Thank you for the clarification Bishop Wright

In this video Conversation, senior biblical fellow Peter Enns asks Rev. N.T. Wright to respond to a reader question about science and faith. Specifically, the reader asks, "If you take Genesis in a non-literal fashion especially the creation stories, why take anything in the Bible literally—such as the Gospels? Do you take the Gospels literally?"

Christmas in the midst of a climate crisis

The other day I watched a Youtube video of the World Council of Churches Christmas message, given by its General Secretary Rev. Samuel Kobia who in his reflection on the 1st chapter of Paul’s Epistle to the Colossians he lamented:

Christmas is a season to sing praises, yet in our time the reality of environmental destruction undermines the doxology of creation. The singing of the spheres is obscured by pollution and manufactured noise, the rhythms of the sea are disturbed by climate change, the beauty of many manifestations of life is disfigured by abusive practices rooted in greed. And as the earth suffers, so must its inhabitants. Already, the poor and other socially marginalized people find it ever more difficult to lift their voices in song. 1

Writing from a post-Copenhagen Summit state of mind I cannot do anything more than silently nod in agreement and whisper: “how true…”

N.T. Wright's insight on Hell

Following up on J.I. Packer's take on hell I found this good insight from leading New Testament scholar N.T. Wright

If He is not Lord of all...

Heaven knows how many times a preacher have scared the living daylights out of me whenever the topic of Lordship has been preached in the church’s pulpit. I can’t even count how many times I’ve raised my hand or almost came and marched in front of the sanctuary to acknowledge Christ’s Lordship whenever a preacher would utter the cliché’ ‘if Jesus is not Lord of all, He is not Lord at all’.

NT Wright on the relationship of Empire and the Gospel

Again here's another brilliant insight from my favorite contemporary theologian

Some thoughts on Sola Fide

Sola fide.

Sola fide otherwise known as the Doctrine of Justification by Faith is the controversial doctrine that distinguishes most Protestant denominations from Roman Catholicism.

This basically sums up the rift that was opened between Luther and the Medieval Roman Catholic Church.

Historic Protestant theology upholds that the only instrumental cause of justification (or being made right with God), from the human perspective, is faith. While God is the ultimate cause of justification, Protestants believe that faith in Christ through the message of the Gospel is important. There are no works, no matter how meritorious they may seem, that can add to justification. This doctrine, according to Protestants, finds its roots in the teachings of Paul but was obscured in the middle ages and restored during the Reformation.

The rift is still there and the divide is still as great (perhaps even greater) than it was 500 years ago.

I remember the countless times that I’ve seen over-zealous self-proclaimed Evangelical Protestant Apologists would fire reckless words about Roman Catholics preaching what they call: “a gospel of works.”

This is a common scene (or better yet a: ‘sticky thread’) on the Bereans Apologetics Research Ministry online discussion board, where Born Again Christians in the board would go on and on in talking about how Catholics got it wrong when it comes to salvation where in retaliation Roman Catholic apologists would more than willing to oblige in a proof-text bout that costs both of them their witness to Christ whom they both proclaim to serve.

I confess that I am among those zealous Bible Christians who at one point in my life looked forward to debates like that on the Bereans forum, I admit that I rejoiced at the fact that I can proof-text my point enough to have my Roman Catholic opponent concede his point against mine.

Even as my ego is stroked by my apparent victory in such debates I am at the same time faced with the question of how do Christians enter into a relationship with God before Luther articulated it into the doctrine that we have now come to call as ‘faith alone’. In other words how do pre-Reformation Christians get saved before it was defined as receiving Christ as your personal Lord in Savior?

Going further I am compelled to ask if: "salvation also entails believing in the Doctrine of Justification by faith?"

Before you pick up stones and start branding me as a heretic let me first makes it clear that I myself am a staunch believer of the Doctrine of Justification by Faith Alone. However, I am also struggling with the question of Church history where whether we like it or not can trace a lineage to the Roman Catholic Church.

It is in that personal struggle with that difficulty in relating the doctrine of justification by faith alone with Church history that I am thankful that God lead me to a small bookstore called Bound in Tomas Morato, Quezon City where I was able to get a copy of Anglican Bishop N.T. Wright’s What Saint Paul Really Said for 40 pesos.

It is there he writes:

“There follows from this a vital liberating point, which I first met in the works of the great Anglican divine Richard Hooker, and for which I shall always be grateful. One is not justified by faith by believing in justification by faith. One is justified by believing in Jesus. It follows quite clearly that a great many people are justified by faith who don’t know they are justified by faith. The Galatian Christians were in fact justified by faith, though they didn’t realize it and thought they had to be circumcised as well. As Hooker said, many pre-Reformation folks were in fact justified by faith, because they believe in Jesus, even though, not knowing about or believing in justification by faith, they lacked assurance, and then sought to fill this vacuum in other ways. Many Christians today may not be clear about the niceties of doctrine; but however inarticulately, they hold on to Jesus; and, according to Paul’s teaching, they are therefore justified by faith. They are constituted as members of the family. They must be treated as such. This is not to say, of course that justification is an unimportant or inessential doctrine. Far from it. A church that does not grasp it and teach it is heading for trouble. It is to say that the doctrine of justification itself points away from itself. Believing in Jesus – believing that Jesus is Lord, and that God raised Him from the dead – is what counts.[1]”

It is fascinating to note that in my personal study of Church history that Born Again Christians seem to look at Church history in this manner:

1. Jesus finishes His earthly ministry then ascends into Heaven
2. The Holy Spirit comes to the disciples during Pentecost thus starting the Christian Church whose story was told in the Acts of the Apostles.
3. For a good number of centuries the Roman Catholic Church was there and it was evil and the supposedly ‘true church’ was re-established my Martin Luther and then we Born Again Christians in the present uphold the pure Gospel that was articulated by Luther as Faith Alone.

Please understand that I am not saying that all Roman Catholics are Christians but just the same not all professing Born Again Christians are Christians as well. All I am saying is that the problem with our ignorance of Church history puts us in a shaky foundation.

It puts us in a spot where we uphold a doctrine outside of its historical context as it was borne at the time when confession and absolution within the Roman Catholic Church could be bought by means of indulgences being sold, resulting in penance that’s borne out of a financial transaction rather than genuine contrition.

It is in this failure to recognize this context that we fail to explain it fully thus making us passionate apologists of something that we do not fully understand.

For me the beauty of the Doctrine of Justification by Faith Alone is that it is an available response for us to personally appropriate God’s saving work in Christ, who is the author and finisher of our faith. That’s why I believe that it is not the doctrine itself that saves, but the reality that the doctrine represents.

Note

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[1] Wright, Tom – What Saint Paul Really Said p. 159

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Between Pentecost and the Second Coming...

...Christians are called to live in the world. So it is imperative that we should get involved with what's happening in the world.

"The task of the Church between ascension and parousia is therefore set free both from the self-driven energy that imagines it has to build God’s kingdom all by itself and from the despair that supposes it can’t do anything until Jesus comes again. We do not ‘build the kingdom’ all by ourselves, but we do build for the kingdom. All that we do in faith, hope, and love in the present, in obedience to our ascended Lord in the power of his Spirit, will be enhanced and transformed at his appearing."
N.T. Wright
Surprised by Hope p. 143

This is one of the reminders that I think I might need to put into a permanent sticky note in my head as a Christian who oftentimes forget to keep in touch with reality as it ought to be viewed from a Christian perspective.

I am sure that I am not alone with this problem.

I often struggle with living out my faith in light of the glorious hope of Christ’s return that I in a way have at one point in my life looked forward to as an instant escape from my personal problems and my inability to live out a faith that not only actively pursues a righteous life but also that of a just society.

Again I am pretty sure that I am not the only one who has struggled with this dilemma.

I believe that we have settled for an escapist eschatology that sees the ultimate purpose for humanity as being sucked into the sky for some disembodied eternal bliss.

This eschatology, has been horribly detrimental to the Church. It has taught us to either flee from the realms of ecology and social justice because God is concerned about the “spiritual” and not the physical (Conservative Protestantism) or to care about them without much good theological reason (mainline Protestantism). If we want to actually appreciate, care and love creation and each other, then a reworking of our eschatology is in order.

This is one of the main themes of N.T. Wright's book entitled: Surprised by Hope: Rethinking Heaven, the Resurrection, and the Mission of the Church, which reminds us that we in the Church have, for long time now, forgotten what the Bible actually teaches about heaven, hell, and the resurrection.

Because a clear understanding of such theological themes as he said would ultimately change our view of worship, Scripture, prayer, justice, mission, beauty, and everything else. Because when we came to faith in Christ, we must remember that we entered a whole new world that was started by the resurrection of Jesus and will be completed when he returns. Our job is to live in that world.

N.T. Wright is a British New Testament scholar whom Christianity Today has described as one of the top five theologians in the world today. After serving three years as the canon theologian of Westminster Abbey, Wright became the Bishop of Durham in 2003 – the fourth highest ranking position of authority in the Church of England. Although he is quite unpopular among evangelicals Bishop Wright is one of those contemporary theologians that I admire for his honest self-criticism of present day Christendom as well as for his dry wit and God-given skill to articulate the same issues within the Christian faith that I myself am also struggling with. J.I. Packer has described Wright as “brilliant” and “one of God’s best gifts to our decaying Western Church,” and I count myself as among those like Packer who is thankful for Wright’s gift of writing about the God whom I believe.
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What is an evangelical?

We have often referred to ourselves as 'born-again' Christians, which is one of the basic elements that can be described as evangelical Christianity is that it is a theological movement, tradition, and system of beliefs, most closely associated with Protestant Christianity, which identifies with the Gospel where most adherents consider belief in the need for personal conversion (or being "born again"), some expression of the gospel through evangelism.

But is this definition enough to explain what evangelical Christianity is? I have often been burdened by the fact that we who profess to be born-again are often deficient in terms of giving a well grounded characterization of our theological standpoint as evangelicals.

I have often struggled with the definition of what an evangelical Christian is basically since I was young in the faith I have often come to a dismay of using the more common connotation 'born again' Christian, which in a way I believe falls short of what a Christian is by definition. Also because it falls short of what theological standpoint a Christian who professes to be a born again is.

I was reading about Anglican Theology on the internet right now, and have come across the evangelical wing of the Church of England and names like George Carey, J.I. Packer and N.T. Wright are mentioned but there is one more familiar name that's mentioned there it is John Stott whom I deeply admire basically for his book Basic Christianity which I was blessed enough to have read a few years back. In a 2006 interview by Tim Stafford of Christianity Today he gave this very insightful explanation about what an evangelical is:

"An evangelical is a plain, ordinary Christian. We stand in the mainstream of historic, orthodox, biblical Christianity. So we can recite the Apostles Creed and the Nicene Creed without crossing our fingers. We believe in God the Father and in Jesus Christ and in the Holy Spirit.

Having said that, there are two particular things we like to emphasize: the concern for authority on the one hand and salvation on the other.

For evangelical people, our authority is the God who has spoken supremely in Jesus Christ. And that is equally true of redemption or salvation. God has acted in and through Jesus Christ for the salvation of sinners.

I think it's necessary for evangelicals to add that what God has said in Christ and in the biblical witness to Christ, and what God has done in and through Christ, are both, to use the Greek word, hapax—meaning once and for all. There is a finality about God's word in Christ, and there is a finality about God's work in Christ. To imagine that we could add a word to his word, or add a work to his work, is extremely derogatory to the unique glory of our Lord Jesus Christ."

- John R.W. Stott
Evangelism Plus: John Stott reflects on where we've been and where we're going, Christianity Today October 2006

Perhaps this insight from John Stott would be a good starting point in our reflection about what our expression of the Christian faith stands for.

Click here to read the entire interview at Christianity Today

N.T. Wright on Evangelism

'The task of evangelism is therefore best understood as the proclamation that Jesus is already Lord, that in him God's new creation has broken into history, and that all people are therefore summoned to submit to him in love, worship and obedience. The logic of this message requires that those who announce it should be seeking to bring Christ's Lordship to bear on every area of human and worldly existence' - N.T. Wright, Commentary on Colossians (pp. 79-80).