Stafford Carson : Presbyterian Pastor

Leland Ryken is the father of my friend and colleague, Dr Philip Ryken. This is Phil’s first year as President of Wheaton College where his father is the Clyde S. Kilby Professor of English. Leland is the author of numerous articles and has contributed, written or edited more than twenty books, and in this article he reflects on the greatness of the King James version of the Bible. It’s an excellent article that is worth reading.

This year marks the 400th anniversary of the most important event in the history of English Bible translation.  In fact, the publication of the King James Version of the Bible in 1611 was the most important event in the history of book printing as a whole, inasmuch as it is the bestselling English book of all time.  I tell my students that the publication of the King James Bible was the most important event in the history of English and American literature. Read more…

JSC Theological

Sometimes we may be inclined to think that everything that could be said about the creation-evolution debate has been said, but in this article, Tim Keller re-visits the discussion and makes some interesting points. It was a paper  entitled “Creation, Evolution and Christian Laypeople” which he gave last year at a conference sponsored by his church, Redeemer Presbyterian Church in New York. Other papers are available through the Biologos Forum website.

He addresses the perception that many people hold, namely, that if you believe in God, you can’t believe in evolution, and if you believe in evolution, you can’t believe in God. Are science and faith irreconciliable and mutually contradictory?

However, he does recognise the real difficulties that evolutionary theory presents for Christians. Keller writes, “In my estimation what current science tells us about evolution presents four main difficulties for orthodox Protestants”. The four main areas that he identifies are these:

Biblical authority: accepting evolution means we must take Genesis 1 as non-literal. What is the relationship between faithfulness to the Scriptures and literalism?

Confusion of biology and philosophy: The strongest proponents of evolution (including Dawkins) take it as a “Grand Theory of Everything,” which essential is a worldview that attempts to explain all deep philosophical and existential questions through evolutionary biology. Does accepting evolution necessarily mean that we must accept this “Grand Theory”?

The historicity of Adam and Eve: If they are only symbolic in Genesis 1-3, how do we handle Romans 5 & 1 Corinthians 15, which tells us that our sinfulness comes from Adam? If we don’t believe in a historical fall, how do we explain our “fallenness”?

The problem of violence and evil: In Keller’s words, “The process of evolution, however, understands violence, predation, and death to be the very engine of how life develops. If God brings about life through evolution, how do we reconcile that with the idea of a good God? The problem of evil seems to be worse for the believer in theistic evolution” .

In pastoral ministry, Keller has found the first three areas as the most pressing concerns from parishioners. Before getting into his answers to these questions, there is a really remarkable statement that Keller delivers in regards to the role of the pastor:

In short, if I as a pastor want to help both believers and inquirers to relate science and faith coherently, I must read the works of scientists, exegetes, philosophers, and theologians and then interpret them for my people. Someone might counter that this is too great a burden to put on pastors, that instead they should simply refer their laypeople to the works of scholars. But if pastors are not ‘up to the job’ of distilling and understanding the writings of scholars in various disciplines, how will our laypeople do it?

It really is a big challenge for pastors and preachers, and another reason why churches need not only good and godly men as ministers, but men who can think clearly and assess arguments in order to communicate effectively to their flock.

This is an interesting and challenging article that people on every side of the debate may find stimulating. His conclusion is that “Christians who are seeking to correlate Scripture and science must be a ‘bigger tent’ than either the anti-scientific religionists or the anti-religious scientists.” The text of the paper is below the fold. Read more…

JSC Theological

A few months ago, Seamus Heaney’s twelfth collection of poems, entitled “Human Chain”, was published, and with much acclaim. The central poem, “Miracle”, was directly inspired by a stroke he suffered a few years ago. Recalling the people who helped him receive prompt medical attention, he draws on the biblical imagery of the men who carried a paralysed man to Jesus to be healed. In a radio interview Heaney said, “I realised the guys that are hardly mentioned are central… without them no miracle would have happened.”

As with many of Heaney’s poems, there is much more being said than is immediately apparent.

“Be mindful of them as they stand and wait

For the burn of the paid-out ropes to cool,

Their slight light-headedness and incredulity

To pass, those ones who had known him all along.”

The only way some of us know that paid-out ropes burn our hands is because we have helped to lower a loved one’s body into a grave. It is a most solemn moment. The paralysed man’s friends, because of his illness, might have expected to have been his pall-bearers. But in this story when they lowered him into the presence of Jesus, it resulted in a remarkable outcome. They did so in faith, and it resulted in life and vitality that was both physical and spiritual.

Like Heaney’s poem, the story of the healing of the paralysed man operates on a number of levels. It is a wonderful story about the resourcefulness of the man’s friends in getting him in front of Jesus. They were men of faith. They really believed that God was at work through Jesus and that all their effort in getting their friend into the house where Jesus was present would be worthwhile. And it was.

But it is also a story about the remarkable insight which Jesus possessed with regard to human needs. Jesus penetrates beneath the surface of the man’s physical disability and addresses his underlying spiritual need. There were important issues in his life that ran deeper than his need for physical healing. He needed to be made right with God. He needed to be forgiven of his sin.

Jesus spoke a word of forgiveness to him and immediately he stood up, took what he had been lying on, and went home praising God.

The story also highlights how radically different Jesus was from the Jewish religious establishment. Luke records that the Pharisees and teachers of the law were sitting in the house, watching Jesus and listening to him. They believed that the only way God forgave sins was within their system, through the temple and all the rituals of cleansing and sacrifices that went on there. If anyone could speak for God and declare to the people that God had forgiven their sins, then it was their priests, and particularly the high priest.

But Jesus cuts through all that traditional understanding and declares on his own authority, and in view of the faith of his friends, that this paralysed man was forgiven. He is claiming to speak for God in a way which challenges and undercuts the traditional channels of authority.

Jesus explains what he is doing by using a mysterious phrase, “the Son of Man” to describe himself. Jewish hearers would immediately recall a passage in the Old Testament, in the book of Daniel, where “one like a son of man” is brought before God and, after a time of great persecution, is given authority over the world. Many Jews understood that this person would be the Messiah, the one through whom God would set up his kingdom after Israel’s long suffering.

Not everyone would have understood what Jesus meant. His actions and words were part of God’s kingdom work and God would ultimately vindicate him. The healing of the paralysed man functions as a sign that Jesus’ authority was real and that he was Messiah.

No wonder the crowd was amazed. Luke says, “They were filled with awe and said, “We have seen remarkable things today.” The word “remarkable” in the original language means things you wouldn’t normally expect. For those people who followed Jesus, there were plenty more remarkable things to come.

When people come to Jesus today, even with a grain of faith, the remarkable and unexpected can and does occur. People who are helpless and paralysed by sin know new life and new freedom. People who are guilty are forgiven. And people who are spiritually dead come to life. It can be so remarkable that for those who look on it results in what Heaney calls “slight light-headedness and incredulity”.

JSC Theological

I know it’s a bit of a mouthful, but moralistic therapeutic deists is the term that’s being used to describe many young people growing up in evangelical churches in the United States. It’s highlighted in a recent study by Kenda Creasy Dean, a professor at Princeton Theological Seminary, who says that the religion of many American teens is actually “fake Christian”.

The report says that if you’re the parent of a Christian teenager your child may be following a “mutant” form of Christianity, and you may be responsible. Dean says more American teenagers are embracing what she calls “moralistic therapeutic deism.” Translation: It’s a watered-down faith that portrays God as a “divine therapist” whose chief goal is to boost people’s self-esteem.

As many churches start their “autumn and winter’s work” especially with youth organisations, this report makes us think again about what kind of beliefs we are actually teaching our children and young people.

Moralistic therapeutic deism was first coined by author Christian Smith of the University of Notre Dame to describe the common religious beliefs among American youth. It was reported in 2005 his book, Soul Searching: the religious and spiritual lives of American teenagers. The research project, entitled the National Study of Youth and Religion, was funded by Lilly Endowment Inc. It found that many young people believed in several moral statutes not exclusive to any of the major world religions:

1. A god exists who created and ordered the world and watches over human life on earth.
2. God wants people to be good, nice, and fair to each other, as taught in the Bible and by most world religions.
3. The central goal of life is to be happy and to feel good about oneself.
4. God does not need to be particularly involved in one’s life except when God is needed to resolve a problem.
5. Good people go to heaven when they die.

These points of belief were compiled from interviews with approximately 3,000 young teenagers. The authors say the system is “moralistic” because it “is about inculcating a moralistic approach to life. It teaches that central to living a good and happy life is being a good, moral person.” The authors describe the system as being “about providing therapeutic benefits to its adherent” as opposed to being about things like “repentance from sin, of keeping the Sabbath, of living as a servant of a sovereign divine, of steadfastly saying one’s prayers, of faithfully observing high holy days, of building character through suffering….”

And last, the authors say it is “about belief in a particular kind of God: one who exists, created the world, and defines our general moral order, but not one who is particularly personally involved in one’s affairs–especially affairs in which one would prefer not to have God involved.” Although a God that is available to intercede in our lives is classically theistic, the authors choose to call this a form of Deism. They say that “the Deism here is revised from its classical eighteenth-century version by the therapeutic qualifier, making the distant God selectively available for taking care of needs.” It views God as “something like a combination Divine Butler and Cosmic Therapist: he’s always on call, takes care of any problems that arise, professionally helps his people to feel better about themselves, and does not become too personally involved in the process.”

The authors believe that “a significant part of Christianity in the United States is actually only tenuously Christian in any sense that is seriously connected to the actual historical Christian tradition, but has rather substantially morphed into Christianity’s misbegotten stepcousin, Christian Moralistic Therapeutic Deism.”

It seems that whatever else we communicate to our young people, we need to ensure that they understand the Gospel of grace. We are sinners. We need a Saviour. We cannot be our own saviours by our own performance. And out of love and gratitude to the One who is our Saviour and Lord, we march to the beat of his drum, not the rhythms of this world.

JSC Theological

My friend and former colleague, Carl Trueman has begun a series of blogposts on the reformation 21 blog on what Luther understood a theologian to be. In good style, Carl names his original sources and draws out some very useful practical lessons.

Most pastors and preachers are reluctant to take on the label of “theologian” (even though that is what they are for their flock). What is described here can be applied with equal force to all of us who “labour in the Word” and who seek to share the results of our labours with our people week by week.

Here is the text of the first blogpost, with the promise of more to come.

I want to start a short series of posts today on Martin Luther’s understanding of what makes a theologian.  The sources for reflection are primarily two: a passage from his Table Talk (no. 3425; not as far as I know available in the standard English translations) and the preface to the first edition of his German works (1539; available in vol. 34 of the Philadelphia edition of Luther’s works in translation).

The preface contains just three things that mark out a theologian: prayer; meditation; and agonizing struggle.    The Tabletalk lists six: the grace of the Spirit; agonizing struggle; experience; opportunity; careful and constant reading; and a practical knowledge of the academic disciplines.  As the shorter is, by and large, subsumed under the longer, I will use the six headings for the next six posts.

As a prologue, however, I want to draw attention to the fact that Luther does not talk about what constitutes theology but about what makes a theologian.  This is somewhat characteristic of his approach: many people have noted the importance of his “theology of the cross,” which he articulated most dramatically at the Heidelberg Disputation in 1518; but the text of the disputation theses do not speak of a theology of the cross; rather they speak of a theologian of the cross.  Theology, for Luther, is the words spoken by human beings in response to the words God has first spoken to them; thus, theology is a personal action; and therefore, there can be no discussion of theology without first discussing the agent, the one who speaks theologically.  Theology is an abstraction unless it is understood as the action of the theologian.

This is an odd idea in a world where the separation of church and academy is now a given.  Theology, like mathematics or biology or literary theory, represents just another object to be studied.  It has become a technical exercise, divorced from the character and identity of the practitioner, a matter simply of learning the techniques or the rules of the game.  In this context, theologians like to think of themselves often as nice people, as socially acceptable, as aspiring to places at the cultural table, as being accepted by others.

But this was not so for Luther: the theologian was one who had been seized by the Word, gripped by the address of God, whose very identity was determined by the this prior address of God which then compelled and shaped any response he might care to give. This process was agonizing, existential, redefining at the most fundamental level the person’s own self-understanding as the huge gulf that exists between Creator and creature in all of its terrifying glory comes home to the theologian and drives him again and again out of himself and to the cross where hangs the Incarnate God.  A theologian — a true theologian — was one who, through agonizing struggle was driven again and again by the Spirit to wrestle with the text of scripture so as to discern its meaning, and then communicate that meaning in the power of the Spirit to others.  As I hope to demonstrate in future posts, nobody who casually bandies around theological ideas, or who talks comfortably about doubt and temptation, is worthy of the title “true theologian” as Luther understood it.

JSC Theological