Christian Assumptions

(Originally written February 15, 2007 in Book 14)

Christianity and Religious Pluralism

The key in religion is the question, "But is it true?"

I could accept Christianity as true if...
- God were to appear to me
- Christians weren't such hypocrites
- There wasn't so much evil in the world
- There was some way of my being able to figure out if Christianity as truer than all other religions

Christian Assumption

1) Authority of Scripture
- The meaning of inspiration
- 2 Timothy 3:15 "And that from childhood you have known the Holy Scriptures, which are able to make you wise for salvation through faith which is in Jesus Christ"
- 2 Peter 1:20-21 "He was chosen before the creation of the world, but was revealed in these last times for your sake. Through him you believe in God, who raised him from the dead and glorified him, and so your faith and hope are in God"
- The locus of inspiration
- not the reader
- to some extent the writers
- most importantly the text
- (plenary verbal)

2) Historicity of Christ
- Grounded in and tied to history
- 2 Peter 1:16-18, "For it is written: 'Be Holy, because I am holy'. Since you call on a Father who judges each person's work impartially, live out your time as foreigners here in reverent fear. For you know that it was not with perishable things such as silver or gold that you were redeemed from the empty way of life handed down to you from your ancestors.
- Cannot separate Jesus Christ the person from the teachings of Christ.

3) Mediation by Christ
- The utter inability of human beings to restore themselves to a relationship with God
- Original sin, fallenness and total depravity
- I John 1:5, "This is the message we have heard from him and declare to you: God is light; in him there is no darkness at all".
- The completed work of Christ
-Displaying the righteousness of God
-Atonement

4) Salvation

A) Salvation: the necessary condition
- intellectual faith (belief that)
- Trusting faith (belief in)
- Reliance on Christ alone

B) Salvation: the necessary consequence
- Good works are the necessary consequences of true faith

Righteousness of Christ Necessary condition (faith alone) -> Human Person -> Changed life (necessary consequence of faith)

Discipleship and how to study the Bible

(Originally Written May 8, 2006 in 3 Subject Book)

Introduction to Christian Education

Colossians 1:28 "He is the one we proclaim, admonishing and teaching everyone with all wisdom, so that we may present everyone fully mature in Christ"

Ephesians 4:11-12 "So Christ himself gave the apostles, the prophets, the pastors and teachers, to equip his people for works of service so that the body of Christ may be built up."

Disciple - follower, pupil, learner
Disciple is used two ways in the New Testament
1) Broad: meaning a follower
2) Narrow: followed Jesus' teaching and bore fruit

Discipleship is a process of learning theology and practice

Spiritual growth is vertical and horizontal. It has a whole person focus. (Luke 2:52, Acts 2:42-47).

The third generation of Christians focused on making disciple-makers (II Timothy 2:2)

Vocation:

Vocation is where your deepest joy meets the world (the divine call to serve). A job is merely a way to earn money. A career is a life goal. What is a divine call? It is not specific to place or time. It is not a way to make life easy. It is not waiting for a voice.

Theory of Revelation:

Liberal - eliminates the supernatural, a perspective of religions, man is generally good
Contemporary - (neo-orthodoxy) contra to the liberal (Karl Barth)
Conservative (evangelical)

One's view of scripture changes the way you view information and the way you teach.

Inductive Bible Study

Deductive - start with a general principle and move to specific details
Inductive (exegesis) - start with specific details and move to a general principle using hermeneutics

Hermeneutics - methods of interpretation

IBS method
1) Observation - what does it say?
2) Interpretation - what does it mean?
3) Generalization - what's the big idea?
4) Application - what's the difference?
5) Implementation - what must I change?

Description vs. Prescriptive interpretation
The Big idea - the point, the composition, the central theme
Ask:
1) What is the author talking about?
2) What is the author saying about what he is talking about?

Application:
Take a specific principle and apply it to a specific situation and apply a specific action plan.

In a lesson plan there are three objectives to touch:
1) A person's head - engage the mind
2) A person's hand - get them to do something
3) A person's heart - get them to feel something

Notes on the Formation, Interpretation and Composition of Scriptures

(Originally written February 3, 2006 in Book 23)

A Faith for all Season

Chapter 2 - The Need for Holy Scripture

Originally, God created a perfect world in this perfect world there was no distinction between special and general revelation. God's words and God's works (creation) were together. God's works (man) rebelled gains God's words. God could no longer be in the presence of His works because of their sinfulness and neither could God's word. Thus, each is still full of general revelation (God's works) but special revelation (His words) are nowhere to be found. Salvation can not be provided by general revelation, special revelation is needed. God provide that special revelation: the Scriptures and Jesus Christ.

Scripture as the Word of God

Theologians throughout history have affirmed what Jesus said: that scripture was and is the word of God (John 10:35)

The Church's belief of scripture as the word of God's is closely linked with the doctrine of divine inspiration of Scripture.

The doctrine of divine inspiration of Scripture comes from 2 Timothy 3:16-17. All Scripture is inspired by God. The NIV translates it as "God-breathed" The Greek in this passage uses the word "theopneustos" (literally God + Breath)

2 Peter 1:20-21 confirms that the authors were not simply inspired to write something; but the words themselves were inspired by God. No prophecy of Scripture came about by the prophet's own interpretation for the prophecy never had its origin in the will of men, but men spoke from God as they were carried along by the Holy Spirit.

Both Paul and Peter were referring to Scripture as the Old Testament, but applying to the New Testament is justified by 3 things:
1) Jesus saw his mission and message as in accordance with the Old Testament
2) Jesus made his apostles agents of divine revelation inspired by the Holy Spirit
3) Jesus stated that future believers would come to faith through the apostolic word

The Scripture is useful in two ways:
1) Doctrine
2) Practice

The Scripture can be used to accomplish 4 Things:
1) Teaching: the idea of proclaiming the truth
2) Rebuking: the idea of combating doctrinal error
3) Correction: the act of leading someone away from an ungodly lifestyle (this is about ethics, not doctrine)
4) Training in righteousness: helping people lead godly lives

The Scriptures make the man of God complete

Nobody profits from understanding the Scriptures if they do not accept and follow them.

Sometimes the words verbal and plenary are used to describe the traditional Christian doctrine of Biblical inspiration

Verbal, Plenary Inspiration

Plenary means full, therefore "plenary inspiration" is full inspiration

"Verbal inspiration" is the idea that the words of Scripture are the exact words God wanted written.

Most Christians do not believe that God dictated to the writers. He allowed them to keep their personalities and styles in their books. God dictating is what Islam believes is the origin of the Qu'ran.

Some Christians believe that God inspired feelings and ideas in the writers. This takes in account for the differing styles in the books. This view however states that the Bible is only quantitatively superior to other works.

The historic consensus of theology is qualitatively superior to other works.

Modern Protestants take the Scriptures as both the word of God and the words of men. This view is that God supervised the writing to get what he wanted said written, but allowed the human authors to keep their humanity and individuality in their work.

Modern Alternatives to Verbal, Plenary Inspiration

Karl Barth: a 20th century Swiss theologian

In his "Church Dogmatics", Barth acknowledges only Jesus Christ as special revelation.

According to Barth's view the Bible is not special revelation and there is no general revelation. The only way God reveals himself is through Jesus Christ.

Revelation only occurs through the risen Jesus Christ living inside of Christian.

Barth denies that the Bible is the "word of God". He states that the Bible can only become the word of God when Jesus Christ uses it to convict us.

Barth believed that knowledge of God was beyond any man's capabilities.

Barth's form of theology is Dialectical theology.

Dialectical theology is when God comes to us as the One who is beyond comprehension and he judges anyone who attempts to comprehend him.

However, Barth changed his views later in life. He states that God can actually be known, but not because man is capable of knowing him. Man can know God because God bridged the gap between humanity and God through Jesus Christ.

In Barth's view the Bible, while not revelation in and of itself, is a witness to revelation in the person of Jesus Christ.

Another school of modern theology bases their beliefs, not on the revelation being in Jesus Christ, but in the belief that the revelation of God comes from the historical events of God's redemption.

Scripture, in this view, is ancient writer's attempts of documenting God's saving acts and those acts' impacts on our lives.

As in the case with Barth's theology, revelation does not lie in the text of the Scripture, but in the "encountered results of what God did for them" (Dorman, 25).

This view holds that the Scriptures are the writers' interpretation of the significance of God's actions. In this view, we are not competed to believe what God did, only what his actions did to impact the writers.

Another modern theology is a partial-inspiration theory. There are various forms of this theory.

This view states that all Biblical statements that deal with spiritual matters are true and from God, but statements regarding historical matters are not necessarily accurate.

The partial inspiration theory does attempt to link the text of the Bible with special revelation.

This view states that the Bible can in fact be erroneous, but is still important on matters of faith.

The Historical events of the Bible are regarded as parables and allegories is the partial-inspiration theory.

The Interpretation of Scripture

Allegory - "the expression through symbolic figures and actions of truths or generalizations about human conduct or experience" (Dorman, 27)

The idea that readers of Scripture must reinterpret the events recorded in them as allegories is rooted in the Greek philosophy of dualism.

According to this dualistic theory, historical events and realities, including the language, are mere images or shadows of the divine realities.

Ancient Judaism and Christianity believed, contrastingly, that God had in fact spoken and acted at specific instances in history. Jesus Christ is the prime example of this.

It is because this belief that the early church generally avoided interpreting the Scriptures allegorically.

During the second century A.D. some of the Church had trouble seeing the connection between God in the Old Testament and Jesus Christ. Marcion is a prime example of this.

Marcion believed that the Bible showed two gods:
1) the Old Testament was a warlike, judgmental deity
2) The New Testament god was kind and loving.

Because of his view of two differently described, Marcion rejected the Old Testament as Scripture and purged the gospel of any Jewish tradition.

Origen considered some of the descriptions of God in the Old Testament as cruel and sub-Christian, but refused to reject the Old Testament like Marcion. He instead removed the offensive passages by interpreting them allegorically.

Origen held that not every Christian was capable of finding the spiritual or allegorical meaning of the text. He believed that this spiritual interpretation was given to the apostles who passed it on to the teachers of the Holy Church. This laid the way for the Catholic view that only its teaching office was able to interpret.

Origen's spiritual interpretation came from two sources:
1) The Holy Spirit was the author of Scripture
2) An influence of Dualism, passed on to him by Philo, who had allegorized the Old Testament in order to synthesize it with Greek philosophy.

Origen held that the literal meaning of the text was inferior to the spiritual meaning because the literal meaning came from the human writer and the spiritual came from the Holy Spirit.

The Antiochean school of theology was opposite to the theology of Origen. They held that the primary meaning of Scripture was its literal, historical sense.

The works of Lucian (of Antioch) set the tone for the Antiochean interpretation of Scripture. Lucian sought to interpret the Scriptures through its Semitic perspective rather than through a Greek philosophical one.

Theodore, a later Antiochean, saw that the literal approach unified a record of God's redemptive work in time, whereas the allegorical method saw it as a collection of timeless truths.

The Antiochean school did not have any lasting effects on theology because of two reasons:
1) Lucian, its founder was also seen as the founder of Arianism. Arianism was a heresy that denied the full divinity of Christ.
2) Nestorious was found to be a heretic. Nestorious was taught by Theodore and therefore Theodore and the entire Antiochean School was condemned as well.

Because of the condemnation of the Antiochean School, one form or another of allegorical interpretation was held by the Church for the next 1,000 years.

The end of allegorical total domination came with the Protestant Reformation.

Luther stated that unless the text is plainly demands us to interpret it allegorically, it is to be interpreted literally, otherwise Scripture is a worthless fable.

Luther's approach to a more literal based interpretation of Scripture was called the grammatical-historical exegesis (exegesis is a fancy word for interpretation).

Luther stressed the perspicuity of Scripture. This basically means that the Bible is clear enough for any reasonably informed person to understand it.

Luther's emphasis on the literal interpretation of the Scriptures opened the doors to new theological insight which were previously shut by the dogmas of the Roman Catholic Church. It also, unfortunately opened the doors to a terrible form of interpretation, the "historical-critical" method.

During the 18th century history was defined by the Rationalists (an Enlightenment Philosophical offshoot) as a closed continuum of cause and effect. Basically, it denied any possibility for miracles. The "historical-critical" method was born out of this view. It declared that the miracles in the Bible were actually myths of the Bible. This method turned Jesus into a human teacher of ethics and denied him of any supernatural being.

This view of Jesus came under attack by late 19th century theologians. These theologians were ironically trained in the "historical-critical" method. They stated that the Gospels were written in such a way that it was impossible to separate a non-miraculous Jesus from a supernatural Christ.

The "historical critical" method seeks to find the meaning of Christ behind the Biblical texts.

The allegorical approach used by Origen sought to find the meaning of Christ above the Biblical text.

The literal approach used by the Antiochean school and the Reformers sought to find the meaning of Christ with the Biblical text.

The historical-critical method denies that Scripture is the word of God.

The Authority of Scripture

Christians have sought to confirm the authority of Scriptures in four ways:

1) The presuppositional approach
-This states that we know the Bible is the word of God because it claims to be.
-God is the author
-This approach does not give any criteria that can distinguish its claims to being divine revelation from the claims of other texts being of divine revelation, like the Qu'ran
-Jesus loves me this I know for the Bible tells me so

2) The Ecclesiastical Approach
-Christians can know Scripture is the word of God because the Church says it is (this is the Roman Catholic approach)
-It is true that the New Testament grew out of the very life of the Church
-Jesus loves me this I know for the Church it tells me so

3) The Spiritual Approach
- This view holds that the ecclesiastical approach places the Church above the Bible
- The inner witness of the Holy Spirit affirms the authority of Scripture
- Absolute assurances of the authority of Scripture can only come from God
- Jesus loves me this I know for the Spirit tells me so

4) The Evidentialist Approach
-There are many convincing proofs that Jesus Christ rose from the dead
-belief in the Bible comes from faith in Christ
-This view holds that the Bible is a generally historically accurate document
-It holds that the evidences from the Bible when combined with reasonable argument establishes that Jesus Christ was crucified, died, buried and rose from the dead beyond a reasonable doubt
-It holds that Jesus' resurrection proves He is the son of God and as such he is trustworthy in all he says
-Jesus trusted the Scriptures we should to
-Because of this we are obliged to follow Jesus and put our whole trust in the Bible as the word of God

The four categories of the authority of Scripture can be placed in two:
1) Fideism
2) Evidentialism

Fideism is based on the term faith, when faith means belief not related to knowledge. The presuppositional, ecclesiastical and spiritual approaches are all fideism.

Evidentialism bases faith upon evidences available to all people. It takes the seriously the historical nature of divine revelation. It refuses to confine knowledge of God to a subjective experience.

All four approaches agree that Scripture is the Church's rule of faith and practice.

The Sufficiency of Scripture

Protestant Reformers believed that the Scripture was alone sufficient while the Roman Catholic Church stated extra-Biblical teachings could be incorporated into Christian dogma.

Roman Catholicism holds that the same spirit which inspired the Scripture still inspires the teaching office of the Church (who they believe is the only fit persons to interpret Scripture).

Their non-Biblical dogmas must meet "apostolic" criteria to be included. There are two criteria it can meet:
1) Any oral tradition whose origins can be traced back to the apostles qualifies
2) The authoritative pronouncements of the ecclesiastical teaching office, whose origin (according to Catholicism) goes back to the apostle Peter qualifies

Protestants believe that only Scripture is apostolic in nature.

The apostles were more than filled with the spirit, they were commissioned by Christ as agents of revelation.

The Protestant definition of "apostolic" is based on the apostle's unique eyewitness experience of Christ's life, death and resurrection gave them the sole authority to write authoritative works to be included in the Scriptures.

The Formation of the Canon

The early church considered the Hebrew Scriptures as the Canon. The need for Scripture that witnessed to Jesus Christ became an issue in the middle of the second century.

It had become more difficult to separate genuine historic oral tradition concerning Christ from the pure myths of Christ.

The need for a church sanctioned canon became more apparent after Marcion produced his canon of some of Paul's letters and the Gospels (purged of any Jewish influence)

The Muratorian Canon is the earliest known list of books which were considered Christian Scripture appeared around AD 200.

In the first half of the third century Origen traveled extensively and recorded which books were considered as Scripture by the various local churches.

He categorized these books three ways:
1) Undisputed
2) Disputed
3) False

The letters of Paul, Matthew, Mark, Luke and John were categorized as undisputed.
2 Peter, 2 & 3 John, Hebrews, James and Jude were categorized as disputed.
The false category included all of the heretical gospels.

Athanasius, the most influential theologian of his day, recorded all 27 books included in todays New Testament in a letter in 367 AD.

The Council of Carthage, in 407 AD affirmed todays canon.

The Reformation saw Luther exclude the Apocrypha from the Old Testament Canon. Thus, the Roman Catholic Bible has nine more books in it than the Protestant one. Luther excluded these because the Jewish Scriptures did and he believed that Jesus and his disciples held the Jewish Scriptures as authoritative.

Catholic Epistles, Pastoral Epistles, The Epistles of John

(Originally written January 24, 2006 in Book 20)

The first three Catholic Epistles:
1 Peter
2 Peter
Jude

1 Peter: Salvation & Suffering

What it means to live for God in a world without God.

"For Western Christians at the close of the 20th Century this brief tract written within a culture not yet Christian becomes a relevant textbook on Christian living in a culture no longer Christian".

1 Peter

I. Problem of Authorship
-What difference does it make whether the Apostle Peter wrote this letter or someone else wrote it and ascribed it to Peter?
-Peter is a highly esteemed apostle
-Peter was an eye witness
-Peter's words in 1 Peter & Acts

II. Who was I Peter written to?
-Gentiles

III. Setting of Peter's Readers
-ridicule for their beliefs
-honor and shame
-walking in Jesus' steps

2. II Peter

-Parallels Jude
-II Peter 1:20-21 Source of Scripture
- A response to rationalistic and hedonistic denials of God
-Paul's letter as Scripture

3. Jude: Danger! False Teachers!

-Parallels 2 Peter
-Jude was probably written after II Peter

Pastoral Epistles

Called Pastoral because they were written to young pastors

Contents: Introduction to Timothy and Titus about:
1) Errors of false teachers
2) Conduct and teaching as pastors/teachers
3) Church order and behavior in worship
4) Pastor's relationship to other groups in the Church
5) Qualifications for Church leaders

Authorship: critical scholarship considered non-Pauline
-a pseudonymous writer in the second century
-used Paul's authority
-to combat a rising Gnostic influence
-or could think of them as pious forgeries

Paul's authorship attacked on four grounds
1) Historical arguments
-don't fit into chronology in Acts (written after Paul was released in the end of Acts)
2) Stylistic arguments
-Author uses different style and words than Paul's (Paul was older, could have given secretaries more freedom)
3) Ecclesiastical arguments
-Church structure and church order is too developed for first century church (ignores fact that church in Acts is already highly developed)
4) Theological arguments:
-Heresy is a developed Gnosticism of the second century so it is therefore, post-Paul (Gnostic heresy existed very early on)

1st Timothy Highlights

1:18-20 Timothy's character and Paul's admonition

1 Corinthians 11:29-30
- New covenant stipulation
- Will Hymenaeus and Philters be in heaven?
2 Timothy is written 5 years after and it seems unlikely.

2:11-15
- Role of women in the church is one of the hottest topics in evangelicalism today

Authorship of Hebrews
-Philip?
-Apollos?
-Priscilla?
-Barnabas?

Hebrews was the oldest complete early Christian sermon that has been preserved.

Written to professing Jewish Christians in danger of apostasy (going back to Judaism)

The Epistles of John

Intro to I John

Test of fellowship
-Am I a carnal or a spirit directed believer?
-Assumes all John's readers are believers

Tests of Life View

-Am I spiritually alive or spiritually dead?
-Assumes some readers are not Christian