“just to keep you going”

The diocesan surveyor came round today to give our house a once-over. While he was here (at about 10am), our older girl came up, offering me an empty glass.

“Daddy, would you like a whisky?”
(Checking watch): “Thank you, but it’s a little early, don’t you think?”
“I just though you might like one - to keep you going.”
“Um. No - I’m probably ok just for now.”
“Amy [her imaginary daughter] and I sometimes have a whisky in the morning, just to keep us going.”
“OK. But I think I’m OK. Thanks.”
“Amy and I didn’t have breakfast this morning. So I think we probably should have some whisky.”

To his credit, the surveyor said nothing.

 

nearly new book

P. Andrew Sandlin, ed., A Faith That is Never Alone: A Response to Westminster Seminary California (La Grange, CA: Kerygma Press, 2007).

This has been out for a few months (published by Lulu), but I was pleased to see that it’s available now from Amazon UK. It’s a fine list of contributors, and each of the essays looks fascinating. I understand that Peter Leithart’s contribution is outstanding. The contents are as follows:

P. Andrew Sandlin, ‘The Polemics of Articulated Rationality’.

John H. Armstrong, ‘Preaching the Faith that is Never Alone’.

Norman Shepherd, ‘Faith and Faithfulness’.

Mark Horne, ‘Reformed Covenant Theology and Its Discontents’.

Rich Lusk, ‘From Birmingham, with Love: A “Federal Vision” Postcard’.

Peter Leithart, ‘Adam the Catholic? Faith and Life in the Adamic Covenant’.

P. Andrew Sandlin, ‘The Gospel of Law and the Law of Gospel: An Assessment of the Antithetical Gospel-Law’.

Norman Shepherd, ‘The Imputation of Active Obedience’.

Rich Lusk, ‘Future Justification: Some Theological and Exegetical Proposals’.

Don Garlington, ‘Covenantal Nomism and the Exile’.

 

new books

There are some cracking new releases at the moment.

With the publication of volume 4, Holy Spirit, Church, and New Creation, the English translation of Herman Bavinck’s magisterial Reformed Dogmatics is finally complete. Richard Gaffin describes this as ‘arguably the most important systematic theology ever produced in the Reformed tradition’. This falls into the ’sell your granny and buy it’ category.

No less exciting, and also in the ’sell you shirt’ category, is the third volume of John Frame’s Theology of Lordship series, The Doctrine of the Christian Life. Even better news is that this monster (1104 pages!) is also available free for download, although I’ll be buying the book at some point.

There’s even more Frame available on CD-Rom. Volume 1 of his Collected Works includes The Doctrine of the Knowledge of God; The Doctrine of God; and Salvation Belongs to the Lord, plus several other books, lots of articles, and some lecture.

Bruce McCormack has edited a collection of essays from broadly Reformed theologians, Engaging the Doctrine of God, consisting of lectures given at the 2005 Edinburgh Dogmatics Conference. The list of contributors is excellent; I’m particularly looking forward to Oliver Crisp on Jonathan Edwards on Trinity, individuation, and divine simplicity, and John Webster on divine aseity.

 

‘be still…’

Last night Annabel pointed me to Psalm 46 as further background to Mark 4:35-41, which corroborates my earlier post. Within the Psalm, the raging nations (v.6) are also symbolised by the roaring waters of the sea (vv.2-3). And God’s word to them, like Jesus with the storm, is ‘Be still…’. And this has nothing to do with strumming guitars and singing sentimental choruses with a soppy grin, but in context means something like ‘Shut up, pack it in, put down you weapons, stop!’. And God stills the nations in order that he might be exalted among them, as his judgments and his peace extend throughout the world.

 

sea=nations

For anyone not familiar with the work of Jim Jordan, this post is intended as a footnote, supporting my previous one (on Mark 4:35-41) by summarising the biblical symbolism relating the sea and the nations.

After the fall of man, the separation of land and sea becomes a common symbol for the separation of God’s people and the ungodly nations of the world. The wicked are like the restless sea, while the righteous are given God’s holy land to dwell in. As the chaotic sea tries constantly to eat the land, so the Gentiles try to invade God’s land. In the Old Testament, the nations are frequently pictured in terms of the sea (cf. e.g., 2 Samuel 22:4-5; Psalm 65:7-8; Isaiah 5:30; 17:12-13; 57:20; Jeremiah 6:23; Daniel 7:2-3; cf. Luke 21:25; Revelation 13:1, 11). (James B. Jordan, Through New Eyes, 146.)

The verses Jordan cites are as follows (sometimes with a verse or two extra included to give the context):

2 Samuel 22:4-5
4 I call upon the LORD, who is worthy to be praised,
and I am saved from my enemies.
5 “For the waves of death encompassed me,
the torrents of destruction assailed me;

Psalm 65:5-8
5 By awesome deeds you answer us with righteousness,
O God of our salvation,
the hope of all the ends of the earth
and of the farthest seas;
6 the one who by his strength established the mountains,
being girded with might;
7 who stills the roaring of the seas,
the roaring of their waves,
the tumult of the peoples,
8 so that those who dwell at the ends of the earth are in awe at your signs.
You make the going out of the morning and the evening to shout for joy.

Isaiah 5:26-30
26 He will raise a signal for nations far away,
and whistle for them from the ends of the earth;
and behold, quickly, speedily they come!
27 None is weary, none stumbles,
none slumbers or sleeps,
not a waistband is loose,
not a sandal strap broken;
28 their arrows are sharp,
all their bows bent,
their horses’ hoofs seem like flint,
and their wheels like the whirlwind.
29 Their roaring is like a lion,
like young lions they roar;
they growl and seize their prey;
they carry it off, and none can rescue.
30 They will growl over it on that day,
like the growling of the sea.
And if one looks to the land,
behold, darkness and distress;
and the light is darkened by its clouds.

Isaiah 17:12-13
12 Ah, the thunder of many peoples;
they thunder like the thundering of the sea!
Ah, the roar of nations;
they roar like the roaring of mighty waters!
13 The nations roar like the roaring of many waters,
but he will rebuke them, and they will flee far away,
chased like chaff on the mountains before the wind
and whirling dust before the storm.

Isaiah 57:20
20 But the wicked are like the tossing sea;
for it cannot be quiet,
and its waters toss up mire and dirt.

Jeremiah 6:22-23
22 Thus says the LORD:
“Behold, a people is coming from the north country,
a great nation is stirring from the farthest parts of the earth.
23 They lay hold on bow and javelin;
they are cruel and have no mercy;
the sound of them is like the roaring sea;
they ride on horses,
set in array as a man for battle,
against you, O daughter of Zion!”

Daniel 7:2-3, 17
2 Daniel declared, “I saw in my vision by night, and behold, the four winds of heaven were stirring up the great sea. 3 And four great beasts came up out of the sea, different from one another…17 ‘These four great beasts are four kings who shall arise out of the earth.

Luke 21:25
25 “And there will be signs in sun and moon and stars, and on the earth distress of nations in perplexity because of the roaring of the sea and the waves,

Revelation 13:1
1 And I saw a beast rising out of the sea, with ten horns and seven heads, with ten diadems on its horns and blasphemous names on its heads.

Revelation 13:11
11 Then I saw another beast rising out of the earth. It had two horns like a lamb and it spoke like a dragon.

 

calming the sea, exorcising the nations

Time and again, I find that Jim Jordan’s work, and particularly his work on biblical symbolism provides explanatory depth and power when applied to all kinds of passages in the Bible. One example is the light shed on Mark 4:35-41 when one grasps Jordan’s observation that in the Bible the sea often represents the nations (see my next post for evidence).

In Mark 4, in the face of growing hostility, Jesus teaches that his word is powerful, and so will bear much fruit. So powerful is it that his kingdom will grow from tiny beginnings, until it has become a global empire, in which the nations of the world find refuge (4:32; cf Ezekiel 17:22-24; 31:2-6; Daniel 4:9-12, 20-22).

4:1-34 is full of land/ground imagery (land = Israel), but then, in 4:35ff we move from land to sea (=Gentile nations). Jesus and his disciples are in a boat, a little bit of land, afloat in the sea. And the sea is raging (cf. Ps 2:1ff) against the Lord’s Anointed (cf. Mk 1:9-11) and his disciples, threatening to engulf them. As the nations rage, the Anointed sleeps, for his trust is in the Lord (Ps 4:8). And when he awakes, with a couple of words, he stills the raging sea, and there is a great calm. The word describing Jesus’ rebuke (epitamen) takes us back to his earlier exorcisms, where he rebuked the evil spirits (1:25; 3:12). The calming of the storm is, in a sense, an exorcism. The pagan nations, where satan dwells, and over which he rules (in the Gospels, he is, of course, also particularly active in Israel) will be exorcised by Jesus’ gospel word, for the Father has given the Son of Psalm 2 the nations for his inheritance (cf. Mark 9:2-29).

4:35ff is then, among other things, an enacted parable, demonstrating that Jesus’ word is indeed powerful enough exorcise the nations, and to still them in their raging, bringing them to find refuge in his kingdom.

The question confronting us, as it did the disciples in the boat, is do we trust him? Do we believe his word has power to still the nations in their raging, to cast out satan from them, and to bring them into his kingdom?

 

to live is Christ

‘Better to live in rubbish with Jesus than to live in Muslim area without him.’

Pete has a sad, beautiful, and very humbling post on Coptic Christians in Egypt.

 

worship and culture

Marc’s post is, I think, the best, and best written, three paragraphs I’ve read on the relationship of corporate worship and the surrounding culture.

He begins:

Too often culture (our whole way of life) determines cult (churchly worship).

He concludes:

The whole of life is worship, but not in the same way as special worship and only because it is an outflow of it.

Read marc, learn, and inwardly digest.

 

my son, the beloved

‘You are My Son, whom I love, with you I am well pleased’ (Mark 1:10)

The Father’s declaration at Jesus’ baptism contains (at least) three OT allusions.

You are my Son. Psalm 2:7: ‘You are my Son, today I have begotten you.’ Jesus is God’s appointed King, who has inherited all the nations of the earth, and is even now ruling at His Father’s right hand.

You are my Son whom I love. Genesis 22:2: ‘Take your son, your only son Isaac, whom you love…’ Just as Abraham took Isaac up the mountain to sacrifice him, so the Father led His Son to Golgotha. But for this Father and this Son, there was no last minute reprieve, for He was both Son and Lamb.

‘…with you I am well pleased’. Isa 42:1: ‘my servant…in whom my soul delights’. This Son is the Suffering Servant, who, in obedience to His Father, equipped by the Spirit, will offer himself to bear his people’s sins. And it is precisely by doing this, precisely because His Father did not withhold the knife, that he will bring light to the nations, inherit the earth, and share the spoil with the strong (Isa 49:6; 52:13-53:12).

And all of this is done in the Spirit (Mk 1:10). Jesus offered himself in death to His Father through the eternal Spirit (Heb 9:14); he was appointed Son of God in power according to the Spirit of holiness by His resurrection from the dead (Rom 1:4); and as the one on whom the fulness of the Spirit dwelt, he poured out His Spirit on all flesh when He returned to His Father’s right hand.

 

the way

‘The way’ is an important phrase in Mark. It’s there right at the beginning in the Malachi/Isaiah quotation (1:2-3), and features particularly strongly in chapters 8-10. Against the backdrop of Isaiah 40-55, John the baptizer comes as a voice to prepare Yahweh’s way as he returns to Zion. And so, later in the Gospel, as we see Jesus journeying ‘on the way’ to Jerusalem we are witnessing Yahweh returning to Zion.

But the ‘way’ to Jerusalem is the way to suffering, rejection and death (10:32-34), the way of the cross. And so, John, the one who prepares the way, ultimately prepares it by his own rejection and death (6:14-29). And those who wish to follow Jesus ‘on the way’ (cf. 10:52), can only do so through suffering service, denying self, taking up cross, and following. The life of discipleship to this God is a life of death, denial, and serving others. Only then can we hope for resurrection life.