that Christians are called to be God’s instruments in bringing people to explicit faith in Christ and to membership of his Church.

So Ruth is justified in how she starts her article in The Times:

Anglicans were effectively mandated today by the Church of England to go out and convert Muslims and other non-Christian believers.

For decades, their fellow Christians have joked about Anglicans that it is unfair to say they believe in nothing. They believe in anything.

But in a move that led one bishop to condemn in anger the “evangelistic rants”, the Church of England yesterday put decades of liberal political correctness behind it.

(I note the confusion between “today” in the first paragraph and “yesterday” in the third, for the same event. Presumably this article is intended for Thursday’s paper, but the online version is dated Wednesday. The BBC is more careful in these matters in avoiding words like “today” and “yesterday” in its online news.)

Meanwhile Ruth, on her blog, notes that Facebook has penetrated further than ever before. She caught a bishop, Pete Broadbent who is well known to my readers here and has in fact been one himself, communicating with the Press apparently from the floor of the Synod during a debate. Now I wouldn’t dream of publishing comments on a Facebook friend’s status without permission from the commenter. Then I suppose if I was really concerned about the privacy of my comments I wouldn’t have any journalists as my friends. But as Dave Walker is my Facebook friend as well as Pete’s and Ruth’s I can confirm that Ruth has accurately quoted the episcopal comment:

Tee hee – surrender – resistance is futile…

Ruth asks:

Is it a scandal that a bishop is using Facebook while ostensibly listening to a serious synod debate on the place of Christ in the world today? Does anyone care?

I don’t! Perhaps the scandal is that I think this important enough even to mention in the same post as the uniqueness of Christ.

By the way, today the Synod also voted, by a clear margin well over the required 2/3 (despite Ruth’s miscalculations), to take the next step in the process towards allowing women bishops.

To conclude: I rejoice that the Church of England has taken such a clear stand on this important issue, reaffirming that salvation is found only in Jesus Christ.

Can God intend anything without predetermining everything?

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In his post A definition of Scripture that conforms to the realia of the text John Hobbins hides some nuggets about God and predestination, which deserve to be repeated in a post where they are not a digression (John’s own word). This is the central one:

an all-powerful, all-knowing God cannot intend anything without predetermining everything unless that same God is all-loving.

The argument seems to be that only an all-loving God, like the one we read about in the Bible, is able to

not allow what he knows will happen in the future to predetermine everything he does in the present.

John illustrates this as follows:

like God, since I am a loving parent, I predetermine that I will not completely determine, for example, my son Giovanni’s choice with respect to where to go to university.

This is of course a completely biblical way of looking at the matter:

Do not be like the horse or the mule,
which have no understanding
but must be controlled by bit and bridle
or they will not come to you.

Psalm 32:9 (TNIV)

That is, God does not want to control our every decision as if “by bit and bridle”, but wants us to make our own choices based on understanding.

This is true of the big decisions in life as well as the small ones. And that means it is also true of the greatest decision of all, whether or not to give one’s life to Jesus Christ as Saviour and Lord. Indeed we can only come to him if God draws us (John 6:44), but Jesus who is also God draws everyone to himself (John 11:32; I’m sure there is no real distinction between the Father and Jesus drawing people to him), so no one is left out. In this connection another equine proverb, although not biblical, is true:

You can lead a horse to water, but you cannot make it drink.

Similarly, God can lead lost human beings to the true living water, but he cannot make them drink, not without violating their humanity. He doesn’t want us to be “like the horse or the mule, which have no understanding”, so he allows us to make our own choices whether or not to accept his gift of eternal life in Jesus Christ. In his kingdom he wants not animals who are there by force, but persons who have decided for themselves to live with him in love for ever.

The Naked Dead Arise!

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Nearly two years ago I caused some controversy by raising the question Does the risen Jesus have blood? This also referred more generally to resurrection bodies. Now a new question on the same lines has arisen at the blog Singing in the Reign: Will the Dead Be Raised Nude? In this Brant Pitre examines

the Jewish tradition which identified the resurrected body with the “garments of glory” that Adam and Eve had lost in the fall but would be restored to the righteous in in the messianic age

– a tradition which he sees reflected in 2 Corinthians 5:3. But he notes that Michelangelo, in his Last Judgment scene reproduced in the post, as well as Mel Gibson depicted naked resurrection bodies.

I don’t think there is any clear biblical teaching on this one. Presumably the risen Jesus appeared in appropriate clothing, even immediately after the resurrection when Mary Magdalene mistook him for a gardener (John 20:15). But that is not necessarily a precedent for the general resurrection. As for 2 Corinthians 5:2-4, surely the clothes mentioned here are a metaphor for the body, not to be understood literally.

Brant refers to “garments of glory” supposedly worn by Adam and Eve in the garden. But the biblical text makes it clear that these, if they existed at all, were not literal clothes:

The man and his wife were both naked, and they felt no shame.

Genesis 2:25 (TNIV)

The resurrection life is more than a restoration of Eden, but not less than it. In it there will again be no shame, as all sins will be forgiven and everyone will have an unrestricted relationship with God (Revelation 21:3-4). The reference to robes (22:14) is surely symbolic. So, as I understand it, in the reurrection we will not be clothed in any literal sense, but only in the glory of God.

Isa = Jesus revisited, with a correction

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Yesterday I posted about Praying in the name of Isa = Jesus, including a correction of some bad information which I found at other blogs. Unfortunately in the process I managed to introduce and propagate some errors of my own. My purpose in blogging again in this post is first to correct my error, and then to offer some further observations on this matter.

I wrote yesterday (but will correct shortly in the original post):

I checked with a Palestinian Arab Christian, from a Roman Catholic background stretching back centuries. He confirmed my understanding (see also this comment) that “Isa” is the form of the name of Jesus which has been used by Arab Christians, or at least the great majority of them, since time immemorial. There may be some non-traditional Arab Christians who use “Yesua” but this form is never used in mainstream churches or Bible translations.

Unfortunately I mis-remembered the information from my friend. As I now understand it, the form of the name of Jesus used by Arab Christians in traditional churches is neither Yesua nor Isa, but Yasu, يسوع, as in the apparently correct information here and here.

The -ua ending, characteristic of Hebrew (as in the Hebrew Yeshua for “Jesus”), and the e vowel, not found in Arabic at least in standard transliteration, show that the form Yesua is not a genuine Arabic one. It may be that Yasu is in some places pronounced more like Yesu or possibly even Yesua. But it is certainly not true that, as claimed, “the Arab Christian communities only refer to Jesus as `Yesua´”.

The form Isa, عيسى, used by Muslims worldwide, is also used by Christians and in Bible translations in many non-Arabic Muslim majority countries, including Iran, Turkey and former Soviet Central Asia. This is the only form of the name known in the national languages of these countries.

Meanwhile I can confirm that Arab Christians and Muslims, and indeed Christians and Muslims in most Muslim majority countries, use only one word for the one true God: Allah, الله. This is not a Muslim word but an Arabic word, related to the Hebrew Elohim, which has been borrowed into many other languages.

Even though Arab Christians and Muslims use different names for Jesus, this does not imply that they are referring to different people. “Simplicity in Christ” has claimed in a comment that

It doesn’t matter what word the Muslims use, the bottom line is that Isa is not Jesus. … Praying in the name of anyone other than Jesus Christ is unscriptural.

But this claim that “Isa is not Jesus” is preposterous. Consider what Islam teaches, and denies, about the one called Isa in the Qur’an

The Qur’an, believed by Muslims to be God’s final revelation, states that Jesus was born to Mary (Arabic: Maryam) as the result of virginal conception, a miraculous event which occurred by the decree of God (Arabic: Allah). To aid him in his quest, Jesus was given the ability to perform miracles, all by the permission of God. According to Islamic texts, Jesus was neither killed nor crucified, but rather he was raised alive up to heaven. Islamic traditions narrate that he will return to earth near the day of judgment to restore justice and defeat al-Masīḥ ad-Dajjāl (lit. “the false messiah”, also known as the Antichrist). … Islam rejects that Jesus was God incarnate or the son of God, stating that he was an ordinary man who, like other prophets, had been divinely chosen to spread God’s message. … Numerous titles are given to Jesus in the Qur’an, such as al-Masīḥ (“the messiah; the anointed one” i.e. by means of blessings) …

Much of this agrees with the biblical account. Of course “Jesus was neither killed nor crucified” and “Islam rejects that Jesus was God incarnate or the son of God” go against biblical and Christian teaching. But the very texts in the Qur’an where the Christian teaching is explicitly contradicted demonstrate that the Islamic Isa is the same person as the Christian Jesus (Qur’an passages quoted from here):

And because of their saying: We slew the Messiah, Jesus son of Mary, Allah’s messenger — they slew him not nor crucified him, but it appeared so unto them

O followers of the Book! [The Bible] do not exceed the limits in your religion, and do not speak (lies) against Allah, but (speak) the truth; the Messiah, Isa son of Marium [Jesus son of Mary] is only an apostle of Allah and His Word which He communicated to Marium and a spirit from Him; believe therefore in Allah and His apostles, and say not, Three. Desist, it is better for you; Allah is only one God; far be It from His glory that He should have a son …

Apparently the uneducated Muhammad, or whoever actually compiled the Qur’an, knew corrupted versions of Bible stories (as in their time there was no Arabic Bible to read), and put them together in a sometimes confused way. The early Muslims may have made further changes to the stories to serve their religious and nationalistic purposes, for example making Abraham nearly sacrifice Ishmael, ancestor of the Arabs, rather than Isaac, ancestor of the Jews, and omitting stories that put those they consider prophets in a bad light. It was probably for this reason, as well as because they had no understanding of Christian teaching on the atonement, that they denied the crucifixion of Jesus. Then, probably after the move to Medina, the early Muslims became more familiar with Christian and Jewish teaching and so added to their proto-Qur’an explicit denials of this teaching.

So, what we have in the Qur’an is not teaching about a person Isa who is different from the Jesus Christ whom Christians know and love. Rather, we have corrupted and false teaching about the true Jesus. This teaching is, I would suppose, so seriously wrong that it cannot in itself lead anyone to saving faith. Nevertheless there have been many testimonies of Muslims who have come to Christian faith by starting with an interest in Jesus as presented in Islam and then finding out more about him through the Bible or from Christians.

So I applaud Rick Warren for making it clear, in his prayer at the presidential inauguration, that Isa is simply another form of the name of Jesus.

Praying in the name of Isa = Jesus

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CORRECTED VERSION, 27th January, see my follow-up post.

Daniel Cordell has sadly spread some false information in his post Praying in the Name of Isa. In response to Rick Warren’s prayer at President Obama’s inauguration, he wrote:

Today, in his Presidential Inauguration prayer, Rick Warren prayed in the name of “Yeshua”, “Isa” and “Jesus”. …

Even Arab Christians don´t refer to Isa,´ but to `Yesua.´ I´ve lived and studied Arabic in one of the same Muslim countries that Warren has visited, and I think he probably knows that the Arab Christian communities only refer to Jesus as `Yesua´ and not `Isa´ as the Muslims.

This has been quoted here and here. So the false information is spreading. And although this has been pointed out to Daniel, he has failed to correct his error in later posts.

The claim in the second paragraph quoted above is not true. I checked with a Palestinian Arab Christian, from a Roman Catholic background stretching back centuries. He confirmed my understanding (see also this comment) that “Isa” “Yasu” is the form of the name of Jesus which has been used by Arab Christians, or at least the great majority of them, since time immemorial. There may be some non-traditional Arab Christians who use “Yesua” but this form is never used in mainstream churches or Bible translations. “Isa” is also used by Christians in many, but not all, Muslim majority countries. This is what Rick Warren probably knows, and is the basis for what he explains in this YouTube video (sorry for the poor quality) apparently taken from a sermon yesterday.

The following information at this Wikipedia page is also incorrect:

Arabic-speaking Christians refer to Jesus as Yasu

This may be true for a minority, but not for all as the page suggests.

Essex vicar predicts the end of the world as we know it

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Sam Norton, a Church of England vicar here in Essex, is quite astonishingly pessimistic, even apocalyptic although it seems for entirely secular reasons, about the state and future of the world. Last year I reported his predictions that oil prices would continue to rise, but instead they have fallen dramatically. He starts his new post with something of an explanation for why this has happened, while insisting that it will not last. For, he argues,

The problem will emerge with further strength when the economy gets through the economic aspects of the present crisis and tries to get back upon its previous growth-based models: the price of oil will increase again and choke off that economic growth. In sum, my view is that, for a period of 10-15 years, economic growth has ceased, indeed, that it will go into reverse.

Well, so far, this is believable – but it ignores the point that as oil prices increase, so, after a time lag, will supply, as expensive oil reserves such as the oil sands of Alberta are exploited, and as users shift to alternative energy sources such as coal, nuclear and renewable. Some of these shifts of course would have worrying implications for the environment and for global warming, but that is a separate issue.

But Sam then takes his predictions too far, matching the nightmare scenarios of the climate change extremists whom he does not support:

I see much of the middle-class Western lifestyle coming to an end over this period; a vast amount of unemployment which will – in a benign outcome – shift to working the land, or, in a less benign outcome, the resurrection of a slave society. …

I see us rapidly approaching a bottleneck – a time of greatly increased pressure and tension, and not all of us will get through. However, decisions that we make now – more at the personal and local society level than at the government level (I tend to see the government as a problem not a solution, as people know) – will make a big difference to what happens. Learn to store more food. Learn to garden or develop a skill that will allow for trading for food. Get to know your neighbours and develop contacts across the community.

I foresee a time of tremendous upheaval and suffering in this crisis that has now begun; a time with greater parallels to the 1340s [the decade of the Black Death] than the 1930s, and a lot of people, a lot of societies, quite possibly even some nations (eg the US and UK in their present form) will not make it through.

Now I think it is clear to me that this is not intended to be a prophecy or any kind of divine revelation, but simply a prediction based on data and trends, even if perhaps it is informed by biblical principles. This is what distinguishes Sam from those preachers who walk around with sandwich boards proclaiming “THE END OF THE WORLD IS NIGH!” But, just as those preachers typically used their backs to preach “REPENT AND BELIEVE THE GOSPEL”, so also Sam finishes off as one would expect from a Christian minister, with a Bible verse:

Yet I also believe that what we do now will make a difference in the end, and I trust that our labour will not be in vain. “For I know the plans I have for you,” declares the LORD, “plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future.”

I’m not quite sure what Sam means here. But even if this blackest of scenarios does prove accurate, God will provide for those who trust in him, and will eventually put all things right in the new heavens and the new earth.

Church leaders and the steward of Gondor

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John Meunier has an interesting and provocative post in which he compares church leaders with the steward of Gondor, in Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings. He suggests that, just as the stewards of Gondor started to see themselves as kings,

the leaders of the church start to imagine they are Christ. …

It was this impulse and arrogance that caused the Reformation. But the Reformers were just as eager to become the voice of Christ themselves.

The stewards’ pretensions didn’t last long when the true king arrived. I hope that not many church leaders have this kind of attitude. But any who do will find themselves embarrassed, to say the least, when Jesus returns in his glory and settles accounts with them. Tolkien was surely aware of what Jesus had to say about stewards (the KJV rendering at least) such as Luke 12:42-46.

Jesus and Authority

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If the “Son” is sent by the “Father,” and if the “Son” comes to do the will of the “Father,” does it not stand to reason that God wishes by this language to indicate something of the authority and submission that exists within the relationships of the members of the immanent trinity?

– Bruce Ware, quoted here (see also here).

It is the nature of the second person of the Trinity to acknowledge the authority and submit to the good pleasure of the first.

– J.I. Packer in Knowing God (1973), quoted here.

Then Jesus came to them and said, “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. …”

– Matthew 28:18 (TNIV)

Therefore God exalted him to the highest place
and gave him the name that is above every name,
10 that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow,
in heaven and on earth and under the earth,
11 and every tongue acknowledge that Jesus Christ is Lord,
to the glory of God the Father.

– Philippians 2:9-11 (TNIV)

So is Jesus the one who submits to authority or the one who exercises it?

A proof of the Virgin Birth?

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It is a little past the Christmas season when people might expect to see such stories. But I have only just come across this: a post by Anglican Curmudgeon, written in November this year, called The Physics of Christianity: Frank Tipler on the Virgin Birth.

I have come across Frank Tipler before. He is certainly a mathematical physicist with top credentials, as is clear from the Wikipedia article about him. His best known contribution to physics is his Omega Point Theory, an argument that the universe will end by collapsing into a point singularity. But he is also considered something of an eccentric because he has dared to identify this Omega Point with God!

Back in the 1990s I read Tipler’s book The Physics of Immortality (1994), supposedly written for a “popular” audience but in fact mathematically complex enough that I was glad of my postgraduate studies in mathematical physics. In this book Tipler argues that as the universe collapses into the Omega Point an infinite amount of computer power will be available, and will be used to provide for everyone who has ever lived an eternal life in a perfect, but virtual, universe. The problem for me is, in what way would that simulated future in fact be my future – especially if there is potentially a large, even infinite, number of simulated futures for me?

It seems that Tipler has now written another “popular” book The Physics of Christianity (2007), in which he has gone beyond his earlier claims that physics implies the existence of God and immortality in rather general terms, to more specific claims in which he

identifies the Omega Point as being the Judeo-Christian God, particularly as described by Christian theological tradition.

Anglican Curmudgeon has read this 2007 book (I have not) and describes it as

one of the most remarkable books about Christianity that I have ever read. In fact, the book is so remarkable that I have decided, at the risk of my reputation as a reliable curmudgeon, … to tell you instead about some of the things which this amazing book shows are inescapably correct about traditional Christian belief.

The example of Tipler’s brilliance which the Curmudgeon chooses to highlight in this post (he promises a series of further posts, and has written the first of them) is in fact not a matter of mathematical physics but one of genetics. Now this is not really Tipler’s field, not the Curmudgeon’s, nor mine. But if what Tipler has discovered is indeed correct, it is quite amazing! I must say that it is so amazing that I cannot quite believe it. It is the sort of thing I might expect to find in a cheap thriller, but not in a supposedly non-fiction book by a respected scientist.

This is what Tipler claims to have discovered, from what I can tell from the short extracts quoted in the Anglican Curmudgeon post: the bloodstains on both the Shroud of Turin and on the Sudarium of Oviedo (supposedly respectively the burial shroud and face cloth of Jesus) contain a unique form of DNA, exhibiting both the very rare XX male syndrome (a human genetically female but physically male) and some other unique characteristics which I do not understand. Tipler writes that he found, in raw data from analysis of the bloodstains,

the expected signature of the DNA of a male born in a Virgin Birth!

The Anglican Curmudgeon writes:

Thus The Physics of Christianity not only provides a physical explanation for how the virgin birth reported in the New Testament would be possible, but it also uses the available physical evidence to provide a stunning verification of Tipler’s hypothesis—a verification which is all the more amazing because it is based on reported results that were never properly presented or interpreted by those who obtained them.

It is for this reason alone that I commend Frank Tipler’s book to all who wish to ground their faith on the physical evidence and common sense that God has given us. Professor Tipler is a unique breed: he is someone who has followed the available evidence, and who has worked out the consequent mathematics, to a conclusion which, no matter how much his colleagues might wish to avoid it, shows that:

A. There is definitely a God Who created the universe in which we find ourselves (to be faithful to his proof, I should use the plural, “universes”—but more on that later);

B. This God indeed has an only-begotten Son, Jesus, who together with the Holy Spirit constitute three separate persons forming one indivisible trinity;

C. The Son—Jesus—although existing before (and throughout) all space and time, came to this planet and took on the form of a man, the product of a unique and one-time Virgin Birth; and

D. Evidence for that unique and one-time birth, as well as for His Resurrection itself, has been waiting for nearly two thousand years for mankind to develop the skills and technology needed to assess it.

It is, as I say, a remarkable thesis, in what is an even more remarkable book.

Indeed – if the thesis is in fact true.