Jan
24
2013
Final excerpt from the early pages of A. T. Ross’ Hebrews commentary. Part 1 here.
Temple and Typology
The evidence that Hebrews was written before the fall of Jerusalem in A. D. 70 is strengthened by a few other observations. Timothy is said to be alive (13:23), and while it cannot be certainly determined that this is the same Timothy that traveled with Paul, there exists no good reason not to think it is the same Timothy to whom Paul wrote two epistles.
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2 comments | tags: AD70, Adam Ross, Hebrews | posted in Biblical Theology, Quotes, The Last Days
Jan
23
2013
![BullysKitchen](http://www.bullartistry.com.au/wp/wp-content/uploads/2013/01/BullysKitchen.jpg)
“Meat is murder. Tasty, tasty murder.”
Finally received my hard copy of God’s Kitchen: Theology You Can Eat & Drink.
“The Old Testament is a violent, bloody book, but the more we modern Christians neglect it, the more our gospel loses its teeth. This little book will call you out, cut you up, lift you up, and set you on fire. It begins where all spiritual meat does: not at the dinner table, not in the kitchen, nor even at the market. It begins in the abattoir. The God of the Old Testament is a butcher only because the Christ of the New Testament is a chef.”
Here’s what’s on the menu:
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Comments Off | tags: God's Kitchen | posted in Bible Matrix, Biblical Theology
Jan
23
2013
[Today and tomorrow I’m posting a couple of excerpts from the draft of a forthcoming book-length commentary by A. T. Ross, The Messianic Priest-King: An Exposition of the Book of Hebrews. His goal has been to take an approach to Hebrews similar to David Chilton’s concerning the book of Revelation, “paying close attention to the symbolic dimension and how the intertextual uses of the Old Testament impacted the argument.” Dealing with the chiastic structures and typology, and quoting all the best guys, Adam has really done his homework. I’ll keep you posted on publication.]
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Comments Off | tags: Adam Ross, Hebrews | posted in Biblical Theology, Quotes, The Last Days
Jan
22
2013
Adam’s Challenge in Eden to Become the King He Was
by Mark Horne (reposted with permission)
“What we need to ask ourselves is, why might a righteous and sinless human need to ‘die’ in order to “live”?”
In basic Evangelical Christian teaching, “sanctification” is a process in which a believer, by the working of God’s Spirit, is able more and more to put off sin and live in more complete obedience to God. That way of summarizing the teaching can be misleading since perception is not always the same as reality. After all, one part of the process might involve discovering hidden sin, which means one might, at times in one’s life, be sanctified by (apparently) becoming more sinful, not less. Furthermore (or perhaps the same issue), new stages in life can bring new and more powerful temptations which one might initially fail to resist.
But another problem with “sanctification” as understood as the basic process and calling in the Christian life, is that Evangelical teaching cannot, on this definition, allow that Jesus, from the time he was born to the time he died, went through sanctification.
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Comments Off | tags: Mark Horne, Romans | posted in Biblical Theology, Christian Life
Jan
19
2013
![Jacob-Raphael](http://www.bullartistry.com.au/wp/wp-content/uploads/2013/01/Jacob-Raphael.jpg)
An excerpt from Bible Matrix III:
Just as Esau was the line of Cain rolled into one, so Jacob was a true son of God. In fact, being blameless as Noah was, the Lord granted him a vision of the true Gate of God, a tower reaching to heaven.
In Bible Matrix, we mentioned the significance of Jacob’s “ziggurat” vision as it relates to the mountain of God. [1] Jacob was laid out on the ground like Adam. His slumber brings a “Bridal” vision.
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Comments Off | tags: Baptism, Bible Matrix III, Cain, Esau, Genesis, Jacob, Literary Structure, Tabernacle | posted in Bible Matrix, Biblical Theology
Jan
18
2013
From Douglas Wilson’s Why Ministers Must Be Men:
Any discussion of women’s ordination will obviously revolve around the direct Pauline statements on the subject, and we will certainly spend the lion’s share of our space there. However, the Pauline instructions were not delivered in a vacuum and when he makes his appeals outside his immediate situation, he makes those appeals to the Old Testament, ground his appeals in both the history recorded there and the law given there.
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Comments Off | tags: Compromise, Culture, Doug Wilson | posted in Apologetics, Biblical Theology, Christian Life
Jan
15
2013
![giotto_isaac_esau_bondone](http://www.bullartistry.com.au/wp/wp-content/uploads/2013/01/giotto_isaac_esau_bondone.jpg)
“Jacob didn’t steal the future. He rescued it from a Man who put food first and whose eyes were not yet opened.”
James Jordan has done the Church a great service by rehabilitating the reputations of Noah the drunk, Abraham the liar, Jacob the swindler and Moses the murderer. He has shown us that the context of these so-called sins and crimes mean that they are nothing of the sort. [1] By this, I don’t mean “cultural context” but Covenant context. The reason these great men of God (and their wonderful women) get such a bad rap is because their stories are treated like a bunch of separate things that occurred, from which we must draw obvious and disconnected morals, rather than a single narrative begun in Genesis 1.
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Comments Off | tags: Abraham, Covenant Theology, Esau, Genesis, Isaac, Jacob, James Jordan, Noah | posted in Bible Matrix, Biblical Theology
Jan
10
2013
![BlindMonks](http://www.bullartistry.com.au/wp/wp-content/uploads/2013/01/BlindMonks.jpg)
or Bible SatNav
The adage “A picture is worth a thousand words” refers to the notion that a complex idea can be conveyed with just a single still image. It also aptly characterizes one of the main goals of visualization, namely making it possible to absorb large amounts of data quickly. (Wikipedia)
It struck me this morning, as I read one of my regular theology blogs, that theologians don’t much use diagrams. The blog post in question used over a thousand words to describe something that is inherent in the architectures (both literary and spatial) found in the Bible.
What this means is that, for the most part, the way we communicate theology is foreign to the way our God does it.
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Comments Off | tags: Bible Matrix III, Literary Structure, Systematic typology | posted in Against Hyperpreterism, Bible Matrix, Biblical Theology
Jan
8
2013
In Born of the Spirit, Peter J. Leithart writes:
Alan Kerr (The Temple of Jesus’ Body: The Temple Theme in the Gospel of John (Library of New Testament Studies), 71) offers this comment on Jesus’ statement that Nicodemus had to be born of the Spirit before entering the kingdom: “It is almost universally accepted that Spirit here refers to the Spirit of God. But at this stage in the Gospel there was no Spirit (7:39), because Jesus was not yet glorified. It is not until Jesus is risen and appears to the disciples and breathes on them and says, ‘Receive the Holy Spirit’ that the Spirit is given (20:22). So from the point of view of Johannine timing what Jesus says to Nicodemus should only be realized in a post-resurrection setting. Properly speaking he can only be reborn from above when Jesus is glorified.”
This obviously affects the use of John 3:5 as a proof text for the doctrine of regeneration.
Is this support for the ‘giving of the Spirit’ in paedobaptism?
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Comments Off | tags: Baptism, Elijah, John, John the Baptist, Noah, Peter Leithart | posted in Against Hyperpreterism, Biblical Theology, Creation