Month: October 2012

Prayer: How Prevenient!

The following post that I authored appeared on the site Life Changing Prayer some three and a half years ago.

Until recently, I would not have used the word in conjunction with prayer: prevenient. But something happened to me to change that.

When I say prevenient, I mean the idea of church reformer John Wesley, who spoke of prevenient grace. He used the word to say that God’s grace gets into us and starts working before we have a chance to do or act or will. We can only do anything, he argued, including turning to God, because of God’s grace that goes before us.

Like I said, I wouldn’t have thought of the word as relating to prayer. Prayer, after all, is something I do, with the action beginning with me and moving to God. For example, the well-known “ACTS” acronym for prayer (Adoration, Confession, Thanksgiving, and Supplication) has to do with types of prayers that I pray, that I initiate.

To be sure, I was familiar with Romans 8:26, which talks about the Holy Spirit interceding for us. But I had never connected that to my own prayer life. I had always thought of prayer as primarily my action, and then in tandem with that the Holy Spirit prayed on my behalf–two parallel and generally non-intersecting means of prayer.

That changed recently when I woke up in the middle of the night praying. And I don’t think it was just I who was praying.

While there may be some pious souls whose first thoughts upon waking up are prayerful ones or God-centered ones, I am not often in that number. My first waking thoughts seem to range from, “I can’t believe all I have to do today!” to, “Wha…? Where am I?”

So when I woke up in the middle of the night praying–and this happened several nights in one week–I knew that God was praying through me. In fact, God had been praying through me when I was sleeping, because when I woke up, the prayer I sensed being prayed through me had already begun and was clearly mid-prayer.

The first and most significant night, I woke up praying for the city of Boston, where I live. Yes, that’s a nebulous description, but the prayer was that nebulous–but no less powerful for its generality. The next night I woke up simply filled with the Holy Spirit. I don’t know what praying was happening that night, but it was that sense of being filled with the Spirit that actually woke me. This, too, was significant, because, as my wife will attest, I generally don’t wake up in the middle of the night unless she is waking me up to tell me to stop snoring.

So I’ve concluded: prayer actually doesn’t start with me. To be sure, there are things I can and should initiate in prayer, but prayer begins with God, not with me. As with Wesley’s take on grace and the human will, prayer, too, is prevenient. Not only does the Holy Spirit intercede for me, but sometimes–as I have just experienced–God intercedes through me, regardless of my awareness of it or decision to sit down and have a prayer time.

A wise author (my dad), in describing the inwardly dialogical yet outwardly inviting nature of the persons of the Trinity, once wrote, “God is used to conversation. Used to dialogue. …ready. This God invites me, in fact, to join in on a conversation already going on, one that has been going on for a very, very long time.”

In the middle of the night, even while I was sleeping, I found myself unwittingly accepting this invitation, joining a conversation without having to do much more than just lie there, and let prayer happen.

Christian Apologetics: a review

I still remember, as a 16-year-old, sitting down at my parents’ computer, hearing the dial tone, and logging on to AOL. I would do this often, not just to check the new technological miracle known as e-mail, but also to go into chat rooms (remember those?) and seek to share my faith with others online.

I made similar efforts at my high school, starting conversations when appropriate and generally just trying to be ready to speak intelligently and compellingly about my Christian faith.

This handbook by Peter Kreeft was a constant reference guide for me. I went on to major in philosophy at a Christian undergraduate school, where I took, among others, classes on the philosophy of religion, St. Augustine, and more. Readings in the Philosophy of Religion became a new resource to which I often turned. I had begun having philosophical and existential questions of my own by that point, ones that I experienced on a profound and at times troubling level.

I’ve always had an interest in the intellectual underpinnings of my Christian faith. And I’ve often been aware that what appear to be intellectual questions or questions of “the head,” are sometimes–when one digs deeper–questions of “the heart,” as well. Since college days, then, I’ve been a bit more cautious than I was as a 16-year-old in an AOL chat room about just how effective “apologetics” can be.

Zondervan has just put out a primary source compendium called Christian Apologetics: An Anthology of Primary Sources, edited by Khaldoun A. Sweis and Chad V. Meister.

There are 54 selections divided into 11 parts, which you can see listed here (PDF) in the table of contents. Christian Apologetics begins with some methodological considerations in part 1, then moves right into various arguments for the existence of God–cosmological, teleological, ontological, moral, the argument from religious experience, and so on. From there the book narrows to more specific topics like the Trinity, the incarnation, miracles, the resurrection, the problem of evil, and more.

Christian Apologetics claims to be “a sampling of some of the best works written by Christian apologists throughout the centuries,” offering “a snapshot of Christian apologetics at its best across the spectrum of time and culture.”

The essays in this volume certainly are some of the best in apologetics. There is Paul at the Areopagus in Acts 17, Aquinas on the cosmological argument for God’s existence, Anselm and Plantinga with the ontological argument for God, Pascal’s wager, Teresa of Avila on experiencing God, Anselm on the incarnation, Swinburne on miracles, John Hick’s “Soul Making Theodicy,” Augustine on free will, and Marilyn McCord Adams on horrendous evil and the goodness of God. Each of these essays is a classic and makes a valuable contribution to the area of apologetics.

The book spans “the spectrum of time” fairly well, with a higher concentration of 20th century writers. Just a couple of the contributors are women, and the overwhelming majority hail from Western contexts–this latter an admission of the book, but a weakness all the same.

A particularly pleasant surprise to me was the inclusion of an an article by R.T. France, in which he makes the case for the historical reliability of the Gospels, which must, he argues, be understood in their proper literary context as “highly selective” records of Jesus’ life with “only a loose chronological framework.” This is not due to deficiency of the Gospels; rather, it is how the Gospel writers intended to write:

The four canonical gospels will not answer all the questions we would like to ask about the founder of Christianity; but, sensitively interpreted, they do give us a rounded portrait of a Jesus who is sufficiently integrated into what we know of first-century Jewish culture to carry historical conviction, but at the same time sufficiently remarkable and distinctive to account for the growth of a new and potentially world-wide religious movement out of his life and teaching.

As I read I appreciated a statement in the book’s general introduction:

But arguments and evidences do not of themselves bring someone into new life in Christ. Here the work of the Holy Spirit is central, and we must be willing to surrender to his leading and his truth and his goodness if we are to truly dwell with the Lord.

I hadn’t yet learned this in the AOL chat rooms, but I’ve long since been convinced of it. So I had hoped to hear more in this book about the role of the Holy Spirit in apologetics. There is a short (one paragraph) treatment by James K. Beilby in chapter 3 that asks, “What is the role of the Holy Spirit in apologetics?” He rightly (in my view) sees it as “not a zero-sum game.” The apologist should be “significantly involved” yet “still hold that the Holy Spirit will determine the effectiveness of our efforts.”

Though the Holy Spirit receives treatment in the section on the Trinity (by Origen, Aquinas, the Creeds, and Thomas V. Morris) and on the Bible (Calvin and canonization), there is never more than Beilby’s paragraph treatment about the role of the Holy Spirit in the project of apologetics. Cogent though Beilby is, I would think “a snapshot of Christian apologetics at its best” should make more mention of something like the Wesleyan view of prevenient grace or even the notion that the Holy Spirit witnesses to a person’s heart before an apologist does. Only the former can enable the latter. Christian Apologetics is not without the exploration of other methodological considerations; I just would have liked to have seen more of this one.

Several other possible areas for improvement in a future edition could be more on faith and reason and how the two interrelate, as well as arguments for the existence of God that take into account and respond to the varous assertions made by the “new atheism” (anemic though it is).

All in all, though, this is a strong work, and I’m happy for it to sit alongside my old college text, Readings in the Philosophy of Religion. Zondervan’s Christian Apologetics is a worthy, if basic, reference guide. I expect it will serve apologists well.

Thanks to Zondervan for the review copy, which I was given for the purposes of review, though without any expectations as to the nature of my review. Find the book at Amazon here (affiliate link) or at Zondervan’s product page for the book.

Septuagint Sunday: Congratulations to…

This past week I’ve received some 50 entries in a giveaway contest for a study by Myrto Theocharous called Lexical Dependence and Intertextual Allusion in the Septuagint of the Twelve Prophets: Studies in Hosea, Amos and Micah.

You can read more about the book here. I’ve made some progress in reading the book myself this week, and will be offering a review in the near future.

To choose a winner, I assigned a number to every entry (both a comment on this blog and a share of any kind qualified), then used a random number generator to select the winner.

The winner is…William Varner!

Congratulations, William, and enjoy the new book.

Thanks very much to all who entered and spread the word. I write about the Septuagint at Words on the Word at least once a week. You can bookmark this tag for my Septuagint posts; it updates as I add new posts. If you like what you see here, you can subscribe/follow this blog using the button on the right sidebar.

While you’re here, here are some highlights of what I’ve written about the Septuagint:

And coming soon:

  • My own review of Lexical Dependence and Intertextual Allusion…
  • A short primer on how to read and understand the Göttingen Septuagint

Thanks for reading, and congratulations again to William Varner!

PlasmaCar, a.k.a., Rocketship, a.k.a. “A COOL, COOL CAR!!!”

This is the family car of choice. In our house it’s called “cool, cool car,” so named by our 2-year-old. We got him one for his birthday. (Its real name: PlasmaCar.)

My wife got it for our 2-year-old after telling me she had scouted it out and that it was “toy of the year.” I’m generally skeptical of toys of the year, but this one has been a hit.

The only challenge was getting our two boys to share the one cool, cool car.

Side note: there was and is an accompanying song. It goes like this:

(loudly) A COOL, COOL CAR!

(softly) a cool, cool car.

(loudly) A COOL, COOL CAR!

(softly) a cool, cool car.

(loudly) A COOL, COOL CAR!

(monotone) CAR.

As I was saying, the sharing was not working out too well…until Grandma came to town and got the 5-year-old one of his very own! (Thanks, Grandma!) It’s now being called a “rocketship.”

The 5-year-old now knows how to do donuts on our back deck. The 2-year-old is not far behind. It’s hours of endless entertainment for us all.

And, yes, that’s the 2-year-old in the picture above on (you guessed it) his older brother’s cool, cool car.

Photo credit: Ian Drummond

Book Giveaway Reminder

This is a reminder that Sunday night I’ll be announcing the winner of a study by Myrto Theocharous called Lexical Dependence and Intertextual Allusion in the Septuagint of the Twelve Prophets: Studies in Hosea, Amos and Micah.

If you haven’t already entered the giveaway, there’s still time. Go here to read more and enter.

Memorizing a Bible verse in a congregational setting

We’ve done some Scripture memory in chapel two times in the last two weeks. It’s been fun to learn the Bible together, which helps to reinforce our common language as worshipers. This week we had our congregation of worshipers learn Proverbs 8:17.

I had us say it out loud five or six times, each time in a different way:

  • once or twice just to get it in our heads
  • once standing
  • once sitting
  • once shouting (and, wow, did they shout!)
  • once whispering

My hope was that the variety of recitations (and the amount of them) would help us all commit it to memory, potential cheese factor notwithstanding. It’s a short verse, so I think the five or six times we said it out loud together (with the text on the screen) was sufficient.

Here’s one other way we could have learned the same verse, a method we employed two weeks ago with another (longer) verse.

This slide shows up first. We say it together once or twice. Then we move to this slide, saying it together again:

Then this:

Finally this:

Each of these methods–the repetition at various volumes and in various postures, as well as the slides with diminishing amounts of texts–seemed to work well for the congregation. I’d imagine this could even work well for solo memorization of Scripture. And I’m looking forward to exploring additional methods for leading congregational memorization of the Bible in the future.

Paul and the Old Testament

There are over 100 explicit quotations of Scripture in Paul’s letters and at least double that number of allusions. However, what is potentially more useful than just citing Paul’s answers to first-century questions is to study how Paul interpreted Scripture, and that is the theme of this book. (1)

This summer I reviewed the third volume of a de facto trilogy by Steve Moyise. In that same series is Paul and Scripture: Studying the New Testament Use of the Old Testament (click on book cover image to see at Amazon). In 160 packed pages Moyise surveys Paul’s use of the Hebrew Bible/Septuagint.

Moyise’s approach is a thematic one, rather than book-by-book. This helps the reader focus on how Paul treated the same topic across his various letters.

The author begins with an introduction to Paul, his “conversion” experience, his missionary activity, and a wonderful problematizing of the issue: because Paul was familiar with Greek, Hebrew, and Aramaic versions of Scripture, “[W]hen Paul introduces a phrase or sentence with an introductory formula (IF) such as ‘it is written’, we have to ask ourselves which version of the Scriptures he has in mind” (10). For Paul “would not have had our concept of ‘Bible’, a bound volume of 66 books (for Protestants) residing on his bookshelf” (10).

Moyise keeps his and the reader’s eye on this issue throughout Paul and Scripture. He explores how Paul used:

  • “The figure of Adam” and creation accounts (with Christ as a Second Adam)
  • The story of Abraham, including a brief but helpful look at “Abraham in Jewish tradition”
  • Moses–“an ambiguous figure for Paul. He speaks to God face to face, but his use of a veil is interpreted as a lack of openness” (59)
  • The law. This was perhaps the most interesting section of the book, as Moyise surveyed not only Paul’s use of Scripture, but how modern theologians have tried to make sense of what looks on first glance like conflicting statements about the law. This section is what led me to write:

I don’t even mind that at the moment I’m a bit perplexed by how Paul could both praise the law as being from God yet also refer to it as a “the ministry that brought death.”

  • The prophets–both to develop a theology of Israel and the Gentiles, and to provide instructions for how the Christian community should live
  • The Psalms, Proverbs, and Job

The final chapter is a more detailed survey dealing with “modern approaches to Paul’s use of Scripture,” which Moyise divides into “an intertextual approach,” “a narrative approach,” and “a rhetorical approach” (111 ff.).

Appendices include a focus on Paul’s quotations from Isaiah, an index of Paul’s quotations of Scripture, and pertinent excerpts from the Dead Sea Scrolls.

As with The Later New Testament Writings and Scripture, the book is accessible to a non-scholar or non-specialist in this field, though it will require some work. Due to the book’s brevity, and what I assume was Moyise’s desire to still cover all the proper territory, the book is dense. This means that even a short volume like this will be a great reference to me for some time, as I seek to better understand the ways in which Paul used the Old Testament, and the ways in which Christians have tried to make sense of that use for some 2,000 years, especially recently.

The gray shaded boxes throughout explain key concepts such as the Septuagint, Origen’s Hexapla, Greek grammar, the Dead Sea Scrolls, and so on. As with Moyise’s other book, one does not need to know Greek or Hebrew to read Paul and Scripture, but he does not hesitate to use transliterated Greek to aid his explanation.

I have begun to appreciate Moyise’s even-handedness in presenting various viewpoints and interpretations. Even when discussing potentially controversial aspects of Paul (which books Paul authored, the “New Perspective,” or the idea of some that Paul actually exhibited “contradictory” and inconsistent views of the law), Moyise is fair and presents the various views in a way that the reader is left to consider them for herself or himself. (And the reader knows where to go to find more.)

One thing that seems rare in a work like this is that Moyise generally writes out a Scripture he is citing, rather than just placing a slew of references in parentheses for the reader to slowly work through. This latter method is not all bad, but Moyise’s quotation or summation of the references he cites makes for a smooth read.

I found helpful Moyise’s employment of “an eclectic view, using whatever methods or approaches were helpful for understanding the particular quotation” (111). Moyise doesn’t conclusively answer all the questions that arise when studying Paul’s use of Scripture, nor does he seek to. He hopes “that this book has both laid a foundation and stimulated an interest to go on and read further” (125), a mission he very much has accomplished (at least in this reader) with Paul and Scripture.

Thank you to Baker Academic for providing me with a review copy of the book. See its product page at Baker here.