seeing in a mirror dimly

Just a quick heads up for anyone who’s keen to come along:

The Prebyterian Theological College is hosting an Open Lecture by Paul Helm on the 15th September.
Moore Theological College is hosting a Calvin500 Conference on the 16th-17th September.

Paul Helm is Professor in History and Philosophy at Kings College, University of London, and holds the J.I. Packer Chair in Theology and Philosophy, Regent College, Canada.

Amongst numerous other interests, Dr Helm has special expertise in the links between Calvin’s thought and its development among Calvinists of the 17th century and is the author of Calvin and the Calvinists, 1982.  He’s written a whole lot of God, Time and Foreknowledge, and is coming to Australia at the perfect time for my doctrine essay!

If anyone’s keen to come along and grab dinner at the RSL before the lecture at PTC, let me know!

Mark Thompson has just posted up a bunch of short summaries of the papers given at the Edinburgh Dogmatics Conference.  Very interesting bunch of speakers: Henri Blocher, Mike Horton, Bruce McCormack, John Franke and Mark Thompson himself.  Here’s s little snippet from Mark’s summary of his paper:

“Perhaps the most controversial part of my paper was the suggestion that the relationship between preaching and the sacraments can help us to clarify what preaching is about. In other words, preaching can be displaced by sacramental maximalism and it can also be distorted by sacramental minimalism. The sacraments remind us that the Christ of preaching is ‘Christ crucified’ not some abstract theological principle; they insist on the proper posture of the Christian as one who receivessalvation rather than effecting it; and they will not allow us to reduce preaching and the Christian life in general to the purely rationalist apprehension of eternal truths.

Some rather insistent voices suggest that the problem with some of our preaching at least is that it contains too much theology, making the sermon too complicated or too remote from the concrete realities of Christian living. I suggest what we need is more theology, not less and, in particular, careful thinking about the place preaching has in our doctrine of the church.”

Go, and check out the rest! Here.

It was Steve and my great privilege to have Dr. Ashley Null as our guest on the Pilgrim’s Podcast this week! We sat out on the rooftop of our building on a beautifully sunny morning and drank sparkling mineral water whilst we talked about God and life.  What could be better!

Ashley is a fantastic guy and an encouraging brother in the Lord.  Formally, he is the canon theologian of the Episcopal Diocese of Western Kansas, visting fellow at Cambridge University, visting research fellow at Humboldt-Universitat in Berlin, and recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship.  One of the foremost experts on Cranmer and the English Reformation, he is the author of Thomas Cranmer’s Doctrine of Repentance: Renewing the Power to Love.

In the interview we get to know him, and hear all about his growth in love for the Lord Jesus.  We ask Ashley what sort of relevance the Anglican church has for young ‘post-denominational’ Christians in Sydney, and get a fascinating answer!  One of the highlights for me though, was hearing Ashley’s thoughts on worship: he clearly explains some of they key differences between the Anglican and Presbyterian understandings of worship – the normative and regulative principles, respectively.

This was such a good interview it was for about an hour! So, this is part one.  Enjoy!

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Well folks, here’s the first ever showdown between Moore and SMBC.  We know you’ve been waiting for it! Chris Ashton, a good bloke (yes, there are some!*) from SMBC comes to the Pilgrim’s Podcast studio and reps his college.  And he does a cracker job of it too!

From churches around Sydney, to the vibe of church planting, to reformed theology, and all the way to creeds – we have a great yarn about these things!

Chris’ blog is over at: chrisashton.com.au Check it out! Good guy.  Good site.  Good yarn.

*disclaimer: that was a joke.  We really love our brothers and sisters at SMBC!

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I’ve just finished reading Colin E. Gunton’s ‘The Triune Creator‘.  His main argument seems to be that Creation is a Project which the Father works through His two hands: the Son and the Spirit.  Basically, it’s a Trinitarian rooting to the doctrine of creation.  He does a historical survey of the theology and philosophy which has led to the Platonising of the doctrine of creation, and this seems to be due to a non-Trinitarian basis within those particular doctrines of creation.  It’s an interesting read, from a thoughtful scholar.

His main bad-guys are Origen and Augustine, who have smuggled in the arch-bad-guy Plato to their thinking.  The main good-guys that Gunton holds up are Irenaeus and Basil who he posits are more Trinitarian, and less Platonic.  For instance:

“Augstine’s treatment of creation out of nothing is therefore ambivalent.  Where Irenaeus and Basil had employed it to defend the goodness of the material world, albeit a goodness sometimes qualified by remnants of platonism, Augustine has taken a step back.” p79.

Of all the chapters, I particularly found the final chapter really helpful.  It’s on Eschatology and Ethics and tries to navigate throught the ‘Futurist’ and ‘Eschatological’ theologies of Moltmann and Pannenberg so that the whole project of creation impacts the present.  He goes more with Pannenberg, than Moltmann:

“What has been attempted is a theological basis for a right use of the inescapable human dominion, one implying a measure of human responsibility for the way things are, but also falling far short of the ecologically oriented theology of creation of Moltmann” p228.

My only criticisms were a) that the first half of the book was just painful to get through.  It wasn’t a very tightly wound argument and felt like he was just rambling – which I suspect he was, b) that I felt that Gunton treated Augustine very unfairly – something like Gunton’s own punching-bag.*  But, c) my main area of disagreement with Gunton was in his Christcentric interpretation of the imago dei on pages 198-200: that the image of God in mankind ought to be seen primarily in light of the incarnate Christ as per the Colossian hymn.

Firstly, this doesn’t seem biblical to me. It doesn’t account for the abundance of texts which refers to Christ being made in human likeness.  Eg, Rom. 8:3, Phil 2:7-8, Heb 2:14.  No matter how Christocentrically you want to twist the texts, I think these texts of Scripture militate against that reading – Christ was made in our likeness!

Secondly, it seems nonsensical.  If the Colossian hymn pushes us to see that all things were made in him (the image of the invisible God), then we are talking about the pre-incarnate Christ! After all, it makes no sense to think about an incarnate Christ prior to Eden! Surely reading the Colossian hymn with the pre-incarnate Christ in view is a more sensible and Christocentric way to go!

I think I’d prefer to go with the standard interpretation of the Image of God.  Bavinck summarises nicely:

“Scripture repeatedly tells us that humankind was made in the image of God, not that we have been modeled on Christ, but that he was made [human] in our likeness (Rom. 8:3, Phil. 2:7-8, Heb. 2:14), and that we, having been conformed to the image of Christ, are now again becoming like God (Rom. 8:29, 1 Cor 15:49, 2 Cor. 3:18, Phil 3:21, Eph. 4:24, Col 3:10, 1 John 3:2). Reformed Dogmatics, Vol2, p554.

So, all in all, this was a stimulating book to read.  Helpful, and good for sharpening.  Let me finish with what I thought was a beautiful section of his book:

“Art is thus one of the human ways of participating in God’s project of creation.  It is redemptive in the sense that it is an activity which enables the creation to reach towards the perfection that is its destiny.  And it enables us to articulate the criterion for an ethic of creation: action for the glory of God.” p234.

* Mark Thompson is blogging on Augustine, so head over here and see how it squares up with Gunton’s punching bag!  Further, Gunton has been critiqued for misreading Augustine (see, Neil Ormerod and Michel René Barnes from Seamus’ blog here)

This is an absolute cracker of a Pilgrim’s Podcast! It might even top last week’s one! Bishop Glenn Davies joined us for a great interview about a whole bunch of things! In fact, we just touched the tip of an iceberg’s worth of discussion – hopefully there’ll be a part two soon.

We discussed Glenn’s theological training and time at Westminster Theological Seminary.  We heard about his training in good Reformed theology under John Frame, and also his appreciation for Cornelius Van Til and Vern Poythress.  We also heard all about exciting opportunities within the Anglican Church in Sydney to grow new churches within the parish system.  And we spent had a cracker of a chat about Infant Baptism (which Glenn prefers to call Covenantal Baptism!) and the Sacraments.

So much good stuff here, and we really enjoyed a great bit of banter with Bishop Glenn.  Hope this Podcast is as much of a blessing to you, as it was to us to be part of!

Update: Here is a link to something Glenn has published on the topic of Covenant and Baptism: download.

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Well, over Friday evening and through Saturday, a group of about 50 of us had the privilege of hearing Carl Trueman speak on the topic of Creeds and Confessions.  It was excellent – lots of stuff to think about, and lots of great encouragement too! Carl took three sessions (with Mark Thompson taking a great session on the 39 Articles in between) which were:

1. Christians who know what they believe in a world which believes nothing
2. Confessing Christ in context
3. Confessing Christ in the future

These are some of the key points I thought Carl made during his lectures (it’s a little random, but worth putting down!):

- Contra today’s emphasis on progress, and the future, Christians know that 1) Truth is verbally formulated, 2) There are bodies which do the formulation, and 3) Truth can, to some extent, cross time and space.
- God does Church, we don’t! And Church is a doctrinal entity (not purely experiential), which presupposes knowledge and experience, which in turn presupposes office (Heb 14:7-9, 1 Tim 5:17,  Romans 10:9, Titus 1:5, James 3).  Thus, training and age are important.
- The order of Calvin’s institutes cannot be read up into his theology. Crucial.
- There are two types of Christian: One who writes their creeds down in order to be open with what they believe, and the other who prefers to keep them in the background
- The fact that Calvin and Luther didn’t reject the perpetual virginity of Mary shows how they valued tradition.
- The proof-texts of the Westminster Confession of Faith point you to traditions in the commentaries – they aren’t crude and brute proofs in and of themselves.  They urge you to pick up the 30 or 40 commentaries on that verse to see why the point was made.
- Confessions are necessary for corporate unity.  Eg: the Emerging Church is correct to point out the individualism of current evangelicalism, but hasn’t solved the problem since they haven’t produced any confession of belief.  Thus, they have a rubbery, non-existent corporate unity.
- Confessions demonstrate our integrity.  Eg, Luther and Zwingli and their disagreement on the Lord’s Supper: [it] “was a tragedy, but would have been an even greater tragedy if they had agreed.”
- Confessions require catechisms.  They are vital to the communication of the faith.  Carl agrees with Jaroslav Pelikan: “any movement that is based around personal salvation in Jesus but is divorced from creeds and confessions is doomed.”
- Confessions relativise the present.  Since they stand the test of time, but they be used to measure how significant current issues are.
- Carl made an interesting suggestion of preaching through confessions.  Morning worship with expository sermons, then a church family lunch, then afternoon worship with a sermon based around the week’s confessional point.
- Confessions must not simply be used as a test of orthodoxy, but they should ultimately bring us back to doxology – since of course, that was in the mind of the framers!

Personally, I’ve been challenged to think about my doctrine of baptism, and the importance of this for my future ministry in the Anglican Church. I think I’ve been taking this doctrine quite lightly, but actually should reconsider this, in light of upholding the 39 artictles.  And also, I’d be keen to think about preaching through the 39 articles at some point also (bar the one on the Queen!).

So, all in all – a great conference and a great guy.  I’m looking forward to Wednesday night’s lecture back at the PTC.  It’s on BB Warfield’s theology.  Info here.

Carl Trueman, of Westminster Theological Seminary is one of the best historical theologians I’ve heard before (along with Ashley Null who’s speaking at Moore College at the moment). Carl is the keynote speaker at the “Confess or Die” conference at the Presbyterian Theological College in Sydney this weekend. I’ll hopefully have some thoughts up about that over the weekend.

But here’s a great video to check out. It’s Carl Trueman speaking about John Owen, who was described by John Webster as the greatest ever english speaking theologian! Check it out! And if you’re free over the weekend, come down to the Confess or Die conference!

Well, they’ve just updated this great website! And in case you haven’t been there before, let me introduce you to Monergism.com. It’s a truly wonderful website for all sorts of theological investigations! From little things to big things, it’s got it all. A Directory of Theology where you can search by many, many topics. MP3′s, sermons, articles, papers, blurbs and even a bookshop – everything you’ll ever want! So do go and check it out. You’ll like it (hopefully!)… Oh, and in case you’re wondering what Monergism means?

(from the site)
“The view that the Holy Spirit is the only agent who effects regeneration of Christians. It is in contrast with synergism, the view that there is a cooperation between the divine and the human in the regeneration process. Monergism is a redemptive blessing purchased by Christ for those the Father has given Him (1 Pet 1:3, John 3:5,6, 6:37, 39). This grace works independently of any human cooperation and conveys that power into the fallen soul whereby the person who is to be saved is effectually enabled to respond to the gospel call (John 1:13; Acts 2:39, 13:48; Rom 9:16).”

I’m not keen to get stuck blogging all about the New Perspective, because – well, for among many reasons I think there are much more interesting theological things to explore out there! Not to mention the fact that flaming goes on enough in the blogosphere!

But I did find these two critiques of the New Perspective(s) quite interesting.  Particularly Paul Helm’s one.  They’re both by scholars who I’ve got a lot of time for, and really appreciate their works.  So I thought I’d share them.

Paul Helm’s critique: Why Covenant Faithfulness is not Divine Righteousness (and cannot be)

Gerald Bray’s critique: The Wrighteousness of God