Sunday, May 15, 2011
Sunday, May 1, 2011
Foundations Only a Few Can Build
This is a sermon that was preached by Dr. Robert Lowery of Lincoln Christian Seminary in chapel services on Feb. 8, 2001. Dr. Lowery was a passionate communicator and devoted student of God's word - as this sermon so clearly illustrates. Through his many years of service in the seminary, Dr. Lowery positively impacted the lives and the ministries of thousands - including my own. My own teaching ministry owes a huge debt of gratitude to Dr. Lowery's influence and encouragement. After listening again to this sermon yesterday I was reminded all over again of just how much my own thinking on scripture, hermeneutics, and ministry I have happily stolen from Dr. Lowery through the years.
When I first accepted the call to teach at Ozark Christian College, Dr. Lowery shared with me a prayer of his for all of his students - especially those who teach. His prayer was from Psalm 119:99 - "I have more insight than all my teachers, for I meditate on your statutes." I laughed when I heard it, and it still sounds outrageous to think about today. But really, shouldn't this be the prayer of every teacher and mentor? That his students may eventually be able to say, "I have gained more insight than my teachers - not because they were unfaithful or ignorant or irrelevant - but because they faithfully pointed me to the timeless truths of God's word. These truths which I have learned to consume and which I have learned to let consume me."
Dr. Lowery died last week after a prolonged battle with cancer. The man who knew more about the book of Revelation than anyone I've ever known, now knows immeasurably more than he ever imagined. Thank you, Dr. Lowery.
When I first accepted the call to teach at Ozark Christian College, Dr. Lowery shared with me a prayer of his for all of his students - especially those who teach. His prayer was from Psalm 119:99 - "I have more insight than all my teachers, for I meditate on your statutes." I laughed when I heard it, and it still sounds outrageous to think about today. But really, shouldn't this be the prayer of every teacher and mentor? That his students may eventually be able to say, "I have gained more insight than my teachers - not because they were unfaithful or ignorant or irrelevant - but because they faithfully pointed me to the timeless truths of God's word. These truths which I have learned to consume and which I have learned to let consume me."
Dr. Lowery died last week after a prolonged battle with cancer. The man who knew more about the book of Revelation than anyone I've ever known, now knows immeasurably more than he ever imagined. Thank you, Dr. Lowery.
Wednesday, April 13, 2011
Tuesday, April 5, 2011
Imagination and Hermeneutics
Hope is an imaginative enterprise. Especially is this the case when hope’s great gift is its power to negate the negatives of present experience. Only the capacity of the human imagination to transcend the given enables us to escape the constraints of the present and to suppose that things might be otherwise. This kind of imaginative or visionary hope is intimately related to transcendence. It takes us beyond the mere extrapolation of the future from the present and the calculation of the future on the basis of past and present. It envisages the genuinely new. Of course, this raises the specter of mere fantasy and the questions of the ground of hope and the sources of hopeful imagining. The more we envisage the category of the eschatologically new—a future reality that breaks the bounds of the immanent capacities of nature and history—the more important it is to distinguish imagination from fantasy. Christian hopeful imagining is grounded in the promise of God and resourced by the images of the scriptural revelation. As Moltmann’s theology of hope has always insisted, it is inspired and directed by the event of eschatological promise: the resurrection of the crucified Jesus. It is characterized also by its relevance to the way Christian life now is lived in the direction of the coming of God’s kingdom and its impact on present reality. In these ways, eschatological imagination is Christologically and scripturally disciplined imagination, not free-floating speculation.
Consequently, human imagination does not function in Christian eschatology as an alternative to God’s revelation. Rather, the revelatory promise of God in Christ and scripture appeals to the human imagination; seizes, transforms, and expands the imagination; makes the imagination the locus and vehicle of its reception. It is the imagination transfigured by God’s promise that is able to envisage in hope the promised transfiguration of reality. It is this Christian imagination that can envision the coming kingdom sufficiently for it to empower Christian living without reducing the kingdom to a reality that can be all too easily perfected already.
It is vital to insist that, when statements of eschatological expectation are said to be imaginative, this does not mean that they are not truth bearing, as an overly rationalistic view of human understanding might suggest. Christian hope is imaginative but not imaginary. In reckoning with the imaginative character of eschatological images and stories, we recognize that they refer to a reality that, because it lies beyond present experience, cannot be literally described. Christian eschatology must speak of a new creation that is both transcendently new and yet in continuity with this creation, since it is the renewal of this world. Of something that were wholly discontinuous with present reality we could hardly speak at all, but of the transcendent future of this world, we can speak in images that point beyond the limits of their literal reference.
Richard Bauckham, “Conclusion: Emerging Issues in Eschatology in the Twenty-First Century,” Oxford Handbook of Eschatology, 681-682.
Consequently, human imagination does not function in Christian eschatology as an alternative to God’s revelation. Rather, the revelatory promise of God in Christ and scripture appeals to the human imagination; seizes, transforms, and expands the imagination; makes the imagination the locus and vehicle of its reception. It is the imagination transfigured by God’s promise that is able to envisage in hope the promised transfiguration of reality. It is this Christian imagination that can envision the coming kingdom sufficiently for it to empower Christian living without reducing the kingdom to a reality that can be all too easily perfected already.
It is vital to insist that, when statements of eschatological expectation are said to be imaginative, this does not mean that they are not truth bearing, as an overly rationalistic view of human understanding might suggest. Christian hope is imaginative but not imaginary. In reckoning with the imaginative character of eschatological images and stories, we recognize that they refer to a reality that, because it lies beyond present experience, cannot be literally described. Christian eschatology must speak of a new creation that is both transcendently new and yet in continuity with this creation, since it is the renewal of this world. Of something that were wholly discontinuous with present reality we could hardly speak at all, but of the transcendent future of this world, we can speak in images that point beyond the limits of their literal reference.
Richard Bauckham, “Conclusion: Emerging Issues in Eschatology in the Twenty-First Century,” Oxford Handbook of Eschatology, 681-682.
Friday, April 1, 2011
Some thoughts on the documentary hypothesis
A short opinion piece reflecting on the documentary hypothesis and does it really matter. It is also a reminder of how certain scholarly assumptions develop a sort of dogma about them over time - to reject these scholarly assumptions is to be labeled either a fool or a heretic. I've always considered source criticism as little more than a red herring anyway. It baffles me that scholars can exert so much energy either defending or demolishing arguments about authorship and sources (oftentimes without any historically verifyable evidence) and in the process totally miss or dismiss the message of the word which has been passed down to us. This is what happens, I think, when you separate scripture from its moorings in the Church. For instance, Hebrews has been used as authoritative scripture within the believing community for about 2000 years. I love speculating about the authorship of Hebrews, but to a great extent it doesn't matter. What does matter is what this book has had to say to the Church through the years and what it continues to say to the Church today.
Thursday, March 10, 2011
More End Times Predictions
The end is coming - on May 21st of this year! Shoot! And the Cubs season will only just be beginning. This is a great demonstration of the ridiculous and laughable (and tragic) inconsistency of "Bible literalists." They enjoy taking a passage from 2 Peter 3 out of its context and hyper-literally while ignoring clear statements made by Jesus himself about calculating dates and times. This passage from 2 Peter 3 has been consistently misinterpreted. This particular interpretation was extremely popular in the Middle Ages. This band of merry travelers are by no means the first or the last group (unfortunately) to make a splash (and also a profit?) off of apocalyptic paranoia. They really aren't even worth mentioning except that the biggest shame of it all is that Jesus' name is mocked and even dismissed in the midst of this craziness. When asked, this group couldn't even articulate how to get to heaven. How about...wait for it...Jesus?! See the article here.
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