What is Good Preaching?

What is good preaching? What is good preaching?

If you listen to some people it's all about line by line preaching - leave the application for the people in the congregation to work out for themselves as God leads them by his Spirit. To me, this is more like teaching a course than preaching.

For others, it's all about the application of God's word rather than the explanation of it. This can prove to be dangerous as it can reveal more about the speaker's opinions than faithfully preaching what God is trying to tell us in his word (it is also lazy - not doing the hard work of praying/understanding/wrestling with the text).

I was reading something the other night on this preaching dilemma.

The author wrote that pastoral preaching should divide up something like this: half explanation of the Bible (ie expositional preaching) and half application. Otherwise, he wrote, you are actually teaching rather than pastorally preaching to your congregation...

I have heard all of the above, and probably been guilty of all of the above at some point. It's an interesting discussion.

Autumn in Mittagong

The first right takes you to our house.

More Mittagong Scenes

Our local library.

Rainy But Clearing

I don't talk that much about my family, but I invite you to take a look at a blog which gives you the story of my son who has Autistic Spectrum Disorder.

Here's the link:

www.rainybutclearing.blogspot.com

What to Do When Your Wife/husband/Flatmate Tells You to Help...

Click here .

Stuff I've Been Reading/Listening To

Exclusion and Embrace (Volf)
Still going!

A Voice of One's Own: Public Faith in a Pluralistic Culture (Volf)
An MP3 series of three lectures Volf gave at Regent College, along with replies from Regent lecturers. I've heard the first one on 'Malfunctions of the Christian Faith'. Volf certainly has his finger on the cultural pulse and this was a really helpful lecture. Really looking forward to getting the time for Lectures 2 and 3.

The Way of Wisdom (Sven Soderlund and J I Packer (eds)).
It's a collection of essays on biblical wisdom dedicated to a guy called Bruce Waltke, a distinguished OT scholar. Wisdom in the bible is a theme I followed through last year as part of a bigger project on Biblical guidance in the context of working out one's future vocation. I want to understand biblical wisdom more - and apply it! Job 28:28.

Serving the People of God (Vol 2 of 4 Vol set) (J I Packer)
Been reading this for a year and a half now...


Stuff I'm getting to eventually:

Finishing the stuff I am reading now!

Postmodern Apologetics MP3 series (Alister McGrath):
Addresses in part the aggressive attacks of Richard Dawkins, the atheistic scientist/author

Finishing Serving the People of God and moving on to another volume in the series, Honouring the People of God (vol 4), which contains mini-biographies of important Christian theologians of the far and recent past.

And yes, that is me being ordained...had hair then too...

Freedom Unlocked

Christ is true freedom unlocked.

I've been reading through 2 Timothy, 1 Peter and started 1 Corinthians (which is our church's new series for this term). This impression is with me from an overall 'survey' reading of each letter (without going into the detail yet!).

These thoughts come to mind - resolve to persevere in Christ from a discovery of the truth in Him; an underlying contentedness, assurance and peace from that same truth; acceptance of what is happening and about to happen because of the truth; and an other-centredness from God - a further resolve to bring other people to the truth of Christ.

There is an unlocking of true freedom in Paul's life and Peter's. Everything is clear now in their purpose and lives. There is an underlying calmness and strength in their letters to Christians.

Hope I'm not being too fuzzy and vague here...I guess impressions can be like that!

Jubilee Man Asks...Is TV Finished..Or Is It Just Me?

A question...do you watch much TV anymore?

In the last two weeks I have watched no television at all. This has been an gradual trend for us over the last few years. Our viewing is now essentially DVD rentals of our choosing and news.

I wonder if other people are in this trend too? Are viewing habits dramatically changing? Hmmm...

Jubilee Man Does Not Sleep - He Waits

As you know, Jubilee Man 'usually doesn't read books - he stares them down until he gets the information he wants' (adapting a Chuck Norris joke here - see a previous post!).

So thank you for your indulgence over the last few posts.

Being a Christian in community is something I've been thinking about for a while now so I thought I'd publish something about it on the blog. I hope you have enjoyed reading over the last few posts and it has stimulated you into thinking more on the theology behind living as a Christian in community with others.

God as Trinity and our Humanity - The End!

Conclusion

God’s being is inherently relational. His being is dynamic in the eternal movement of love within himself. His being is relational and the distinctness of the Trinity – Father, Son and Holy Spirit - is also dynamically and eternally relational, not being able to exist or be defined without the other. We understand God’s deep love for his people by seeing how God loved the world so much that gave of himself to humanity in the form of the fleshly Jesus so we may be reconciled to him (John 3:16).

This has profound effects on our understanding of personhood and community as we see that a trinitarian-shaped community is other-centred, communicative, fair, accepting of diversity and ‘the other’, reconciled to God, seeking others to be and to be reconciled to each other also, with Christ is its head.

There are limits to trinitarian application but clearly God as Trinity is a cornerstone to marking out our personhood and community as the Spirit draws followers of Christ into ontological eternal communion with the Father and Son. In the words of J.B. Torrance:

'To hold out Jesus Christ gives back to people their humanity’.[1]

[1] J.B. Torrance, Worship, 93.

God as Trinity and our Humanity Penultimate

Trinitarian Thought: The Limitations of the Application

All wrongdoing is sin (1 John 5:17), but in Christ there is no sin (1 John 3:5). This aptitude to sin means that although there is clear continuity between human and divine personhood, there is also a clear discontinuity.[1] If we say we have no sin, ‘we deceive ourselves and the truth is not in us’ (1 John 1:8). A Christ-centred Trinitarian community will still sin. We will always be limited to analogy between ourselves and the Trinity in this regard. We still groan eagerly awaiting our adoption as sons (Rom 8:23).

Colin Gunton warns that there is a real danger in making Jesus Christ into ‘a world principle at the expense of Jesus of Nazareth’, turning his cross ‘as a focus of the suffering of God rather than the centre of that history in which God overcomes sin and evil’.[2] Any disconnection of the Trinity from the cross is therefore incorrect in its application and promotes pantheism over God’s desire to redeem his people from sin and reconcile them to himself.

In essence, the missionary context of God is missed (the Father sends the Son who sends his Spirit to us to draw us to himself). Gunton therefore promotes a strong doctrine of creation which he says detracts from any connection between creator and creature, and in its distinction gives the ground of being and autonomy for the world.[3] The solution to the world’s problems is therefore not merely modelling the Trinitarian life. Only following Christ as Saviour and Lord is the solution, and even then the world will only truly be made perfect on the last day.

[1] Edward Russell, ‘Reconsidering Relational Anthropology: A Critical Assessment of John Zizioulas’ Theological Anthropology’, in International Journal of Systematic Theology 5:2 (July 2003): 185.
[2] Gunton, The Promise of Trinitarian Theology, xx.
[3] Gunton, The Promise of Trinitarian Theology, 72.

God as Trinity and our Humanity D

Applying All This to Living in Community!

We have seen that the Trinity is the nature of true being, and that this nature is one of a sharing in being, not an individualism or monism. As a result we see that the Trinity has a revolutionary effect on our understanding of personhood and community, moulding our precepts of communication, individuality and otherness, diversity in community, justice and love for the purpose of serving the crucified and risen Christ as our centre.

We see a person not just as an individual but as ‘someone who finds his or her true being in relationship with God and with others…the counterpart of a Trinitarian doctrine of God’.[1] Ultimate reality within a Trinitarian framework is relational reality. We are no longer isolated individuals who exist to strive ahead solely for our own fulfilment, bettering ourselves (even through using religion) whilst stepping over others, all solely for our own happiness. The relational God shows us we can no longer think like this. It is the Spirit who draws us out of ourselves and into the eternal loving relationship between the Father and Son. The Holy Spirit delivers us from this narcissism. Through the Spirit drawing us into union with Christ we now are no longer people ‘who happen to exist in close proximity to others…but as interconnected, interdependent relational beings in community’.[2] Ware portrays a Trinitarian-flavoured character of personhood as one that understands that ‘what one does affects another, what one needs can be supplied by another, what one seeks to accomplish may be assisted by another’.[3]

Clearly this has dramatic consequences to the nature of our relationships with others. Instead of pursuing our own ends and using people in order to achieve our own ends, we seek to serve God and others and consider their needs above our own. In marriage, for example, we seek not to preserve our autonomy at the other’s expense but to love and serve and consistently relate to each other sacrificially and follow Christ together.

Furthermore, our understanding of God as Trinity makes us appreciate diversity amongst each other. Whereas communities are usually accustomed to diversity being discouraged and unappreciated (remembering in the introduction above Gunton’s harrowing example of babies being aborted in the womb, as their parents cannot be bothered enduring their baby’s predicted ‘differences’), a Trinitarian understanding of relation helps us instead to embrace diversity. We have reconciliation with God; God has allowed this to be so in the earthly life, death and resurrection of his Son. Therefore we are called to be at peace with others and be reconciled (eg James 3:181 Peter 3:11; 2 Peter 3:14). There is a unique quality to each person that in community we appreciate and embrace, due to our own participation in the eternal relationship between the distinct persons in the Trinity. Reconciliation ‘removes our alienation from others in a postmodern world’ and enables us to be in dialogue with others including those different to us (eg homosexuals) as we share with them the love of God in the gospel.[4]

As God has gone out of his way to communicate with us through his word, so too we understand that within a Trinitarian understanding of personhood and community, communication with others is of great importance. Communication is vital for relationship and mutual love within an understanding of personhood and community. As God communicates himself to us perfectly through the earthly life of Christ and through the Spirit, so too do we see the essential nature of communication within a community of love and other-centredness.

In a community moulded by the relational self-giving nature of God as Trinity, relationships within the community require faithfulness and constancy and perseverance. As sin breaks down the analogy between our relationships and God’s inner relationship and being, a commitment to serving the community with justice and fairness is required. It is injustice and unfairness that breaks down relationships and destroys them.[5] Systems that provide mercy and justice to preserve the other-centredness of a community are essential.

Clearly God as Trinity has a dramatic impact on our understanding of personhood and community. As we participate in the eternal relationship and fellowship between the Father and the Son through the Spirit, we understand that ‘personhood precludes individualism and separation or self-sufficiency and self-existence’.[6] The community is to model the Trinity in its own relations, to be other-centred, giving, communicating to each other and loving each other with justice and fairness and appreciating diversity within it as the gospel is shared and we seek others to be reconciled to God. In this Trinitarian-shaped community all accept their need for each other, ‘while enabling all to be truly themselves’ and be free to serve with Christ as the head.[7]

[1] J.B. Torrance, Worship, 27.
[2] Bruce A. Ware, Father, Son and Holy Spirit: Relationships, Role and Relevance (Wheaton, Illinois: Crossway Books, 2005), 134.
[3] Ware, Father, Son and Holy Spirit, 134.
[4] Doyle, ‘Conflict’, 8-9.
[5] Knox, Selected Works Vol 1, 164.
[6] Zizioulas, ‘The Doctrine of the Holy Spirit’, 47.
[7] Gunton, Father, Son and Holy Spirit, 17.

God as Trinity and our Humanity C

Further evidence of the love of God to us is found in the open access we have been given to God the Father through the Son in the power of the Spirit. By grace we are offered the opportunity in Christ through the Spirit to participate in the eternal communion between the Father and the Son.[1] God the Father has wonderfully shown us himself through giving his Son to us in Jesus’ incarnation, death and resurrection.

There also lies an indivisible wholeness between the persons of the Trinity. The Trinity is involved in ‘mutual sharing’ of each other. They are ‘relations that depend on each other for their meaning’.[2] They ‘receive from and give to each other their unique particularity’.[3] The Trinity relates not just with itself but in itself. The Father, the Son and the Spirit ‘contain each other with co-mingling and without separation’. There is an ‘eternal movement of love’ between them.[4] The Father cannot define himself as Father without the Son. The Son is not known as Son without his relationship with the Father. The Spirit cannot proceed from nothing – he must proceed from someone. The internal Trinity defines itself by the other in it. This is also important in informing our ideas of personhood and community to be discussed shortly.

The Father is truly knowable through the earthly life, death and resurrection of the Son. Despite there being a hierarchical ordering of roles within the Trinity in the Bible, we see that there is no ‘inferiority’ between the persons of the Trinity. Each share divinity equally through their union, in one relational being. The Father sends the Son. The Son obeys the Father. The Spirit proceeds from the Father and the Son. This ‘order’ is within the Trinity itself and shows us the love of God in saving us and the roles that each in the Trinity play in this, as the Son, in love, obeys his Father for our sake and the Spirit shows us this loving bond. Although ‘seemingly’ inferior to the Father, the Son reveals to us a powerful witness of depths of the love of God to us in his equal divinity. This is not a dictatorial Trinity with the Father as the one source of life. That the Son would voluntarily submit to his Father and become flesh to show us the Father is evidence of this. Likewise the Spirit, bonded mutually to the Father and the Son, draws us to the Father through the Son in love for us; the Spirit is the bond of love between Father and Son.

When God acts, it is personal for him. For example, Jesus dying on the cross on our behalf is an act of God in himself. The offer of justification by faith is a personal act of God himself. This God is a personal God who is personal in his actions. What we see of God in the bible is what we get – a God of unyielding love who seeks us out for relationship, whose very being demands relationship and sharing within himself and for us. God is personal God as witnessed in his relational being and mutual indwelling relations. He offers to each human being ‘a relation of unique intimacy, of participation in his divinity’, through his personal offer of reconciliation of us to himself through Christ.[5] Through sending his Son into the world for our salvation (John 3:16), God reveals that ‘he will not live alone without us…God loves us more than he loves himself’.[6] T.F. Torrance states this powerfully:

God loves us because he loves, because his loving is the primary act of his Being, because his loving is his very being.[7]

[1] J.B. Torrance, Worship, 8.
[2] David S. Cunningham, ‘The Trinity’, in The Cambridge Companion to Postmodern Theology (edited by Kevin J. Vanhoozer; Cambridge Companions to Religion; Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2003), 189.
[3] Gunton, Father, Son and Holy Spirit, 16.
[4] T. F. Torrance, The Christian Doctrine of God, 170.
[5] Letham, The Holy Trinity, 459.
[6] T.F. Torrance, The Christian Doctrine of God, 244.
[7] T.F. Torrance, The Christian Doctrine of God, 244.

God as Trinity and our Humanity B

The Trinitarian God

‘No sooner do I conceive of the one than I am illumined by the splendour of the three’.[1]

Looking into the heart of God through the earthly life of Jesus reveals God’s unity in ‘triunity’, and ‘triunity’ in unity. God at his very heart is relational. Let me explain.

This is seen in the very language the Bible uses for the relationship between the different persons of the Trinity. God is Father, Son and Holy Spirit (Matt 28:19, 2 Cor 13:14). In the language of the Trinity we see already a family relationship between Father and Son. A father is only known as a father through the relationship he has with his child. The relations between the persons in the Trinity belong to who the persons actually are.[2] For example, the Father is the Father only in relation to the Son. The Son gains his identity as Son only through his relationship to the Father (eg Matthew 11:27, John 8:19). The Spirit is not an ‘independent impersonal energy force’ but a personal being – the ‘Spirit of the Lord’ (Acts 15:9), the Spirit of love (Rom 15:30) and truth (1 John 4:6, 5:6) - who shows his love to the Father and the Son through glorifying them and through giving believers access to the Father in Christ through him (eg John 15:26, 16:13).

The foundation of this relational oneness in God is his being. The being of God is not an impersonal substance but shows us the internal relationship of God himself. It is a relationship showing us that God is love (1 John 4:8, 16). The nature of his divine being is revealed as eternal togetherness. His real being is in fact a sharing in being between Father, Son and Holy Spirit. God is relational within his very being. As Knox writes, the subject matter of theology is ‘not God, but God in his relationship, for the essence of God is in eternal relationship’.[3] The Trinity ‘has his being in loving communion’.[4] In his very being God chooses to be for others. This God is not the egocentric ‘I AM’ but the ‘I AM’ who is defined by his otherness.[5] This is the personal being of God within himself that seeks out others – including us! - in love.

There is also ‘otherness’ within the trinitarian God. There are three distinct persons within the one personal being of God. The Bible shows us that the Trinity is ‘an eternal communion of three persons in undivided union’.[6] The three persons that are one God are eternally relating to each other in love.

For example, between the Father and the Son there lies a unique relationship (Matt 11:27, John 1:18, 17:25-26). This relationship ‘is described as one of mutual love, mutual self-giving, mutual testifying, mutual glorifying’.[7] Clearly the Son submits to the Father’s ‘fatherhood’. Jesus only tells the world ‘what I have heard from him [the Father] (John 8:26). Jesus is sent to Earth by the Father (John 8:42, 12:49). Jesus’ authority to ‘lay down his life’ and ‘raise it again’ is a charge received from the Father (John 10:18). The Son honours his Father (John 8:49). The Father loves the Son (John 15:9). The Son abides in his Father’s love (John 15:10). As mentioned above, the Spirit is also a personal being who shows his love to the Father and the Son through glorifying them and through giving believers access to the Father in Christ through him (eg John 15:26, 16:13).

This is the language of clear affection and love between distinct persons in the Trinity. Here there is a God of relation. Within Him is a family relationship of Trinitarian giving, with the honouring, loving and willing submission of the Son in love to the Father and the Father’s corresponding pleasure in his Son (Matt 3:17), with the Spirit as the bond of love between them.

The being and the distinctiveness of God complement each other as we see God is love. The being of God has no being other than in relationship. This will be vital in informing our ideas of personhood and community.


[1] Gregory of Nazianzus in Robert Letham, The Holy Trinity in Scripture, History, Theology and Worship (Phillipsburgh, New Jersey: P & R Publishing, 2004), 463.
[2] Letham, The Holy Trinity, 461.
[3] David Broughton Knox, D Broughton Knox Selected Works Volume 1: The Doctrine of God (edited by Tony Payne; Sydney NSW: Matthias Media, 2000), 154.
[4] James B. Torrance, Worship, Community and the Triune God of Grace (The Didsbury Lectures 1994; Carlisle, England: Paternoster Press, 1996), 26.
[5] T. F. Torrance, The Christian Doctrine of God, 135
[6] Letham, The Holy Trinity, 462.
[7] J.B. Torrance, Worship, 119.

My Daughter (the Eldest)

My Younger Son

God as Trinity and our Humanity A

For what is a man, what has he got?
If not himself, then he has naught
To say the things he truly feels and not the words of one who kneels
The record shows I took the blows
And did it my way![1]

The well-known song ‘I Did It My Way’ reveals an individualism that marks out Western culture. God as Trinity has been ridiculed and swamped by the dominance of reason since the 18th century enlightenment. How could there be one God who is Father, Son and Holy Spirit? He must be one only (if there even is a god at all!). The idea of God as being one but not three has in part laid behind individual western theories of the person.[2] A self-centred model of ‘personhood’ is now in operation. This individualism has caused separation and isolation as individuals seek their own advancement. Loneliness is a feature of Western society which has become ‘pre-occupied with self-expression, self-fulfilment, self-realisation, and self-esteem, leading at times to the self being equated with God’.[3]

At the same time sameness has dominated our culture. Diversity is no longer appreciated or desired. Babies are ‘killed in the womb because we don’t want to bother with those that are different’.[4] Our world is marked by ‘deep alienation from God and each other’.[5]

Humanity’s problems are not limited to the West. Global humanity is alienated from God, and as a result human freedom can be secured ‘only by assuming total autonomy in a manner that excludes the total authority of God’.[6] Without God the drive for total autonomy has become the way for individuals to deal with other individuals.

The world is deeply confused about the nature of human life, because it is ‘confused about what personal being truly is’.[7] Theories of personhood and community have now become important topics of discussion. How can the Trinitarian nature of the God of Jesus Christ inform our understanding of personhood and community? What are the benefits of the analogy between the Trinity and ourselves? What are the limitations of the analogy? To do this we first need to consider God as Trinity.

[1] Final verse of Frank Sinatra’s I Did it My Way (Lyrics by P. Anka, J. Revaux, G. Thibault and C. Frankois; Dec 30, 1968).
[2] Colin E. Gunton, The Promise of Trinitarian Theology (2nd edition; Edinburgh, Scotland: T & T Clark, 1997), 93.
[3] David Broughton Knox, ‘The Gospel and Society’, in D Broughton Knox Selected Works: Volume 3 The Christian Life (edited by Tony Payne and Karen Beilharz; Sydney, NSW: Matthias Media, 2006), 155.
[4] Colin E. Gunton, Father, Son and Holy Spirit (Edinburgh, Scotland: T & T Clark, 1997), 15.
[5] Robert C. Doyle, Conflict: Christian Reconciliation against its Trinitarian and Evangelical Base (paper given at St Andrews Theological Seminary Faculty Colloquium, Manila; 21 July 2000), 2.
[6] Lesslie Newbigin, ‘The Trinity as Public Truth’, in The Trinity in a Pluralistic Age: Theological Essays on Culture and Religion (edited by Kevin J. Vanhoozer; Grand Rapids, Michigan: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 1997), 1
[7] Gunton, Father, Son and Holy Spirit, 13.

My Older Son

Embrace This Book

I've finally started reading a book called Exclusion and Embrace by Miroslav Volf. I would love to just publish the whole book on this site, it is so helpful for Christians! Copyright may be a slight issue, however...so some quotes from what I have read so far:

• Postmodernity creates a climate in which evasion of moral responsibilities is a way of life. By rendering relationships 'fragmentary' and 'discontinuous', it fosters 'disengagement' and 'commitment-avoidance'. (p21)

• The self-giving love manifested on the cross and demanded by it lies at the core of the Christian faith...the incarnation of that divine love in a world of sin leads to the cross. (p25)

• Christian communities, which should be the 'salt' of the culture, are too often as insipid as everything around them. (p37)

• At the very core of Christian identity lies an all-encompassing change of loyalty, from a given culture with its gods to the God of all cultures. A response to a call from that God entails rearrangement of a whole network of allegiances. (p40)