Puritan Prayers from the Valley of Vision,

Confession and Petition

Holy Lord, I have sinned times without number, and been guilty of pride and unbelief, of failure to find Thy mind in Thy Word, of neglect to seek Thee in my daily life. My transgressions and short-comings present me with a list of accusations, but I bless Thee that they will not stand against me, for all have been laid on Christ. Go on to subdue my corruptions, and grant me grace to live above them. Let not the passions of the flesh nor lustings of the mind bring my spirit into subjection, but do Thou rule over me in liberty and power.

I thank Thee that many of my prayers have been refused. I have asked amiss and do not have, I have prayed from lusts and been rejected, I have longed for Egypt and been given a wilderness. Go on with Thy patient work, answering ‘no’ to my wrongful prayers, and fitting me to accept it. Purge me from every false desire, every base aspiration, everything contrary to Thy rule. I thank Thee for Thy wisdom and Thy love, for all the acts of discipline to which I am subject, for sometimes putting me into the furnace to refine my gold and remove my dross.

No trial is so hard to bear as a sense of sin. If Thou shouldst give me choice to live in pleasure and keep my sins, or to have them burnt away with trial, give me sanctified affliction. Deliver me from every evil habit, every accretion of former sins, everything that dims the brightness of Thy grace in me, everything that prevents me taking delight in Thee. Then I shall bless Thee, God of jeshurun, for helping me to be upright.

Thanks Steve for the link

I preached a sermon on the idolatry of science and technology last week. The audio can be found here, it is the evening service on 22/11/09

I have battled my way in the last few weeks half-way through this important study by Douglas Campbell. This book offers a serious challenge to justification by faith, whether one takes a ‘Lutheran’ of Wrightian New Perspective.  It offers a new paradigm rather than a new perspective.

I was pleased to see hear that a recent discussion of this book at SBL is available to listen to. It involves a discussion of this book from Gorman, Moo and Torrance with questions from Hays and Wright. Here is the link Thanks to Andy Rowell for making this audio available to those who couldn’t make SBL.

The award winning Encyclopedia Judaica is available online for free

The latest volume of Themelios is out which contains a review of N.T Wright’s Justification:Paul’s Vision and God’s Plan by a man called David Mathis from a place called Bethlehem Baptist Church. I thought that sounded familiar so I googled his name and discovered that he is the executive pastoral assistant to John Piper.

That is pretty weird….

Given the seriousness of this interchange between Wright and Piper you might have thought that they may have asked a reviewer who didn’t work for Piper. As it turns out, and there is no surprise here, it is quite a negative review. I do wonder if Piper may have had a hand in it….

 

 

I thought I better do this as Belder and the Bishop tagged me. Hopefully Taylor may join in.

1) What’s your favourite theology book?
Ahhh! That is difficult. I have different books for different phases of my life

John Piper: The Pleasures of God
When I was in my late teens this book powerfullly set forth a high view of God. A powerful tonic to an anthropocentric view of the world.

Creation Regained by Al Wolters: In my early twenties this book exposed my dualism and set the foundation for a non-reductionistic view of the kingdom and the gospel.

N.T. Wright: Jesus and the Victory of God: In my late twenties this book helped me to better understand the historical Jesus

Rikk Watts: Isaiah’s New Exodus in Mark: In the last few years I keep on coming back to this book. This book has shaped and is still shaping how I read Mark and appoach teh Old Testament.

2) What Christian(s) book has been most influential in your thinking? Why?
Creation Regained: Al Wolters  Life became richer! Mission became life encompassing

3) Where do you attend church?
St Micheals, Stoke Gifford Bristol

4) What is your denominational affiliation?
Church of England

5) Who is your favourite theologian/Christian philosopher?
John Calvin,   Lesslie Newbigin, N. T. Wright, Chris Wright, Rikk Watts

6) Who is your favourite preacher?
My dad…

7) What is your calling as a Christian (if you’ve figured that out!)?
To be human. To love God and enjoy him forever. To be an agent of reconciliation. To be a husband and dad. To teach and preach. To bring theological education to the church. To be a servant of the church.

What spiritual virtue do you desire most?
Greater depth and persistence in personal prayer

9) What is the greatest challenge to the church today?
Depends who we are talking about:
Conservative Evangelicalism: To reduce the gospel to personal peity and evangelism
Mainline CHurches: To be more influenced by  zeitgeist than scipture

10) What bothers you most about the local church?
I have noticed a copy of the ‘Left Behind’ series in the Church Library.

11) What encourages you most about the local church?
Love the Bible, Love each other, impacting local community, openness to the Holy Spirit.

12) Pre, post, or Amil?
I have postmillenial tendencies….
Jesus shall reign where’er the sun
Does his successive journeys run;
His kingdom stretch from shore to shore,
Till moons shall wax and wane no more.

13) Antichrist…past or future?
Margaret Thatcher! just kidding….. both/and

14) If you could only keep 5 Christian books with you on a desert island, what would they be?

Bible: Preferably a study bible with notes, maps and concordance.
Greek New Testament + Greek Grammer Book + BDAG lexicon Apostolic Fathers in Greek (might finally be able to get my greek up to scratch)
Church of England’s ‘Daily Prayer’
Maybe Bavink’s Reformed Dogmatics: Never read it but want to!
Hymn Book of some description (preferably something which blends old and new)

15) What got you thinking theologically?
debates as a teenager on United Beach Missions about Calvinism and Arminianism.

The Death of Jesus in the Gospel of Mark

The purpose of my last few months of research has been to explore, within the narrative of the gospel of Mark, the link between Jesus’ death and the Temple.  This link is clearly to be seen at the surface level of the passion narratives where the  Temple and the  cross are fused together in the closing stages of the Markan narrative. For instance, Jesus at his trial, which leads directly to his execution, is  falsely accused of saying that he would destroy the Temple sanctuary ( ναὸν) and replace it with another (14:58). This accusation is repeated during the crucifixion  in the form of mockery  (15:29) and at the point of death the link between Jesus’ death and the Temple is made explicit, ‘for a single instant…. we [the reader] are transplanted from Golgotha to the Temple area, and then back to Golgotha’ when the veil of the Temple was torn (ἐσχίσθη)  in two (15:38).

The attached paper (click on title above)  seeks to explore these themes.

I came across this quote from John Chrysostom(347-407) which I thought I would share.  This is a voice of the past but sadly resonates with much of the contemporary Anglican church.

You have often been present at the burning of large houses. You have noticed how the smoke keeps rising to the sky. If no one comes near to put a stop to the mischief, but every one keeps looking to himself, the flame spreads freely on, and devours everything. It may happen that the whole city will stand around; they will stand around merely as spectators of the evil, not to aid nor assist. And there you may see them one and all standing round, and doing nothing, with various individuals stretching out their hands, and pointing out to some one who may have just arrived, either a flaming brand that moment flying through a window, or beams hurled down, or a whole exterior wall forced to fall outward, and tumbling violently to the ground.
And there may be some around who are more daring and venture-some, who will have the boldness even to come close to the very buildings themselves while they are burning, not in order to lift a finger to help them or to put a stop to the mischief, but that they may the more fully enjoy the sight, being able from the nearer place to observe closely all that which often escapes those standing at a distance. If the house should happen to be large and magnificent, it appears to them a pitiable spectacle, and deserving of many tears. And truly there is a pitiable spectacle for us to behold—capitals of columns crumbling to dust, and many columns themselves shattering to pieces, some consumed by the fire, others thrown down often by the very hands that erected them, that they may not add fuel to the flame. Statues which stood with so much gracefulness with ceilings resting on them now stand exposed, with the roof torn off, standing hideously disfigured in the open air. And why should one go on to describe the wealth stored up in the house—the gold interlaid fabrics, the vessels of silver? What has now become of the storehouse of fabrics and perfumes, and the caskets of the costly jewels stored in a room the owners seldom visited? It has all become one blazing fire. Now coming in and out of the house are persons coming from their baths, cleaning persons, servants and many others. The whole house is one muddle of fire and water, mud and dust, and half-burnt beams!
Now why have I drawn out so full a picture as this? Not simply because I wish to picture the conflagration of a house, for that is no essential concern of mine. Rather I wish to set before your eyes, as vividly as I can, the calamities of the Church. For like a conflagration indeed, as if from a thunderbolt hurled from on high, a fire is blazing in the roof of the Church. Yet no one seems roused up by it yet. Meanwhile our Father’s house is burning, and we have remained asleep.…
Upon awakenening we stand gazing in amazement at the flames, but no longer able to quench the evil, or if we do quench it for a while, after a short time a spark is rekindled from a heap of ashes and begins consuming everything just as before. So it is now occurring with the Church, just what happens during a conflagration. It has already devoured the supports of the very pillars of the Church. Even the most faithful who had been supporting the roof, and who formerly held the whole building together it has enveloped in the flame. So the fire moved easily to the rest of the outer walls. Just as in the case of buildings, when the fire penetrates the timbers, it is better armed for its attack upon the stones, and when it has brought down the pillars and leveled them with the ground, little more is needed to consume everything else in flames. For when the props and supports of the upper parts fall down, the rest will speedily follow.
This is just where we are today in the life of the church: the fire has penetrated into every part.… We are no longer able to counsel those who are under our guidance, because we ourselves also are possessed with the same fever as they. We who are appointed by God to heal others, need the physician ourselves. What further hope of recovery is there left, when even the very physicians themselves need the healing hand of others?

(John Chrysostom, Homilies on Ephesians, Hom. X, NPNF 1, XIII, pp. 100–101)