From time to time I am going to take a moment to write about the major influences on my life: authors, preachers, music, movies, and the like. I will put these posts up in a thoroughly biased manner because each post will strictly be my opinion. I don't expect everyone to agree with me, but hopefully, each post will shed some light on why I think the way I think. And, maybe, you'll come to appreciate them too.
I'll get straight to the point: I like breakfast. I like it a lot. There is very little about the Most Important Meal of the Day that I dislike. In fact, I think it is so important, that if it were at all possible, I would eat breakfast all day, every day.
Think about it: at what other meal can you combine sweet and savory, dessert and entree, all in one course, wash it down with coffee, and call it 'normal'? The typical breakfast menu involves meat, eggs, various confectionery delights, fruit, breads - a veritable cornucopia of cholesterol and sodium/sugar laden dishes simply waiting to be obliterated.
My favorite breakfast order? The skillet. Why? Take everything I just said, throw it all on one plate together, top it with some hot sauce and go to town! With a cinnamon roll on the side, of course.
This is also why I like diners - which is a separate post all on its own. Diners serve breakfast all day, which makes them the place to go when you're me. Doesn't matter what time it is: If I find myself at a diner, breakfast is getting ordered.
Bon appetit!
Wednesday, May 30, 2012
Tuesday, May 29, 2012
Parenting and Roller Coasters
I am pretty sure that Christen wrote about this at some point, but I will reiterate it here: Parenting is a series of ups and downs. Sometimes it feels like the downs are outweighing the ups, especially with a 3-year-old in the house. I feel like there's been a 3-year-old for 3 years, which is impossible since I only have two children. Nonetheless, it's been amazing to see the major swings that take place over weeks, days, and sometimes hours and minutes.
Just like a roller coaster, so goes parenting. The slow incline that is pregnancy gives way to the rush of speed that is giving birth and the subsequent season of infancy (when you never really sleep, not really), and then you get to the rest of the ride. The twists. The jolts. The dips. The round-abouts. The spirals, both up and down.
Since Christen's passing, it has felt a bit like I'm building a whole new ride to get on. I thought parenting in general was challenging. Single parenting? Wow. So, as I'm designing this thing, here are some of the peaks and valleys I can see being built in to it (based off of actual events over the past 10 days):
Peaks:
- Audrey doing the dishes without being asked
- Hudson taking being a gentleman seriously
- Made up songs/singing along to music in the car
- Playing, playing, playing
- Not needing to watch TV
- Impromptu cuddle time
- Being required to refer to them as Captain America and Princess Audrey (she likes her name)
Valleys:
- Oh! the whining
- Crying over not getting to hear a song, making the wrong snack, selecting the wrong movie, calling someone by the wrong name (see final point of Peaks)
- Hudson forgetting that he's a gentleman
- Audrey taking advantage of being a 'lady'
In this time of building and restructuring, I'm reminded of Christen's mission statement as a mother. She stood for the following:
I will provide love, discipline, counsel, and education so that my children will be trained up in the way of the Lord. I will exemplify a God-centered, Christ-exalting, Bible-saturated life so that they would make choices based on their relationship with the Lord.
I've adopted that as my mission statement as a father (she always took the best wording!). It's on that foundation, the grounding of the glory of God and the revelation of His Word that I, by His grace, will build this new ride.
Just like a roller coaster, so goes parenting. The slow incline that is pregnancy gives way to the rush of speed that is giving birth and the subsequent season of infancy (when you never really sleep, not really), and then you get to the rest of the ride. The twists. The jolts. The dips. The round-abouts. The spirals, both up and down.
Since Christen's passing, it has felt a bit like I'm building a whole new ride to get on. I thought parenting in general was challenging. Single parenting? Wow. So, as I'm designing this thing, here are some of the peaks and valleys I can see being built in to it (based off of actual events over the past 10 days):
Peaks:
- Audrey doing the dishes without being asked
- Hudson taking being a gentleman seriously
- Made up songs/singing along to music in the car
- Playing, playing, playing
- Not needing to watch TV
- Impromptu cuddle time
- Being required to refer to them as Captain America and Princess Audrey (she likes her name)
Valleys:
- Oh! the whining
- Crying over not getting to hear a song, making the wrong snack, selecting the wrong movie, calling someone by the wrong name (see final point of Peaks)
- Hudson forgetting that he's a gentleman
- Audrey taking advantage of being a 'lady'
In this time of building and restructuring, I'm reminded of Christen's mission statement as a mother. She stood for the following:
I will provide love, discipline, counsel, and education so that my children will be trained up in the way of the Lord. I will exemplify a God-centered, Christ-exalting, Bible-saturated life so that they would make choices based on their relationship with the Lord.
I've adopted that as my mission statement as a father (she always took the best wording!). It's on that foundation, the grounding of the glory of God and the revelation of His Word that I, by His grace, will build this new ride.
Thursday, May 24, 2012
How to Study the Bible: Is the Bible Historically Reliable?
With so much to cover and so many topics I'd like to talk about, I put Theology Thursday to a vote. The outcome of the vote determined what would be covered in the coming months. The first subject to be tackled is How to Study the Bible.
Last week, we learned how the Bible came together. This week, we're going to dig in to the question of the Bible's reliability. Is the Bible, as we know it, a historically accurate and reliable document?
The argument here is whether or not the actual words contained in the Bibles we have are 1) what the original authors wrote and 2) were written in an accurate way so as to transmit the historical truths they claim to tell. Basically, is the Bible true or a simple mythology?
The stance that opponents to the validity of the Bible take is one of questioning how the text was recorded over time. Many would hold that the accounts of the life of Jesus were not written down prior to the second century, well over 100 years after He had lived. They go on to claim that, in accordance with the oral tradition of the time, the accounts of Jesus grew in mythology over that time span and were eventually written down in such a way as to make Jesus more a legend than an actual historical figure. Think Babe Ruth and the famed 'called shot'. Did it happen? Or was that just a tall tale weaved in the media?
In order to counter their arguments, we must take a look at how historical documents are proved and accepted as accurate in general and then apply the same tests to the New Testament (I focus on the New Testament because, just like last week, the Old Testament is generally left alone in these debates. However, the same process could easily be applied to the Old Testament, and I am sure it would check out.). Based on everything I have read on this topic, there are three tests to guide us in our understanding of the validity, reliability, and historicity of the Bible: the bibliographic test, the internal evidence test, and the external evidence test.
Bibliographic Test
As defined by Josh McDowell, this test "is an examination of the textual transmission by which documents reach us. In other words, not having the original documents, how reliable are the copies we have in regard to the number of manuscripts (MSS) and the time interval between the original and extant copy?"
For those who don't know this, we do not have in existence today an original copy (called an autograph) of any book or letter included in the New Testament. Therefore, we have to know that what was copied down was done so faithfully and within an acceptable period of time to be considered reliable.
To do this, let's do a comparison between the New Testament and a few other documents. These other documents are plainly accepted as accurate and acceptable historical documents, worthy to be taught in high schools and colleges alike as true to what the original author wrote and intended. We will consider when the original is said to have been written, when the first copy we now have in possession was written, how many such MSS exist today, and what level of accuracy the copies share (these statistics are pulled from several sources, listed at the end of this post).
Author Date Written Earliest Copy Time Span # of MSS Accuracy
Homer ca. 900 BC ca. 400 BC ~500 years 643 95%
Caesar ca. 50-58 BC ca. AD 900 ~950 years 10 Too few MSS
Tacitus ca. AD 100 ca. AD 1100 ~1,000 years 20 Too few MSS
Plato ca. 427-347 BC ca. AD 900 ~1,200+ years 7 Too few MSS
Aristotle ca. 384-322 BC ca. AD 1100 ~1,400 years 5 Too few MSS
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
New Testament ca. AD 60-90 ca. AD 130 ~100 years 20,000+ 99.5%
What this means is that, based on the number of copies we have of the pieces of the New Testament, the time between when it was first written and from when we have a copy, and the accuracy of the copies to each other, we can certainly say that the text we have is the text that was originally written (and for those disconcerted with the 99.5% accuracy, the discrepancies are over grammar, spellings, style, and/or accidental omissions/duplicates - nothing in question has any weight to bear on doctrine or teaching).
Internal Evidence Test
The bibliographic test tells us that the text we have today is faithful to what was originally written. We must now turn to the words themselves and test whether or not those words are credible. This is the internal test.
There are several considerations to make when testing the internal credibility of a document. At the outset, it must be understood that a document is 'innocent until proven guilty' - in other words, a document claiming to present facts must be assumed to do exactly that unless it blatantly records falsehoods or is inconsistent in its own claims. In this, we have seen over and over again how archaeology and historical criticism support what was written in the New Testament.
Next, we must look at who wrote the New Testament. The authors consistently claim to either be direct eyewitnesses or to have recorded what an eyewitness has testified to be true. This is seen in Luke 1:1-3, 2 Peter 1:16, 1 John 1:3, and John 19:35. Therefore, the people who wrote the books and letters in the New Testament were not simply recording hearsay; they were recording the facts as they, or someone close the them, saw them.
Still, it would only be fair to allow for criticism from contemporaries. After all, if one eyewitness reports one account and another reports something to the contrary, we are faced with a he-said-she-said scenario, and the truth becomes very difficult to prove. The fact is that there were people alive who also witnessed the events of Jesus's life, death, and resurrection, and some of those people were not sympathetic to the apostles' cause - they were, in fact, opposed to it. Thus, if what was being written and propagated was in any way inaccurate, those opposed could simply have risen up and written a refutation to the apostles' claims. The apostles even opened themselves to this kind of criticism, as seen in Acts 2:22 and Acts 26: 24-48. None such came.
Last, the relationship of Old Testament prophecy to the life of Jesus as recorded in the Gospels indicates a God-ordained consistency simply unparalleled in any other major religious text. Without going into all the details, there were literally hundreds of prophecies fulfilled by Jesus Christ, including those found in Isaiah 7:14 (cf. Matthew 1:18-23), Micah 5:2 (cf. Luke 2:1-7), Hosea 11:1 (cf. Matthew 2:13-15), Malachi 3:1 (cf. Luke 2:25-27), Psalm 22:16 and 22:18 (cf. Luke 23:33 and John 19:23-24, respectively), and Isaiah 53:10-12 (cf. Acts 2:25-32).
External Evidence Test
Again, Josh McDowell defines this test by stating that "[the] issue here is whether other historical material confirms or denies the internal testimony of the documents themselves."
Within the Christian world, Papias (Bishop of Hierapolis, friend of the Apostle John, as preserved by Eusebius) and Iranaeus (Bishop of Lyons, disciple of Polycarp who was a disciple of the Apostle John) together testify to the authorship of the Gospels. They state that John wrote his gospel, as did Matthew, and that Mark wrote his based off of the testimony of Peter and Luke his based off of the teachings of Paul (and other eyewitnesses - cp. Luke 1:1-3).
Outside of the Christian world, we have already mentioned how archaeology and historical criticism have verified the facts of the Bible as they are laid out. People, places, leaders, and events, as they are described in the New Testament, have been verified over time by the historical record and the physical evidence (as it is uncovered).
Further, ancient, secular historians wrote of Jesus and verified not only His life but also some of His deeds. Here are a few quotes (pulled straight out of the Mark Driscoll resource listed below):
Flavius Josephus, from Jewish Antiquities:
Now there was about this time Jesus, a wise man, if it be lawful to call him a man; for he was a doer of wonderful works, a teacher of such men as receive the truth with pleasure...And when Pilate, at the suggestion of the principal men among us, had condemned him to the cross, those that loved him at the first did not forsake him; for he appeared to them alive again the third day, as the divine prophets had foretold these and ten thousand other wonderful things concerning him. And the tribe of Christians, so named from him, are not extinct at this day
Pliny the Younger, from The Letters of Pliny the Younger (this one addressed to the emperor Trajan):
They (Christians) also declared that the sum total of their guilt or error amounted to no more than this: they had met regularly before dawn on a fixed day to chant verses alternately amongst themselves in honour of Christ as if to a god...
These as well as many other Jewish and Roman historians document and give credence to the truths as presented by the authors of the New Testament.
Here's the big idea:
The Bible we have, and specifically the New Testament, is a historically valid and reliable document, and the text therein constitutes a true testimony to the events surrounding the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus of Nazareth, called the Christ.
Sources:
Easy read: Mark Driscoll, On the New Testament; Josh McDowell, More Than a Carpenter
Medium read: Josh McDowell, The New Evidence that Demands a Verdict; Lee Strobel, The Case for Christ; Dan Story, Defending Your Faith
Next week: Why Study the Bible?
Last week, we learned how the Bible came together. This week, we're going to dig in to the question of the Bible's reliability. Is the Bible, as we know it, a historically accurate and reliable document?
The argument here is whether or not the actual words contained in the Bibles we have are 1) what the original authors wrote and 2) were written in an accurate way so as to transmit the historical truths they claim to tell. Basically, is the Bible true or a simple mythology?
The stance that opponents to the validity of the Bible take is one of questioning how the text was recorded over time. Many would hold that the accounts of the life of Jesus were not written down prior to the second century, well over 100 years after He had lived. They go on to claim that, in accordance with the oral tradition of the time, the accounts of Jesus grew in mythology over that time span and were eventually written down in such a way as to make Jesus more a legend than an actual historical figure. Think Babe Ruth and the famed 'called shot'. Did it happen? Or was that just a tall tale weaved in the media?
In order to counter their arguments, we must take a look at how historical documents are proved and accepted as accurate in general and then apply the same tests to the New Testament (I focus on the New Testament because, just like last week, the Old Testament is generally left alone in these debates. However, the same process could easily be applied to the Old Testament, and I am sure it would check out.). Based on everything I have read on this topic, there are three tests to guide us in our understanding of the validity, reliability, and historicity of the Bible: the bibliographic test, the internal evidence test, and the external evidence test.
Bibliographic Test
As defined by Josh McDowell, this test "is an examination of the textual transmission by which documents reach us. In other words, not having the original documents, how reliable are the copies we have in regard to the number of manuscripts (MSS) and the time interval between the original and extant copy?"
For those who don't know this, we do not have in existence today an original copy (called an autograph) of any book or letter included in the New Testament. Therefore, we have to know that what was copied down was done so faithfully and within an acceptable period of time to be considered reliable.
To do this, let's do a comparison between the New Testament and a few other documents. These other documents are plainly accepted as accurate and acceptable historical documents, worthy to be taught in high schools and colleges alike as true to what the original author wrote and intended. We will consider when the original is said to have been written, when the first copy we now have in possession was written, how many such MSS exist today, and what level of accuracy the copies share (these statistics are pulled from several sources, listed at the end of this post).
Author Date Written Earliest Copy Time Span # of MSS Accuracy
Homer ca. 900 BC ca. 400 BC ~500 years 643 95%
Caesar ca. 50-58 BC ca. AD 900 ~950 years 10 Too few MSS
Tacitus ca. AD 100 ca. AD 1100 ~1,000 years 20 Too few MSS
Plato ca. 427-347 BC ca. AD 900 ~1,200+ years 7 Too few MSS
Aristotle ca. 384-322 BC ca. AD 1100 ~1,400 years 5 Too few MSS
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
New Testament ca. AD 60-90 ca. AD 130 ~100 years 20,000+ 99.5%
What this means is that, based on the number of copies we have of the pieces of the New Testament, the time between when it was first written and from when we have a copy, and the accuracy of the copies to each other, we can certainly say that the text we have is the text that was originally written (and for those disconcerted with the 99.5% accuracy, the discrepancies are over grammar, spellings, style, and/or accidental omissions/duplicates - nothing in question has any weight to bear on doctrine or teaching).
Internal Evidence Test
The bibliographic test tells us that the text we have today is faithful to what was originally written. We must now turn to the words themselves and test whether or not those words are credible. This is the internal test.
There are several considerations to make when testing the internal credibility of a document. At the outset, it must be understood that a document is 'innocent until proven guilty' - in other words, a document claiming to present facts must be assumed to do exactly that unless it blatantly records falsehoods or is inconsistent in its own claims. In this, we have seen over and over again how archaeology and historical criticism support what was written in the New Testament.
Next, we must look at who wrote the New Testament. The authors consistently claim to either be direct eyewitnesses or to have recorded what an eyewitness has testified to be true. This is seen in Luke 1:1-3, 2 Peter 1:16, 1 John 1:3, and John 19:35. Therefore, the people who wrote the books and letters in the New Testament were not simply recording hearsay; they were recording the facts as they, or someone close the them, saw them.
Still, it would only be fair to allow for criticism from contemporaries. After all, if one eyewitness reports one account and another reports something to the contrary, we are faced with a he-said-she-said scenario, and the truth becomes very difficult to prove. The fact is that there were people alive who also witnessed the events of Jesus's life, death, and resurrection, and some of those people were not sympathetic to the apostles' cause - they were, in fact, opposed to it. Thus, if what was being written and propagated was in any way inaccurate, those opposed could simply have risen up and written a refutation to the apostles' claims. The apostles even opened themselves to this kind of criticism, as seen in Acts 2:22 and Acts 26: 24-48. None such came.
Last, the relationship of Old Testament prophecy to the life of Jesus as recorded in the Gospels indicates a God-ordained consistency simply unparalleled in any other major religious text. Without going into all the details, there were literally hundreds of prophecies fulfilled by Jesus Christ, including those found in Isaiah 7:14 (cf. Matthew 1:18-23), Micah 5:2 (cf. Luke 2:1-7), Hosea 11:1 (cf. Matthew 2:13-15), Malachi 3:1 (cf. Luke 2:25-27), Psalm 22:16 and 22:18 (cf. Luke 23:33 and John 19:23-24, respectively), and Isaiah 53:10-12 (cf. Acts 2:25-32).
External Evidence Test
Again, Josh McDowell defines this test by stating that "[the] issue here is whether other historical material confirms or denies the internal testimony of the documents themselves."
Within the Christian world, Papias (Bishop of Hierapolis, friend of the Apostle John, as preserved by Eusebius) and Iranaeus (Bishop of Lyons, disciple of Polycarp who was a disciple of the Apostle John) together testify to the authorship of the Gospels. They state that John wrote his gospel, as did Matthew, and that Mark wrote his based off of the testimony of Peter and Luke his based off of the teachings of Paul (and other eyewitnesses - cp. Luke 1:1-3).
Outside of the Christian world, we have already mentioned how archaeology and historical criticism have verified the facts of the Bible as they are laid out. People, places, leaders, and events, as they are described in the New Testament, have been verified over time by the historical record and the physical evidence (as it is uncovered).
Further, ancient, secular historians wrote of Jesus and verified not only His life but also some of His deeds. Here are a few quotes (pulled straight out of the Mark Driscoll resource listed below):
Flavius Josephus, from Jewish Antiquities:
Now there was about this time Jesus, a wise man, if it be lawful to call him a man; for he was a doer of wonderful works, a teacher of such men as receive the truth with pleasure...And when Pilate, at the suggestion of the principal men among us, had condemned him to the cross, those that loved him at the first did not forsake him; for he appeared to them alive again the third day, as the divine prophets had foretold these and ten thousand other wonderful things concerning him. And the tribe of Christians, so named from him, are not extinct at this day
Pliny the Younger, from The Letters of Pliny the Younger (this one addressed to the emperor Trajan):
They (Christians) also declared that the sum total of their guilt or error amounted to no more than this: they had met regularly before dawn on a fixed day to chant verses alternately amongst themselves in honour of Christ as if to a god...
These as well as many other Jewish and Roman historians document and give credence to the truths as presented by the authors of the New Testament.
Here's the big idea:
The Bible we have, and specifically the New Testament, is a historically valid and reliable document, and the text therein constitutes a true testimony to the events surrounding the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus of Nazareth, called the Christ.
Sources:
Easy read: Mark Driscoll, On the New Testament; Josh McDowell, More Than a Carpenter
Medium read: Josh McDowell, The New Evidence that Demands a Verdict; Lee Strobel, The Case for Christ; Dan Story, Defending Your Faith
Next week: Why Study the Bible?
Thursday, May 17, 2012
How to Study the Bible: What is the Bible?
With so much to cover and so many topics I'd like to talk about, I put Theology Thursday to a vote. The outcome of the vote determined what would be covered in the coming months. The first subject to be tackled is How to Study the Bible.
In order to ensure people get the most out of these posts, I'm going to try to keep these first few posts in the series relatively short. Truly, a LOT of ink has been justifiably spent defending the canonization of the Bible, specifically the New Testament (the focus of this week's post), as well as the validity of the historical text itself (next week's post). However, since these are more along the lines of foundational, I will simply boil down the positions as simply and clearly as possible so that we can move to the more practical and applicable posts, those focusing on why we should (and should want to) study the Bible and a few tips on how to actually go about studying it. Therefore, while there are a number of facts, statistics, citations, and book after book to be read and considered for this week's post, I'm going to focus on just a few sources (listed at the end of the post) and give the general thrust of the argument.
This week's question is What is the Bible? Specifically, how did we get the book we currently have? How did 'they' pick the books and letters that were included? First, I'll briefly give consideration to the Old Testament. Second, and the larger section, I will focus on the New Testament as it is what is most commonly disputed.
In traditional Protestantism, the Old Testament stops with Malachi, the last of the prophets. After this point, God did not send a prophet for 400 years until the coming of John the Baptist, who proclaimed the coming of Jesus. During these years of silence, called the Intertestamental Period, other books were written. These became known as the apocrypha. Initially, these books were effectively considered helpful additional books, but they were never accepted as holy Scripture until the Catholic Council of Trent in 1546. From that point, the Catholic (and some Orthodox) Bible added books to the Old Testament that were never so adopted by either Jews or Christians up to that point. Thus, we see the difference in the Catholic Bible (which includes the Apocrypha) and the Protestant Bible (which does not).
The other books of the Old Testament are referred in the New Testament as 'The Law, Prophets, and Psalms' or 'The Law and the Prophets' or simply 'The Law'. To quote Mark Driscoll, "Jesus also spoke of the Old Testament as existing from Abel (from Genesis, the first book of the Old Testament) to Zechariah (a contemporary of Malachi, the final book of the Old Testament)." The evidence for this is found in Luke 24:44, Matthew 23:35, and Luke 11:51. Even today, the Hebrew Bible and the Christian Old Testament are virtually the same, excepting the order of the books.
Frankly, there is little dispute over the Old Testament. The New Testament? Well, that's a different story. Let's deal with that now.
First, I want to define a word that I learned while researching for this post. The word is canon. No, not the weapon used to fire off the port bow (spelled cannon, for those keeping track at home). I always thought the word was synonymous with 'Bible', that it was just another way of saying 'the whole collection of books in the Bible'. While it has come to mean that in our time, the original meaning of canon refers to the 'rule' or 'measuring rod' by which the books of the Bible were selected. It is the norm against which books of the Bible were set to determine inclusion or exclusion.
Many people argue that the Bible was put together by a bunch of people hunkered down in a room hundreds of years after Jesus lived and after the texts had been written. They suggest that the writings were allowed to grow to legendary and mythic levels prior to being included in the Bible (we'll deal with this argument next week), and then only the books that verified what they wanted people to know about Jesus were included. After all, they had their institutions, reputations, and power to protect - so the argument goes.
However, contrary to this notion is what actually happened (insert sarcastic tone). As Driscoll writes, there were three primary characteristics in the inclusion of books into the New Testament:
1) They were written based on eye-witness account of the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus.
2) They were in accord with what is revealed as true about God in the rest of Scripture.
3) They were received by God's people and demonstrated God's power in changing lives.
Additionally, the apostles themselves validated the writings of the New Testament and placed them alongside the Old Testament in a peer-to-peer relationship. This is seen in the following passages:
2 Peter 3:15-16 - Paul's letters placed alongside Scripture, presumably the Old Testament
And count the patience of our Lord as salvation, just as our beloved brother Paul also wrote to you according to the wisdom given him, as he does in all his letters when he speaks in them of these matters. There are some things in them that are hard to understand, which the ignorant and unstable twist to their own destruction, as the do the other Scriptures.
1 Timothy 5:18 - Paul quoting Deuteronomy and Luke back-to-back as Scripture
For the Scripture says, "You shall not muzzle an ox when it treads out the grain (from Deut. 25:4)," and, "The laborer deserves his wages (from Luke 10:7)."
From the foundation of the New Testament church, this placing of New Testament books alongside the Old Testament Scriptures continued in what B.B Warfield refers to as a "line of such quotations...never broken in Christian literature."
Here is another, extended quote from Warfield:
What needs emphasis at present about these facts is that they obviously are not evidences of a gradually-heightening estimate of the New Testament books, originally received on a lower level and just beginning to be tentatively accounted Scripture; they are conclusive evidences rather of the estimation of the New Testament books from the very beginning as Scripture, and of their attachment as Scripture to the other Scriptures already in hand. The early Christians did not, then, first form a rival “canon” of “new books” which came only gradually to be accounted as of equal divinity and authority with the “old books”; they received new book after new book from the apostolical circle, as equally “Scripture” with the old books, and added them one by one to the collection of old books as additional Scriptures, until at length the new books thus added were numerous enough to be looked upon as another section of the Scriptures.
The big idea is this:
The New Testament was not 'put together' by people hundreds of years after it had been written. It had been put together and was generally accepted in the Church throughout the Christian world, and this collection was subsequently verified at the various councils years later.
Catch that - that's a big difference. The councils did not make up the list of what was in and what was out. They verified that which had already been put together, and evaluated the other books that had subsequently been (falsely) put forth as legitimate books, like the Gospel of Thomas and First Clement, based on the canon (remember: the norm or rule) which already existed in the collection already accepted by the people of God. The apostles placed their authority behind the teachings of the books and letters themselves while they lived, the early church fathers accepted them, and the Church at large embraced them as Truth.
Sources:
Easy read: Mark Driscoll, On the Old Testament and On the New Testament
Medium read: R.C. Sproul, Scripture Alone
Difficult read: B.B Warfield, Revelation and Inspiration
Next week: Is the Bible Historically Reliable?
In order to ensure people get the most out of these posts, I'm going to try to keep these first few posts in the series relatively short. Truly, a LOT of ink has been justifiably spent defending the canonization of the Bible, specifically the New Testament (the focus of this week's post), as well as the validity of the historical text itself (next week's post). However, since these are more along the lines of foundational, I will simply boil down the positions as simply and clearly as possible so that we can move to the more practical and applicable posts, those focusing on why we should (and should want to) study the Bible and a few tips on how to actually go about studying it. Therefore, while there are a number of facts, statistics, citations, and book after book to be read and considered for this week's post, I'm going to focus on just a few sources (listed at the end of the post) and give the general thrust of the argument.
This week's question is What is the Bible? Specifically, how did we get the book we currently have? How did 'they' pick the books and letters that were included? First, I'll briefly give consideration to the Old Testament. Second, and the larger section, I will focus on the New Testament as it is what is most commonly disputed.
In traditional Protestantism, the Old Testament stops with Malachi, the last of the prophets. After this point, God did not send a prophet for 400 years until the coming of John the Baptist, who proclaimed the coming of Jesus. During these years of silence, called the Intertestamental Period, other books were written. These became known as the apocrypha. Initially, these books were effectively considered helpful additional books, but they were never accepted as holy Scripture until the Catholic Council of Trent in 1546. From that point, the Catholic (and some Orthodox) Bible added books to the Old Testament that were never so adopted by either Jews or Christians up to that point. Thus, we see the difference in the Catholic Bible (which includes the Apocrypha) and the Protestant Bible (which does not).
The other books of the Old Testament are referred in the New Testament as 'The Law, Prophets, and Psalms' or 'The Law and the Prophets' or simply 'The Law'. To quote Mark Driscoll, "Jesus also spoke of the Old Testament as existing from Abel (from Genesis, the first book of the Old Testament) to Zechariah (a contemporary of Malachi, the final book of the Old Testament)." The evidence for this is found in Luke 24:44, Matthew 23:35, and Luke 11:51. Even today, the Hebrew Bible and the Christian Old Testament are virtually the same, excepting the order of the books.
Frankly, there is little dispute over the Old Testament. The New Testament? Well, that's a different story. Let's deal with that now.
First, I want to define a word that I learned while researching for this post. The word is canon. No, not the weapon used to fire off the port bow (spelled cannon, for those keeping track at home). I always thought the word was synonymous with 'Bible', that it was just another way of saying 'the whole collection of books in the Bible'. While it has come to mean that in our time, the original meaning of canon refers to the 'rule' or 'measuring rod' by which the books of the Bible were selected. It is the norm against which books of the Bible were set to determine inclusion or exclusion.
Many people argue that the Bible was put together by a bunch of people hunkered down in a room hundreds of years after Jesus lived and after the texts had been written. They suggest that the writings were allowed to grow to legendary and mythic levels prior to being included in the Bible (we'll deal with this argument next week), and then only the books that verified what they wanted people to know about Jesus were included. After all, they had their institutions, reputations, and power to protect - so the argument goes.
However, contrary to this notion is what actually happened (insert sarcastic tone). As Driscoll writes, there were three primary characteristics in the inclusion of books into the New Testament:
1) They were written based on eye-witness account of the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus.
2) They were in accord with what is revealed as true about God in the rest of Scripture.
3) They were received by God's people and demonstrated God's power in changing lives.
Additionally, the apostles themselves validated the writings of the New Testament and placed them alongside the Old Testament in a peer-to-peer relationship. This is seen in the following passages:
2 Peter 3:15-16 - Paul's letters placed alongside Scripture, presumably the Old Testament
And count the patience of our Lord as salvation, just as our beloved brother Paul also wrote to you according to the wisdom given him, as he does in all his letters when he speaks in them of these matters. There are some things in them that are hard to understand, which the ignorant and unstable twist to their own destruction, as the do the other Scriptures.
1 Timothy 5:18 - Paul quoting Deuteronomy and Luke back-to-back as Scripture
For the Scripture says, "You shall not muzzle an ox when it treads out the grain (from Deut. 25:4)," and, "The laborer deserves his wages (from Luke 10:7)."
From the foundation of the New Testament church, this placing of New Testament books alongside the Old Testament Scriptures continued in what B.B Warfield refers to as a "line of such quotations...never broken in Christian literature."
Here is another, extended quote from Warfield:
What needs emphasis at present about these facts is that they obviously are not evidences of a gradually-heightening estimate of the New Testament books, originally received on a lower level and just beginning to be tentatively accounted Scripture; they are conclusive evidences rather of the estimation of the New Testament books from the very beginning as Scripture, and of their attachment as Scripture to the other Scriptures already in hand. The early Christians did not, then, first form a rival “canon” of “new books” which came only gradually to be accounted as of equal divinity and authority with the “old books”; they received new book after new book from the apostolical circle, as equally “Scripture” with the old books, and added them one by one to the collection of old books as additional Scriptures, until at length the new books thus added were numerous enough to be looked upon as another section of the Scriptures.
The big idea is this:
The New Testament was not 'put together' by people hundreds of years after it had been written. It had been put together and was generally accepted in the Church throughout the Christian world, and this collection was subsequently verified at the various councils years later.
Catch that - that's a big difference. The councils did not make up the list of what was in and what was out. They verified that which had already been put together, and evaluated the other books that had subsequently been (falsely) put forth as legitimate books, like the Gospel of Thomas and First Clement, based on the canon (remember: the norm or rule) which already existed in the collection already accepted by the people of God. The apostles placed their authority behind the teachings of the books and letters themselves while they lived, the early church fathers accepted them, and the Church at large embraced them as Truth.
Sources:
Easy read: Mark Driscoll, On the Old Testament and On the New Testament
Medium read: R.C. Sproul, Scripture Alone
Difficult read: B.B Warfield, Revelation and Inspiration
Next week: Is the Bible Historically Reliable?
Tuesday, May 15, 2012
This is Real
"This is real. This is happening. This is my life."
I spoke those words aloud to myself Saturday night as I was preparing to go to bed. The kids were with Grandpa and Grandma for the weekend, and I was in my bedroom fixing the sheets. All of a sudden, I was hit with a sensation that I have never felt before.
It was as though I was looking through someone else's eyes. I was looking into the life of some man going about his nightly routine. I had a flash of his mind and of all the things he had been thinking over the last week. It was all very ordinary stuff - going to work, taking care of his kids, cleaning the house, cooking dinner. There was really nothing exceptional about any of it. The whole scene was very strange, and it seemed like something was hanging in the air. There was a weight upon this man, only he didn't feel it. At least, he didn't seem to. He was just going about his routine. The man paused at this point and looked around. Familiarity crept in as I felt the quilted bedspread in need of a wash, the soft linen of the sheets, the floorboard that creaks right next to the dresser. It was then I realized I was in my own home, in my own bedroom, looking through my own eyes.
For that moment, I could not make sense of reality. I had seen through this man's eyes, and though he was me, I had no concept of what he was doing or why. Surely this was not how I lived, I thought. Do I really make up a bed only to sleep on one side of it? How long have I been going through these motions? Is this my life? It doesn't seem like it...
And then, more disturbing than these thoughts came the reality that, in fact yes, this is all real. I struggled to shake my doubts. Aloud, I said those words to myself.
"This is real. This is happening. This is my life."
At that point, I thought I would feel sad. Or angry. Perhaps frustrated. Even lonely. I felt none of these things. I felt like a chalkboard freshly erased, the remnant of what was written there still faintly visible, the dust not taken away but merely pushed around the slate, a cloudy image of something that once was clear.
I am coming to the understanding that it is easy to lose oneself in two extremes: routine and dreams. The former gives structure and makes sure things get done, but it lacks passion and zeal and an awareness of other happenings outside of the norm. Dreams certainly don't lack for passion or vision or excitement, but they deny that which is necessary to accomplish right now, and they ignore what is happening in the present. Combined, they miss reality, where one misses due to fixtures and the other due to fantasy.
I live in these two extremes. I require routine because there is so much to be done. Even with the help I receive, there is simply so much that demands my attention and energy and focus. I dream because dreaming lets me believe for the future, to hope in what is coming next. By themselves and in right balance, these two extremes are lovely dance partners. But without the music of reality playing them along the floor, they're just two lunatics locked in a deluded embrace.
Here is my reality: My name is Joe Ringle. I am 29 years old. I have two children, Audrey and Hudson. My wife, Christen, passed away 4 months ago. Life is difficult for us right now. But we serve a God whose goodness knows no end. He has rescued my family from certain, eternal death and given us, through Jesus, true and lasting life with Him, even if it isn't with each other here and now.
I will live in light of grace and not fetter myself to foolish delusions or denials of the truth.
I spoke those words aloud to myself Saturday night as I was preparing to go to bed. The kids were with Grandpa and Grandma for the weekend, and I was in my bedroom fixing the sheets. All of a sudden, I was hit with a sensation that I have never felt before.
It was as though I was looking through someone else's eyes. I was looking into the life of some man going about his nightly routine. I had a flash of his mind and of all the things he had been thinking over the last week. It was all very ordinary stuff - going to work, taking care of his kids, cleaning the house, cooking dinner. There was really nothing exceptional about any of it. The whole scene was very strange, and it seemed like something was hanging in the air. There was a weight upon this man, only he didn't feel it. At least, he didn't seem to. He was just going about his routine. The man paused at this point and looked around. Familiarity crept in as I felt the quilted bedspread in need of a wash, the soft linen of the sheets, the floorboard that creaks right next to the dresser. It was then I realized I was in my own home, in my own bedroom, looking through my own eyes.
For that moment, I could not make sense of reality. I had seen through this man's eyes, and though he was me, I had no concept of what he was doing or why. Surely this was not how I lived, I thought. Do I really make up a bed only to sleep on one side of it? How long have I been going through these motions? Is this my life? It doesn't seem like it...
And then, more disturbing than these thoughts came the reality that, in fact yes, this is all real. I struggled to shake my doubts. Aloud, I said those words to myself.
"This is real. This is happening. This is my life."
At that point, I thought I would feel sad. Or angry. Perhaps frustrated. Even lonely. I felt none of these things. I felt like a chalkboard freshly erased, the remnant of what was written there still faintly visible, the dust not taken away but merely pushed around the slate, a cloudy image of something that once was clear.
I am coming to the understanding that it is easy to lose oneself in two extremes: routine and dreams. The former gives structure and makes sure things get done, but it lacks passion and zeal and an awareness of other happenings outside of the norm. Dreams certainly don't lack for passion or vision or excitement, but they deny that which is necessary to accomplish right now, and they ignore what is happening in the present. Combined, they miss reality, where one misses due to fixtures and the other due to fantasy.
I live in these two extremes. I require routine because there is so much to be done. Even with the help I receive, there is simply so much that demands my attention and energy and focus. I dream because dreaming lets me believe for the future, to hope in what is coming next. By themselves and in right balance, these two extremes are lovely dance partners. But without the music of reality playing them along the floor, they're just two lunatics locked in a deluded embrace.
Here is my reality: My name is Joe Ringle. I am 29 years old. I have two children, Audrey and Hudson. My wife, Christen, passed away 4 months ago. Life is difficult for us right now. But we serve a God whose goodness knows no end. He has rescued my family from certain, eternal death and given us, through Jesus, true and lasting life with Him, even if it isn't with each other here and now.
I will live in light of grace and not fetter myself to foolish delusions or denials of the truth.
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