essay

Sins of ignorance

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J. C. Ryle on sins committed in ignorance:

But I do think it necessary in these times to remind my readers that a man may commit sin and yet be ignorant of it and fancy himself innocent when he is guilty. I fail to see any scriptural warrant for the modern assertion that: ‘Sin is not sin to us until we discern it and are conscious of it.’ On the contrary, in the fourth and fifth chapters of that unduly neglected book, Leviticus, and in the fifteenth of Numbers, I find Israel distinctly taught that there were sins of ignorance which rendered people unclean and needed atonement (Leviticus 4:1–35; 5:14–19; Numbers 15:25–29). And I find our Lord expressly teaching that ‘the servant who knew not his master’s will and did it not’, was not excused on account of his ignorance, but was ‘beaten’ or punished (Luke 12:48). We shall do well to remember that, when we make our own miserably imperfect knowledge and consciousness the measure of our sinfulness, we are on very dangerous ground. A deeper study of Leviticus might do us much good.1

  1. Ryle, J. C. (1952). Holiness (Kindle Locations 331-338). Heritage Bible Fellowship. Kindle Edition. [↩]

Two

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My wife wrote a lovely happy birthday message to our recently-turned-two-year-old this week, and toward the end she remarked, “I am curious what your daddy would add to this list…” So here I am adding to her list.

Happy birthday, E. You have no idea how much you are worried about, gushed and cooed over, and just flat out loved by Mom and Dad (not to mention your two Grandmas, Opa, Grandfather, and a gaggle of aunts, uncles and cousins).

Following Mom’s lead, here are some things you do that make me smile:

  • You’re finally taking my advice and learning English. (And if I ask you what language you’re learning, you answer, “English”.)
  • Even though you can’t read, you know what all your shirts say because we tell you and you remember. I showed you this picture yesterday and asked you what your shirt says, and you said, “I’s love Dad”:
    E wearing his “I ♥ MY DAD” shirt
  • You call Smarties “Farties”. (See mom’s recent post and video about this.)
  • You are starting to figure out subjects, objects and indirect objects, but you get them in the wrong order sometimes. The other day you said to mom, “Mom [subject] get Dad [indirect object] a car [direct object],” which was phenomenal, but you will sometimes say things like, “E pick Dad up,” when you really mean “Dad pick E up.” I’ve offered to help you diagram that sentence, but you oddly don’t seem interested in that. You’ll figure this stuff out, I’m sure, and in the meantime it’s genuinely fun seeing the wheels turning in your head as you experiment with language.
  • You love driving the train with me (the Toca Train app on my iPhone/iPad). We have lots of fun together picking up passengers and loading things on and off our flatbed car with the crane.
  • You also like playing Legos with me (Duplo Legos), but the fun is definitely not in helping me build something, but rather in destroying whatever it is I’m trying to build. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not at all upset by this, but I do look forward to a time when we will have more fun building things together.
  • Ever since Aunt Kathlene got her new kitten, Gracie, when we sing “Amazing Grace” you won’t sing the actual words, but instead want to insert “Gracie” into every line. (“Amazing Gracie! How sweet the Gracie. That saved a Gracie like Gracie!”)
  • You are an amazing eater. You’ll eat anything we put on your plate. We’ve fed you every variety of salsa (from mild all the way up to hot) and you seem to have no problem with any of them. I fed you some jalapeño jelly the other day and you loved it. You’ve enjoyed octopus, sushi, fresh lemon, avocado (guacamole), coffee, and many foods I turn my nose up to, like mushrooms and various other vegetables and fruits. There are one or two things you turn your nose up at, but for the most part you eat anything put before you in a seeming state of ignorant bliss. Everything is new, and therefore, everything is worth trying.

Well, my list isn’t as long as your mom’s, but right now I’m faced with the choice of either adding more things to this list or sitting down to play with you, and I’d like the record to show that I made the right choice right now. I love you to pieces, kiddo. 

On consistency between Biblical authors

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I was explaining to my wife the other night that whenever I encounter a difficult passage in the Bible, I try to look for related information from the same writer. I don’t immediately jump over to passages in other books of the Bible, pitting one passage against another and letting them duke it out to see who wins. This kind of Bible bashing is, in my opinion, a fundamentally flawed approach and should not be employed by anyone who holds to the principles of perspicuity and inerrancy of God’s word. Instead, I try to understand the difficult passage in its own context, and by context I mean moving in concentric circles from the paragraph to the chapter to the book and then finally to other books by the same writer.

In our brief discussion, my wife agreed with me about context being important, but she found it curious that I would say that I look at statements by the same author and try to avoid other authors until I have a greater understanding of what that one author really meant. I’ve been approaching scripture this way for a while almost without thinking about it and without ever expressing or explaining it to anyone else, and her curiosity about it set in motion some introspection and self-reflection about why I do it. These comments are an attempt to set into words my thought process.

Why do I stay within single authors?

From the world’s perspective, the Bible was written by several individual men. From a Christian worldview, the various scripture books all had one author, namely God, notwithstanding they were written as God inspired those individual men.

If it can be shown that any Biblical author contradicts himself (is not internally consistent within his own writings) then we have really serious problems. Either (1) that author was of lesser intelligence and incapable of articulating cogent and consistent arguments or (2) that author was insane and actually concurrently believed contradictory truth claims, (3) that author changed his mind at some time or (4) at least some or all the documents claimed to be by that author are of dubious authorship and were therefore mistakenly included among the canon.

If it can be shown that the several Biblical authors are each internally consistent, but that they contradict each other, then we can conclude the Bible was written by intelligent but uninspired men who held to cogent and consistent but nevertheless contradictory and competing worldviews. It then becomes a contest as to which one of these authors’ systems of theology is inspired (and thus true) and which are wrong, or if they are all wrong together.

If it can be shown that each Biblical author is internally consistent and is furthermore externally consistent with all other Biblical authors, in other words, that the Bible taken as a whole is internally consistent, then that is possible cause for believing that God authored the scriptures. Considered another way, a necessary condition (but not a sufficient condition) for accepting the Bible as God-inspired is being able to show that the whole Bible is internally consistent.

It is in consideration of the above three “ifs” (the above three paragraphs) that I pay very careful attention to the various authors to make sure they are consistent within their own writings and also with the other authors. If one passage in the Bible seems to contradict the rest of the Bible theologically, I first look for instances from the same author where he is consistent with the rest of the scriptures. Then I consider why he may seem to be contradicting himself in the one passage in question. I try to consider that one author in a vacuum and interact with only his writings before I begin to look outside his writings.

Some working examples

So, for instance, when I look at a difficult passage for perseverance of the saints like Hebrews 6:4-6, I don’t immediately jump over to the best related verses by other authors in other books of the Bible (like John 6:37-40 or John 10:28-29), but I stay right where I am and notice Hebrews 6:9-12, where the author clarifies what he really meant in Hebrews 6:4-6 by stating that, “though we speak in this way,” he is confident that his audience won’t really fall away from faith. Moving further out, but staying with the same author1, I find Hebrews 7:25; Hebrews 10:14; Hebrews 10:36-39; Hebrews 12:2 and Hebrews 13:5. Clearly the author of Hebrews positively affirms the doctrine of perseverance of the saints.

Another good example is a difficult passage for limited atonement, 1 John 2:2. Compare and contrast that to the almost word-for-word passage John 11:51-52. The parallel statement by the same author helps to clarify the author’s intended meaning. Additionally, passages like John 6:38-39; John 10:11; John 10:14-16; John 13:1; John 15:13; John 17:1-2, 9; 1 John 3:16 and Revelation 5:9 help to establish that John did indeed hold to the doctrine of limited atonement.

Not just for difficult passages

I should mention that this doesn’t apply only to difficult passages. For instance, as John Piper recently pointed out2, 1 and 2 John are the best commentary you’ll ever find on Jesus’ new commandment in John 13:34-35.

A corollary to this whole idea is not only looking for consistency within authors but looking for consensus among several authors. For instance, in Sunday School at Jordan Presbyterian Church this morning, Pastor Reid found evidence for the historicity of the universal deluge by surveying various Old and New Testament authors. The author of 1 Chronicles includes Noah in Abraham’s genealogy (1 Chronicles 1:4) and Luke includes him in Jesus’ genealogy (Luke 3:36), so they both evidently believed Noah was a real person. Furthermore, Isaiah, Jesus (attested by both Matthew and Luke), the author of Hebrews and Peter all treat the flood as though it was a real historical event (See Isaiah 54:9; Matthew 24:37-39; Luke 17:26-27; Hebrews 11:7; 1 Peter 3:20 and 1 Peter 2:5). Whether you realize it or not, if you allegorize the flood then you are calling into question the credibility of all these Biblical figures.

Conclusion

So I hope I’ve helped you see why paying attention to authorship is a huge part of my hermeneutic—my way of learning from and interpreting the Bible. Realizing how the Old Testament prophecies of Jesus are so amazingly fulfilled in the New Testament was one of the things that made me recognize the authenticity of the Bible in the first place. Realizing further that the Bible was written by multiple authors and yet they are all consistent in what they believed and taught has really helped to solidify that belief for me. I hope I’ve encouraged you to look at the Bible in a different way as you consider the various authors and how they support each other. 

Photo credit: le vent le cri.

  1. It may be important to note here that the writer of Hebrews is anonymous. Hebrews was widely attributed to Paul in the early centuries of Christendom, but in recent years faithful Christians have questioned authorship since the epistle doesn’t contain Paul’s usual greeting and benediction, and has a markedly different style. Some have speculated that Barnabas, Luke, Apollos or Priscilla wrote the book, but ultimately we are left with an unknown. So, to consider writings by the author of Hebrews, I could look to the other writings of Luke if I had any reason to feel confident about that possibility, but ultimately I’m forced to stay within the book of Hebrews. [↩]
  2. See Piper’s sermon, As I Have Loved You, Love One Another, from March 17, 2012. [↩]

Prepare to be very bored

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I blogged rather cryptically several months ago about correlation and causation, referencing one of my favorite web comics. Today, as promised in that blog post, I’m finally able to provide more information.

I wrote a research paper a couple years ago for a language and communications course in my bachelors degree program: Essential fatty acids and attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder. This week I finally finished the second half of that language and communications course, a video presentation on the same subject, and I’m proud to be able to share it with you.

I want to say you should turn the lights down low, pop some popcorn and sit back and enjoy, but the reality is this will probably bore you to tears. Maybe you insomniacs out there can use this instead of your sleeping pills tonight.

Here are the documents I mention right at the beginning of the video:

Deep

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I read a book this week quite by accident. I had purchased the Amazon Kindle edition of this book when it was on sale last fall, knowing I would read it eventually, but hadn’t touched it since then. But the topic of this book was relevant to something I was studying this week, so I picked it up with every intention of just thumbing through it for a few nuggets of info. Instead, I ended up reading it from cover to cover in about three days. For some reason this book was a page-turner for me on the same level as thrillers like Jurassic Park or The DaVinci Code. The weird part is it’s a non-fiction theology book.

Now, I suppose it’s not that weird that I would enjoy a book about theology. It is, after all, one of my favorite subjects to read. But generally it does take me some effort to maintain focus on any one book. There’s a reason I read them; I usually get a lot of educational value out of them, but they don’t usually grip me the way this book gripped me. This book captivated my interest until the very last page; I couldn’t put it down.

The Deep Things of God: How the Trinity Changes Everything The book is Fred Sanders’s The Deep Things of God: How the Trinity Changes Everything. It is essentially a wake-up call to evangelical Christianity that we need to bring the Trinity back into the center of our doctrine and practice. Sanders’s thesis is that the Trinity is the gospel, and if we want to make the gospel central (something evangelicals have historically been very good at) we’ve got to make the Trinity central (something Sanders argues evangelicals should be very good at, but paradoxically aren’t). He succeeds in defending this thesis, and opened my eyes to the reality of the nature of God and how God reveals that nature to us in that God the Father sent the Son and the Holy Spirit so that, though their work, we can be reconciled to God and have an intimate share in the eternal fellowship of the Trinity.

I think one of the reasons this book engaged me so is how relevant many of its themes are to things that have happened or are currently happening in my life. Take, for instance, one of the first conversations I ever had with Janene about Mormonism and Christianity. I was explaining to her why I believed, as a Latter-day Saint, that I could become a god some day. I told her it was because when I imagined the historical Christian concept of a God all alone in the beginning, before he had created anything, I imagined that kind of God would be very lonely and unhappy. He could create a worm or an ant, but he wouldn’t be able to have real fellowship or love with the worm or ant. He could create a chicken or a dog or a cow or a monkey and still not experience real fellowship. The only way he could find happiness and fulfillment would be to create another being of the same species as himself. I remember she explained to me then that God wasn’t lonely in the beginning. God, the three persons of the Trinity, had experienced perfect love, fellowship, and companionship from all eternity, and didn’t need to create a race of gods to find fulfillment.

Here’s Sanders on this topic:

Creation was not required, not mandatory, not exacted from God, neither by any necessity imposed from outside nor by any deficit lurking within the life of God. The Bible does not directly answer the question, Why did God create anything at all? but it does let us know what some of the most glaringly wrong answers to that question would be. It would be wrong to say that God created because he was lonely, unfulfilled, or bored. God is free from that kind of dependence.

And further:

In Susanna [Wesley]’s Trinitarian worldview, the eternal Son has eternally existed alongside the eternal Father, always receiving the full goodness of divinity from him. The world, therefore, does not have to bear the burden of being God’s eternal recipient of self-giving goodness. To put it another way, unless the Son were the eternal recipient of the Father’s self-giving, the world would be metaphysically necessary to the being of God. The point Susanna made here has also been seen by numerous thinkers. The Baptist theologian Augustus H. Strong (1836–1921) put it this way: “Neither God’s independence nor God’s blessedness can be maintained upon grounds of absolute unity. Anti-Trinitarianism almost necessarily makes creation indispensable to God’s perfection, tends to a belief in the eternity of matter, and ultimately, leads . . . to pantheism.”

And still further:

It is unworthy to think that God without us is lonely or bored. God is not looking for something to do in the happy land of the Trinity. God did not create the world in order to fill the drafty mansion of heaven with the pitter-patter of little feet. God is not pining away for companionship in a lonesome heaven. Good theological reflection, taking its lead from the Bible, would always reject the idea of divine loneliness or boredom. But as soon as you entertain the truth of the doctrine of the ontological Trinity, the unworthiness of the idea of a lonely or bored God becomes patently obvious. The triune God is one, but not solitary.

The reason for my believing I could be a god one day is that I did not believe in the Trinity. It’s that simple. And when I came to believe in the Trinity, it changed everything, just as Sanders says it does in his sub-title. What’s more, as I’ve thought back to that conversation with Janene ten years ago, I’ve never thought of it as a conversation about the gospel. I thought of it as a conversation about the nature of God that needed to happen to prepare me to hear the gospel. What this book taught me, however, is that God himself is the gospel. If God is dependent on the world in order to further his own glorification and perfection, then nothing we get is ever truly undeserved mercy and grace; it’s what God needs to do, not what he freely and benevolently chooses to do. The idea that God doesn’t need the world (cf. Acts 17:24-25) is the very thing that makes both creation and redemption such amazing grace, and that is 100% gospel. So it turns out Janene was preaching the gospel to me all those years ago, and it was the gospel that got through to me in that conversation, even though it’s taken me ten years to realize that was the gospel.

And that’s just one example of how I found this book relevant to my life. This post is already too long for me to share further examples. I can’t recommend this book enough to any evangelical who wants to regain a clear focus on the Trinity in their theology, evangelism, and everyday Christian living. 

Web browsers and Bible translations

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It occurred to me just now, while reading the comments on an article about Internet Explorer market share, that something from the tech realm is roughly analogous to something in the theology realm: web browsers and Bible translations.

Browsers

There are many different web browsers on the market today. They are all free, so cost is not a differentiating factor. What are the differentiating factors? Well, some browsers seem to care more about web standards and become the darlings of web designers. Some browsers care more about user features and become the favorites of web surfers and tinkerers, and some browsers come bundled with operating systems and become the default for people who don’t understand they have a choice.

Which browser do I use? Honestly, it depends on the mood I’m in. At work on my PC I go back and forth between Firefox and Chrome; at home on my Mac I go back and forth between Chrome and Safari. When I need my web development and debugging tools, I have to use Firefox. When I want something a little snappier for regular web browsing, I like Chrome and Safari. I’m kindof a snobby web designer, so I do try to avoid Internet Explorer, but honestly, I use it more than you might think. I do a lot of testing in IE, and I’ve even been known to use IE when I just need to look up something quick, or when I need to log into a different e-mail or Twitter account and I don’t want to log out of my main account in my other browser.

Bibles

There are many different Bible translations on the market today. Comparable paperback, hardcover, or leather editions usually sell at about the same price point no matter which translation you choose, so, again, cost is not a differentiating factor. What are the differentiating factors? Well, some Bibles care more about getting the Word into a mode of speaking that is more vernacular, closer to the ground, so to speak, closer to the language of the common man. These Bibles become the favorites of youth ministries and evangelical outreach ministries trying to put the Bible into the hands of folks who’ve never read it. Other Bibles emphasize accuracy and literal conformity to the original languages. These become the darlings of seminarians and theology snobs.

Which Bible do I use? Honestly, it depends on the mood I’m in. I go back and forth between the ESV and the NLT, and this year, due to the momentous anniversary, I’ve been reading the KJV. If I’m doing intense study of a book or chapter, I prefer the ESV or the NASB. If I’m just reading straight through, I like the NIV (I don’t have a problem with the 2011 update), the NLT, and I’ve even been known to use The Message when I get in a really particular mood for that kind of thing.

One more thing…

One last similarity between these two seemingly disparate things, and this is what I was reading this morning that made me think of this whole subject, is that there are people who swear by one browser or one Bible and refuse to use the others. These people get so militant and evangelistic that they try to convert other people to their camp. Me, I just use all of them. I see value in all of them for various situations and purposes. Browsers are just tools. They all access the same web, and are really only as good as their developers and development philosophies, and some are better than others for various reasons. Bibles are tools too. They are all translations of the same Word of God, and are really only as good as the translators and their translation philosophies, and some are better than others for various reasons.

Am I crazy to see these similarities? Am I crazy to use more than one browser and more than one Bible? Let me know what you think in the comments. 

Toast paint

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I’m a stickler for user interfaces. In this case, the user interface of a toaster in the break room at my office.

Toaster

There’s an icon at the top of the toaster, just left of the lever you push down to insert the toast. Here’s a better picture so you can see the icon more clearly.

Unintelligible icon on toaster

The icon is of a piece of bread evidently coming out of the toaster. Now, you and I know exactly what this lever is meant to do, so I can only ascertain that this icon is intended to aid someone who has simply never seen or heard of a toaster before (perhaps he/she was raised with wolves or is from another planet). The thing that’s getting me, though, is how exactly the presence of this particular icon would help this hypothetical user? Why does the arrow go up and not down? Is the icon somehow meant to convey that, after I push the toast down, I can use the same lever to get it to come back up? But in that case, what is the “cancel” button for below and to the right of the lever?

Now, to be fair, I’m trying to think of an icon myself that would convey the intended meaning, and I’m drawing a blank. It seems to me the use of a toaster is so obvious that you don’t need an icon at all. What do you think? Would the icon make more sense if the arrow went down? Would you advocate the use of an entirely different icon or no icon at all? 

By the grace of God they were freely willing

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Pocketwatch inner workings I believe in the complete sovereignty of God over all human decisions and actions, but this doesn’t mean I believe we never make decisions or choices or that we lack our own will. This position is known as Compatibilism because it asserts that free will and determinism are compatible. I was reading 2 Corinthians 8 yesterday and two passages stuck out to me with respect to this issue.

2 Corinthians 8:1-5 (emphasis mine):

We want you to know, brothers, about the grace of God that has been given among the churches of Macedonia, for in a severe test of affliction, their abundance of joy and their extreme poverty have overflowed in a wealth of generosity on their part. For they gave according to their means, as I can testify, and beyond their means, of their own accord, begging us earnestly for the favor of taking part in the relief of the saints—and this, not as we expected, but they gave themselves first to the Lord and then by the will of God to us.

So, Paul says right at the outset that he’s going to tell us about something God is doing in the churches of Macedonia. The Macedonian’s generosity, despite their great poverty, was a grace that originated from God and not from man. But then he turns right around and says the Macedonians were doing this “of their own accord”. Other translations say the Macedonians were “freely willing” or that they did this “entirely on their own” or “of their own free will”. He then turns right around again and says that the Macedonians submitted themselves to the Lord and to their leaders “by the will of God”.

So was it the Macedonian’s will or God’s will that accomplished this? It was both! Or perhaps, more accurately, it was ultimately God’s will to put it into the minds and hearts of the Macedonians so that they would will, even delight, to give so generously.

The other passage makes this connection even more explicit. 2 Corinthians 8:16-17 (again, emphasis mine):

But thanks be to God, who put into the heart of Titus the same earnest care I have for you. For he not only accepted our appeal, but being himself very earnest he is going to you of his own accord.

Again, other translations have phrases like “by his own choice” or “of his own initiative”, but the meaning is the same. God, in his sovereignty, put the care into Titus’ heart so that Titus himself would freely will to visit the Corinthian saints.

I love the few passages in the New Testament that mention free will. They do not in any way deter me from glorying in the absolute sovereignty of God. 

My temporary setup: AT&T GoPhone + iPad + Google Voice

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You may have seen a Tweet from me mentioning that the backlight on my iPhone 3G finally kicked the bucket. I used it for two weeks and couldn’t stand it anymore, so I started thinking about alternatives.

I’ve got an old Motorola AT&T GoPhone I bought back when I was doing a lot of biking and needed an expendable backup phone, but I hate using it for two reasons: (1) it doesn’t have any of my contacts, and (2) I hate texting with the tiny numeric keypad. However, it dawned on me yesterday that I haven’t even been using my phone for most of my texting in the last several weeks. More often than not I’ve used the excellent free Google Voice service on my recently-mobile-data-plan-enabled iPad. It further dawned on me that I can do almost everything I do with my phone on my iPad instead, except for actually making and receiving calls.

So, I’ve dusted off that old GoPhone and swapped my SIM card in there. When I need to make a call now, I bring up Google Voice on my iPad, click Call, choose the contact, and instruct Google Voice to ring my cell phone. It’s actually a great little setup and I’m sure it will serve me fine until Apple finally decides to release iPhone 5.