So, persevering in prayer is an essential characteristic of prayer. It shows, not only that we really desire what we are asking for, but that we also believe that God will answer.
I hate having to justify myself but I am told I have an obligation to so as no one else is in a position to.
Robert Banks begins his criticism with the statement, "DBK seems to have developed his theological method too independently of the wider world of theological discussion".
Because he has had the slenderest personal contacts with me he has perforce to base this comment on my theological writings. He bases his comment on the fact that I am not constantly citing and footnoting references to contemporary scholars; but to assume that consequently I am unacquainted with modern theological scholarship is non sequitur, it doesn't follow logically. It is a question of what I am aiming to achieve, to accomplish by my theological writings.
By God's providence, from early youth, I have had very great opportunities of personal relationship and theological cross-fertilisation with scholars in the universities of England, Scotland, and America, and by their visits to Australia. And, of course, I have had access to the great libraries of England; the Bodley, Oxford, Cambridge, London, and the British Library, as well as the growing libraries of Tyndale House, Cambridge, and of Moore College, Sydney. I do not believe that I am unacquainted with the writings of modern scholarship.
If I do not normally constantly refer to them in the pages of what I write, it is due to my understanding of how theology should be written, or what the objective is. The objective is to make clear some aspect of "the whole counsel of God", and to then see how it applies to our life.
True theology is an explanation of God's revelation. Therefore there should be constant references to holy Scripture to assure the reader that what is being said is well grounded; but there is only need for an occasional reference to a writer in the last half-generation.
Most of Christian theology has been done in the past. A theologian should be very well acquainted with the pivotal thinkers of the past and of the present (of which there are one or two). Their thought will enter into his own thinking but, unless he is writing a history of theology, they will not be referred to by name.
A reason—and a most important one—that modern theological writers are not of much help—except to provide an interesting stimulus here and there, is that the presuppositions of their theological writings are so different from classical Christian theology that it makes much of their conclusions of little value. True theology must be based on, to quote our Lord, "What God has spoken to you". This is the Scripture as we have it in our hands. What God has spoken to us must of course be true, infallible and inerrant. Any other concept is unthinkable. Yet the members of the wider theological reading to which Banks believes I should be constantly referring reject this view of Scripture, which was the view of Jesus and his apostles and of all the theologians up to a generation or so ago. The "modern theological academy"
has such a fundamentally different presupposition on which their theological thinking is based that an eclection that chooses this or that among their conclusions to include in the theological whole is likely to weaken rather than strengthen the result. This does not mean that a theologian should be unacquainted with modern writings, but it is more important to be acquainted with the older writings. My object and consequently style of writing does not quote either older or modern writers. But I am not criticised for not quoting the ancients, but only the moderns, and the deduction is drawn that I'm unaquainted with these latter!
I would wish never to be addressed as "Dr" on the strength of a DPhil, as these junior doctorates can become a snare to seduce young scholars, especially, from the path of sound learning.
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.
Consideration of the character of the Christian religion shows there will always be a place for full-time ministry of the word of God. The Christian religion is a religion of faith in Christ the Lord. Faith is distinguished from superstition by being based on the truth and distinguished from rashness by bgeing based on the knowledge of the thruth. All this depends on true taching, for we are not born with a knowledge of the truth. Moreover, Christianity is a religion of personal relationship, that of fellowship. Fellowship only comes through hearing and responding to a word spoken. God relates himself to us speaking thorugh his word and we relate to him by responding to his word. So it is plain that a ministry which conveys and makes clear the truth about God and conveys God’s word to the mind and so to the conscience of the hearer is an essential characteristic of Christianity. If this ministry dies out then Christianity dies out.
The same conclusion may be arrived at from a slightly different approach. Jesus Christ is Lord but he can exercise no Lordship nor can obedience be the response of the Christian unless the mind of Christ is known and known relevantly to the circumstances of the Christian. This again requires a teaching ministry which understands the mind of Christ and how it applies to modern circumstance and which accompanies this teaching with exhortation and admonition, directed to the conscience of the hearer. A ministry of Christian teaching and preaching is a lifetime occupation because teaching cannot be discharged without preparation, and preparation requires time. For the Christian teacher to give himself to preparation, to the study of the word of God and its relevance, was never more needed than in the present generation.
Fellowship springs out of friendship, or it may create friendship. It cements friendship. Fellowship is also a word hard to define. It is friends engaged in a common activity. It is friendship expressed in joint endeavour, friends doing things together. It makes friendship even more enjoyable. It is the happiest human experience. Friendship implies sharing a common possession leading to a common activity on the basis of that sharing.
In Christian fellowship the common possession which Christians share is the Holy Spirit, God himself. As a consequence, the activities they engage in is the work that God is engaged in. They share him, and they share in his work. It is the fellowship of the Holy Spirit in which they partake.
1975 has been declared by the Pope a Holy Year, so that Roman Catholics who visit Rome or go on other approved pilgrimages receive an indulgence, that is they are led to believe that punishment due for their sins will be remitted by this visit.
The Roman Catholic theory of indulgences goes hand in hand with the theory of purgatory. The two stand and fall together. Purgatory is said to be something whereby you make satisfaction after death for temporal punishment due to your sins, and an indulgence is the Pope’s action in letting you off these required satisfactions because of something else which you have done which he has nominated, for example a visit to Rome in Holy Year. But the Bible teaches that our sins are blotted out completely when we put our faith in Jesus and that there is no over-plus for which we have to give satisfaction in purgatory after death. Purgatory is a cruel doctrine, but it is a figment of the imagination. It has no basis. The Bible teaches, on the contrary, that at death Christians enter into the joyful presence of their Lord, because their sins are completely forgiven through his death.
When I was in Rome, I saw in a building near the Old Lateran Palace a staircase of 29 marble stairs which men and women, young and old, were climbing on their knees. A plaque at the bottom of the stairs stated that God would forgive the punishment of purgatory due to their sin for those who climbed these stairs on their knees, and that was why these people were engaged in this otherwise meaningless activity. I was reminded of Martin Luther when he visited Rome in 1510 before the Reformation movement began, how he had begun to climb these same stairs on his knees in the hope of obtaining indulgences and so shorten his time in purgatory. But half-way up the stairs a verse from the Bible rang through his mind: “The just shall live by faith”.
It was a verse from Habakkuk the Prophet which St Paul had re-echoed in his letter to the church at Rome. “The just shall live by faith.” Yet here was Luther trying to live by works, anxious to accumulate merit with God by climbing up these stairs on his knees. But the bible says, “The just shall live by faith”. This was God’s word. Luther wanted eternal life but he was trying to earn it by merit; but God had said, “The just shall live by faith”. We are told that Luther got up from his knees straight away, walked down and walked out. He turned his back on salvation by merit. For him from now on, it was salvation by trust in God.
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“The just shall live by faith”: faith in what? Faith in God’s promises. God has spoken: some people hear and obey, others ignore his word going their own way. Those who hear have faith in him, and God accepts them and he gives them what he has promised. He promises to receive all who come to him through Christ; to save them; to forgive them. His word is clear: “If any man sin, the blood of Jesus Christ his Son cleanses us from all unrighteousness”. Christ’s blood is the only purgatory we need. Since God promises that Christ's blood cleanses us from all unrighteousness there is nothing left over for an indulgence to cover. Since we are saved by faith we ought not to try and climb into his favour by our merit. It is up to us to believe him, to trust him, to thank him, to serve him, so that the peace of God which comes from the knowledge of forgiveness may take the place of fear and guilt.
The doctrine of the Trinity is the glory of the Christian faith. It is drawn entirely from revelation. It depends on the absolute truth of the sentences through which the Scriptures teach us about God and his nature, his character, his purposes, his actions and promises. The doctrine depends, for example, on the infallibility and inerrancy of the teaching in St John's Gospel, or the Epistle to the Ephesians or the last paragraph of St Matthew's Gospel, because the doctrine of the Trinity is not enunciated fully in any one passage but is gathered from many statements of the Scriptures. If we cannot rely on the verbal inspiration of Scripture, the doctrine of the Trinity has no basis.
Our wisdom, in so far as it ought to be deemed true and solid Wisdom, consists almost entirely of two parts: the knowledge of God and of ourselves. But as these are connected together by many ties, it is not easy to determine which of the two precedes and gives birth to the other. For, in the first place, no man can survey himself without forthwith turning his thoughts towards the God in whom he lives and moves; because it is perfectly obvious, that the endowments which we possess cannot possibly be from ourselves; nay, that our very being is nothing else than subsistence in God alone. In the second place, those blessings which unceasingly distil to us from heaven, are like streams conducting us to the fountain.
On the other hand, it is evident that man never attains to a true self-knowledge until he have previously contemplated the face of God, and come down after such contemplation to look into himself.
...these days ministers are so busy building up their congregations by every other method than by the preparation of their [sermons] that they have no time to prepare properly. Twice this last week I have heard the miserable sophism that the best preparation for a sermon is knocking around the parish getting to know people. Of course a minister must know people, but he learns this by being a person.
