Foundational Principles and Basic Frameworks for Redemptive History and Biblical Theology (LDBC Recap 2/7/16)

February 8, 2016November 26, 2017Kirk E. Miller

Explanation

On Sunday, January 24th, 2016, I began a Core Seminar on Redemptive History & Biblical Theology at my church, Lake Drive Baptist Church. During the course of this series I’ll be sending out emails recapping lessons and directing recipients to resources for further study.

Rather than just share these recaps with my church family, I’ve decided to share them here on the blog for anyone else who might be interested. I will be posting them occasionally over the next couple of months on a weekly basis or so.

See previous posts:

Recap / review

This week we began closing up our survey of foundational matters by surveying foundational principles and key frameworks for understanding Biblical theology and piecing together redemptive history. These foundational matters are incredibly important because they have a direct effect on how we go about interpreting scripture (hermeneutics), doing Biblical theology, and piecing together redemptive history.

Foundational principles

We laid out 4 foundational principles for understanding redemptive history and doing Biblical theology.

1. Scripture’s unity. Amidst its diversity of human authors, themes, settings, occasions, purposes, etc., scripture is ultimately one book, with a unified author (God), about a unified subject.

2. Scripture’s theme. That one unified subject or theme we defined as “The outworking of God’s salvation accomplished through Jesus Christ in history on behalf of his people to the glory of God.”

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C.S. Lewis on the Danger of God’s Goodness

February 5, 2016February 1, 2016Kirk E. Miller

[I]t is no use either saying that if there is a God of that sort–an impersonal absolute goodness–then you do not like Him and are not going to bother about Him. For the trouble is that one part of you is on His side and really agrees with His disapproval of human greed and trickery and exploitation. You may want Him to make an exception in your own case, to let you off this one time; but you know at bottom that unless the power behind the world really and unalterably detests that sort of behaviour, then He cannot be good. On the other hand, we know that if there does exist an absolute goodness it must hate most of what we do. That is the terrible fix we are in. … We cannot do without it. and we cannot do with it. God is the only comfort, He is also the supreme terror: the thing we most need and the thing we most want to hide from. He is our only possible-ally, and we have made ourselves His enemies. Some people talk as if meeting the gaze of absolute goodness would be fun. They need to think again. They are still only playing with religion. Goodness is either the great safety or the great danger-according to the way you react to it. And we have reacted the wrong way.

C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity, book 1, chapter 5, paragraph 3.

The Significance and Relevance of Biblical Theology and Redemptive History (LDBC Recap 1/31/16)

February 4, 2016November 26, 2017Kirk E. Miller

Explanation

See previous post:

Introducing Biblical Theology and Redemptive History (LDBC Recap 1/24/16)

Recap / review

Yesterday we talked about why redemptive history and Biblical theology matter. In other words, we talked about its significance and relevance.

Caveat

However, a caveat is needed. As noted yesterday, we do this not because somehow we are responsible for determining what in scripture is worthy of our attention. In other words, we are not making note of this study’s relevance in order to somehow justify the importance of this Biblical material. Scripture—and specifically for our purposes, its Biblical theology and account of redemptive history—is important regardless of whether we sense its important.

The goal of scripture (and, by extension, Christianity) is not to meet “felt needs;” but to address needs that ought to be felt. We are not the determiner of what in scripture is worth attending to. We may have our felt needs. And these may be fine—sure. But we must recognize that God knows what we need more than we do.

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C.S. Lewis on Politics and Social Engagement

February 3, 2016February 3, 2016Kirk E. Miller

Throughout Mere Christianity, C.S. Lewis makes a handful of comments on Christians and social engagement, with particular reference to political matters at times. In this post, I’d like to draw attention to a few of these.

First, without condoning any sort of complacency with regards to political involvement, Lewis admonishes us to keep things in perspective. Is politics the answer to the dilemma which humanity faces?

I do not mean for a moment that we ought not to think, and think hard, about improvements in our social and economic system. What I do mean is that all that thinking will be mere moonshine unless we realise that nothing but the courage and unselfishness of individuals is ever going to make any system work properly. It is easy enough to remove the particular kinds of graft or bullying that go on under the present system: but as long as men are twisters or bullies they will find some new way of carrying on the old game under the new system. You cannot make men good by law: and without good men you cannot have a good society. That is why we must go on to think of the second thing: of morality inside the individual.[1]

Second–and I rather enjoyed this section—Lewis talks about the role of “the Church” in political activism.

People say, “The Church ought to give us a lead.” That is true if they mean … that some Christians–those who happen to have the right talents- should be economists and statesmen … and that their whole efforts in politics and economics should be directed to putting “Do as you would be done by” into action. If that happened, and if we others were really ready to take it, then we should find the Christian solution for our own social problems pretty quickly. But, of course, when they ask for a lead from the Church most people mean they want the clergy to put out a political programme. That is silly. The clergy are those particular people within the whole Church who have been specially trained…. [W]e are asking them to do a quite different job for which they have not been trained. The job is really on us, on the laymen.[2]

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Introducing Biblical Theology and Redemptive History (LDBC Recap 1/24)

February 2, 2016November 26, 2017Kirk E. Miller

Explanation

Introduction

First, we talked about how the historical nature of Christianity distinguishes it from other religions. Many other religions are based on what we might call “timeless (better: non-historical) truths” (e.g., a way of reaching Nirvana [Buddhism] or a set of rules about how we might survive God’s judgment [Islam]). In contrast, Christianity stands and falls on historical realities. Salvation in Christianity is not merely about something that happens between me and God, but it is quite importantly about historical events, e.g., Christ’s death and resurrection. For instance, whereas Islam does not stand and fall on the figure of Muhammed (God could have delievered the Koran through anyone, so they believe), Christianity does in fact stand and fall on God acting in history, specifically in the person of Jesus. What makes Christianity so unique is that we actually see God acting in history, not only as creator of it, but also as the one directing it and continually intervening in it to bring about his saving purposes.