Round the Sphere Again: Quotable

He Commands and Then Commends
Steve Hays:

One of the striking features in Gen 1 is the interplay between the divine “senses.” The interplay between divine speech and divine sight. In Gen 1, God’s speech is creative while his sight is evaluative. His speech is prior to the effect of his verbal fiat, while his sight is subsequent to the effect of his verbal fiat. He commands and commends. He commands something into being, then commends the outcome.

Read the whole post at Triablogue.

Lovingly Remove the Shelter
Francis Schaeffer: 

Every man has built a roof over his head to shield himself at the point of tension…The Christian lovingly, must remove the shelter and allow the truth of the external world and of what man is to beat upon him. When the roof is off, each man must stand naked and wounded before the truth of what is…He must come to know that his roof is a false protection from the storm of what is.

Found at Apologetics 315.

Chicago Statement on Biblical Inerrancy 26

What do Christians mean when they say the Bible is inerrant? The Chicago Statement on Biblical Inerrancy tells us what leading inerrantist mean by inerrancy. I’ll be posting a section of this statement each week until I’ve posted the whole thing.

After a preface and a short statement, the Chicago Statement contains the Articles of Affirmation and Denial. (You can read previously posted sections of this statement in by clicking here.) The last section is the Exposition, which “gives an account of the outline of doctrine from which our summary statement and articles are drawn.” I think the expostion section, which continues here, is the most interesting—and maybe the best—section of this historic church document.

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Transmission and Translation

Since God has nowhere promised an inerrant transmission of Scripture, it is necessary to affirm that only the autographic text of the original documents was inspired and to maintain the need of textual criticism as a means of detecting any slips that may have crept into the text in the course of its transmission. The verdict of this science, however, is that the Hebrew and Greek text appear to be amazingly well preserved, so that we are amply justified in affirming, with the Westminster Confession, a singular providence of God in this matter and in declaring that the authority of Scripture is in no way jeopardized by the fact that the copies we possess are not entirely error-free.

Similarly, no translation is or can be perfect, and all translations are an additional step away from the autographa. Yet the verdict of linguistic science is that English-speaking Christians, at least, are exceedingly well served in these days with a host of excellent translations and have no cause for hesitating to conclude that the true Word of God is within their reach. Indeed, in view of the frequent repetition in Scripture of the main matters with which it deals and also of the Holy Spirit’s constant witness to and through the Word, no serious translation of Holy Scripture will so destroy its meaning as to render it unable to make its reader “wise for salvation through faith in Christ Jesus” (2 Tim. 3:15).

How Beautiful the Feet

While I was on my holiday, Aron Wall commented on the Theological Term post on inclusivism. I’m not sure he’ll be back to see my reply, because it’s been a couple of weeks since he made his comment. But even if he doesn’t return, I think it’s important for me to respond to what he wrote, because the Theological Term posts don’t drop off into the bloggy netherworld, but are accessed repeatedly over the years. So for the sake of Aron, if he returns, and all those who look up inclusivism in the future, here is the first part of my reply to his comments. (When I’m finished replying, I’ll link to my replies in another comment on that post.)

Aron’s comments are in the block quotations and my responses are below them.

Despite the fact that this post has made me cranky, because this is my first comment on your site I should tell you that it is a lovely place and that I have enjoyed reading it several times. It astonishes me, however, to find someone who truly loves God so much and talks about grace so much, and yet believes that God is so stingy in giving his grace to our unrighteous race.

Thank you for your kind words about my site.

I’m having trouble wrapping my mind around the phrase “stingy in giving his grace.” It’s a nonsense phrase, really. By definition, any act that comes from grace is an act of generosity. That God saves any one at all precludes the accusation that he is stingy.

Was Abraham saved by “explicit faith in Jesus Christ”? Did Abraham call on the name “Jesus”? He did not. Rather, “Abraham believed God, and it was credited to him as righteousness.” Does that mean that Abraham was saved apart from faith in Jesus Christ? Absolutely not, but it does not seem to pass the test of “explicitness” required by the exclusivist for the modern day unevangelized person. Rather, he had faith in God’s promise, which *turned out* to be about Jesus (but without Abraham knowing that).

Yes, the Old Testament faithful looked forward to the provision God would make for them, trusted in what he would provide, and were saved on account of their faith. But they still had to know the good news of the promise of God in order to trust in it. Salvation still required special revelation; they needed to hear and believe the promise of God. Those Gentiles who remained unaware of the promises of God, who did not know of God’s special revelation given to the Jews, were “without hope” (Ephesians 2).

Now that the promise has been fulfilled, the provision has been made, and more has been revealed, we must trust in the the fulfilled promise, the work accomplished, and the new revelation—or the good news of Christ and his work. How explicit someone’s knowledge had to be on order for them to be saved depended on how much had been revealed by God at their time in history. But it has always required special revelation from God; it has always required “good news” proclaimed and heard and believed.

But as for the quotation from Romans [10:14-17], exclusivists are on sketchy ground when they derive their position from Paul’s rhetorical questions “How can they call on…etc.” The exclusivist assumes that the answer is “They cannot.”

It’s not simply an assumption, but a logical conclusion. For one, if the questions are rhetorical, their answer has to be, “they can’t,” because a positive rather than a negative answer would require an explanation in the reply. If the answer is positive, the questions aren’t rhetorical.

What’s more, the questions form a logical argument which ends in a statement—a conclusion—about the beauty of the feet of those who preach the good news. Why are those feet beautiful? Because they represent people’s only hope salvation: hearing the good news preached by preachers who are sent to them.

And then the passage is summed up with this statement: “faith comes from what is heard,  and what is heard comes through the message about Christ.” This is exactly what we would expect as a summary statement of the argument made by the preceding series of questions if the expected answer to those questions is “they can’t.”

I encourage you to go through the list of questions and answer them in the positive. When you do that, do the questions build an argument that leads to the logical conclusion that the feet of those who bring good news are beautiful? Can it be summarized by the statement that “faith comes from what is heard,  and what is heard comes through the message about Christ”?

The trouble is that Paul goes on to give a different answer in just a few verses.

No, he doesn’t, not if the passage is interpreted in context, but that’s a matter for another post on another day.