The Bible is Rated "R"

Here.

Tom Wright on the use of the Bible in the Church

Here.

the book that i'm writing that i'll really never get around to

Teaching has really made me want to write a book. I don't have cute letters in front of my name so it will likely not happen. I've got a thorough bibliography, a table of contents, specific charts and paradigms, a thesis, etc, etc.

I want it to be a book that that appropriately blends reading the Scriptures narratively, doctrinally, devotionally, and theologically. My title would be "A King and A Kingdom: God's Story of Grace and Truth."

I've bounced the idea off several people. And, of course, my students are all thumbs up. We shall see. Here are the chapters:

1. Scripture [what it is and what it isn't]
2. Glory [the grand goal of it all]
3. Inclusio [the royal narrative oreo]
4. Covenant [the relational remedy]
5. Covenant(s) [the story unfolds]
6. Jesus [the covenants fulfilled]
7. Gospel [the kingdom is here]
8. Soteriology [this all means something about Salvation]
9. Pneumatology [this all means something about the Spirit]
10. Ecclesiology [this all means something about the Church]
11. Eschatology [this all means something about the End]

good biblical interpretation

From "The Art of Reading Scripture" edited by Ellen Davis and Richard B. Hays [pg 3].

Faithful interpretation of Scripture invites and presupposes participation in the community brought into being by God's redemptive action.

Scripture is like a musical score that must be played or sung in order to be understood.

BiBLE BEE

This summer I helped out with Bible Bee contestants. You make think this to be lame and sound a little too VBS-ish, but be patient. It was a group of high-schoolers competing for a national prize. 17,000 kids participate across the country. Each student must memorize large portions of Scripture from the OT and NT. They also had to take to memory dozens of Bible facts and random questions. It really was a daunting task for most of these teens. I would say that several of them know more Bible than their pastor. Anywho.

They were awesome to work with. Most of these kids were generally conservative and/or fundamentalist in their upbringing. I do live 12 miles from Bob Jones. And here's the crazy thing. What would you say the prize is for the national winner of this competition?

A gold-embossed, bonded-leather KJV?

A lifetime supply of everything Tim LaHaye has ever written?

How about a scholarship to Liberty? or CIU?

No. The prize for the high school winner of the Bible Bee gets a $100,000 check. Yes. You read those zeros correctly. There will be a kind, happy, conservative, God-fearing, 16-year old kid with their name on a check for $100,000. My lifetime salary might not add up to that until I'm 30.

Here's the best part. One of the kids that I got to "coach" and help this summer went to the national competition [they start with hundreds of regional competitions]. In the national competition, he moved from the top 100 to the top 20. Today they will cut it down to 7. Then a winner will be picked. I'm kind of proud of the whole thing.

And plus, he's an incredible kid... Go Joshua! I'm going to try to watch him live online :)

THE BiBLE iS KiND OF iMPORTANT

• "As in paradise, God walks in Holy Scriptures, seeking man" [St Ambrose].
• "A single line of the Bible has consoled me more than all the books I have ever read" [Immanuel Kant]."
• Abraham Lincoln called the Bible "the best gift God has given to man."
• A dictionary published by the Soviet government in mid-1900s called the Bible "a collection of different legends, mutually contradictory and written at different times and full of historical errors, issued by churches as a 'holy' book."
• "A thorough knowledge of the Bible is worth more than a college education" [Theodore Roosevelt].
• "There's nothing written in the Bible that says, 'If you believe in Me you ain't going to have no troubles.'" [Ray Charles]
• "Give a man an open Bible, an open, mind, a conscience in good working order, and he will have a hard time to keep from being a Baptist" [A. T. Robertson].

BiBLE TRANSLATiONS [and the new NiV]

Stereotyping Bible readers. Stolen from Scot McKnight, here. Very funny if, like me, you are way too immersed in American evangelicalism.

• NRSV for liberals and Shane Claiborne lovers
• ESV for Reformed complementarian Baptists
• HCSB for LifeWay store buying Southern Baptists
• NIV for complementarian evangelicals
• TNIV for egalitarians
• NASB for those who want straight Bible, forget the English
• NLT for generic brand evangelicals
• Amplified for folks who have no idea what translation is but know that if you try enough words one of them will hit pay dirt
• NKJV and KJV for Byzantine manuscript-tree huggers
• The Message for evangelicals looking for a breath of fresh air and seeker sensitive, never-read-a-commentary evangelists who find Peterson's prose so catchy

This is, of course, all brought on by the announcement of the new NIV coming out in 2011. Which, if you think about it, could read: The New New International Version Version. Here are some various takes on it all:

Al Mohler

Scot McKnight

Douglas Moo

Ligon Duncan

Cathy Grossman

THE BiBLE

Fun and generally unacademic facts. Enjoy.

• The Bible is the best seller of all time. Out of the top ten, if you add best sellers 2-10 together, they will still not be as popular as the Bible.
• Someone has calculated that the Bible is so influential that if every Bible in the world ceased to exist right now, it could all be put back together with books from the public libraries.
• Of Christ, Voltaire said, "Curse the wretch!" Voltaire once boasted, "In 20 years Christ will be no more. My single hand shall destroy the edifice it took twelve apostles to rear." Shortly after his death, the house in which he printed his literature became the depot of the Geneva Bible Society.
• For almost 1600-1800 years the Catholic Church had a list of forbidden books that should not be read by Catholilcs. It is said that the Bible was on this list for nearly 1000 years [see here, here, and here]. This is not to bash any of my Catholic brethren. It's fun facts, remember :)
• The Bible has close to 500 verses on prayer, a little less than 500 verses on faith, but over 2000 verses on money and possessions.
• There are nearly 5700 Greek manuscripts of the New Testament. None are originals. The earliest we have comes from the beginning of the second century. Lest ye think this yields doubt, let's take a look at the second most popular ancient text - Homer's "Iliad." There are about 2500 manuscripts. The earliest is from 400 BC. However, Homer wrote the Iliad about 800 BC. Some scholars even say 900 BC. Without a doubt, "the New Testament is the best attested collection of writings from the ancient world" [Dr Matthew Harmon, here].

Seminarian Woes

This is by David Gentino. It has been a fun discussion. Go read.

dominated by the word of God [calvin]

One month before he died at age 54, Calvin wrote his last will and testament. Notice how beautifully Bible-drenched and God-besotted he was.

In the name of God, I, John Calvin, servant of the Word of God in the church of Geneva, thank God that He has shown not only mercy toward me, His poor creature, but what is much more, that He has made me a partaker of His grace to serve Him, through my work. I confess to live and die in this faith which He has given me, inasmuch as I have no other hope or refuge than His predestination upon which my entire salvation is grounded. I embrace the grace which He has offered me in our Lord Jesus Christ and accept the merits of His suffering and dying, that through them all my sins are buried; and I humbly beg Him to wash me and cleanse me with the blood of our great Redeemer so that I, when I shall appear before His face, may bear His likeness. Moreover, I declare that I endeavored to teach His Word undefiled and to expound Holy Scripture faithfully, according to the measure of grace which He has given me.

THE BiBLE and WORLD POLiTiCS

Pharaoh.

King Cyrus.

Caesar.

Nebuchadnezzar. 

If you've read your Bible at all, you'll know that these are big-time political leaders found in the Old and New Testaments. These are just a couple. There are dozens more. What's unique about these fellas and their political counterparts is that they were pawns in God's huge, providential hand. God was always working through and against world politics to bring about His purposes for His covenant people.

The use of the two prepositions in the above sentence is massively intentional. Politics is never an end or a goal. It is a means. I know that we will always wrestle until "the kingdom of this world becomes the kingdom of our Lord and of His Christ" [Rev 11.15], but why do Christians live like one tiny slice of the political pie is the end all. Further, if you don't see eye to eye with them, you are often deemed a lesser believer in their mind.

Let me repeat those prepositions again. God works THROUGH and AGAINST world politics. That is the biblical paradigm. I don't feel as if many believers live like it is. Yes, render to Caesar what is Caesar's [Mk 12]. Yes, submit to authority [Rom 13]. But please, don't rush to the polls as if you are doing God a favor. We must be upstanding citizens, but we are strangers and aliens here [1 Pe 1 and 2] and our true citizenship is in heaven [Phil 3]. We have to live like that is true.

the Bible was not written to you but for you

I was reading through one of John Walton's Genesis commentaries the other day. In it he laid some good hermeneutical foundations. I thought you'd like to read over them. Always good to keep in mind, especially since we generally make the Bible about us and our puny little problems.

1. We must allow the text to pursue its own agenda, not force it to pursue ours.
   
2. We must be committed to the intention of the author rather than getting whatever mileage we can out of the words he used.
   
3. We must resist over-interpreting the text in order to derive the angle we are seeking.
   
4. We must be willing to have our minds changed by the text - that it is at least part of the definition of submitting ourselves to the authority of the text.
   
5. We must be willing to accept the inevitable disappointment if the text does not address or solve the questions we would like answers to.
   

read the Bible

Tom Wright and the use of the Bible in corporate worship. This is from pg 151 in Simply Christian.

Just as you're insulting a good wine if you drink it from a plastic cup instead of a glass which shows off its color, bouquet, and full flavor, so you're insulting the Bible if, given the opportunity, you don't create a context in which it can be heard and celebrated as what it really is: the rehearsal of the powerful deeds of God the creator and rescuer.

"Give yourself to the public reading of Scripture" [1 Tim 4.13].