Render unto God the things that are God's

"200k professing evangelicals a year render unto butchers that which bears Caesar's image in order to render unto Moloch those who bear God's."
-- R. C. Sproul Jr.   (from a Twitter post on April 12, 2013)

Speaking Bible

While discussing some of the ecclesiastical problems associated with the widespread use of extra-biblical language, particularly the language used throughout protestant traditions and textbooks, Peter Leithart commented:

The Bible is a common inheritance among all Christians. If we all learned to speak Bible, we would be speaking the same language. But we deliberately invest terms with a great deal of theological content to distinguish ourselves from other believers. We fill terms with all kinds of theological content in order to makes sure that nobody confuses us with Lutherans, because Lutherans say 'this' and we say 'this'. And I just don't see that as consistent with Jesus' desires for the Church. Jesus' desire is that the Church be one, and that we not erect those kinds of barriers. If we go back and wrestle with the Bible to speak Bible fluently then I think [with] that particular ecclesiological problem ...we are more apt to achieve what Jesus wants us to achieve, which is the unity of His body.1

1.  IN MEDIAS RES PODCAST, March 30th, 2007 

The Genius of John

In The Genius of John: A Composition-Critical Commentary on the Fourth Gospel, Peter F. Ellis attempts to identify the author of the fourth gospel. He writes:

Whoever the author of the Fourth Gospel was, one thing is certain: he wanted to remain anonymous. He wanted only to be known as the disciple whom Jesus loved. He speaks about himself in 13:23 as the one who at the Last Supper "was lying close to the breast of Jesus"; in 19:23-26, 35, as the disciple who stood beneath the cross, was given the care of Jesus' mother, and witnessed the death of Jesus; in 20:2-10, as the disciple who ran with Peter to the tomb on Easter morning and, upon seeing the burial cloths, believed; in 21:7, as the disciple who alone recognized the stranger on the shore as Jesus; and in 21:20-23, as the disciple about whom Jesus said to Peter: "If it is my will that he remain until I come, what is that to you?"

It is probable that he is the "disciple... known to the high priest" who spoke to the maid and had Peter admitted to the court of Annas (18:15-16). It is quite probable that he was one of the two unnamed disciples of John the Baptist who followed Jesus at the beginning of his public life (1:35-39), and equally probably that he was one of the two unnamed disciples who accompanied Peter in the boat on the Lake of Galilee after the resurrection (21:2). 

What is certain is that the Gospel itself declares the Beloved Disciple to be "the disciple who is bearing witness to these things, and who has written these things..." (21:24).1

How many times have you studied John's gospel and overlooked these details?

1.  Peter F. Ellis, The Genius of John: A Composition-Critical Commentary on the Fourth Gospel [The Liturgical Press; Collegeville, MN; 1985] p. 2

N.T. Wright on Weather Forecasting

When we read an Old Testament text which says 'the sun will be turned into darkness and the moon into blood and the stars will be falling from heaven,' we ought to know as a matter of literary genre that the next line is not going to be that the rest of the country is going to have scattered showers and sunny intervals. This is not a primitive weather forecast.

-- N.T. Wright, speaking in a panel discussion at the 2010 Wheaton Theology Conference

Charles Spurgeon on "Violence"

Commenting on Matthew 10:23, which reads, "But when they persecute you in this city, flee ye into another," Charles Spurgeon writes:

It is to the last degree foolish to attempt to force religion upon men: it advances by gentleness, and not by violence. ...Persecution has often been a spur to the church. Let us be diligent in our holy calling, and preach the Gospel while we can do so in peace.1

1.  Charles Spurgeon, The King Has Come [Old Tappan, NJ: Fleming H. Revell Company; 1987] pp. 124-125 

Hypocritical American Ideals

In his book, A Free People's Suicide: Sustainable Freedom and the American Future, Os Guinness concludes his thoughts about America under judgment:

   As I said and will say again, America stands before the world today under the judgment of her own ideals. Again and again it is Montesquieu and Madison, rather than Marx and Muhammad, whose principles boomerang back on America in world reactions to America's superpower actions. As I have heard argued by foreign admirers of the U.S. Constitution at universities in Europe, Asia and the Middle East, it is hypocritical for Americans to pride themselves on checks and balances at home but to ride roughshod over international opinion, institutions, laws and other checks and balances abroad, or to talk of free-market capitalism and impose it on others in a coerced, lopsided manner favorable only to American corporations and investors.

   ...Ironically, American liberals and radicals who attack American aggression abroad often espouse the same negative view of freedom at home that they deplore abroad. In fact, what unites an otherwise disparate group that would include most liberals, almost all libertarians and most postmodern radicals is that freedom is largely a question of escaping the power of others over them. It is all about dismantling the structures of oppression and liberating the victim. 

  ...But then we are back to the core conundrum of freedom. Freedom requires a framework of order, which means restraint, yet the only restraint proper to freedom is self-restraint, which freedom undermines. 

   Whatever positions we take on such issues, these old debates about freedom are a valuable corrective to naivety and utopianism. The passion for freedom is simple and strong, but freedom itself is subtle, complex and demanding. Its defense is never simple and easy, never a matter of arms alone. While the world still turns and the boot of the powerful still grinds into the faces of the weak and poor, the human cry for freedom will never be silenced and the bell of freedom will always ring out along with the cries of suffering and anger. 

   Equally, cries for justice and for order will always blend with cries for freedom, and it will always be harder to be free than not to be free. Freedom's work is never alone and never done, which is why the founders' confidence in the prospect of a freedom that could remain free forever is so audacious and so deserving of greater attention than it is given by a free people grown complacent through the privileges of freedom.1

1.  Os Guinness, A Free People's Suicide: Sustainable Freedom and the American Future [Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press; 2012] pp. 67-68

Two Concepts of Liberty

Commenting on Isaiah Berlin's four famous essays on liberty, but particularly his 1958 lecture titled "Two Concepts of Liberty," Os Guinness makes a few interesting observations:

Negative freedom, as Berlin defines it, is freedom from--in essence, freedom from interference and constraint. Positive freedom is freedom for--in essence, freedom for excellence according to whatever vision and ideals define that excellence. 

...[I]n reality the choice between the two freedoms in never either/or. Negative and positive freedoms can be distinguished in theory, but if true freedom is to flourish, they must never be divorced in practice. Indeed, one of the most difficult challenges of the modern world is to create societies that allow diverse faiths and ideologies to have the maximum of both positive and negative freedoms for each faith and ideology. No nation has so far achieved full success in this test, though some have done better than others.  

For one thing, neither positive nor negative freedom is complete without the other. They each describe complementary sides of the same full freedom, which always rests on two conditions: the complete absence of any abuse of power, which is the essence of positive freedom. In a free society understood in this way, free citizens are neither prevented from doing what they should (the denial of positive freedom) no forced to do what they shouldn't (the denial of negative freedom).1

1.  Os Guinness, A Free People's Suicide: Sustainable Freedom and the American Future [Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press; 2012] pp. 61-61