Beale, Inerrancy, OT in NT

Greg Beale lecturing at Tenth Pres in Philadelphia on an area in which he is one the world's leading evangelical scholars--inerrancy and the New Testament's use of the Old Testament.

The Boice Center Lecture Series #1: Inerrancy and the New Testament use of the Old Testament from Tenth Presbyterian Church on Vimeo.

Why Are We So Lost in Darkness Sometimes, Even as Christians?

One possible reason, from the Westminster Confession of Faith, 5.5:

The most wise, righteous, and gracious God doth oftentimes leave, for a season, His own children to manifold temptations, and the corruption of their own hearts, to chastise them for their former sins, or to discover unto them the hidden strength of corruption and deceitfulness of their hearts, that they may be humbled; and, to raise them to a more close and constant dependence for their support upon Himself, and to make them more watchful against all future occasions of sin, and for sundry other just and holy ends.

'to raise them.'

What Is the Bible?

As usual, hard to improve on the way Packer puts it in his most recent book, just out:

Most people in churches nowadays have never read through the Bible even once; the older Christian habit of reading it from start to finish as a devotional discipline has virtually vanished. So in describing the Bible we start from scratch, assuming no prior knowledge. 

The Bible consists of 66 separate pieces of writing, composed over something like a millennium and a half. The last 27 of them were written in a single generation: they comprise four narratives about Jesus called Gospels, an account of Christianity’s earliest days called the Acts of the Apostles, 21 pastoral letters from teachers with authority, and a final admonition to churches from the Lord Jesus himself, given partly by dictation and partly by vision. All these books speak of human life being supernaturally renovated through, in, with, under, from and for the once crucified, now glorified Son of God, who fills each writer’s horizon, receives his worship, and determines his mind-set at every point.

Through the books runs the claim that this Jesus fulfills promises, patterns and premonitions of blessings to come that are embodied in the 29 pre-Christian books. These are of three main types: history books, telling how God called and sought to educate the Jewish people, Abraham’s family, to worship, serve and enjoy him, and to be ready to welcome Jesus Christ when he appeared; prophetic books, recording oracular sermons from God conveyed by human messengers expressing threats, hopes and calls to faithfulness; and wisdom books which in response to God’s revelation show how to praise, pray, live, love, and cope with whatever may happen.

Christians name these two collections the Old and New Testament respectively. Testament means covenant commitment, and the Christian idea, learned from Paul, from the writer to the Hebrews, and from Jesus himself, is that God’s covenant commitment to his own people has had two editions. The first edition extended from Abraham to Christ; it was marked throughout by temporary features and many limitations, like a non-permanent shanty built of wood on massive concrete foundations. The second edition extends from Christ’s first coming to his return, and is the grand full-scale edifice for which the foundations were originally laid.

The writer to the Hebrews, following Jeremiah’s prophecy, calls this second superstructure the new covenant, and explains that through Christ, who is truly its heart, it provides a better priesthood, sacrifice, place of worship, range of promises and hope for the future than were known under its predecessor. Christians see Christ as the true center of reference in both Testaments, the Old always looking and pointing forward to him and the New proclaiming his past coming, his present life and ministry in and from heaven, and his future destiny at his return, and they hold that this is the key to true biblical interpretation.

Christians have maintained this since Christianity began. 

--J. I. Packer, Taking God Seriously: Vital Things We Need to Know (Crossway, 2013), 21-22

United to the Resurrected Christ

Richard Gaffin:

What characterizes the redemption of Christ holds true for the redemption of the believer. As the justification, adoption, sanctification, and glorification of the former take place by and at his resurrection, so the justification, adoption, sanctification, and glorification of the latter take place in his having been raised with Christ, that is, in his having been united to Christ as resurrected.

This means, then, that despite a surface appearance to the contrary, Paul does not view the justification, adoption, sanctification, and glorification of the believer as separate, distinct acts but as different facets or aspects of the one act of incorporation with the resurrected Christ. 

--Richard B. Gaffin, Jr., Resurrection and Redemption: A Study in Paul's Soteriology (P&R, 1987), 130-31

Miracles and the Restoration of the Truly Natural

We tend to think of the miracles of the Gospels as interruptions in the natural order. In a fascinating passage that reminds me of Bavinck, German theologian Jurgen Moltmann argues that miracles are not an interruption of the natural order but the restoration of the natural order. We are so used to a fallen world that sickness, disease, pain and death seem natural. In fact, they are the interruption.

When Jesus expels demons and heals the sick, he is driving out of creation the powers of destruction, and is healing and restoring created beings who are hurt and sick. The lordship of God to which the healings witness, restores creation to health. Jesus' healings are not supernatural miracles in a natural world. They are the only truly 'natural' thing in a world that is unnatural, demonized and wounded. . . . Finally, with the resurrection of Christ, the new creation begins, pars pro toto, with the crucified one.

--Jurgen Moltmann, The Way of Jesus Christ (trans. M. Kohl; Minneapolis: Fortress, 1993), 98-99 (pars pro toto is Latin for 'part for the whole')