Notes on *Hearers and Doers*
Hearers and Doers: A Pastor's Guide to Making Disciples Through Scripture and Doctrine, Kevin J. Vanhoozer, (Lexham Press, 2019)
Main Idea/Takeaway
Pastors must be theologically rooted to help church members recover the primacy of Scripture in their discipleship.
"Hearers & Doers is intended to help pastors fulfill their Great Commission to make disciples, with emphasis on the importance of teaching disciples to read the Scriptures." (Preface xi)
"My hope is that the present book will help pastors recover Calvin's vision for theology as a help to reading the Bible in ways that enliven and encourage disciples to walk its way of wisdom." (Preface xxii)
"To make disciples is to teach people how to become biblically literate so they can be effective inhabitants and representatives of the city of God, for the purpose of gospel citizenship." (71)
"Accordingly, this book is a guide for hearing and reading the Bible rightly, as well as a training manual for doing the Bible rightly. The goal is to train disciples to walk around in the strange new world of the Bible even as they live in the familiar old world of the present. It is a pastor's guide for training hearers and doers, faithful followers of Jesus Christ and faithful interpreters of the Word that directs us in his Way." (71)
"I want to examine the significance of sola Scriptura in making disciples by stressing its role in fostering the Christocentric social imaginary that makes the church a creature of the word." (99)
"A pastor does many things, but I have argued that most of these things are forms of ministering God's word: either by speaking (preaching, teaching, counseling, praying) or enacting it (celebrating the Lord's Supper, visitation). The particular focus of the present work has been on the pastor as disciple-maker, or what I have described elsewhere as "public theologian"- one who does theology with and for people." (241)
Interaction
Social imaginary = deep assumptions. (8)
The negative task of theology. (9)
What other words are shaping our people? (50)
Pastors minister by helping people make connections in three key areas. (117)
What is a pastor-theologian? (123)
If we don't mature immature Christians into real disciples, who will? The church is where this must happen. This goes for all 'immature Christians' that make up a congregation. The consumers, the feminists, etc. Where do they go to become disciples? It must be the church. And so the stronger brothers must bear with the failings of the weak. (Romans 15:1)." (125)
Preach the Bible; baptism and Lord's Supper; and people are not part of the church who shouldn't be. (127)
This is our consumer culture, which is not 1 Timothy 6:8. (146)
Credo-Baptism see p.218. (150)
Lord's Supper see p.221. (151)
"The church is most itself at Table." (221)
Table of Contents
Introduction
Part One: Warming Up: Why Discipleship Matters
I. The Role of Theology in Making Disciples
II. Whose Fitness? Which Body Image?
III. From Hearing to Doing
IV. Doctrine for Discipleship
Part Two: Working Out: How Discipleship Happens
V. Creatures of the Word
VI. Company of the Gospel
VII. Communion of Saints
VIII. Children of God
Favorite Quotes by Chapter
Introduction:
"In short: what it means to be biblical is inextricably related to what it means to be Jesus; disciples, and what form this discipleship should take in the twenty-first century." (xviii)
"Doctrine, like Scripture, teaches disciples who they are "in Christ." Disciples have to understand, and remember, whose Way they belong to." (xviii)
"Why should pastors study theology? So that they can better know whom they worship, and learn how to form others into true worshipers who know how to worship, and to walk, in spirit and truth (John 4:22-24)." (xxi)
"Theology is about learning how to live out Christ's life in us (Gal 2:20), a life that includes cruciform wisdom (1 Cor 2:2) and resurrection power (Phil 3:10)." (xxiii)
"The aim of evangelism is to make converts, people who believe the gospel, repent of their former way of life, a bonfire of the vanities, and face a new direction- Christward." (xxiv)
"Making disciples involves more (but not less) than informing minds or forming habits. It also involves transforming imaginations, that is, that primary ways they see, think about, and experience life." (xxv)
"The pastor must be a theologian: someone who can relate life in general, and the lives of his congregation, to what Scripture shows us the Father doing in Christ through the Spirit to renew creation." (xxvii)
Part One
Warming Up: Why Discipleship Matters
I. The Role of Theology in Making Disciples
"There is probably no more damaging picture distorting our present-day lives, and our understanding of the God of the gospel, than "love." Love is often depicted as a desire to be fulfilled (romanticism) or as accepting people for who they are (inclusivism) or as loyalty to one's own people group (tribalism)." (7)
" A social imaginary is the picture that frames our everyday beliefs and practices, in particular the "ways people imagine their social existence." The social imaginary is that nest of background assumptions, often implicit, that lead people to feel things as right or wrong, correct or incorrect." (8)
"The doctrines we hold be they philosophical, political, or theological, feel right or wrong, plausible or implausible, based largely on how well they accord with the prevailing social imaginary or world picture. What I have called above the "negative task" of theology is to critically reflect on the way in which the church embodies the prevailing social imaginaries of the day rather than the biblical imaginary- the true story of the Triune God is doing in the world." (10)
II. Whose Fitness? Which Body Image?
"Theology helps the church make disciples by exposing the lie- the false social imaginaries that often hold even church members captive (the negative, critical task) - and by redirecting them to the way, truth, and life of Jesus Christ (the positive, indicative task)." (14)
"Food cults arguably replace what religion once did by prescribing... food rules and rituals. Like religion, they provide meaning in confusing situations, giving us moral guidelines and comfort." (27)
"Pastors, too, ought to be concerned with the diet of their congregation, particularly if we stretch the term to include what kind of reading and entertainment church members imbibe on a regular basis."(42)
III. From Hearing to Doing
"Discipleship is about becoming who we are in Christ, and this is entirely a work of God: "Therefore, is anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation" (2 Cor 5:17)." (44)
"Discipleship is essentially a matter of hearing (authority), believing (trust), and doing the truth (freedom) that is in Jesus Christ." (50)
"As Dietrich Bonhoeffer put it: in discipleship, "Jesus is the only content." Disciples do the truth, then, by following his way and living out his life: "It is no longer I who live, but Christ lives in me" (Gal 2:20)." (52)
"To be a disciple is to hear, do, and adore what we see there, in the mirror of Scripture: the lordship of Jesus Christ." (53)
"True disciples are awake and alert to what is going on in the world, to what is really real, namely, the "real presence" of Jesus Christ. The true story of the world, narrated in Scripture, concerns God's presence and activity." (54)
"We agree that the imagination is a key factor in making disciples. Yet we become disciples not simply by participating in Christian liturgical practices but by participating in- living into and acting out- Scripture's canonical practices and, yes, Christian doctrine (see 1 Tim 4:16)." (56)
"To walk in the truth is to live in accordance with the truth of the gospel, that it, the truth of the new reality that has come into being in and through Christ's person and work." (59)
"Christian discipleship is companionship with Christ. The Christian Way is that of the long-distance walker, a long obedience in the same direction, where day in and day out, with each step we take, we choose to live in a way that follows Jesus and corresponds to the truth- our new life in him. Making disciples is a step-by-step process of helping men and women to walk the Way of Jesus Christ." (60)
IV. Doctrine for Discipleship
"Discipleship involves waking up to the realization that there is a choice, and we must stay awake to the lordship of Jesus Christ long enough to make the right one: to obey, and thereby to exercise, like Jesus, genuine freedom." (78)
"Feeding on God's word involves more than tasting or taking a bite; it means making a meal of it, digesting it. Eugene Peterson calls Christians to absorb and imbibe the Bible so that it seeps into all our pores." (79)
"Reading the Bible theologically, as teaching by God, of God, and leading to God, is our best hope for breaking free of the pictures that hold us captive: consumerism, humanism, transhumanism, nihilism, existentialism, moralism, scientism, and so on- idols all, of heart and mind. Reading Scripture theologically means reading it together, in the church, in ways that lead to its readers' moral and spiritual, and sapiential formation." (85)
Part Two
Working Out: How Discipleship Happens
V. Creatures of the Word
"Pastors must do everything they can to ensure that Scripture alone, and not some other story, serves as their congregation's essential social imaginary." (94)
"One such insight is that the church must always be "reforming" its thought and life in accordance with the Scriptures. In particular, the church must always be reforming in order to imagine the world that the Bible imagines." (95)
"The best way to take captive the imagination of Christians in any age is through the church's proclamation of the gospel in word and deed: in sermon, sacrament and shapes of everyday living." (103)
"The evangelical imagination alone opens up the real possibility of living along the grain of reality: according to what is really the case "in Christ." (110)
"As Ephraim Radner says, preaching "is a way of putting us back where we belong: into the text itself...where God's word, in all his creative omnipotence, does its work of self-giving and conformation." (115)
"Pastors minister this needed understanding by helping people make connections in three areas: between the parts of the Bible and the overarching story; between the Bible and the world in which they live; and between who they are at the moment and who God calls them to be in Christ." (117)
"The sermon is not a secondhand description of what is happening in a historical galaxy far, far, away. No, gospel preaching proclaims the true story of the world, acknowledging that all things are "from him and through him and to him" (Rom. 11:36). The sermon is the heavy artillery in the pastor-theologian's arsenal, and the best frontal assault on imaginations held captive by other stories promising other ways to the good life." (118)
"Scripture alone is the ultimate story from which disciples must take their existential bearings." (119)
"Pastors cannot know everything about everything, but they should be able to know one big thing about everything: whether or not it fosters life in Christ." (121)
"We read the Bible in order to discern the Way of truth and life that leads to fellowship with God and human flourishing from ways of falsehood and illusion that lead only to the dead end of idolatry and human frustration." (122)
"The pastor-theologian is a special kind of generalist a generalist who "specializes" in relating all things to the gospel of Jesus Christ in order to make disciples, especially by disciplining their imaginations to conform to the unified biblical narrative with Christ at its center." (123)
"It takes an imagination shaped by the Bible to see one's congregation as a living temple, with each member a living stone. (1 Peter 2:5)" (124)
"It takes a biblically formed eschatological imagination to look at a sinner and see a saint." (124)
VI. Company of the Gospel
"The church is the biblically mandated place to make disciples." (125)
"The Reformers also wrestled with the problem of how to recognize the tru church, and developed three criteria: the right preaching of the word, the right administration of the sacraments, and the proper exercise of discipline." (127)
"What pastors have to say that no one else can say is not simply that there is a God bu that God has acted. The gospel is a report of something that has been done. We have news- breaking news that the kingdom of God has broken into our world in the person and work of Jesus Christ. God has acted (creating news to report) and God has spoken (the news is reliable because those who reported it were inspired by God). (129)
"Christians today are living between the first and second comings of Jesus, in the closing scenes of Act IV, poised between memory and hope." (130)
"Doctrine does not add content to Scripture, but it does add understanding. Doctrine develops only because the church's understanding of the biblical story and its implications has developed, just as Jesus promised it would: "When the Spirit of truth comes, he will guide you into all the truth." (John 16:13)" (133)
"So how do we learn to get real? 'By reading Scripture theologically', that is, with the help of doctrine's ministry of understanding, and with a view to participating in the story of Scripture tells, the ongoing drama of redemption." (144)
"Each part of the church's worship service- spoken or sung word, bath, table, prayer- focuses on some aspect of Jesus' story. Taken together, then, the liturgy is the church's spoken and enacted interpretation of the reality attested in and by Scripture. The liturgy is therefore theodramatic. It is all about rehearsing what the Triune God has done, is doing, and will do to renew creation and form a holy nation to be his treasured possession. Accordingly, the liturgy is a prime training ground for making disciples fit for theodramatic purpose." (145)
"Everything in which we habitually participate leaves a little mark on our soul, forms our spirits, and trains our loves." (146)
"Much of the mainstream culture in the modern and postmodern West contributes to the formation of individualist consumers who believe that certain things or experiences will complete their identity and satisfy their desire for happiness." (146)
"Everything begins with disciples; ability to inhabit the biblical story and thus let Scripture serve as their primary imaginary." (153)
"The point of liturgical performance is not to give disciples lines but rather to help shape their understanding of the story of Jesus of which they are a continuing part, and to prepare them to be the kind of people who want and are able to continue acting out new scenes of the same drama." (154)
"What I am calling liturgical formation is the process of helping disciples enter into the drama to the point of becoming story-dwellers, people whose imagination is fixed on the reality of what God is doing in Christ through the Spirit to renew humanity and all creation." (160)
VII. Communion of Saints
"sola Scriptura means that Scripture alone, as God's own set-apart discourse, is the only wholly reliable, sufficient, and final authority for the church's life and thought (including imagination). (176)
"Pastors need to help disciples discern which doctrines are essential, requiring unity, and which are nonessential, requiring liberty (and charity)."(197)
"Mere Protestant Christianity uses the resources of the solas and the priesthood of all believers to express the unity-in-denominational-diversity that local churches have in Christ." (201)
"The local church, a people with canon sense and catholic sensibility, is the true end of the Protestant Reformation." (202)
VIII. Children of God
"Christlikeness is the goal of discipleship. It is not only a way of walking but a state of being. To be more precise, it is the state of being-in, and abiding with, Christ." (204)
"Christ is the image of God and disciples are to be images of Christ." (204)
"The sobering truth is that much of what is going through our heads is not the story of Jesus but some other story." (209)
"Pastors need to wake up congregations to the cultural forces that are forming their spirits, and perhaps clouding their vision." (211)
"Learning Christ is a matter of following- or we could say practicing- Christ. It is by reading God's word, illuminated by the Spirit, that disciples learn to think rightly, see rightly, judge rightly, and act rightly, that is, in a Christlike manner." (216)
"Wisdom means knowing what to do in particular situations in order to glorify God and follow Jesus in ways that befit faithful disciples. In a word, theological wisdom means knowing how to improvise the mind of Christ at all times, everywhere, and to everyone." (217)
"To be in Christ is to be in the process of being restored to true humanity, a process that requires our active involvement. To put on Christ means to act out his life in us." (220)
"The church is most itself at Table, for it is in partaking Christ's body that the church becomes Christ's body: one. In all its activities, especially the Lord's Supper, a local church in its corporate life "puts on" the spectacle of reconciliation in Christ and not only acts out but also becomes a parable of the kingdom of God." (221)
"To take, read, and preach the Bible in the church, with an ear for the word of God to the people of God, is to read it as testimony to Christ, his person and work, his suffering and glory." (225)
"This is our ultimate calling, our highest privilege and responsibility: to live into our adoption as sons and daughters of the Father. This is our destiny (and our predestination, Eph 1:5), to be adopted as sons and daughters through Jesus Christ." (234)
Notable Content
"If you want to know what fuels the present-day social imaginary, follow the money: the GWI estimates that global wellness fuels $3.7 trillion economy, more than three times larger than the global pharmaceutical industry (beauty and anti-aging programs and products alone amounted to almost $1 trillion)." (18)
See Atul Gawande's, Being Mortal: Medicine and What Matters in the End , for a well articulated critique of the effects of secularization and medicalization on our concept of what it is to be well. (23)
See Food Cults: How Fads, Dogma, and Doctrine Influence Diet (27)
See (72-75) for seven initial theses on reading the Bible theologically.
The Four Principles of the Protestant Reformation:(96-97)
The material principle: justification by faith (sola gratia, sola fide, solus Christus)
The formal principle: "according to the Scriptures" (sola Scriptura)
The dynamic principle: the Spirit who ministers, illumines, enlivens, and unites.
The final principle: a citizenship of the gospel.
"Scripture alone ought to rule our thinking about what a pastor is and does." See (114-116) for three metaphors that pastors would do well to allow to reshape their vocational imaginations.
Five-Act Play: World History as a Drama of Redemption
Act I: creation and its subsequent corruption
Act II: beginning from Genesis 12 and running through the rest of the OT
Act III: Jesus: God's definitive saving Word
Act IV: begins with the risen Christ sending his Spirit to create the church
Act V: last judgment and the consummation of all things
cf. John 13. Case for Community Groups. (139)
Lesslie Newbigin, The Gospel in a Pluralist Society. Case for Community Groups. (140)
Five Premises of sola Scriptura: (172-173)
The Bible is the word of God written in human words inspired by the Holy Spirit.
God both authors and authorizes the Bible.
God's word is God's discourse: something God says about something to someone in some way.
Different types of discourse exercise authority in different ways over different domains.
All divinely authored discourse serves the same ultimate end.
Prioritizing public Bible reading. (198)
Notes on *Fundamentalism and the Word of God*
Fundamentalism and the Word of God, J. I. Packer (IVP, 1958)
Spurgeon: “Defend the Bible? I would as soon defend a lion.”
Main Idea
Evangelical theology, in line with historic Christian doctrine, believes the Bible is the word of God, and should be thus defended against the assaults of Liberalism/subjectivism.
"In fact, the cause of the division is, from one point of view, the deepest doctrinal divergence of all- disagreement as to the principle of authority: for there can be no stable agreement on anything between those who disagree here. Through treating the position of Evangelicals as mere bits and pieces and failing to ask why they believe the things they do believe, the critics have misses this issue altogether. Yet it is the heart of the controversy, and it is here that our discussion must center." (17)
"The scriptural approach to Scripture is thus to regard it as God's written testimony to Himself. When we call the Bible the Word of God, we mean, or should mean, that its message constitutes a single utterance of which God is the author. What Scripture says, He says. When we hear or read Scripture, that which impinges on our mind (whether we realize it or not) is the speech of God Himself." (89)
"Evangelicals, it is said, cling to the idea of biblical infallibility as drowning men cling to a straw- not because it is worthy of their trust, but because they want something to cling to and there is nothing else within reach. We can now see how perverse a misunderstanding this is. the evangelical certainty of the trustworthiness and authority of Scripture is of exactly the same sort, and rests on exactly the same basis, as the Church's certainty of the Trinity, or the incarnation, or any other catholic doctrine. God has declared it; Scripture embodies it; the Spirit exhibits it to believers; and they humbly receive it, as they are bound to do." (122)
"We have seen what the real issues are: the authority of Christ and of Scripture; the relation between the Bible and reason; the method of theology, and the meaning of repentance; the choice between Evangelicalism and Subjectivism." (176)
Interaction
The question of Scripture is really, "What think ye of Christ?" (59)
The message of Scripture is Jesus. He is the key. (84)
See Vanhoozer, "First Theology" (86)
JIP is suspicious of the Biblical Theology movement in its earliest days, c.1950s. (155)
Liberalism repeats the same assault on Christianity that has been since its beginning: the contribution of sinful man to the work of Christ, which obscures Christ's glory. (173)
We, following the Reformation heritage, must oppose Liberalism today as the Reformers opposed Medieval Catholicism. (173)
Table of Contents
Foreword
I. 'Fundamentalists' under Fire
II. What is 'Fundamentalism'?
III. Authority
IV. Scripture
V. Faith
VI. Reason
VII. Liberalism
VIII. Conclusion
Favorite Quotes by Chapter
Foreword:
This book is a constructive re-statement of evangelical principles, aiming to fix the right approach to the Bible.
I. Fundamentalists Under Fire
Liberal critics are not going after mere evangelical practice, but actual principle. They consider the idea of biblical inerrancy to be unreasonable in our modern times.
And many of these critics blame Fundamentalists for being too parochial. They consider them to not get everything wrong — they’re not heretics — but they need to adjust a few things here and there. “If only Fundementalists would abandon their isolationism and come into these [more mainline] movements!”
JIP calls this analysis just flat wrong ...
“It reflects two characteristic weaknesses of ecumenical theology. The first is the tendency to treat every theological tradition as no more than a loosely linked collection of isolated insights, brought together by the mere accident of history. But the evangelical faith is a systematic and integrated whole, built on a single foundation; and they must be understood and assessed as such. ... [there actually is a major doctrinal issue separating the two sides, Mainlines and Fundamentalists] ... in fact, the cause of the division is, from one point of view, the deepest doctrinal divergence of all – disagreement as to the principle of authority: there could be no stable agreement on anything between those who disagree here. Through treating the position of evangelicals as mere bits and pieces and failing to ask why they believe the things that they do believe, the critics have missed this issue altogether. Yet it is the heart of the controversy, and it is here to our discussion must center.” (17)
“Our first task must be to test all the words of men by the authoritative Word of God, to receive only what Scripture endorses, and to reject all that is contrary to it.” (19)
II. What Is Fundamentalism?
On the connection between Christology and the doctrine of Scripture. As Timothy Ward also says, "people's view of Scripture is often largely determined by their view of Jesus Christ" (Words of Life, 41).
Matthew 5:17–18,
17 “Do not think that I have come to abolish the Law or the Prophets; I have not come to abolish them but to fulfill them. 18 For truly, I say to you, until heaven and earth pass away, not an iota, not a dot, will pass from the Law until all is accomplished.
III. Authority
“The real question concerns the principle of authority.” (41)
“The problem of authority is the most fundamental problem that the Christian church ever faces. This is because Christianity is built on truth: that is to say, on the content of a divine revelation. Christianity announces salvation through faith in Jesus Christ, in and through whom that revelation came to completion; but faith in Jesus Christ is possible only where the truth concerning him is known.” (42)
Two classes of doctrinal division:
1) a common view of the Bible as the final authority, but different only as to what it teaches
2) divided views on authority, such as Protestants and Rome; (same would apply to Evangelicals and Liberals)
There are three distinct authorities to which final appeal might be made:
Holy Scripture (Evangelical)
Church Tradition (Rome)
Christian Reason (Liberal)
Evangelical view of authority:
“To learn the mind of God, one must consult His written Word. What Scripture says, God says. The Bible is inspired in the sense of being word-for-word God-given.” 47
“The proper ground for believing a thing is that God says it in His written Word, and a readiness to take God’s word and accept what he asserts in the Bible is thus fundamental to faith.” 49
The Teaching of Jesus:
“The fact we have to face is that Jesus Christ, the Son of God incarnate, who claimed divine authority for all that he did and taught, both confirmed the absolute authority of the Old Testament for others and submitted to it unreservedly himself.” (55)
“In conjunction with the teachings of Jesus, the written word of the Old Testament retains is full, divine authority. Attempts have been made by some who reject Christ’s view of the Old Testament to evade the force of this conclusion. This could be done only by denying Christ’s authority altogether. Christ’s claim to be divine is either true or false. If it is true, his person guarantees the truth of all the rest of his teaching (for a divine person cannot lie or err); therefore, his view of the Old Testament is true. If his claim is false, there is no compelling reason to believe anything else that he said. If we accept Christ’s claims, therefore, we commit ourselves to believe all that he taught—on this authority. If we refuse to believe some part of what he taught, we are in effect denying him to be the divine Messiah – on our own authority. The question, “What think ye of the Old Testament?”, resolves into the question, “What think ye of Christ?” And our answer to the first proclaims our answer to the second.” (59)
“The apostles clearly grasped their Master’s of teaching about Scripture. They proclaimed Christianity as the fulfillment of Scripture. They preached the authority of Christ on the basis of the authority of the Old Testament. They argued from Scripture, quoting its words as the speech of God. Indeed, they laid claim to the Old Testament as a Christian book. The oracles of God, entrusted to the Jews, had been written primarily, they maintained, for the benefit of Christian believers. ‘Whatsoever things were written beforehand were written for our learning.’ The events in the wilderness in Moses’s day ‘were written down for our instruction, upon whom the end of the ages has come.’ The prophets who spoke of the sufferings and glory of Christ ‘were serving not themselves but you, in the things which have now been announced to you by those who preached the good news to you.’ The reckoning of righteousness to believing Abraham was recorded ‘not for his sake alone, but for ours also.’ The Old Testament Scripture were ‘able to make you wise unto salvation through faith which is in Christ Jesus.’ To Christians, who held the key to its meaning, the Old Testament was luminous, though to those who veiled their hearts by refusing to find its meaning in Christ it remained obscure.” *(62-62)
Rom 15:4; 1 Cor. 10:11; 1 Peter 1:12, Rom 4:23; 2 Tim 3:15
“Apostolic utterances are the truth of Christ and possess the authority of Christ; they are to be received as words of God, because what they convey is, in fact, the word of God.” 64
“To deny the normative authority of Scripture over the church is the misconceive the nature of Christianity, and, in effect, to deny the Lordship of Christ. If the teaching of Christ and the apostles is to rule the church, the church must be ruled by Scripture.” (69)
“The words and lives of Christian men must be in continual process of reformation by the written Word of their God.” (69)
“We may never assume the complete rightness of our own established ways of thought and practice and excuse ourselves the duty of testing and reforming them by Scripture.” (70)
“Scripture has complete and final authority over the church as a self-contained, self interpreting revelation from God. This is what evangelicals are concerned above all to maintain. What Scripture says, God says; and what God says in Scripture is to be the rule of faith and life in his church.” (73)
IV. Scripture
Scripture itself is alone competent to judge our doctrine of Scripture (76)
The Divine Origin of Scripture:
"Inspiration is to be defined as a supernatural, providential influence of God's Holy Spirit upon the human authors which caused them to write what He wished to be written for the communication of revealed truth to others." (77)
"The Bible excludes the idea of a frustrated Deity. 'Whatsoever the Lord pleased, that did he in heaven, and in earth. He was well able to prepare, equip and overrule sinful human writers so that they wrote nothing but what He intended; and Scripture tells us that this is what in fact He did. We are to think of the Spirit's inspiring activity, and, for that matter, of all His regular operations in and upon human personality, as (to use an old but valuable technical term) concursive; that is, as exercised in, through and by means of the writers' own activity, in such a way that their thinking and writing was both free and spontaneous on their part and divinely elicited and controlled, and what they wrote was not only their own work but also God's work." (80)
"But it is more than a library of books by human authors; it is a single book with a single author — God the Spirit — a single theme — God the Son, and the Father's saving purposes, which all revolve round Him. Our Lord is therefore the key to Scripture, and its focal center; there is a sense in which all bears witness of Him, and in this common reference the heterogenous contents of the Bible find their unity. Not that all parts of Scripture are equally important, or witness to Chris and the kingdom of God in the same way. But no part of Scripture is without its bearing on these central topics, and no part of Scripture is rightly understood if read without its reference." (84-85).
"The biblical concept of Scripture, then, is of a single, though complex, God-given message, set down in writing in God-given words; a message which God has spoken and still speaks." (88)
"Leave man to guess God's mind and purpose, and he will guess wrong; he can know it only by being told it. Moreover, the whole purpose of God's mighty acts is to bring man to know Him by faith' and Scripture knows no foundation for faith but the spoken word of God, inviting our trust in Him on the basis of what He has done for us. Where there is no word from God, faith cannot be." (92)
"God's Word is affirmed to be infallible because God Himself is infallible; the infallibility of Scripture is simply the infallibility of God speaking. What Scripture says is to be received as the infallible Word of the infallible God, and to assert biblical inerrancy and infallibility is just to confess faith in (i) the divine origin of the Bible and (ii)the truthfulness and trustworthiness of God." (96)
"The authority of Christ requires us to receive as God's Word all that the Bible asserts. No other attitude to biblical assertions is theologically warrantable." (100)
"God's Word is not presented in Scripture in the form of a theological system, but it admits of being stated in that form, an, indeed, requires to be so stated before we can properly grasp it- grasp it, that is, as a whole. Every text has its immediate context in the passage from which it comes, its broader context in the book to which it belongs, and its ultimate context in the Bible as a whole; and it needs to be rightly related to each of these contexts if its character, scope, and significance is to be adequately understood." (101)
"Fanciful spiritualizing, so far from yielding God's meaning, actually obscured it. The literal sense is itself the spiritual sense, coming from God and leading to Him." (104)
"Christians are bound to receive the Bible as God's Word written on the authority of Christ, not because they can prove it such by independent enquiry, but because as disciples they trust their divine Teacher." (108)
"But without the Spirit's help there can be no grasp of the message of Scripture, no conviction of the truth of Scripture, and no faith in the God of Scripture. Without the Spirit, nothing is possible but spiritual blindness and unbelief." (112)
V. Faith
"Just as the Spirit teaches all Christians to receive as authoritative articles of faith the doctrines which the Scriptures assert, so He teaches them to regard as an authoritative articles of faith the doctrines which the Scriptures assert, so He teaches them to regard as an authoritative source of doctrine the Scriptures which assert them." (121)
VI. Reason
'All truth is God's truth; facts, as such, are sacred, and nothing is more un-Christian than to run away from them." (127)
"Whereas the non-Christian is led by faithless reason, the Christian should be guided by reasoning faith." (128)
"Sinners are no more ready to acknowledge God in their thinking, by allowing His utterances authority over their judgment, than they are to acknowledge God in their actions, by allowing his utterances authority over their behavior." (139)
"Christian believers, who acknowledge the authority of Christ as a Teacher in other matters, ought equally to acknowledge it in their approach to the Bible; they should receive Scripture as He did, accepting its claim to be divinely inspired and true and studying it as such." (141)
"This is the only road to intellectual freedom, and its sole safeguard is the principle of absolute subjection to Scripture." (143)
"If anyone in the present debate lacks intellectual freedom, it is rather those whose minds are governed by the tyrannical modern axiom that what is newest must be truest, what is old must be out-of date, and change is always progress; those who feel they must deny what Christ affirmed about Scripture rather than break with nineteenth- century ideas of what assumptions are 'scientific' and what are not; those in the grip of a theological neuroses that makes them regard rationalistic principles of biblical criticism as an inviolable sacred cow." (143-144)
VII. Liberalism
"To defer to God's Word is an act of faith; any querying and editing of it on our own initiative is an exhibition of unbelief."(153)
"To accept all is consistent; to reject all is consistent; but no third course is consistent." (163)
"If man's judgment is to be the measure of some things in Scripture , why not of all things? If we are entitled to desupernaturalize the faith in part, why not altogether? It is hard to respect the liberal half-way houses, however much acuteness and learning goes into their erection; for they are arbitrary through and through." (163)
"History shows that Christian witness is strong and effective only when believers are humble enough to believe nothing less about God than His own Word tells us." (163)
"The apologetic strategy that would attract converts by the flattery of accommodating the gospel to the 'wisdom' of sinful man was condemned by Paul nineteen centuries ago, and the past hundred years have provided a fresh demonstration of its bankruptcy. The world may call its compromises 'progressive' and 'enlightened' (those are its names for all forms of thought that pander to its conceit); those who produce them will doubtless, by a natural piece of wishful thinking, call them 'bold' and 'courageous', and perhaps 'realistic' and 'wholesome'; but the Bible condemns them as sterile aberrations. And the Church cannot hope to recover its power till it resolves to turn its back on them." (168)
VIII. Conclusion
"The Bible asks to be regarded as a God-given, error-free, self-interpreting unity, true and trustworthy in all that it teaches." (169)
"The fact is that here we are faced in principle with a choice between historic Evangelicalism and modern Subjectivism."(170)
"Once men reverse the proper relation between Scripture and their own thinking and start judging biblical statements about God by their private ideas of God, instead of vice versa, their knowledge of the Creator is in imminent danger of perishing, and with it the whole idea of supernatural redemption." (171-172)
"Evangelical theology is bound to oppose the attitude which under-values the gift of Scripture and presumes to correct the inerrant Word of God, just as it will oppose all misguided endeavors to supplement by human merit the perfect righteousness of Christ."(174)
Notable Content
Two classes of doctrinal division: (44)
1) a common view of the Bible as the final authority, but different only as to what it teaches
2) divided views on authority, such as Protestants and Rome; (same would apply to Evangelicals and Liberals)
Packer is suspicious of the Biblical Theology Movement in its early days (see 151-160)
Four reasons why Liberalism is faulty (see 160-163)