Geoff's Miscellany

Bible

John Wesley on Foreknowledge and Election

January 10, 2019

Below, you'll find 1 Peter 1:1-2 and John Wesley's comments on vs 2. Over all, I find what he says to be convincing. The idea that the descriptions of God's fore or after knowledge in the Bible are metaphorical is perfectly reasonable. It is just as much true that predestination is a metaphor as it is true that God's being surprised or ignorant is as well.

Sola Scriptura

January 8, 2019

Edward Feser has three posts on the Protestant doctrine of sola scriptura (only the Bible) over at his blog.

Here is Feser's summary of a summary of the Jesuit critique of sola scriptura:

You’ll recall that the early Jesuit critique of sola scriptura cited by Feyerabend maintains that (a) scripture alone can never tell you what counts as scripture, (b) scripture alone cannot tell you how to interpret scripture, and (c) scripture alone cannot give us a procedure for deriving consequences from scripture, applying it to new circumstances, etc.

He was Going to Die Tomorrow

January 3, 2019

The Philokalia includes excerpts from Evagrius of Pontus’ Texts on Watchfulness. This one really caught my eye:

A monk should always act as if he was going to die tomorrow; yet he should treat his body as if it was going to live for many years. The first cuts off the inclination to listlessness, and makes the monk more diligent; the second keeps his body sound and his self control well balanced.
Now, meditating on death as a spiritual discipline is long attested in Scripture (Ecclesiastes 12:1-7) and other authors of antiquity, like Epictetus:
Day by day you must keep before your eyes death and exile and everything else that seems frightening, but most especially death; and then you’ll never harbour any mean thought, nor will you desire anything beyond due measure. (Enchiridion 21)
But what interested me in Evagrius' little note on watchfulness was his concern that the monk care for his body. We should live each day as though eternity awaits us on the other side, but we should care for our body as though we were going to live a long time. In the current year, it is apparently verboten to pursue physical ideals or attempt to establish them at all, but the fact is that insofar as it depends on us (for some bodily care is literally out of reach due to injury or congenital difficulties), the way we care for our bodies is reflective of and contributes to our spiritual well-being. Why? Because our body is our first bit of the earth to rule (Genesis 1:26-2:7) and because the state of our body directly affects our state of mind.

Bruce Charlton and John's Gospel

December 22, 2018

Over the past few months, Bruce Charlton has been reading John's Gospel exclusively in order to better understand the meaning of Jesus. He's come to some startling conclusions. He compiled them all here. In his final post reporting on this process, he made these observations:

I regard the Fourth Gospel as chronologically the first, and qualitatively the most authoritative, source on the life and teachings of Jesus. As I read and re-read, I found that the discipline created a situation as if the Fourth Gospel was the only scripture.

And indeed, whenever I turned to other Gospels, or to the Epistles and Revelation, they looked very much inferior; very much like rag-bag collections of theology, memoirs, theories and folk tales about Jesus; and of very mixed validity - since many things in them contradict the Fourth Gospel...

How is one justified?

November 13, 2018

It's a contentious issue to some. But I'll just post what the New Testament says without comment. Only one passage is partially my translation. The rest are either the NET or ESV. I've excluded passages that repeat the same thing. I have left one passage out about the impossibility of being justified by the law simply because I do not think that justification by law and justification by God for obeying the law are necessarily conceptual equals. But it's important to consider that the New Testament picture of justification is rich and a simple formulation of how it happens is by no means obvious.

On the Importance of Philosophical Reasoning for Biblical Exegesis: Edward Feser and Romans 1:18-23

February 5, 2018

Introduction In my mind, the ability to engage in philosophical reasoning in order to tease out the implications of particular interpretations of the Bible and other truths is indispensable for reading the Bible and teaching it to others.

Example

Edward Feser, in a post titled, "Repressed Knowledge of God?" comments that the common interpretation of Romans 1:18-23 is mistaken. Here is the passage in question from the ESV, I would translate it differently, but it reflects the most common interpretation:

Abraham's Virtues

December 28, 2017

God Blessed Abraham in All Things

Yoram Hazony makes the case that in Genesis, Abraham is painted as a paradigmatically virtuous character. The primary evidence is that while Abraham is not perfect, God has confidence that he will “command his children and his house after him, and they will keep the way of the Lord, to do justice and right.[1]" Also significant is Genesis 24:1, “And the Lord had blessed Abraham in all things.”

Virtue Lists in the New Testament

December 27, 2017

Virtue Lists?

In the Bible there are several famous virtue lists. A virtue list is exactly what is sounds like, a list of positive traits in sequence as a description of the good life.

As a part of Scripture, the New Testament virtue lists are easy to overlook and if you misunderstand God’s grace, they can seem overly moralistic.

What if John wrote first?

November 29, 2017

In Star Wars: A New Hope, the character Han Solo was confronted by an intimidating bounty hunter, Greedo. In the original cut of the film, Han shot Greedo before things could get out of hand. This fit with the anti-hero arc, Han was the scoundrel with a heart of gold. In later recuts of the film, Greedo shot first. And so in nerd circles, people lament, 'Han Shot First.'

The Image of God: Each Man Makes Heaven and Earth Anew

November 25, 2017

In Genesis 1:1-2, God makes the heavens and the earth.

In Genesis 1:26-31, God makes man in his image.

Okay.

We’re not able to engage in creating a cosmos from nothing.

But here’s what we can do.

We construct the world in unique ways, each of us.