Round the Sphere Again: Recommended for Watching

Here are a few videos I enjoyed watching recently.

This first one shows a panoramic view from the summit of Mount Logan, Canada’s highest mountain, located within Kluane National Park and Reserve in southwestern Yukon. (Did you know the exact height of Mount Logan was unknown until 1992? Or so says Wikipedia.)

Next up, ten thousand Japanese singers singing Beethoven’s Ode to Joy.

From the video details:

The performance of “Daiku”, “The Ninth”, Beethoven’s 9th Symphony with 10000 (amateur) chorus singers is a Japanese highlight every year in the end of December. Here is the last movement, recorded at the 2011 concert in Osaka, this year dedicated especially to the memory of the victims of the desastrous tsunami in March.

And then it’s my favorite bear family again, playing on a mossy hillside a few days ago.

Trading Down

Fundamental to idolatry in biblical terms is the idea of an exchange —swapping the true God for something else. Thus Jeremiah laments that ‘my people have exchanged their Glory for worthless idols’ (Jer. 2:11; cf. Ps. 106:20), and the apostle Paul comments that ‘they exchanged the truth of God for a lie and worshipped and served created things rather than the Creator’ (Rom. 1:25; cf. v. 21). 

That idolatrous exchange can occur in various ways. Someone might exchange the true God for an alternative ‘deity’, such as the pagan god Baal who proved so tempting for God’s people in Old Testament times. Alternatively, someone might exchange the true God who genuinely blesses for something else supposed to bring blessing, such as sex or money (Eph. 5:5). Or the exchange may amount to modifying God’s character, airbrushing out attributes we deem problematic to make a more convenient God in our image. This last kind of idolatry is hardest to spot, because we can indulge in it while retaining Christian vocabulary. We continue to speak enthusiastically of ‘God’, and even about ‘Christ’ and ‘the gospel’ while all along we are operating with an imitation forged by our own sinful imaginations. When we suppress certain truths about God (e.g. his holy wrath against sin) or distort others (e.g. his love) to produce our own designer deity, then we are guilty of false faith, and are left with a ‘counterfeit God’.

Quoting from Pierced for Our Transgressions: Rediscovering the Glory of Penal Substitution by Steve Jeffery, Michael Ovey, and Andrew Sach.

Theological Term of the Week

bibliolatry
The worship of the Bible instead of God. (While technically it may be possible to commit bibliolatry, high esteem for and submission to the Bible is not bibliolatry, but rather worship of God through reverence of and obedience to his revelation to us.)

• A proper attitude toward scripture from scripture:

I have stored up your word in my heart,

that I might not sin against you.

Blessed are you, O LORD;

teach me your statutes!

With my lips I declare

all the rules of your mouth.

In the way of your testimonies I delight

as much as in all riches.

I will meditate on your precepts

and fix my eyes on your ways.

I will delight in your statutes;

I will not forget your word.

(Psalm 119:11-16 ESV)

• From The London Baptist Confession 1689:

Chapter 1: Of the Holy Scriptures

5. We may be moved and induced by the testimony of the church of God to an high and reverent esteem of the Holy Scriptures; and the heavenliness of the matter, the efficacy of the doctrine, and the majesty of the style, the consent of all the parts, the scope of the whole (which is to give all glory to God), the full discovery it makes of the only way of man’s salvation, and many other incomparable excellencies, and entire perfections thereof, are arguments whereby it doth abundantly evidence itself to be the Word of God…

• From Freedom and Authority by J. I. Packer:

[I]f Jesus was God incarnate and spoke with personal divine authority, and if by sending the Spirit he really enabled his apostles to speak God’s word with total consistency. it follows that both Testaments (that which his gift of the Spirit produced as well as that which he knew and authenticated) ought to be received as “the very words of God” and as “God-breathed and … useful … so that the man of God may be thoroughly equipped” (Rom. 3:2: 2 Tim. 3:16. 17). Only as we seek to believe and do what the two Testaments, taken together, say have we the full right to call ourselves Jesus’ disciples. “Why do you call me. “Lord. Lord,” and not do what I say?” (Luke 6:46). Scripture comes to us, as it were, from Jesus? hand, and its authority and his are so interlocked as to be one.

Bowing to the living Lord entails submitting mind and heart to the written Word. Disciples individually and churches corporately stand under the authority of Scripture because they stand under the lordship of Christ, who rules by Scripture. This is not bibliolatry but Christianity in its most authentic form.

1. GotQuestions.org: What is bibliolatry?
2. Blue Letter Bible: Does Belief in Inerrancy Cause Worship of the Bible?
3. Kevin DeYoung: Is Bibliolatry the Real Danger?
4. Tim Challies:  Bibliolatry
5. S. M. Baugh: Is Bibliolatry Possible?

Related terms:

• authority of scripture
• inerrancy of scripture
• infallibility of scripture
• inspiration of scripture
• sola scriptura
• special revelation
  
• sufficiency of scripture

Filed under Scripture.

Do you have a term you’d like to see featured here as a Theological Term of the Week? If you email it to me, I’ll seriously consider using it, giving you credit for the suggestion and linking back to your blog when I do.

Clicking on the Theological Term graphic at the top of this post will take you to a list of all the previous theological terms in alphabetical order.