The last few weeks have been pretty crazy/busy—I wrote a paper on Isaiah 52:13-53:12, then worked on a sermon from Job which I gave this past Sunday, and now I’m working on another paper.

This paper will be looking at the role of creation in worship, primarily creation’s temple role in the Garden of Eden, and how each temple/tabernacle afterward picks up on the original goal of creation. Yesterday I finished Greg Beales book on The Temple and the Church’s Mission: A Biblical Theology of the Dwelling Place of God, and today I started reading Dempster’s Old Testament theology, “Dominion and Dynasty” and came across this brilliant quote:

“While it is true that the Bible ‘was never received as sacred scripture because of its literary merit’ (Carroll 1993: 89), ignorance of its literary features impedes understanding. This is part of the problem with fundamentalism, whether on the theological right or the theological left; the text is simply used and not studied.” Dempster, pg 24.

Right on the money.

I just finished Walton’s book on Genesis, and will be reviewing it shortly. The last section of the book is a Frequently Asked Question section. One of the questions involves the difficulty of understanding some aspects of the Bible, which Walton answers wonderfully. In his answer, he also gives a slight apologetic for scholarship:
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I’m far too cynical. This is somewhat a result of my nature, but in the past two years or so I’ve seen my cynicism grow. There have been times when this has been checked, and went dormant for a while, but it would eventually come back. There used to be a time when I was a lot more idealistic, and a bit of a dreamer. This would cause me to marvel at life. I would get lost in nature (literally and metaphorically) and see God’s beauty and creativity. I would rejoice at stories of life being given—whether it be a birth, or the selfless acts of someone towards someone else, or…etc. And sure, those things still get to me. On a good day. If I search hard enough. They certainly don’t spring up in everyday occurrences like they did before. The problem is, I still talk as if I was astonished each and every day. I wasn’t intentionally lying. I just didn’t realize that I hadn’t been lost in astonishment and awe quite like I used to be. This is because it’s a subtle movement, where I haven’t lost all astonishment. Just enough over a period of time to not notice it.

John Walton offered this corrective in Proposition (=chapter) 17 of “The Lost World of Genesis One:”
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Whenever anyone asks me how old I think the earth is, I usually go through a huge spiel on believing the earth is younger than most Old Earthers think, and older than most Young Earthers think. I then go into something about the literary features of Genesis 1, the beauty of the frame-work view, followed by why that doesn’t necessitate that God couldn’t create the universe just like it’s written even though it’s literary. Then I go into how it’s weird that the options are either thousands of years or 7 days, and how I think Augustine might have been on to something with an instantaneous creation. Then I usually just shrug my shoulders and say “I don’t know.”

You would think that eventually I’d just skip to the last part.

In his book, “The Lost World of Genesis One,” scholar John Walton keys in on the age of the earth debate:

“If the seven days refer to the seven days of cosmic temple inauguration, days that concern origins of functions not material, then the seven days of Genesis 1 as a whole have nothing to contribute to the discussion of the age of the earth… The point is not that the biblical text therefore supports an old earth, but simply that there is no biblical position on the age of the earth. If it were to turn out that the earth is young, so be it.”

“God has chosen the agenda of the text, and we must be content with the wisdom of his choices. If we attempt to commandeer the text to address our issues, we distort it in the process.”

-John H. Walton, The Lost World of Genesis One: Ancient Cosmology and the Origins Debate, pg. 21.

I’ve been reading Peter Bolt’s book The Cross From A Distance: Atonement In Mark’s Gospel, which explores how the cross and the crucifixion event is interwoven into the entire narrative of Mark’s Gospel- and what each section can teach us about the atonement. The book has been a great read so far, and I wanted to highlight a quote that I just read that highlights the disjunct between Jesus and his disciples in the garden of Gethsemane:

“Jesus realizes that it is the great time of trial (v. 38), and he urges the disciples to watch and pray so that they might not succumb to it. This adds to the drama of the scene. Jesus is at one end of the garden, struggling against the great cosmic battle about to be fought, and the disciples are at the other end, struggling to stay awake against the weakness of their mortality. This reinforces the fact that jesus will face this battle alone. He alone can embrace this hour.” (pg 110)

Christ is Risen: The world below lies desolate
Christ is Risen: The spirits of evil are fallen
Christ is Risen: The angels of God are rejoicing
Christ is Risen: The tombs of the dead are empty
Christ is Risen indeed from the dead,
the first of the sleepers,
Glory and power are his forever and ever!
-St. Hippolytus (AD 190-236)

He is Risen!

The following quote is from the introduction of Geerhardus Vos’ “The Eschatology of the Old Testament,” page 7:

“The biblical redemption aims at a new creation and nothing less than that. Therefore, all the threads of purposeful finality are made to run together in the redemptive revelation of grace; all the rays of original eschatological light and splendor are refocused in it. The dignity of God as Redeemer postulates it and the truly pious soul will not, cannot, conceive of it otherwise. The promise reminds God of and, as it were, confronts him with the fact that he cannot abandon the works of his hands, that he must perfect what he has begun. This is but another way of saying that eschatology is the crown of redemption both from God’s and man’s side.”

Revelation 22:20

Λέγει ὁ μαρτυρῶν ταῦτα· ναί, ἔρχομαι ταχύ. Ἀμήν, ἔρχου κύριε Ἰησοῦ.
The one who testifies to these things says, “Yes! I am coming quickly!” Amen! Come, Lord Jesus!

The following quotes are from Martin Luther’s “An Open Letter on Translation,” where he is answering allegations of not being “literal” in his German translation from the Latin, Hebrew, and Greek. Funny how the essence of things don’t really change. You can read this letter at Project Gutenberg.
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“For without the Old Testament, Jesus quickly loses reality and either becomes a stained-glass window figure- colourful but static and undemanding, or a tailor’s dummy that can be twisted and dressed to suit the current fashion.

We have seen that the Old Testament tells the story which Jesus completed. It declares the promise which he fulfilled. It provides the pictures and models which shaped his identity. It programmes a mission which he accepted and passed on. It teaches a moral orientation to God and the world which he endorsed, shaprened and laid as the foundation for obedient discipleship.”

-Christopher J. Wright, “Knowing God through the Old Testament, pgs. 251-252