Notes on *The Art of Pastoring*
The Art of Pastoring, David Hansen, (IVP, 1994, 2012)
Main Idea/Takeaway
Pastors are called to be parables of Jesus — people meet Jesus in our lives when we follow Jesus.
"I attempt to describe why it is that people meet Jesus in our lives when we follow Jesus. Even more, I have attempted to describe how and why following Jesus is the central principle of pastoral ministry, the comprehensive principle that integrates every task." (13)
"The thesis of this book is that people meet Jesus in our lives because when we follow Jesus, we are parables of Jesus Christ to the people we meet." (13)
"Here's what the pastoral ministry is for me: Every day, as I go about my tasks as a pastor, I am a follower of Jesus, I am therefore a parable of him to those I encounter. The parable of Jesus works the power and presence of Jesus in their lives." (31)
"Pastors who are parables of Jesus Christ change people's minds about Christ and bring the real Christ to people." (145)
Interaction
I pray petitionary and intercessory prayers because that grace of God at work within me leads me to desire things I cannot create. God's grace at work in me causes me to want to see things happen that I can't make happen. So I ask him to. (114)
Difference between parable and symbol. (143)
Table of Contents
I. Beginning
II. Call
III. The Holy Spirit
IV. Temptation
V. Eschatology
VI. Preaching
VII. Prayer
VIII. Friendship
IX. Sacrament
X. Leadership
XI. Leaving
XII. Reward
Favorite Quotes by Chapter
I. Beginning
"Better to be a follower of Jesus and no expert at that, just a sinner saved by grace, called to love because I have been bought with a price." (22)
"Pastoral ministry must be following Jesus Christ. Jesus Christ called me to this work, and following him must be integral to realizing his calling." (22)
"The speakability of God: this is what I want my life to be, a living organism through which God speaks, Not a hero, but a regular guy working away at imitating Christ in my everyday life." (26)
"My shepherding is an authentic extended metaphor of the Good Shepherd. And as such, my life conveys the surprising presence of the grace of God." (27)
"But if Jesus is communicated through us because of the likeness we share with him in our everyday life, if the essence of delivering Christ is living like him in our whole life, matching our life's narrative with his life's narrative, then our everyday life counts." (29)
"An adequate definition of pastoral ministry emphasizes following Jesus as the act of ministry, and particularly following Jesus on the way of the cross." (29)
"Sexual sin gets the press, but ego press kills the church." (30)
II. Call
"The gospel is the power of the love of God, and as such it gives the pastor the power of the love of God to give to others. If the gospel is the pastor's bread, the pastor will always have bread to give away." (41)
IV. Temptation
"I've tried and tried, but I've never been able to mix ambition and love. When I'm trying to be important and I'm plotting my way to the top, I can't love my wife, I can't love my kids, I can't love my friends, I can't love my parishioners. When I'm climbing ladders I cut myself off from the power of the pastoral ministry, which is love. For me to love, for me to follow Jesus, I need to step off the ladder." (76)
"In our hypertherapeutic milieu, people want professionals to do something to them to make them feel better. Living through life, meeting the demands of following Jesus, living under the lordship of a holy God doesn't appeal to the general public these days." (78)
"Pandering is a moral problem. We pander to people's desires for shortcuts because we don't want to walk the Way of the Cross with them. We want shortcuts just as much as our people do." (82)
V. Eschatology
"If we can't teach our people where they go because we don't know ourselves, or if we feel that we cannot teach them what we really believe about heaven and hell, we are poor pastors." (85)
"The widespread lack of a coherent, biblical eschatology among preachers, and their unwillingness to teach it, leads to toothless, people-pleasing preaching." (86)
"All I see is people that need Christ. I see people in danger. I feel a fire light in my gut: the message God has given me for this morning is something the congregation needs to hear and respond to. Nervousness about my performance is displaced by concern for the people to hear the Word of God and believe in faith. I see their end. I see their need. I see that there is a decision to be made about Christ, and that decision counts for everything."(99)
VI. Preaching
"Preaching is a form of aggression. As we preach, Yahweh, the God of war, conducts holy war to conquer territory. The field of conflict is the human heart." (108)
"Thinking Christocentrically helps me sort through the side issues and leads me straight to the heart of every biblical text and the subject of all sermons: Jesus Christ." (111)
"This is what renews our hermeneutic: hearing Christ preached and taught by authors and preachers who are unafraid to tell us the truth. And that is the whole point of preaching: to tell the truth boldly and unashamedly." (112)
VIII. Friendship
"I'm gun-shy of people who like me too much."(137)
"They thank Jesus but give me the credit. Their speech is think with spiritual lingo, but they treat me like I'm their savior. I don't think they're talking about me or Jesus. They're talking to someone or something I symbolize to them. Psychologists call this transference." (137)
"What must die in every pastor is the subconscious desire to please people. What must not die is the will to love. There's the risk."(140)
"There are intelligent steps the pastor can take to avoid the snare. Don't try to be a therapist. When pastors try to be therapists, the danger intensifies."(142)
"But pastors should never, under any circumstances, attempt to create or enhance transference reactions in parishioners. They do happen, and they can have happy endings, but they should be avoided. The happy endings are rare." (143)
"How can a pastor be a parable of Christ and not a symbol of God? There is a critical difference between symbols and parables: symbols are durable, parables are impermanent." (145)
"Pastors, as parables of Jesus, bring Christ to people and then as quickly as possible become unimportant, unnecessary and superfluous to the important thing: the parishioners' relationship with Jesus." (146)
"Rather, pastors need to allow their personal effect on people to be powerful, but light-handed and brief. This is what it means for a pastor to be humble. Humble pastors don't hang around for adulation, for then they might become an idol. Becoming an idol is the greatest fear of the humble pastor."(146)
IX. Sacrament
"Sin is not a mistake. Our sin is our willing unlawfulness, our purposeful breaking of God's law. In attitude and in deed, we rebel against God, and we have for that reason forfeited our right to live. We deserve to die for our sins. That's what the death of Jesus is for; our deliberate unlawfulness." (158)
"God's love is not a theory, nor does it meet an abstract need. God's love is a factual, historic action: the death of Jesus Christ. The purpose of God's act of love is to meet our real need, the forgiveness of our sins." (159)
X. Leadership
"Jesus Christ is the object of proclamation. Preaching our visions and ideas for the church is cheap leadership, and it is not preaching. But biblical, Christocentric preaching is powerful pastoral leadership." (168)
"A good sermon is like the breakfast the risen Christ prepared for his bone-weary disciples, fish cooking on coals, and bread." (168)
"Preaching clever ideas, church programs, politics and heart warming stories is thin soup. But bringing the Word of God faithfully to people week after week is a gourmet feast, good to taste and good for the soul. Christians who hear good preaching learn to "taste and see that the LORD is good" (Ps. 34:8). They develop a taste for the Word. They love to hear the Word of God, thoughtfully prepared, lovingly presented." (169)
"Whereas the sermon divided the church into individuals, the sacraments unite individuals with the body of Christ." (175)
"It is simple insight that the traditions of Christianity that place heavy stress on the sacraments tend to view individuals from the perspective of the unity of the church, while the traditions of Christianity that place heavy stress on preaching tend to view the church as a collection of individual disciples."(176)
XII. Reward
"It's just plain true that the more our world values autonomy and self-realization, the more discouraged and defeated we pastors have become. The more the world around us becomes its own eschaton, the less we will be understood and appreciated for what we do. And to the extent that we pastors accept the world's stance and attempt to become our own destinies through autonomy, the more we will despise our call and demand satisfaction now for our efforts. That's when we start trying to make stones into bread." (195)
Notable Content
"Reading the text in its original language accomplishes two vital things. Looking at the text in its original tongue is another way to fiddle with it. It is a way of spending unhurried, inefficient time with the text. It forces me to slow down and listen more intently." (104)
"Whereas morning prayer is praying the Psalms, wandering prayer is praying like the Psalms." (118)
Chapter 8 delves into the topic of transference. This is one of the most important treatments of this topic I’ve read in regards to pastoral ministry, and it is extremely relevant, especially for younger pastors (129)
"A pastor is not a symbol of God. A pastor is a parable of Jesus Christ." (143)
"But the sacraments, whose responsibility is to unite us, become a definite threat to the unity of the church if they are celebrated willy-nilly in small groups." (178)
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 *Words of Life*
Words of Life: Scripture as the Living and Active Word of God, Timothy Ward (IVP, 2009)
Main Idea/Takeaway
When we read the words of Scripture we encounter God in action to reveal himself and redeem sinners through Jesus Christ.
"The kind of doctrine of Scripture this book will outline is one that aims to demonstrate that its every aspect is shaped from the bottom up by the character and actions of God, and is integrally related to God's being and action, yet without the inert book coming to eclipse the living Savior." (17)
"To encounter the words of Scripture is to encounter God in action." (48)
"Scripture is God in communicative action. Therefore to encounter the words of Scripture is to encounter God in action." (177)
Interaction
To obey/disobey God's words is to obey/disobey God himself. (27)
Central to how we live like Jesus is real is our attentiveness to his word. Our everyday embrace of Jesus's realness is seen in how we relate to His word. (28)
God's actions as an extension of himself. (31)
Trusting God's words is trusting God. (32)
Human language. (34)
See Packer's "Fundamentalism and the Word of God." (41)
The organizing principle. (48)
How to think of 'doctrine' of Scripture. (51)
The covenantal nature of our relationship with God. (52)
Bible as a covenant book. (55)
When we hear the apostolic word. (60)
God is the source of all reliable meaning. (64)
This is not a "canon within a canon," but rather is to say that, because of redemption history, some books are more relevant to the church's life, and the content of the gospel." (85)
What is verbal God-breathedness? Prepositions are breathed out by God in light of the speech act. (86)
Amazing implication for translatability. (90)
Defense of the NIV. (91)
The inner testimony of the Holy Spirit.(93)
While we never shrink back from rational proofs, we are supernaturalists and should never pretend otherwise.(94)
cf. Vanhoozer 'First Theology.' (95)
When we read the words of Scripture, we encounter God in action. (95)
We deny the sufficiency of Scripture when we suppose the Spirit to work apart from the Word. (112)
Primary matters: salvation, life, holiness. Secondary: worship, government, etc. (112)
Word & Spirit. Nothing more is needed, and nothing less. (113)
Foundational to preaching. (121)
On "Preaching in worship and as worship"- This is connected to the bigger question of Who is God?! And his revelation. And what is Scripture? (122)
Sufficiency means that nothing more or less than Word & Spirit is needed to receive God's revelation (& its purpose to save). Clarity means nothing more or less than Word & Spirit is needed to understand God's revelation ( & its purpose to save). (129)
Table of Contents
I. Introduction
II. God and Scripture: a biblical outline
III. The Trinity and Scripture: a theological outline
IV. The Attributes of Scripture: a doctrinal outline
V. The Bible and Christian life: the doctrine of Scripture applied
VI. Summary
Favorite Quotes by Chapter
I. Introduction
"Throughout Christian history, the overwhelmingly predominant view of the Bible has been that it is itself the living and active Word of God. To say that the Bible is the Word of God is to say, putting it another way, that 'what the Bible says, God says'." (9)
"We do not have to choose between 'believing in the Bible' and 'believing in Christ.' As Christians we are called on to do both. In fact one crucial means by which we demonstrate our faith in Christ is by also believing what the Bible says. Perhaps the most straightforward argument for this begins by observing the fact that Jesus himself treated the Jewish Scriptures, our Old Testament, as themselves words from God, and so if we are going to be devoted to him then we must make sure our view of the Scriptures is the same as his." (11)
II. God and Scripture: a biblical outline
"Thus an action of God can be appropriately described both y saying that God's Word has performed an action for which he sent it, and by saying that God himself has performed an action." (25)
"Thus, when Adam and Eve disobey God's spoken command , they fracture their relationship with God himself. From God's side, when the words of his command are set aside by his creatures in favor of their own desires and their own claims of wisdom, then God himself has been set aside." (27)
"Abraham's response to God's words simply is also a response to God himself. His obedience to and trust in God's words are also, at one and the same time, an obedience to and trust in God himself." (28)
"To trust God's covenant promise is not to enter into an agreement with an absentee God; it is to trust the God who has come to you. There is, then, a complex but real relationship between God and his actions, expressed and performed, as they are, through God's words. In philosophical terms, there is an ontological relationship between God and his words. It seems that God's actions, including his verbal actions, are a kind of extension of him." (31)
"Communication from God is therefore communion with God, when met with a response of trust from us." (32)
"God speaks to us human words of promise, such that for us to trust those words is in itself an act of trusting God himself." (32)
"Whatever else may be true of human language, it is quite reasonable to suppose that it has the ability to speak truly of God, both because it was given to us by a God who speaks within himself as eternally three speaking persons, and also because our possession of language, as made in God's image, is analogous to God's communicative capacity. Our language can be made by God to speak truthfully of him because our language has its origin in him and in some way is like his own." (34-35)
"This philosophical assertion continues, sometimes unconsciously and therefore unquestioned, to shape much contemporary rejection of the orthodox doctrine of Scripture. At root, the rejection of Scripture as divine special revelation is often a side effect of the greater rejection of the particularity of Christ as God's ultimate self-revelation in the world. Here should be noted a feature that underlies many discussions about Scripture: people's view of Scripture is often largely determined by their view of Jesus Christ. That is one practical reason why the doctrine of Scripture must be articulated in a way that makes explicit its dependance on the doctrine of Christ." (41)
"Therefore everyone who never met the Word incarnate directly, bit who hears the words of Christ from the disciples, nevertheless encounters the words of the Father and of Christ, who in those words present themselves to us as a covenant-making God." (42)
"Thus to reject the disciples' words, which come from Christ and are about Christ, is to reject God, and so to be liable for condemnation." (42)
"God has identified himself both with Jesus Christ in person and with the passing on by his disciples of the words Jesus brought from the Father, with the result that to reject those human words spoken by the disciples is to reject God." (42)
III. The Trinity and Scripture: a theological outline
"Perfection, necessity, sufficiency, clarity, inspiration and authority. Analysis of the Bible under these headings, as the primary way in which Scripture is described theologically, does indeed sometimes pass too quickly over the complexity of scriptural testimony and teaching on the nature and function of the Bible in relation to God and his purposes." (50)
"Here we are still very much engaged in the vital task of describing Scripture explicitly at every point in the light of the character and actions of God, as revealed and witnessed to in Scripture." (51)
"In the overarching narrative of Scripture the two great actions of the Father, following the glory of his creative act and the tragedy of the fall of humankind, are to redeem and to reveal." (52)
"Commandments declare the stipulations of the covenant. Prophecy and epistles, in particular, expound and apply those stipulations in specific contexts; they are, in effect, the covenant preached in different situations. Narrative relates the unfolding events in which God's people have successfully trusted and rejected him, and through which God has faithfully enacted the consequences of his promises , whether in blessing or judgment." (55)
"Psalms give exemplary forms in which a believer can address God in many situations in life while remaining faithfully within the covenant, whether one is full of praise for experience of blessing, or confused and despairing over God's apparent failure to keep his promises. And apocalyptic writing demonstrates graphically the full reality of the present and ultimate consequences of either blessing or cursing that follows from obedience or disobedience to the covenant." (55)
"Yet to see the Bible as 'the book of the covenant' is not simplistic or reductionist. It is rather to recognize Scripture's profound role in the relationship between humanity and God that God wants to establish." (56)
"A very high claim for Scripture is of course being made here: Scripture is an aspect of the action of the sovereign, faithful, self-revealing God in the world, and specifically it is the action by which this God declares his ongoing covenant with his people, climaxed in Christ." (56)
"The strong bonds between ourselves, our actions and the words by which we perform many of our actions is evident in the normal course of life. This is particularly so when we think about the responses that can be made to a promise. For you to say 'I trust you to keep your promise' or 'I trust your promise' or 'I trust your words' is in effect to say the same thing in regard to me. For you to distrust the words of my promise is simply to distrust me. Persons and actions are so intimately identified in interpersonal relationships that actions begin to look like an extension of our personhood in our relationships with others." (59)
"Those who rejected the apostolic proclamation of the gospel of Christ thereby made themselves liable to God's condemnation, because in rejecting those words they had rejected God. Similarly, to hear the words of Christ was directly to hear the speech of God. It follows that to speak of Scripture as the book of the covenant, the ongoing form in which God repeats his covenant promise in the world, ought to lead us to speak of Scripture as in some sense a mode of God's presence in the world." (60)
"As we have seen, we as persons who act in relation to one another are so invested in our words that, by speaking, we act upon both ourselves and one another (e.g. in making you a promise I acquire for myself the responsibility to keep my promise and ascribe to you the obligation to take me at my word, other things being equal). It follows that what you do to my words (to my actions as performed by my words) you do to me." (63)
"A speech act can be as short as a single word ('Go!'), or as long as a unified collection of books (the Bible as God's covenant promise in writing). Therefore when we speak of Scripture as a mode of God's presence, we are asserting that it is in the speech acts of Scripture that God reveals himself by being semantically present to us, as he promises, warns, rebukes, reassures and so on. And this revelation is happening when the words of Scripture are read: when God is performing again, through the reading of Scripture, the same action he performed through those words when they were first written." (66)
"Turretin's response was that 'Christ is our only teacher, in such a sense as that the ministry of the word is not thereby excluded, but necessarily included because now in it only he addresses us ad by it he instructs us." (71)
"Scripture's words are 'Word' not just because he sent them and speaks through them, but also because its words are his actions, the present word-actions of the Word." (71)
"We should read, listen to and hear it preached, in order to find ourselves presented again with Christ and addressed by him. As we encounter the words of Scripture, we are encountering the Son in action, presenting himself to us in his call on us to take up our cross and follow him." (72)
"God's aim in Scripture is to lead us to true devotion to Christ, and obedience to him and love for him, impinging on every area of life and thought." (73)
"To speak of Scripture as in itself divine is therefore to speak of the divine origin of the speech acts of Scripture, a characteristic that follows from their identity as God's speech acts." (78)
"Because of the unity of the Father and the Son in revelation and redemption, Scripture is at the same time the word by which the incarnate and ascended Word, the one in whom all God's covenant promises are fulfilled, continues to act and to present himself semantically so that he may be known in the world over which he has all authority." (78)
"Because the whole of Scripture is breathed-out by God, every part needs to be interpreted in the light of its place in the history of salvation that Scripture unfolds, and in its literary context." (85)
"Verbal inspiration claims that the Bible says exactly what God wants to say because the Holy Spirit was responsible for every word written in Scripture. He is the divine Author behind the human authors." (86)
"It is the speech acts of Scripture (its units of meaning: sentences, paragraphs and books) that have their origin in divine authorship, because authors primarily author speech acts. The individual words are inspired (spoken out by God) to the extent that they come together to express these speech acts." (86)
"Crucial to the Reformers' view of this action of the Spirit is that his illuminating work took place not through the church but through Scripture." (93)
"Whenever we encounter the speech acts of Scripture, we encounter God himself in action. The Father presents himself to us as a God who makes and keeps his Covenant promises. The Son comes to us as the Word of God, knowable to us through his words. The Spirit ministers these words to us, illuminating our minds and hearts, so that in receiving, understanding and trusting them, we receive, know and trust God himself." (95)
IV. The Attributes of Scripture: a doctrinal outline
"Thus a verbal revelation is absolutely necessary if humanity is to know God as he truly is, and to be able to enter into a saving knowledge of God." (101)
"If Scripture alone is claimed to be the supreme authority in Christian thinking and living, that is because both its content (the verbal revelation) and its form (the written Scriptures) are indispensable." (102)
"The whole pattern of God's self-revelation is that he establishes a covenant relationship between himself and his people, and this is a relationship in which he makes himself known. He does not reveal himself exhaustively, but the God he shows himself to be in his covenant relationship is the God he really is." (104)
"The reality of the Trinity, and the purpose of the incarnation, crucifixion, resurrection and ascension are sufficiently complex that they cannot be mimed or communicated through a religious impulse or sensation; they need to be spoken." (104)
"In the light of this, I would define the sufficiency of Scripture in this way: because of the ways in which God has chosen to relate himself to Scripture, Scripture is sufficient as the means by which God continues to present himself to us such that we can know him, repeating through Scripture the covenant promise he has brought to fulfillment in Jesus Christ." (113)
"Human finitude, and particularly sin, are the reasons for our lack of understanding of Scripture, rather than the cause being in some lack of clarity attributable to Scripture itself." (116)
"Expository biblical preaching in fact assumes rather than denies the clarity of Scripture. An expository preacher takes it that his sermon can be judged as either a faithful or an unfaithful exposition of Scripture by his hearers, as they discern for themselves whether his teaching is or is not warranted by his biblical text. His appeal is not 'My teaching is true because I'm an officially appointed preacher' nor is it as heart 'My teaching is true because I am a Spirit-filled and Spirit-anointed preacher.' Those two factors may give added weight to his teaching, but at heart the implied claim of the expository preacher is instead 'My teaching is true because it can be openly seen that what I am saying is in line with the meaning of Scripture'." (121)
"The preacher is not doing something with Scripture that the hearer by definition cannot do, which would be the case if the preacher were appealing primarily to special spiritual anointing or to his holding of an office in the church." (122)
"The authority of Scripture is dependent entirely on the authority of God, and comes about only because of what God has chosen to do in the way he authored Scripture, and because of what he continues to do in presenting himself to us through Scripture as a God we can know and trust."
"It commits us to giving the Bible the sovereign place in our lives that must follow from its central place in relation to God and in his actions." (129)
"The idea that the Bible is 'infallible' means that it does not deceive. To say that the Bible is 'inerrant' is to make the additional claim that it does not assert any errors of fact: whether the Bible refers to events in the life of Christ, or to other details of history and geography, what it asserts is true."
V. The Bible and Christian life: the doctrine of Scripture applied
"Preaching goes as tragically astray when it muses and reflects on those matters it should be proclaiming, as it does when it confidently proclaims what the preacher cannot know, because Scripture is silent." (158)
"For example, if as a preacher I am hesitant that the Spirit will come and act supremely through my preaching of the speech acts of Scripture because he once authored them and is alive to speak to them again, then my preaching, if it is to be proclamatory, will probably take one of two forms. I might end up recommending my own spiritual experience as normative, perhaps using some biblical texts to illustrate my experience, by way of historical precedent. Or I might focus on rehearsing the beliefs and practices of my Christian subculture or denomination, which distinguish us from other groups, with the Bible again reduced to serving as a doctrinal sourcebook, or as a handbook of practical illustrations." (158)
"To claim that one's own human speech about Christ crucified really is God speaking, and that the Holy Spirit comes in power through one's apparently weak speech, seems to run dangerously close to blasphemy. Yet that is clearly the pattern for the extension of the gospel after Pentecost that Christ and the apostles established."(159)
"The New Testament precedent is simply that the preacher can preach and must preach, fearful and trembling because he is given the privilege of speaking God's words and has no power to determine the result of his preaching, but not so fearful that he loses his resolves to know and proclaim Christ and him crucified." (159)
"The Spirit's activity through the speech acts of the Bible now is consistent with his activity in their composition at the level of grammar and meanings back then. The Spirit, as the Spirit of Christ, navigates the church into the future by calling it back to the written Word he authored." (161)
"In the light of this, what the faithful biblical preacher does, and what the Holy Spirit does with Scripture through him, is best described as a contemporary re-enactment of the speech act that the Spirit performed in the original authoring of the text. This notion, that the sermon is itself a redemptive act of God in the present, is common in literature on preaching." (162)
"A biblical text written, for example, to instil in its first readers and hearers a confident hope that at the future coming of Christ their perseverance in the faith will be vindicated performs that same action again in the lives of contemporary believers. It does so in a sermon if the preacher is faithful to the purpose of the original text, and fashions his sermon not just as a speech about hope, but as itself a hope-inspiring action." (163)
"The Spirit is again graciously present in the preached message, if what is preached now is faithful in purpose and content to what he once inspired." (163)
"Properly faithful biblical preaching involves the preacher deliberately seeking to fashion every verbal (and indeed physical) aspect of his preaching in such a way that the Spirit may act through his words in the lives of his hearers, ministering the content of Scripture in accordance with the purpose of Scripture." (163)
"The preacher with a Christian congregation is therefore not bringing something fundamentally new in his sermon. Of course he should be teaching aspects of the biblical faith they are still unaware of, but he is only bringing to light for them from Scripture what is already true of them, explaining more of the truth that is already theirs. At heart he is reminding them of the one thing that has been undeniably true of them ever since they first devoted themselves to the apostolic gospel: that by the work of the Spirit of God they are not what they once were." (169)
"Good preaching exercises something of a 'credal' function in the local church, giving people an interpretative structure in which to make sense of individual parts of Scripture when they encounter them for themselves." (172)
"What we expect from Scripture must be determined entirely by what Scripture is, and the purpose for which God has caused it to be written."(174)
"The norms of grammatical and historical interpretation are not avoided. But interpretation is not an end in itself; reading the Bible is not fundamentally a comprehension exercise. Interpretation should serve only to lead us to an encounter with God as he actually presents himself to us in Scripture." (175)
VI. Summary
"He gives us Scripture as our word of life: the trustworthy, clear and sufficient means of knowing him and remaining in covenant relationship with him, in the power of the Holy Spirit, right up until the day we shall no longer need it, because then we shall see face to face." (179)
Notable Content
The Reformers view of the work of the Word and Spirit together was an argument directed in three directions at once: (93)
Against Roman Catholicism, it asserted that the Spirit required the church only as an instrument, not as the actual dynamic, by which people came to faith.
Negatively against the sixteenth-century Radical Reformation, it asserted that the Spirit regularly illuminated minds through the content of the written Word.
Positively, it served to demonstrate the faithfulness and consistency of God in revelation.
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)