The Theological Impetus for Global Partnership

     Now, this post today, just perfectly fits the title of my blog – “Ramblings.”  Because, you see, what is moving me to write this is just simply my frequently rambling mind.  I’ve had some thoughts on global partnership—new to me—that I need to write down . . . to discipline myself to write.

     First, there is the critical issue that faces the 3^rd Lausanne Congress on World Evangelization (just one of six issues):

Partnering in the Body of Christ: Toward a New Global Equilibrium

     Now the practical question for me as a mission leader is, Why?  Why should I lead my team and seek to mobilize others to enter into partnerships within and outside of the denomination, within and outside of the nation?  It is honestly just very challenging to me to assess the value of such partnership.  And, if I look on a larger scale, how do I convince my local Baptist association or the Southern Baptist Convention as a whole to engage in meaningful partnerships with churches, agencies, and associations from other parts of the world?

     TIBM has “partnering with others” as one of our seven central tasks.  So it is something that we do.  And with certain of those partnerships, it is not difficult to convince me that the relationship is important and valuable, but if you ask me to articulate why, I’m not sure I could do so convincingly.  More fundamentally, I’ve had trouble articulating why partnership as a practice is inherently right and good and to be passionately pursued by all Christian churches, agencies and organizations.  I mean, if it is only a matter of trying to keep us from bickering at each other, well, then partnership is reduced to a mere necessary annoyance – like filing your taxes.  Even if the value of partnership is only practical – sharing “resources and best practices” – well, I suppose that is good, but doesn’t that potentially reduce the impetus for partnering to the desire to seek relationships of convenience?  So that if I cannot be convinced of the practical benefits of such an arrangement, there is really no reason to enter into it.

     Is there more? Is there a deeper, essentially ontological, compellingly theological reason for engaging in global partnerships?  Is there an inescapably Biblical demand that relegates all pragmatic motivations and hesitations concerning partnership to the dim background?  Well, of course, I have a thought.  Consider Paul’s prayer in Ephesians 3:

I believe that one of the things that Paul’s prayer declares is that it is impossible for local bodies of Christians to reach (or even significantly approach) spiritual maturity without engagement in genuine relationships with Christians outside that local group.  Look with me at this text:

1.         The Desired Result is Spiritual Maturity – note Paul’s “so that” in verse 19.  Everything that Paul is praying is “so that” something will result in the beneficiaries of his prayer.  It is “so that you may be filled with all the fullness of God.” Which is a wonderfully evocative way of speaking of spiritual formation, maturity, sanctification – God’s work to transform us into the image of Jesus Christ.

2.         The Cause of the “So That” – It is clear that Paul believes that when a Christian is enabled to comprehend (the Greek word καταλαβέσθαι means literally to “eagerly seize”) and know the multidimensional, knowledge-surpassing love of God, the result is spiritual maturity—the “so that” of verse 19.

3.         The Essential Conditions of Comprehending – Note that Paul’s prayer assumes that this comprehending and knowing of God’s love is only possible “together with all the saints” (v. 18).  This fellowship is presented here as a necessary condition for which Paul is praying on behalf of his readers without which, the apostle is convinced, grasping the love of God and thus spiritual maturity is an utter impossibility.

4.         The Plurality of You – The Biblical demand for partnership comes into full relief when we recognize that the “you” of Paul’s prayer (v. 16, 17, 18, and 19) is plural (preserved nicely in the Nepali Bible as “timiharu”).  That is, the “you” being rooted and grounded in love in verse 17 is the local body of believers that has received and is now corporately reading Paul’s epistle.  Thus is it a local body of believers for whom Paul is praying in verse 18 when he says, “I pray that you [all] may have power to” comprehend and know the love of God.  It is this plural you then that must enter into relationship, dialogue, and indeed partnership “together with all the saints” – Christians from outside that specific community – “so that” spiritual maturity may result in their body. 

     What we are left with is an inspired prayer that sees spiritual maturity as only attainable when local bodies of Christians are engaged in meaningful partnerships with other communities of faith outside their immediate context.  That is, we may say confidently from this text that any given mission team, church, agency, denomination, or Christian organization will be unable to be all that God would have them be as evangelists, medical missionaries, church planters, Bible translators, campus ministers, Christian educators, relief workers, worshippers, intercessors, disciples, or Jesus-followers apart from the pursuit of global partnership as a corporate spiritual discipline.  Or, to put it positively, the active pursuit of ever-deepening global partnerships by local bodies of Christians enables those communities to better (and increasingly so) comprehend and know God’s love which results in dramatic spiritual transformation and growth.

     This is true, I assume, because there is actually only one body of Christ in the world (4:4) with one triune God indwelling, ruling over, and guiding that whole body (4:4-6).  That the gifts of Christ are distributed among all parts of that body (4:7ff) further testifies to the fact that it is when that global body is peacefully bonded together (4:3), pursuing and gradually arriving at the unity of faith (4:13) that the Church of Jesus Christ in the world functions as it should (4:16).  It is when the whole Church builds itself up in love (4:16) – which it cannot do outside of the exercise of the spiritual discipline global partnership – that it “grows up in every way into him who is the head, into Christ” (4:15).

     Whew! Okay, then, think about that for awhile.  I’d love to read your comments.  Also, I strongly encourage you to engage the global conversation on this topic at http://www.lausanne.org/global-conversation/more-partners-at-the-family-table.html where you can read several articles, watch a video, explore resources, and interact with others.  Blessings! 

Take the 5-Point TIBM-Cape Town Challenge!

      Fresh back from my trip to the US-Lausanne pre-congress meeting, I had a chance to offer a report, words of encouragement, and set of challenges to the TIBM family this past Sunday night in our house church gathering.  I’ll admit that in my excitement, it was difficult to present things in an organized fashion, but I think that most people got the idea.  Well, I won’t rehash the whole report here, but I did want to outline the five-point “TIBM-Cape Town Challenge” that our team/church is taking on in 2010.  This is our way of preparing for the 3^rd Lausanne Congress on World Evangelization and engaging in a work that we feel may be the defining Kingdom-work of our generation.

     Wow, I’m really tempted to just go on and on here, but I’ll restrain myself.  Let me get right into the challenge and ask you to join us in this.

1.      Read, study, teach, and memorize the book of Ephesians

All 4,000 on-site participants are being challenged by the Lausanne leadership to soak in Ephesians in the months leading up to Cape Town.  We are also being asked to teach it and preach from it in our various mission contexts and even to memorize it.  The official Cape Town 2010 study guide for Ephesians is simple and helpful.  You can download a pdf for free here.  At Trinity, we just finished a multi-year study of spiritual warfare that had us focused a lot on Ephesians 6.  Nevertheless, we’ll take up this challenge and take a significant amount of time in the book this year.

2.      Prayer for and memorization of all nations

The 3^rd congress will be the most diverse gathering of Christians the world has ever seen.  Some 4,000 delegates from 200 nations will come together to pray, worship, commune, and discuss the most critical issues of our time.  The leadership of the US delegation has specifically asked us to pray for all these nations and to memorize their geographical locations on the earth.  This challenge was quickly amended in the recent Dallas meeting to, “Well, just do all the nations.”  So, I’ve begun to do so and invite you as well.  To pray, I am using a tried and true resource called Operation World that, fantastically, is available online for free.  Just go there and click on “pray today.”  Do it every day.  To memorize the locations of all the world’s nations, I’ve been using a geography quiz site that works well, is free, and is actually helping me.  You can check it out here.  Again, try doing one quiz every day.

3.      Study the Lausanne Covenant

The Lausanne Covenant is a document that resulted from the 1^st Lausanne congress in 1974 and has served as a “rallying point” for evangelical Christians the world over who are passionate about the “whole Church taking the whole gospel to the whole world.”  It is something of a statement of faith, but one that is fundamentally grounded in the missional calling and nature of God’s people.  One of the most influential documents in the history of evangelical Christianity, it is something that I want to lead my team in studying, understanding, and interacting with.  There are some terrific resources available for free on the covenant including the actual text itself as well as a study guide entitled For the Lord we Love by John Stott that can be helpful in an individual and group context.  I plan to do personal study as well as to lead TIBM in corporate study of the covenant.

4.      Fully engage the 6 crucial issues of the congress

The 3^rd Lausanne Congress is not being convened simply because we haven’t done it in a while, but in response to a global outcry from Christians who see that God’s Church is facing a number of extraordinarily difficult challenges.  AIDS, postmodernism, Islamic fundamentalism, the southern shift of the church, and other weighty issues are matters that simply cannot be ignored. The passion of Lausanne 3 is to gather the leaders of God’s worldwide church to earnestly seek the will of Christ through prayer, repentance, worship, communion, study, and conversation.  Our hope is to come away from the congress with an Acts 15 kind of declaration, “It seems good to us and to the Holy Spirit that the Church . . .”  In particular, through a multi-year process of prayerful and informed discernment, six crucial issues have been put before us.  These are:

·         How do we make a case for truth and the uniqueness of Christ in a postmodern, pluralistic world?

·         How do we articulate and demonstrate the power of the gospel in the midst of suffering and strife?

·         How do we respond redemptively to religious fundamentalism – Islam and Hinduism in particular?

·         What should be our priorities with respect to the unfinished task of world evangelization?

·         What are obstacles to world evangelization within the church and how can those be addressed?

·         How should the Church in the US partner with the Church in the rest of the world?

So then, the challenge is to prayerfully and studiously, thoughtfully and actively, locally and globally engage these six critical issues.  I believe that any local church or Christian organization in the world today that has a truly global vision will be able to find significant points of intersection between these issues and their local ministry.  So, I have decided to seek to make the work of Lausanne 3 the work of TIBM.  Here are a couple concrete ways we plan to engage these challenges.  First, I am calling upon the TIBM family to engage in the growing global conversation around these issues that is being hosted online by Lausanne and Christianity Today.  You can do that too by going directly to this site. I believe that God may have tremendous plans for this site.  Engage now.  Secondly, TIBM will be using a number of our Sunday night house church gatherings to focus on these issues.  We’ll take time to unpack each of the 6 issues and then prayerfully discuss them in our group.  In particular, we’ll frame our discussion with these questions:

 ·         How does this global issue impact and intersect with our local ministry?

·         How is God calling us to engage in this issue globally? How is God calling us to engage in partnerships around this issue?

·         What things make our involvement challenging?  Hopeful?

·         What resources do we have for the wider church and what resources do we need from the wider church concerning this issue?

·         What concerns should we bring before the Lord regarding this issue?

5.      Develop a Strategy for Mobilization and Prophetic Leadership

Cape Town 2010 is not an end in itself.  It is, Lord willing, the beginning of renewal, reformation, and recommitment for the global Church.  Those who engage in the work of Lausanne 3, have the responsibility to mobilize, equip, call, and lead the whole church to take the whole gospel to the whole world.  As the Lord speaks to us in global community about these 6 critical issues, we then must speak to those in our spheres of influence.  We don’t know now what that will need to look like.  However, we know enough to pray and prepare ourselves for a work that will continue long after the Cape Town delegates have gone back home.  So, pray now.  And consider now how God may be calling you in leadership and in service around this work.  How should your gifts (teaching, giving, prayer, administration, service, mercy, etc.) be put to use to support the work of Lausanne right now?

     Well, here it is.  The final installment of our discussion of missions.  In case you are just joining us, what I'm trying to do is answer the question, "Why should we Jesus-followers continue to engage in missions by fervent prayer, sacrificial giving, and personal going?"  I’ve given two answers to that question already, so now it’s on to the third:

Mission is, fundamentally, an attribute of God and, thus, true “Godliness” necessitates a missional life.

     Now, I have to admit, this is one of my favorite reasons to talk about because it is one of the hardest for me to understand.  Does that sound weird?  Well, it's just that I really like it when a theological concept just sort of puts me in my place.  Thoughts about the bigness of God just really excite and awe me.  So here's the deal--our participation in mission is related to the imitation of God.  Let me explain.

     In Ephesians 5:1, Paul calls on believers to be “imitators of God.” As you read the Bible, you will at times come across this idea.  A writer in speaking about how we, as Christians, should live will found commands upon the very nature and attributes of God.  For example, John tells us to love one another because God is love (1 Jn. 4:7-8).  Elsewhere, we are told by Peter to “be holy” because God is holy (1 Pet. 1:16).  There are other places like this too.

     Now, throughout the New Testament we see very clearly that God’s goal for us is to make us like Jesus.  For example:

·             2 Cor. 3:18 (God is transforming us into the image of the Lord Jesus from one degree of glory to another.)

·             1 Jn. 3:1-3 (This teaches that our ultimate hope is that we will become like Jesus and that even now that hope stimulates the transformation process.)

·             Lk. 6:40 (Jesus says that the goal and result of discipleship is to become like the Teacher—Him.)

     We know that as humans we have been created in the image of God, but sin has damaged that image.  God’s plan of salvation and sanctification is to restore the image and reflection of God’s glory in our lives.  This restoration is both the promise of salvation and the outworking of it.  We have the firm hope that we will one day be like Him.  And we have the charge to imitate Him right now.

     So this is the first of three parts of a basic argument for the third answer to the question, "Why mission?"  It is the truth—we should be imitators of God.  Now, keep that in mind as I talk about the second part which has to do with "attributeness."

     Because we, as Jesus-followers, desire to imitate God, we’ve learned to behold Him—to look at and watch God.  We study Him to see what He's like and what He does.  With John, we look and see that God is love.  Not just that God is loving, but that He is the very definition of love.  Love is not some abstract principle that exists apart from the person and nature of God.  Love is a concept that is originally derived from who God is.  John is so convinced of this that he goes as far as to say that anyone who really loves must be born of God and that no one who lacks love can really claim to have any knowledge of God, “For God is love.”

     Well, that is what it means for something to be an attribute of God.  An attribute of God is an attribute of God not because it is a concept or principle that God conforms to, but because it is originally, ultimately, and perfectly found only in God.  And like John, our meditations upon these attributes of God very often lead to applications in our personal lives.  I’ve been talking about 1 John 4:7-8, so let's just read it:

Beloved, let us love one another, for love is from God, and whoever loves has been born of God and knows God. Anyone who does not love does not know God, because God is love.

     For John, the desire to be like God, is a given.  But what I want to talk about is mission.  I said that mission is, fundamentally, an attribute of God and I intend to prove it very simply.  Let's look a few verses:

Jesus said to them, "If God were your Father, you would love me, for I came from God and I am here. I came not of my own accord, but he sent me. (Joh 8:42)

So, the Father sent the Son.

"But when the Helper comes, whom I (Jesus) will send to you from the Father, the Spirit of truth, who proceeds from the Father, he will bear witness about me." (Joh 15:26)

So, the Father and the Son sent the Holy Spirit. And now, lastly, a series of verses from Luke:

And Jesus, full of the Holy Spirit, returned from the Jordan and was led by the Spirit in the wilderness . . . . And Jesus returned in the power of the Spirit to Galilee, and a report about him went out through all the surrounding country. . . . On one of those days, as he was teaching, Pharisees and teachers of the law were sitting there, who had come from every village of Galilee and Judea and from Jerusalem. And the power of the Lord was with him to heal.  (Luke 4:1, 14, 18, 5:17)

     This may be the weirdest part, but the Bible testifies to the fact that Jesus Christ, in His humanity, found the power and direction (in essence, the support) He needed to perform His mission on the earth from God the Father, through the Spirit. 

     Now these are some relatively new thoughts for me, but at this point I’m simply in awe as I consider the glorious doctrine of the Trinity which may well be the most missional doctrine of them all.  For in it, we see that mission is an attribute of the Triune God.  We see here, God sending, God being sent, and God the Sender supporting God the Sent.  And keep in mind that the word “sent” in the Bible is the Greek “apostollo” which is translated in Latin as “missio” from which we get our English word, “mission.” Some call this, the Missio Dei—the sending of God.

     Think about it.  Before any of us came along, before we ever commissioned anyone to go to any place, before anyone ever came to tell us about Jesus, before there was a knowledge of Christ in any human being, before there where human beings—there was a Triune God who was, by His very nature, missional.  And if tomorrow there were all of the sudden no more Christians and no more churches there would still be mission because there would still be God and mission comes from and is perfected in God.

     So the all three parts of my argument goes like this:  We should imitate God.  God is missional by nature.  Therefore, we should be engaged in mission.  Let's think for a moment about this third piece.

     This Missionary God—this God who sends God, this God who is sent by God, and this God who supports God in mission—sends us.  Take all that stuff I just said about the Trinity and attributeness and the imitation of God and pour it into this huge saying of Jesus:

"As the Father sent me, even so, I am sending you."  (John 20:21)

     It makes sense.  We are, after all, His children.  We should resemble Him.  We should have His eyes and smile.  His laugh.  His walk.  His passions.  His heart.  We should even take up the family business.  I remember growing up with my dad running a gas station in Shawnee, Oklahoma.  Some of my best days and fondest memories were of going to work with my dad.  Pumping gas, washing windows, running the cash register, helping him fix flat tires and change oil.  There was always something quite special about just being with dad and doing what he did.  That, my friends, is exactly what mission is – an invitation by our Father to go to work with Him.  Today, tomorrow, and every subsequent day until Jesus returns are all “take-you-kid-to-work day,” and our Father is eager to show you what He does all day.

See what kind of love the Father has given to us, that we should be called children of God; and so we are. The reason why the world does not know us is that it did not know him.  (1 John 3:1)

Peace.

     Every year (well, I did it last year anyway), I take time to provide you folks with a list of the five best books I read during the previous year.  If you are interested, you can see my top 5 list for 2007 here.  In general, as I reflect on my reading for 2008, I have a couple main thoughts.  First, I really didn’t read as much as I would have liked.  Of course, I read more of the Bible (like the whole thing), so that took some of my time.  Secondly, I didn’t read much that I really liked.  I have this hang up.  Once I start a book, it is really important to me that I finish it.  Even if the book stinks, I tend to just press on.  So, I did read a few stinkers last year.  Ask me about those in the comment section and I’ll forewarn you.   But anyway, let’s move on to the top five.  I’ve included them all in the TIBM Recommended Resource store, so if you are interested in any of these, I encourage you to go over there and purchase them.  Also, I have to mention that while I did read and enjoy my own book, Ethnographic Chicago, I am refraining from listing it here because, well, that makes me look pretty full of myself (which sometimes I really am, and I’d like to keep that in check).  Okay, without further ado:

     Well, I hope you read a ton in 2008.  I’d love to hear about some of your favorites in the comment section of this blog.  Seriously, let’s see how many 2008 top 5 lists we can get in the comment thread.  Also, if you have read any of the books in my top 5, what did you think? 

My Friend:  This is my understanding: The Law of Moses is summed up into two: love the Lord your God and love your neighbor. So basically the 10 commandments are kinda being summed up here. So we are to follow this as our guidelines in life.

Cody:     And I think this is true.  Jesus Christ summed up the law in this way and Paul followed Him (Rom. 13:9, Gal. 5:14).  Of course, we must be clear about what is meant by “guidelines.”  It is not through the 10 commandments or even the “greatest commandments” that salvation (from beginning to end) can be obtained.  That is, we do not earn salvation as a repayment for our love of God.  On the contrary, we only can love God as a result of his initial love towards us.  As John writes, “We love because he first loved us” (1 Jn. 4:19).  Our love, faith, and all subsequent God-pleasing virtue is produced in our lives due to the free and gracious work of God in our hearts to conform us to the image of Christ.  They are called the “fruit of the Spirit” as opposed to the “works of the flesh” in Galatians 5.  An apple tree doesn’t have to work to produce apples, it just will, providing it is tended properly and is, in fact, an apple tree.  God has planted us.  We are his workmanship (Isa. 61:3, Eph. 2:10).  It is God who works in us to will and to work according to his good purpose (Phil. 2:13).

     To be sure, good works follow regeneration necessarily.  That is, there is no such thing as a Spirit-indwelt person who has not been re-wired to please God and seek His glory.  Such is the meaning of the sometimes confusing “faith without works” verses in James’ epistle.  Works are a wonderful thing in this regard as they bear witness to our hearts that we are truly in Christ—they testify to the genuineness of our faith.  However, we must never forget that these works are the product of the free grace of God, the result of His saving work in us.  They do not merit God’s favor in any way.  We are free from the Law in that our just condemnation (because we are law breakers) has been fully satisfied in the atoning death of Christ our Lord.

     Of course, the law is still written.  It remains the inspired word of God that has come down to us.  So what are we to do with it?  Are we simply New Testament people who consult the Old only for Bible trivia purposes and vacation Bible school stories?  I don’t think so.  The promise of the New Covenant is that God’s law would no longer be the written letter on paper or stone but it would be written on our hearts (Jer. 31:33).  As people born of the Spirit it is our nature to want to please God.  However, we cannot simply create a written code of regulations for everyone to follow.  This, of course, has been attempted by many Christians throughout the years.  But this is not the way of the Spirit.  If we want to please God, it is no longer a matter of turning to chapter and verse as much as it is about cultivating a genuine communion with our Father.  Paul said we must “try to discern what is pleasing to the Lord” (Eph. 5:10).  In this, the word of God written will be our true friend.  We will soak ourselves in the Scripture from Genesis to Revelation – meditating, praying, exegeting, believing, joyfully obeying – trying to discern.  Then, the 10 commandments and the Beatitudes and even the regulations about mildew cleansing will become as manna from heaven for us.  “Man does not live by bread alone, but by this,” we will say.  We’ll read about the mildew, Sabbaths, feasts, and more and ask, “Father, what does this tell me about your character?  What does this say about what pleases your heart? ” And then, we probably will remember to go spray our shower with Tilex.

     The last two points of the doctrine of creation are as follows:

3.  God directly created human beings in his own image and thus radically different from the rest of creation (cf. Gen. 1:26-27, 5:1, 9:6; Rom. 8:29; 1 Cor. 11:7, 15:49; Eph. 4:24; Jam. 3:9).

4. God created Adam and Eve as the first humans.  They are the real ancestors of the entire human race (Gen. 2:7-8, 21-25, 3:20; Rom. 5:12-21).

     It is here, I think, that Biblical theology comes most in conflict with macro-evolutionary ideas.  There is such a concept as “Theistic Evolution” which essentially claims that there is no necessary contradiction between Biblical theology and Darwinian-type evolution.  And, I suppose that if Darwinism is communicated in a way that doesn’t assume atheism or deism (that is, that it doesn’t contradict either of the first two points of the doctrine of Creation), then, up to that point, theistic evolutionists are correct.  One may hold to the principles of macroevolution and still believe that God not only started the process of creation but has remained involved in it throughout history.  However, points 3 and 4 are just much more difficult to reconcile with a Darwinian worldview.

     First, to be faithful to Scripture, one must believe that a radical distinction exists between humans and other forms of biological life.  There is the imago dei (the image of God) concept to contend with in the Bible.  I find it difficult to conceive of a view of humanity that preserves both the belief that humans alone are made in the image of God and that they the biological descendants of other species of primates.  Things get trickier when we move fully into point 4.  According to Scripture, Adam and Eve were made directly by God in his image.  It was an event – this creation, this bestowing of life, this depositing of the imago dei.  If you are an adherent to theistic evolutionary views, I would really like to hear your theologizing on this issue.  If humans are the product of a slow and gradual process of transmutation, when does the image of God come into play?  At what point is a human being a bearer of imago dei and thereby radically distinct from all creation?  I suppose a theistic version of punctuated equilibrium could lend a hand – which could also help us to get two real ancestors of the human race (i.e. Adam and Eve).  But I think that is really stretching credulity.

      A final word here on the importance of point 4.  You may be wondering why is it necessary to affirm that Adam and Eve really were the first humans – our real ancestors.  I know that there are some that read the first several chapters of Genesis metaphorically.  Others try to read it as a science text book.  I don’t think either approach is exegetically honest.  For example, it seems to me that reading chapter one as being about a sequence of 6 literal 24-hour periods is forcing a modern, Western, monochronic view of time upon the ancient, Middle-Eastern, and polychronic audience to which Moses was writing.  Not to mention God’s limitless ability to make what is a “day” to him seem like billions of years to everyone else (2 Pet. 3:8).  But on the other hand, metephorizing the entire contents of the early chapters of Genesis not only reduces the contents to fairytales in the worst way but also ignores the tenor with which the chapters were written.  The person who reads Genesis 1-11 can’t help but confess that the contents were meant to be believed – they were written as history.  There are ages and genealogies, measurements and boring details.  One might take the position that Genesis 1-11 isn’t true, but that it was written to be believed as actual fact seems self-evident.  Moreover, it seems clear that the New Testament authors, and Jesus himself, believed these early chapters to be genuine historical records (e.g. Mt. 23:35, 24:37, Mk. 10:6, Lk. 3:38, Rom. 5:14, 1 Cor. 15:22, 1 Tim. 2:13-14, Heb. 11:7, 1 Pet. 3:20, 1 Jn. 3:12, Jude 14).

     Of course, the biggest problem with denying our literal descent from Adam and Eve is that doing so wreaks havoc to the essential doctrine of original sin.  The doctrine teaches that Adam and Eve were made sinless, bearing the untainted image of God.  They then sinned by rebelling against God’s command, thus corrupting the nature within them.  Original sin* refers to the fact that since we are all descended from Adam, we have all inherited a sinful nature.  We are, like David, sinful from birth and conceived in iniquity (Ps. 51:5).  We are not sinners because we sin.  Rather, we sin because we are sinners by nature.  Sin and death, and with it our just condemnation, have spread to all humanity (Rom. 5:12-21).  The doctrine of original sin highlights our inherent and emphatic need of a savior.  We cannot please God, seek Him, or become justified in God’s sight apart from the free and sovereign work of His grace in our lives – without the Lord Jesus Christ (Rom. 3:9-20, Eph. 2:1-10).

     So, how can theistic evolutionists reconcile macroevolution with the doctrine of original sin?  If there wasn’t a literal Fall, if there is no literal descent from Adam, where does our sinful nature come from?  I think this is a huge problem for the concept of theistic evolution, and I cannot conceive of a way around it.  One thing is certain, that from birth human beings have an innate proclivity to sin is far more observable than the transmutation of species.   And, at the end of the day, I reject macroevolutionary principles because I don’t find the weight of evidence in favor of Darwinism so compelling as to warrant the kind of theological gymnastics that would be required for reconciling those principles with what I already know to be true – God’s infallible word.

     So that’s where I end my review of the four principles of the Biblical doctrine of creation.  This is where the apologetic battle must be fought for Christ’s sake.  Active creative theism, the imminence and transcendence of God, the imago dei, and the doctrine of original sin are pillars and essentials of the faith one for all delivered to the saints.  And it is the responsibility of every follower of Jesus to earnestly contend for and proclaim these transforming and life-giving truths (1 Pet. 3:15, Jude  3). 

     In a few weeks, we’ll examine the concept of the image of God and attempt to answer the question, “What does it mean that we are made in God’s image?”  But now for something completely different . . . .

[*For more on the doctrine of original sin, read “What is the Biblical Evidence for Original Sin” a brief article by John Piper.]

     The second point of the doctrine of creation is as follows:

2.  After creating the universe, God continued to be actively and intimately related to his creation.  That is to say that God is present and active in the whole universe and in our particular lives (cf. Gen. 1:4, 7-11, 14, 16-18, 20-22, 24-31, 2:1-3, 5-9, Isa. 41:17-20, 43:6-7; 45:7; 65:17; Eph. 2:10; Heb. 1:3).

     And when it really comes down to it, I think this is the main reason why many people are so adamantly opposed to the idea of intelligent design or the possibility that there could be a supreme being ruling over the universe.  Really, there must be some explanation for the astoundingly virulent attitudes of many of atheism’s greatest proponents.  Just take atheistic figurehead Richard Dawkin’s comments for example:

“The God of the Old Testament is arguably the most unpleasant character in all fiction: jealous and proud of it; a petty, unjust, unforgiving control-freak; a vindictive, bloodthirsty ethnic cleanser; a misogynistic, homophobic, racist, infanticidal, genocidal, filicidal, pestilential, megalomaniacal, sadomasochistic, capriciously malevolent bully.”   (Quoted on Dawkins sycophant Steve Wells’ blog from The God Delusion)

     So what’s the cause of all this outright hostility towards the idea of God and towards Christians in particular?  Natural selection? 

     No, I really think it has to do with the implications of point 2 of the doctrine of creation.  I’d be willing to bet that most of these guys (and gals) wouldn’t have very much at all to say about belief in an intelligent creator if that’s all there was to it.  After all, it’s not unusual for them to posit that very thing in the form of some kind of extraterrestrial “seeding” theory (here’s Dawkins on this).  If the creator simply “seeded” biological life on earth and then zipped away to some far off galaxy in their flying saucer, then well and good.  The problem is that the Bible teaches (and science really does affirm*) that God not only created at the beginning, but stuck around afterwards.

     This is the idea that sinful people (myself included before I met Christ) have always shuddered at.  The idea that there is an omnipotent God ruling over the entire universe and prying into your personal affairs is just pretty scary when you think about it.  Moreover, when it turns out that this God actually cares about things like right and wrong, holiness and obedience, love and justice – well, YIKES!  There is a sense in which Dawkins is right in calling God unpleasant.  For those who live their lives in enmity towards God, nothing could be more unpleasant than to realize that it all matters.

     It seems to me that atheism is the ultimate crutch for those who don’t want to face the fact that God sees and cares.   Atheists like Dawkins are on a boat to Tarshish, and what they don’t seem to understand is that sleeping in the cabin won’t make the storm go away. 

     We need to be ready and willing to try to persuade such people to believe in God and the salvation that he offers through his son, Jesus Christ (2 Cor. 5:11).  But we also must persistently pray for our atheistic friends and family that God will mercifully pursue them, granting them faith and repentance that leads to a life-giving knowledge of the truth (2 Tim. 2:25).

[*There is a good scientific discussion of this in The Case for a Creator.]

     In my previous post,  I presented four major principles taught by the Bible with respect to the doctrine of Creation.  I want now to reflect a bit further on these ideas. 

1.   The source and cause of the created world is an uncreated God who is thus supreme and sovereign over all creation (cf. Gen. 1:1ff; Ps. 89:11, 104:24, 148; Isa. 40:25-26, 42:5; Eph. 3:9; Col. 1:16; Heb. 1:2; Rev. 4:11).

     I won’t spend much time on this idea because I feel like I’ve already addressed it to some extent.  The bottom line is that if you push them far enough, Darwinists find it impossible to get around the need for an intelligent designer.  As I said previously, they just can’t get the evolutionary engine running without someone turning the key.  Or, if you prefer, they can’t roll the Yahtzee. 

     Now, what ends up happening, is that the atheist will almost always respond to this dilemma by asking who created God.  The rationale is that if the complexity of a protein molecule requires an intelligent creator, surely the greatly more complex creator needs an even more intelligent source.  It seems that the attempt is to make the teleological argument for the existence of God seem unreasonable. 

     I have heard Christian apologists respond to this, but I haven’t found their responses all that compelling.  To me,  all this question does it require us to assume that the ultimate source of creation must be itself eternal and self-existent.   Maybe I’m missing something, but I do not get why that doesn’t make sense to the atheist.  It is completely reasonable to assume that there is an intelligence that is responsible for the origin of the universe and that this intelligence is eternal and has aseity.  And it just so happens, that the Bible describes God as having those attributes (e.g. Ps. 90:2).

     Have you encountered other arguments that you find difficult to respond to?  Post in the comment section and we’ll talk.

Blessings!

     Before we leave the topic of creation, I want to spend some time talking about where the real battleground is for those who want to be faithful to the Scriptures.  That is, I want to talk about the Biblical doctrine of creation.  As we encounter Darwinists in our attempt to communicate spiritual truth, I think it is critical that we know where exactly we should be focusing our apologetics.  There are certain battles that we simply don’t need to be fighting. 

     It has often been the case in church history that Christians have picked the wrong fights, often claiming that the Bible teaches things that it does not.  For example, when Galileo Galilei supported the Copernican view of a heliocentric universe, he was charged with heresy and forced to recant his claims.  The Roman Inquisition incorrectly believed that the Bible taught that the earth was in the center of the universe.  This exegetical blunder has long been one of the great historical and unnecessary embarrassments of the Church.

     It is absolutely essential that we understand what the Bible actually teaches regarding the doctrine of creation, so we don’t find ourselves fighting silly battles that are at best a waste of time.  In short, I find that the Scripture teaches four key truths regarding creation that we must understand, believe, and vigorously defend.  I have listed these principles below with several scriptural texts that  support them:

1.   The source and cause of the created world is an uncreated God who is thus supreme and sovereign over all creation (cf. Gen. 1:1ff; Ps. 89:11, 104:24, 148; Isa. 40:25-26, 42:5; Eph. 3:9; Col. 1:16; Heb. 1:2; Rev. 4:11).

2.  After creating the universe, God continued to be actively and intimately related to his creation.  That is to say that God is present and active in the whole universe and in our particular lives (cf. Gen. 1:4, 7-11, 14, 16-18, 20-22, 24-31, 2:1-3, 5-9, Isa. 41:17-20, 43:6-7; 45:7; 65:17; Eph. 2:10; Heb. 1:3).

3.  God directly created human beings in his own image and thus radically different from the rest of creation (cf. Gen. 1:26-27, 5:1, 9:6; Rom. 8:29; 1 Cor. 11:7, 15:49; Eph. 4:24; Jam. 3:9).

4. God created Adam and Eve as the first humans.  They are the real ancestors of the entire human race (Gen. 2:7-8, 21-25, 3:20; Rom. 5:12-21).

      To the extent that Darwinism challenges any of these principles, Christians who desire to be faithful to the Bible have a serious theological motivation for engaging in debate.  Indeed, we must be willing and ready to give a defense of these essential Biblical truths (1 Pet. 3:15).   The good news is that some really great resources like the Case for a Creator, Expelled, and the Face that Demonstrates the Farce of Evolution are available to help us in this battle.

     Now, beyond these four points, I don’t believe there is a strong Biblical exegetical or theological reason for arguing with non-believers.  No one is being kept out of God’s Kingdom because they believe in an old earth or that dinosaurs weren’t contemporary to humans.  There are plenty of “in-house” debates that Christians can have on these kind of side issues, but it is the essentials that we must proclaim and defend in our various mission contexts. 

     To be sure, Darwinism as it is commonly delineated is clearly heretical, a worldview that is undeniably anti-Biblical.  It certainly fails on theological grounds from a Biblical perspective.  But it is worth remembering that on a completely different level, the scientific, Darwinism falls short of glory.  Darwinism tends to be just bad science that cannot withstand real scrutiny and so does not invite any.

     Over the next few blogs, I plan to reflect a bit more on the four principles of the doctrine of creation mentioned above.  For now, I invite you to let me know in the comment section if you think there are parts of the doctrine that I have overlooked and that you feel should be included among the other four.

Power and Magic: The Concept of Power in Ephesians by Clinton Arnold

A Brief Review

     Well it took some doing but I’ve just finished reading Arnold’s thematic commentary on Paul’s (yes, Paul’s) epistle to the Ephesians.  I breathed a great sigh of relief when my eyes finally reached the end of that last page.  It is a very difficult book.  For the unengaged, don’t bother.  If you don’t at least have some functional Greek, you’ll be in trouble for most of the book.  Not to mention that Arnold assumes his readers are acquainted with the kinds of debates that go on among New Testament scholars deep in the recesses of the ivory towers – he basically jumps right into the fray, and if you don’t work very hard you’ll get lost fast.

     Now, having said that, I got through it.  What’s more, I think I kind of understand what Arnold was saying.  So it can be done.  The real question, of course, is whether or not Power and Magic is worth the trouble. 

     My answer is an unqualified and enthusiastic, “YES!!!”  C. Peter Wagner (yeah, I know) in a blurb on the back of this book claims that Arnold’s commentary makes the classic commentaries on Ephesians “virtually obsolete.”  Well, after reading Power and Magic  myself I find that statement hard to argue with.  Arnold has undertaken to interpret Ephesians in light of its cultural and spiritual context.  I know that seems like a pretty common sense approach.  However, it also seems that no one else has every really thought of it.  Furthermore, Arnold does this with great skill.  His work on the background of western Asia Minor and Ephesus in particular are absolutely priceless.  In so many ways, Arnold has provided a long-lost key to unlocking the mysteries of Ephesians.  I am now darn near convinced that without this key (i.e. a deep understanding of the Ephesian context, especially in terms of magic and power), many of the riches of this epistle and therefore its relevance for us as followers of Jesus, students of Scripture and participants in God’s global mission will simply remain unearthed.

     So, here’s my recommendation:  if you plan to do some serious study or teaching related to the book of Ephesians, do yourself a favor and read Arnold’s text.  Especially pay attention to chapter 2, “The religious climate of western Asia Minor in the first century A.D.” and the conclusion chapter (little Greek required, awesome insights).  What is needed now is a more lay-level commentary on Ephesians that effectively brings Arnold’s insights to the whole Church.  I would also like to see some work done that considers the implications of this reading of Ephesians on modern cross-cultural mission.  In particular, Arnold has painted a picture of the Ephesian church as being one not altogether different in composition and background from the present-day churches of Africa, Asia, and Latin America.  A truly missiological commentary of Ephesians would be the wonderful resulting treasure for the Church.