Wah! Wah! Wah!
Woof woof.
Brmm. Brmm.
Spotto orange bike!
Spotto green car!
Hey lookat the cat!
Hello, Bebe!
The Need to Pray for a Great Awakening
We can become so accustomed to the status quo that we stop anticipating great change. The keenness of our expectation slowly disappears. Very few ministers keep up the edge on their spirit that was there at first. There is a sense in which being dissatisfied with the present is sinful, but we can still eagerly anticipate God’s works. The extraordinary is not ordinary and there is a real sense in which we need to be satisfied with what God is doing now. But at the same time it is true that we need to expect great things from God.
Gordon, my friend, I really have to thank you for initiating this debate on Acts 17 and for arguing strongly against using Paul's speech as an argument for "contextualizing the gospel".
After a bit more research on Acts 17 which I had to conduct in the last days, I am even more inclined to agree with you and want to add three points to your list:
1. What is often overlooked is the context of the Areopagus speech, the framing narrative. The Areopagus speech itself is not the start of Paul's preaching in Athens, it is his last word there.
He apparently started preaching soon after he arrived in Athens. Note that from the beginning of his preaching he addressed not only the Jews and the God-fearers in the synagogue but also gave public talks in the market-place (v 17).
And what was the content of his message to the Athenians? The usual stuff: Jesus and the resurrection (v 18).
So Paul confronted the pagan Athenians with the Gospel right from the beginning, and there is not the slightest hint of "contextualisation of the gospel".
2. In the Areopagus speech itself he is indeed not too nice to the well-educated, philosophy-loving Athenians. His reference to the "unknown god" (agnostos theos, v 23) is often understood as if he were saying: you poor guys, I understand that God is difficult to know; I'll help you.
But that's much too soft an interpretation.
What he actually does in this verse is calling the philosophers, who are terribly proud on their education and knowledge because of which they think they know everything - he calls these guys agnoountes (note the plural): 'those who know nothing', who, despite of their brillant education and knowledge, have not the slightest idea of the true God.
Your philosophical knowledge, Paul says, on which you are so proud, does not help you at all. To put it bluntly, he calls them 'stupids' - wrapped in philosophical clauses.
3. agnoountes derives from ag-noein, literally: 'having no mind'.
Later in the speech, v. 30, Paul uses this compound again, as a noun, ag-noia, together with another compund with -noein: the well-known meta-noein, literally: 'to change one's mind', mostly translated with 'to repent'.
So in v 30 Paul not only characterizes the Athenians again as being in the state of agnoia, of ignorance, but he also calls them to turn their minds!
This is rudest philosopher bashing, and it is a real surprise that they interrupt him not already then but only after he mentioned the resurrection (again!, one has to add).
In consequence, one can't really say with Phil Nicholson (s.a.) that Paul is making adjustments because he wants "to get a hearing for the gospel and make it understood". I think Christoph Stenschke (Luke's portrait of Gentiles, p. 224) has it right that "the speech addressed and revealed at every point the misconceptions behind and the inadequacy of pagan theology, worship and piety, all of which are branded as ignorance of the true nature of God and his worship. ... The best educated Gentiles appear as spiritual 'write-offs'."
One may call this 'contextualisation', if one wants to.
(If this comment needs editing, feel free ...)
Alex
Comrade Ferguson's capitulation suggests that discipline is as crisp as ever in the Ruddocracy.
But the increasing disarray in the Dear Leader's papers suggests intriguingly otherwise.
Mr Rudd has always spread out his papers in question time, constructing neat piles which he rearranges and tends with all the assiduity of a pensioner at bingo.
But in recent days, his piles have become noticeably dishevelled. There were 18 yesterday, as best we could count - although counting them was difficult because they spilled into each other.
At one point, he dragged up another chair and had three new piles going on that, plus another stack propped up behind the brass clock that adorns his desk.
The whole effect was unsettling in its disorder; kind of like the scene in A Beautiful Mind where you finally get to see inside John Nash's shed and it's a flapping mass of newspaper clippings, and you finally understand the true extent of his condition.
# Godly social action will be recognized on the last day, along with all our godly deeds.
Our good deeds are the fine linen we will wear on the great day of judgement; they will not earn our salvation or justification (of course!), but they are evidence of our saving faith in Christ. They will thus be a reason for commendation from our heavenly Father, even if others have not seen them (1 Cor 4:5).
Although doctors initially said he would not recover from his brain damage-induced coma, his family refused to let him die, demanding that doctors continue to provide "active" care.
"They said he wouldn't recover sufficiently for his quality of life to be good enough," Ms Gilsenan said.
"[But] he did get a lot better … he really did make progress and he got into rehab, which they told us he would never do."
So persistent was his recovery that just before Easter he was able to say the names of his daughters and even leave the hospital in a wheelchair to visit friends.
Sorry, Gordon, I know you are busy with other things, but I just couldn't resist to comment on this post.
Sarah's thesis that Paul re-contextualises Aratos gets strong support from the (in my view) most important book on the Areopagus speech (Bertil Gärtner, The Areopagus Speech and Natural Revelation, Uppsala 1955). Gärtner's main thesis is that Paul borrowed words and phrases from pagan writers, but the meaning he gives to them is completely different from that of their original context.
Those who defend the idea that the speech is Pauline (although the wording probably is Luke's) also see strong links between Acts 17 and Romans 1.
(For the historian there is also an interesting parallel between Aratos' l. 2: "For every street, every market-place is full of Zeus" and Acts 17,16 "the city was full of idols". Might be worth writing an article on that parallel and dedicate it to Sarah Fordham - if she doesn't want to write the article herself....)
Alex
Paul does something very interesting in quoting the poet Aratus. He re-interprets, or should I say re-contextualises [to place (as a literary or artistic work) in a different context]. He seems to be ignoring the fact the poem is about Zeus and extolling the deity, nay false god, full on. It's like he is replacing the name Zeus with the name Jesus in his mind, and making out this is an OK thing to do. In v 29 we have the turning point: 'being then children of God' and it's a recontextualisation.
Let us begin with Zeus, whom we mortals never leave unspoken.
For every street, every market-place is full of Zeus.
Even the sea and the harbour are full of this deity.
Everywhere everyone is indebted to Zeus.
For we are indeed his offspring... (Phaenomena 1-5).
I would link this passage with what Paul says in Romans 1:'the pagans are without excuse because of the things that have been made...' He says that people suppress the truth - 'that which is known about God is evident within them.'
Sur[e]ly mission is about uncovering this truth no[w] it is no longer suppress[ed]? Wouldn't that entirely change the way we approach evangelism?
Next month the Sydney Symphony will perform Berlioz's dramatic symphony Romeo and Juliet, a work paid for by Niccolo Paganini, proving money can buy great art. Freed from the daily grind of writing newspaper articles for a crust, in nine months Berlioz conjured the high point of Western art music. Thank you, Mr Paganini.
Richard Lynch, Waterloo
I need to pray that next time I'm faced with the reality that life's not in my control, that I won't be surprised. And I need to pray that I start to trust that God's plans for my life are perfect. And that they are good.
But the joy of salvation, in the Bible, never descends into sentimentality; it is always grounded in reality and truth. And so it is here, for the term survivor is a two-edged sword. Not everyone will survive; some will be overthrown by God’s judgment. And the reason is simple: not everyone will go up to Jerusalem to worship the King (17). They will maintain their defiance to the end; and for them there will be no victory, and no joy, but want (no rain), plague and punishment (17-19). Zechariah’s vision of the coming kingdom of God is wonderfully inclusive: it embraces people of all nations. But it is not universalist in a sentimental, truth-evading way. Belonging to the people of God is not merely a matter of survival, as though all that is required is to be alive; it is also, more fundamentally, a matter of personal decision. One must choose to come to the feast, and join the worshippers. And Zechariah is quite clear that not everyone—nor even the majority—will choose to do so.
There is hell as well as heaven.
And this shall be the plague with which the Lord will strike all the peoples that wage war against Jerusalem: their flesh will rot while they are still standing on their feet, their eyes will rot in their sockets, and their tongues will rot in their mouths.
1 Pet. 4:12 Beloved, do not be surprised at the fiery trial when it comes upon you to test you, as though something strange were happening to you.
Rom. 8:17 and if children, then heirs—heirs of God and fellow heirs with Christ, provided we suffer with him in order that we may also be glorified with him.
James 1:2 Count it all joy, my brothers, when you meet trials of various kinds
1 John 3:13 Do not be surprised, brothers, that the world hates you.
Mark 8:34 And he called to him the crowd with his disciples and said to them, “If anyone would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow me.
As I grow more mature in years I am more and more aware of just how wise Billy Graham’s policy is of never signing statements you haven’t written yourself.
Most arguments for atheism, including one I heard recently from Peter Singer, revolve around unjust human suffering: if God cares about us, why does He allow so much suffering without intervening? Either God doesn't exist, or God is bad.
One facet of a response to this question is to consider the judgement of God.
9 When he opened the fifth seal, I saw under the altar the souls of those who had been slain for the word of God and for the witness they had borne. 10 They cried out with a loud voice, “O Sovereign Lord, holy and true, how long before you will judge and avenge our blood on those who dwell on the earth?” 11 Then they were each given a white robe and told to rest a little longer, until the number of their fellow servants and their brothers should be complete, who were to be killed as they themselves had been.
The New Testament message is a message about the judgement of God on every individual and over every human institution.
The message of God's judgement is the message which Christians are commissioned to proclaim. It is a very practical and a very pressing message, but within this message there is a word of grace and hope, for the judge is also the saviour...
The message of God's judgement is a very relevant message. It is the point of contact with the hearer, for whatever the culture barrier between the messenger and hearer, both have this common ground; they know the guilt of sin. This is a universal human experience, and it is at this point that the gospel message becomes relevant. For within the message of judgement there is also the message of the victory that Christ has won over sin, so that all who call upon his name as their Lord receive remission of sin and are no longer under judgement but have passed out of death into life. They are accepted by God as his sons and daughters, and stand before him in his favour.
A gospel which contains judgement as a prominent strand as does the New Testament gospel, is relevant to men and women everywhere and in every age and culture. It does not need indigenization [that is, contextualization], so popular a catchword today, but requires only clarity of language and faithfulness in proclamation. The sense of right and wrong is universal in the human race and so is the knowledge that we fall below our own standards of what is right, and that this entails death.
Thus the gospel that contains judgement, and salvation from judgement, is a gospel that is always relevant to the hearer, no matter to what stage of civilization he may have attained. Such a gospel does not need to be assimilated to the culture of the people who are hearing it.
A theology that proclaims the God who saves from judgement by forgiveness through faith in the Lord Jesus Christ does not need to be adapted for Australian audiences, or to be turned into a black theology for the blacks of North America. Asian Christians and Western Christians need the same gospel and the same theology which is based on it, and all are able to understand it, no matter how different the cultural backgrounds of the hearers and preachers may be, so long as the proclamation is true to the New Testament gospel of judgement and salvation from judgement.
I tell you, it will be more bearable on that day for Sodom than for that town.
13Woe to you, Chorazin! Woe to you, Bethsaida! For if the mighty works done in you had been done in Tyre and Sidon, they would have repented long ago, sitting in sackcloth and ashes. 14 But it will be more bearable in the judgment for Tyre and Sidon than for you. 15 And you, Capernaum, will you be exalted to heaven? You shall be brought down to Hades.
I am the subject of depressions of spirit so fearful that I hope none of you ever get to such extremes of wretchedness as I go to, but I always get back again by this—I know I trust Christ. I have no reliance but in him, and if he falls I shall fall with him, but if he does not, I shall not. Because he lives, I shall live also, and I spring to my legs again and fight with my depressions of spirit and my down castings, and get the victory through it; and so may you do, and so you must, for there is no other way of escaping from it. In your most depressed seasons you are to get joy and peace through believing.
I believe there are some persons who are beyond the reach of the preacher and who must be dealt with, if treated at all successfully, by the ordinary physician. Their case has gone beyond the limits of argument. Their mind has got into a disordered condition and the body, also, and therefore both body and mind must be set right by some other means before it is likely that spiritual reasons will prevail upon them. Provided you are sane people in some measure of health, and that you are sincere persons, we think that with God’s blessing we may be the means of comfort to you this morning.
Can you see the Son of God agonizing in the garden? Your Maker lies on the ground. Can you see Him taken before Herod and Pilate, and there mocked and scourged and spit upon? Can your eyes endure to see that spectacle of grief when the plowers made deep furrows on His blessed back? Can you believe that He is very God of very God, and yet is suffering thus? Can you see Jehovah grind Him to powder between the upper and the nether millstone of His wrath?
Can you hear Him say, “It is finished”? Can you mark the fearful shriek of “Eloi! Eloi! Lama Sabacthani?”
Can you believe that this is the Son of God—standing for sinners and suffering all this weight of wrath and punishment for us—and yet think that He is not worthy of being trusted to do that for which He died?
But being what I am, unworthy, undeserving, and Hell-deserving, I trust Christ to save me—and if He does not save me, He is not as good as His word!
But if I wait for joy and peace, and afterwards trust, I go the wrong way to work, and put the cart before the horse. Then I have begun to expect a harvest before I sow the wheat—to expect the flower before I cultivate the stem—and I shall be mistaken and go down to the pit with a curse because I would not obey the command, “Believe and live.”
Now, I will finish with this declaration. If you can get into such a state that all the sins that were ever committed should swear that they will block your pathway to peace. If all the suggestions of Hell that ever came up from the infernal pit should surround you at one time. If, in his own proper person, the very Prince of Hell should stand across the way and swear to spill your soul’s blood...
Yet, yet in that fearful extremity, if you can believe, you are saved!
“Joy and peace in believing.” (Romans 15:13)
PETER Jensen is right. Defining 'white' as 'grey' doesn’t change the way light works, it just brings confusion. In the same way, redefining marriage as anything other than a voluntary union between one man and one woman can only bring confusion, and also pain, as experiments with alternatives show.
Gordon Cheng
Kingsford, NSW
RECENT experience leads me to affirm Peter Jensen’s call for "spending a lot more time and energy thinking about the moral meaning of marriage between a man and a woman".
Two months ago I married my first couple, and attending the wedding were people from all sorts of backgrounds. After the ceremony, I was struck by the number of people commenting on how revelatory the teaching from the Bible was. One woman who had been married for many years had never realised how prudent the Bible’s teaching is on the relationship between a husband and wife. This wedding confirmed what I already held in principle, that is, sometimes to progress as a society we need to return to basics, and that involves accepting the Bible’s framework for human relationships.
Murray Campbell
Mentone, Vic
The population explosion prophets are still warning of a population crisis to come, but they got the story almost perfectly backward when it comes to nations like Japan. Russia and several other European nations face similar crises.
...Evangelicalism must be defined theologically and not politically; confessionally and not culturally.
Our purpose is not to attack or to exclude but to remind and to reaffirm, and so to rally and to reform.
Rarely have I been as moved emotionally as I have been by reading these stories.
There is the teenage girl whose parents insisted she have an abortion; the husband who drove his wife to the abortion clinic against his own better judgment and later watches his marriage unravel. One is about a grandmother who each year, as the date nears of her daughter’s abortion, silently mourns the loss of the grandchild she never knew. These stories will change you. They will make you look at this issue differently, just as the experience has changed the people involved.
The founder of the Abortion Changes You movement and author of the book Changed knows full well. Michaelene Fredenburg shares her own experience in the book. She says, “There are still many times that are painful for me. Mother’s Day is particularly difficult. The year my child would have graduated from high school was filled with pain. . . . If my child had gone to college, she would have graduated this year. This child would now be a young woman with gifts and abilities, hopes and dreams, her whole life ahead of her. There will always be a hole in my heart,” she says, “a hole in the fabric of our family and our community.”
10 But whenever you enter a town and they do not receive you, go into its streets and say, 11 ‘Even the dust of your town that clings to our feet we wipe off against you. Nevertheless know this, that the kingdom of God has come near.’ 12 I tell you, it will be more bearable on that day for Sodom than for that town.
Granted, there is no place for giddiness concerning God's wrath, but isn't there a place for passionate, blood-earnest warning? Isn't it biblical to move past agnosticism about hell and implore people on Christ's behalf: Be reconciled to God (2 Cor. 5:20)? Could it be that our evangelism languishes, our preaching loses authority, and our congregations lose focus because we don't have the doctrine of hell to set our face like a flint toward Jerusalem?
But because the figures since 2002 might raise doubts about the orthodoxy, there has been a great silence. Most of those involved in public discussion of global warming simply ignored what was happening to the temperature record. The media have continued to interpret any minor weather event as proof of global warming. Political leaders have continued to crank up the panic.
It's a response that has to raise concerns about the relative roles of reason, emotion and propaganda in public consideration of global warming.
The implications of the past six years for public policy are the same as for science: we need to be cautious. We simply don't know enough about this matter to justify urgent and dramatic action. It's worth reflecting on the number of scientists who are certain about what the temperature trend will be in a 100 years, yet in 2001 were unable to predict what would happen in the next six.
The same people who only now predict a twelve-year cooling still expect to be taken seriously about eventual massive warming. They’re making this up as they go along. And it’s your fault for believing previous warming threats:
The projection does not come as a surprise to climate scientists, though it may to a public that has perhaps become used to the idea that the rapid temperature rises seen through the 1990s are a permanent phenomenon.
From whom might the public have gotten that crazy idea?
That's right -- this is the most popular game among 12- to 14 year-old boys. This shocks even one of the game's creators, Lazlo Jones, who told the Post, "If you let your child play this game, you're a bad parent."
