It is 6/6/06. The remake of “The Omen” debuts today to some bad reviews. You know, Hollywood’s antichrist is never as frightening as the real one(s). Anyway, I just wanted to announce some things that have NOT happened today:

• The Rapture has not occurred as pre-tribulational, pre-millennial believers have noticed. Not that they expected it today, it’s just that they expect it any day.
• Christ has not returned as amillennial believers have noticed.
• The antichrist was not born today. “Children, it is the last hour, and as you have heard that antichrist is coming, so now many antichrists have come.” (1Jn 2:18, ESV)
• God has not started heeding our calendar. Just because we call today 6/6/06 does not mean that God recognizes our method of counting days. Indeed, He established a method that we no longer follow! It was the calendar outlined in the Law.
• Hitler was not resurrected. No kidding, really. It didn’t happen.

I might just have some Underwood Deviled Ham for lunch today with some deviled eggs. Follow that up with some devil’s food cake as a snack. Making me hungry.

PCWorld Magazine just published the Top 25 Worst Tech Products of All Time. The list is pretty impressive and accurate. Just to comment on a few of my personal favorites:

1) AOL – Yes, oh, yes. I was an early adopter of AOL and I learned to hate it in pretty quick order. I dropped it just before security went through the floor. Bottom line: get a real ISP.

4) Windows ME – Gach. They tried to pretty up Win98 and repackage it. Still bloatware that was not ready for primetime.

7) Microsoft Bob – Almost as annoying as Clippy the Office Assistant. Speaking of which, Clippy should have been on that list. Bob was Microsoft’s attempt to put a happy face on a bad computer experience.

17) Apple Macintosh Portable – In the dark days before laptops there were portables. This was an early edition and it was also known as the “Luggable” because it was so darn heavy. Before LCDs these beasts had small CRTs which meant a lot of weight and power. Huge batteries with short lifetime.

Take a look, it is an interesting list. I think they should have included the Dot Com Bubble, the 386SX and (as mentioned above) Clippy.

Yesterday was one of those exceptional Sundays. At church, we sang more hymns than usual. The sermon was given by one of our elders who addressed the errors of the Da Vinci Code and presented some helpful Church history. After church, my son went with a friend to a play and the ladies and I ate at Taco Bell then went home for a nap. After that we went to the Chicago Botanical Garden for a nice stroll. We picked up Ben and went home for dinner. Leftovers. Then I pulled out the hymnals and a copy of Spurgeon’s All of Grace. We sang Come Ye Sinners and then took turns reading from Spurgeon and finished by singing Amazing Grace. We all had ice cream and then hung out in the living room together just talking and playing. Nothing super dramatic, just some quality family time delighting in God and his mercy and creation.

Something I’ve come to truly appreciate lately is that the medium is not neutral in communication. I would also extend this to the church building. Consider the sanctuary or worship center or meeting room, whatever it is called, at your church. When you walk in and sit down and engage in corporate worship, the layout of the room is not neutral. It communicates also.

What is most central in the room? I mean, what does the room point to, what are the chairs aimed at, what is not obstructed and what is? It says a lot. If there is an elevated stage, when you are worshiping you are looking up toward it. That is very much a posture of worship. What is before your eyes?

In some churches, there is a piano and drum set and microphones and guitars in that central position. The worship band is there. I’m not saying that you are worshiping the band, but what does such a configuration communicate about the significance of the worship band? When the pastor comes to preach, is he on the same level as the equipment or below it? Doesn’t that communicate something, even subconsciously?

Read On…

There has been much speculation about the scarlet cord that Rahab was told to hang from her window in Joshua 2:18. Ancient Christian interpretations take it to represent the blood for Christ. For example in the First Epistle of Clement to the Corinthians chapter 12, it says that Rahab was told “that she should hang forth from her house a scarlet thread. And thus they made it manifest that redemption should flow through the blood of the Lord to all them that believe and hope in God.” Or consider Augustine’s treatment in Psalm 87 where Rahab “was told to hang out of the window a line of scarlet thread, that is, to bear upon her forehead the sign of the blood of Christ. She was saved there, and thus represented the Church of the Gentiles.”

However, “typological connections of this sort must be handled with great care. Indeed, a real typological connection between the Testaments should be recognized in the light of the Bible’s own consciousness.” ¹Martin H. Woudstra, The Book of Joshua, New International Commentary on the Old Testament, (Grand Rapids: Eerdman’s Publishing Co., 1981), 75. Also, we must ask if this was what the original author intended or the original audience would have heard. We must not rush to the sensus plenior ²In my opinion, the sensus plenior (or “fuller sense”) can be a valid interpretation of a text but only when used sparingly and with great care, following the New Testament example. Also, the original meaning of the should not be ignored, changed or eclipsed.before we have heard the voice of the original human author.

Read On…

A while ago, I posted a review of what is called the Federal Vision. Since then I’ve come to understand it a bit better and want to take another look at what they believe.

The Federal Vision believes that one can be “in Christ” and not be eschatologically saved. Baptism places one “in Christ” (Gal 3:27). Under the Old Covenant if the head of the household was in the covenant, his entire household was in the covenant. Male infants were circumcised not because of their faith, but because of the faithfulness of the head of the household. Likewise in the New Covenant, if the head of the house comes to faith, his household is considered to be in the covenant. Infants are baptized and therefore “in Christ”. In discussions I have had with some Federal Vision adherents they advocated baptizing unbelieving spouses provided they didn’t object. This is based on 1Co 7:14 where children are “holy” and unbelieving spouses are “made holy” because of the believer.

Read On…

I posted this thought at the Derek Webb forum, but I liked the way it came out so I’ve edited it into a blog post. It builds on some previoius thoughts I’ve had.

To do “apostolic succession” correctly, it would have to be done in accordance with the Apostle’s instructions. (I mean ‘correctly’ as in a fashion envisioned by the beginning of the chain.) Paul instructed Timothy to “entrust these things to faithful men who will be able to teach others also” (2Ti 2:2). The chain then could be broken by entrusting it to unfaithful men and those who couldn’t teach. The point is that the chain, while valid in so far as we see ordained people ordaining others, is not a perfect chain.

My next thought goes back a bit further historically. Who ordained the Apostles? Not the priests and scribes and lawyers, it was Jesus himself. The existing, ordained religious heirarchy didn’t ordain him, they murdered him. According to Hebrews 7, Jesus started a brand new chain, he was ordained according to the order of Melchizedek, not Levi. Of course God is able to reforge the chain as he sees fit. Apostolic succession then doesn’t extend unbrokenly (is that a word?) back to Abraham or Enoch or Adam. God realigns the chain as he desires. By this I am referring to only the laying on of hands from one generation to another. If we consider it in terms of those who hold to the truth of the gospel and tell others, then yes, the chain extends backward despite times in redemptive history when it looked the bleakest.

For me then, the lession is not the importance of a perfectly unbroken chain of hands being laid on but the imporance of “faithful men” who teach and pass on the “faith that was once for all delivered to the saints” (Jude 3). What we need is not just a theological geneology of who ordained whom, history makes it clear that such a list doesn’t exist, what is needed is Semper Reformanda. We need to be constantly checking our doctrine and looking back across the ages to what our theolgical forefathers have taught. Where has time proven them right? We need to heed modern scholarship and the illumination they can shed on how best to wrestle though the difficult issues. Above all, we need to be heeding the work of the Holy Spirit as he illuminates his written word to us. Though teacher may be more or less faithful, though traditions may be more or less true, God’s word stands.

I recently received a comment on my original post about complementarianism that pointed me to a blog entry by Ben Witherington, Professor of New Testament Interpretation at Asbury Theological Seminary. Apparently, Ben has a commentary on coming out on 1 Timothy.

I’ve finally had the time to read the blog entry and comment on it. I realize that this is not Ben’s full treatment of the issue and so this is no my full response to it either. Just a few observations.

1) the verb ‘authentein’ in vs. 12 occurs only once in the NT– just here. The verb is a strong one, and in my commentary which comes out in the fall I give instances of where it can be used to mean ‘to domineer’ ‘to usurp authority over’, but it also has the sense of ‘to exercise authority over’ as well.

True. So the meaning of the word is not disputed. The noun form of the word is authentes “master”. According to Lampe’s Patristic Greek Lexicon, the word means “hold sovereign authority, act with authority”. A very strong word in deed!

Paul is not talking about occasions or instances where it is perfectly proper for women to teach or exercise authority over men, something he will mention elsewhere, for example in Rom. 16.

There is nothing in Romans 16 that teaches that.

The issue here in Ephesus is that there are some women who are seeking to teach or take authority over men, without first being quiet and learning about their faith. This is inappropriate of course.

How does Ben know this? Verse 11 say to “let a woman learn” there is nothing saying “first and then…” Much of the egalitarian argument on the interpretation of this verse is based on what they suppose is the situation in Ephesus but little is provided in the way of proof.

2) nothing is said here about women being subordinate to men. What vs. 11 speaks about is learning quietly and so being in submission to the teaching and what is being required of the listener…In short, 1 Tim. 2 is talking about silence and submission in the presence of authoritative teaching and teachers.

True enough. Just to be clear, I am not arguing for the subordination of women from this verse. I am simply saying that women may not hold the office of elder or pastor and may not teach men.

Clearly enough, he is correcting high status women who actually had fine clothes and jewels to wear, and could come to worship with high coiffed hair. It is these sorts of women he has in mind in 1 Tim. 23) the verb here is ‘I am not (now) permitting’. As Philip Payne has shown, there is not a single instance of the use of this verb in Greek literature where this form means ” I am permanently banning women from teaching etc.’ This is a verb which implies a ban for a specific period of time until the problem is remedied or the proper conditions are met for women having learned enough to be able to teach.

This simply is not the best way to handle verb tenses in Greek. There are too many exceptions to this type of a rule. The verbal aspect theory would say that Paul is using a present tense verb not to mean “not for now” but to emphasize it, to make it stand out. As Stanley Porter says “Greek tenses are not primarily temporally-based.” (Verbal Aspect in the Greek of the New Testament, with Reference to Mood and Tense, 252.) In other words, a verb can be present tense and be stative. The “default” setting for a Greek verb is the Aorist. It is the most common verb tense used. Rarer is the present tense. When the less common verb tenses are used, they serve to draw attention to what is being said. The exact time reference of the verb must be taken from the context. That is why some Greek grammars speak of “future Aorists.”

Back to verse 12 where the verb is present active indicative. Though it can be a present, temporary state, it can also indicate a steady state. For example, in Matthew 3:9 John the Baptist warns the Jews not to say “We have (present active indicative) Abraham as our father” as assurance that they are acceptable to God. John does not say that they will stop being Abraham’s children, he says that God can raise children to Abraham out of the stones. Their state is fixed, but not helpful to them. It is the immediate context which must tell us about the temporal aspect of the verb and that is entirely missing in 1Ti 2. There is nothing indicating that it is only a temporary prohibition that Paul has in mind.

I guess I’ll have to wait to see Witherington’s fuller treatment of this verse in his forthcoming commentary but I didn’t find the blog entry particularly convincing.