SP4. The Spirit sanctifies the believer.

This is now the fourth and final post in a unit on the Holy Spirit in my ongoing series, theology in bullet points. The first unit had to do with God and Creation, and the second was on Christology and Atonement.
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The Spirit sanctifies the believer.

1. In terms of priority, the body of Christ is primary, and the individual believer is secondary. Yet every individual is valued equally, created in the image of God, male and female, people of every tribe and nation, people of every status. All are loved whether sinner or saint.

God is love, so he loves every individual. But there are many individuals in the Church. So it seems obvious that there is more love dispensed to the Church as a whole than to any one individual in the Church. The health of the whole Church takes priority over the liberty of the individual Christian (e.g., Rom. 14; 1 Cor. 10).

Accordingly, the way in which the Spirit engages the individual is a microcosm of the way he engages the Church as a whole. The Spirit sanctifies the Church and makes it God's own. So the Spirit sanctifies the individual believer. The Spirit purifies the Church and makes it righteous, and the Spirit purifies the believer and makes us righteous. The Spirit empowers the Church for mission and service. The Spirit empowers the individual for mission and service. The Spirit leads the Church into truth. The Spirit leads individuals into truth.

2. If Christ is the basis of atonement, all the grace relating to salvation is dispensed through the Holy Spirit. It is the Holy Spirit that dispenses prevenient grace, the grace that comes to us before we are able to go looking for God. It is the grace that enables us to move toward God. It is the grace that empowers us to be able to repent and exercise faith.

It is the Holy Spirit that dispenses the grace that justifies us and acquits us of all our sin. The Holy Spirit is God's "seal" of ownership (2 Cor. 1:22), such that if someone does not have the Spirit, that person does not truly belong to Christ (Rom. 8:9). The Holy Spirit is an "earnest" of our eternal inheritance (2 Cor. 5:5; Eph. 1:13-14), which is both a guarantee of that coming promise and a down payment of what is to come, a "foretaste of glory divine."

The Holy Spirit is thus the central factor in the incorporation of a person into the body of Christ. You can be baptized and not have passed from death to life (Acts 8:16). You can have passed from death to life and not been baptized (Acts 10:44-48). You can have undergone significant change and movement toward a godly and righteous life. You can have prayed the sinner's prayer and agreed to all the creeds of Christendom with your head.

But unless a person has the Holy Spirit, he or she is not yet in Christ. [1] It is the Holy Spirit that gives witness to our spirits that we are children of God (Rom. 8:16). The Holy Spirit thus brings us the assurance that we are children of God. It is the act of the Holy Spirit whereby we become "in Christ" and when we speak of Christ in us, we are speaking of the Spirit of Christ, Christ's presence in us somehow mysteriously mediated by the Holy Spirit.

3. It is somewhat popular at the moment to speak of conversion as a long gradual process rather than an instantaneous one. [2] There is of course a good deal of truth in this claim. It usually does take a good deal of time for a person to change.

It's also a slightly different question from whether you will escape the judgment. Most believe that unbaptized children will escape the final judgment, and yet they have neither been baptized nor have they received the Holy Spirit. If so, then one can technically be "saved" in that sense without baptism, faith, or having even received the most crucial element of all--the Holy Spirit.

But the Holy Spirit comes in an instant, and in that sense, you become part of the people of God in a moment. There may be a long process leading up to that point, and there is almost always a long process thereafter. But this is a different issue than being baptized into Christ by receiving the Holy Spirit, which must thereby always happen definitively in a moment.

The disciples cannot be used as an example of gradual incorporation into the body of Christ, even if they changed gradually. The Holy Spirit simply was not given in the manner of the new covenant until the Day of Pentecost. In that sense, none of the disciples were "in Christ" until the Day of Pentecost, when they were baptized into Christ in an instant. [3]

4. How does one know that this baptism, this receiving of the Holy Spirit has taken place? There can and often have been noticeable signs. The book of Acts testifies to the sudden ability to speak in other languages, a sudden boldness to proclaim Christ's resurrection, the sudden ability to perform miracles and healing. In the American revivals of the eighteenth, nineteenth, and twentieth centuries, people often felt an overflow of emotions and might start shouting or even running the aisles of a church.

But did everyone in the early church experience these sorts of dramatic manifestations or emotions? Not likely. We can imagine that the most typical manifestation of the Holy Spirit is a sense of peace and assurance, a sense that, in fact, you are received by God and at peace with him.

No doubt there will be some who do not feel different. Some, perhaps because of their past, may not feel anything at all. But are you truly committing to God with your whole will to the extent you know how? Are you making a choice of faith for God? Are you willing to make that faith public, including a public confession of faith in baptism?

Then you should trust that your sins are forgiven and that the Holy Spirit has taken control over your life. Sometimes God uses others to give us an assurance in such cases. Seek out someone you trust. God often empowers others in the body of Christ, especially those he has called to minister, to proclaim to us that our sins are indeed forgiven (cf. John 20:23).

3. The Holy Spirit thus sanctifies us and sets us apart as belonging to God. He purifies us of our guilt of sins past and he overcomes the power of Sin present and future. The Holy Spirit is behind initial sanctification, the act of cleansing us of our past sins and setting us apart as God's children. The Holy Spirit is behind progressive sanctification, the increase of righteousness and godliness in our lives.

When we get to the point of complete surrender of all our lives in every way we know how, the Holy Spirit can sanctify us entirely, making it easy to do the good we want to do. But we will always have room for growth until the day when we are glorified, when our mortal, corruptible bodies, our flesh subject to Sin and temptation, is transformed into resurrected bodies that are made like Christ's glorious resurrection body.

The Holy Spirit thus empowers us for obedience. The Holy Spirit imparts righteousness and godliness to the believer so that we are not only legally in right standing before God, but the Spirit actually makes us good. We are not, as Luther taught, doomed always to be both sinner and saint, but the Spirit empowers us not only to do the good but even to want the good. [4]

3. The Holy Spirit not only empowers us for purity. He also empowers us for ministry. We have already mentioned the manifestations of the Holy Spirit in Acts. The Church is praying in an upper room in Jerusalem when the Holy Spirit comes on the Day of Pentecost. The Church is born. The Spirit brings everyone there into Christ.

Immediately we see a change. They are witnessing with boldness to the crowds, even in languages they have never learned. The next day, Peter and John heal a lame man. Later in Acts they and others will cast out demons.

The mission of the Church is the mission of God. The mission of God is the redemption of everything in the creation. The Spirit empowers the Church--both on an individual and corporate level.

The Holy Spirit sanctifies the believer. He purifies us. He incorporates us each individually into the body of Christ. He empowers us.

Next Sunday: E1. The Church is the body of Christ.

[1] We are not talking about tongues here, for not all who receive the Holy Spirit in Acts speak in tongues and the rest of the New Testament is practically silent on the topic, except for a couple chapters in 1 Corinthians.

[2] E.g., Richard Peace, Conversion in the New Testament: Paul and the Twelve (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1999).

[3] In this sense, Peace's book is inadvertently trying to address two quite different questions at once, one a question of change and the other a question of incorporation. Given this blurring of questions, it is no surprise that his book barely mentions the most important element in conversion of all--the Holy Spirit.

[4] Simul iustus et peccator, semper repentans -- "At the same time, righteous and a sinner, as long as we are always repenting"

My God and Creation now published

I finally finished editing the first volume of my Sunday theology series and self-published it both in Kindle and paperback form (190 pages). The first volume is called God and Creation: Wesleyan-Arminian Reflections. Here is the Kindle link:

And here is the paperback link:

It is all available on the web for free as well, although the published version has key terms and discussion questions if you wanted to go through it as a group.

As far as I know, the Wesleyan Church currently doesn't have a resource like this one. When people ask me for a resource on our theology, I have to send them to the Nazarenes. Christ and Salvation is also finished in unedited form, and I hope to get it edited and published in a month or two. The Spirit and the Church is in process... next post tomorrow.

Tired of open theism in your philosophy classes?

Then why not have your philosophy classes use my philosophy text, based on the classic Wesleyan theology of God?

#shamelessselfpromotion

A Christian Philosophical Journey

Friday Novel: To Cambridge

For the whole trip from Chicago to Cambridge, Alan had the funny feeling that he was being watched. He wasn’t quite able to put his finger on it. There was a guy on the plane, for example, whom he had seen several times in the airport in Chicago. Then there was someone at Heathrow airport in London who later ended up on the same train to Cambridge.

Alan was also surprised to find Mr. Fox waiting for him at the station when he arrived in Cambridge.

“Welcome to Cambridge, Mr. Randolph,” came the voice of Mr. Fox the moment he stepped off the train.

“I didn’t expect to see you here at the station,” Alan answered.

“I thought I’d walk you to the house where you’ll be staying for the next couple weeks.”

“I won’t be in Grantchester?”

“No. You’ll be in a house here in Cambridge until we can get you oriented to your new circumstances.”

“My new circumstances?”

“Yes,” Mr. Fox said and paused for a moment. “You are a legacy. Your father was a member of the society. Most new potentials do not have any enemies. Indeed, the enemies of the society usually do not know when new students are coming or going.

“In your case,” Fox continued, “your father is well-known and has a few talented enemies. If you do not want to take on the risk, you are welcome to leave. If you do not make it past the first quarter, no one will likely pay you much attention thereafter.

“But if you continue, there will always be a small risk that someone will try to hurt you or your family, if you choose to have one. This is of course one of the reasons your father never married your mother.”

The comment hit Alan like a ton of bricks. Could it be that his father had a good reason for staying somewhat aloof from him and his mother? The thought had never even occurred to him.

"We will train you to defend yourself, of course. And you will always have an added layer of security around you of which you probably will not even be aware. You should recognize that, if you join one of the schools, you will lose a good deal of privacy for a time.

"Mostly importantly," he added. "We will give you the tools of the trade, shall we say."

"The what?" Alan puzzled.

"Let's just say that once you are equipped, the chance of a successful attack significantly diminish. Thus there is a high motivation to get to you now, like a defenseless egg that has just hatched. Later on, it won't really be worth it."

Seland's Reading Philo 1

Fond fragments of memories past peek into my consciousness as I begin Torey Seland's Reading Philo: A Handbook of Alexandria. It has been a great privilege to be a Dean for several years. But I also have often thought of the experience something along the lines of what Philo says in On the Special Laws 3.1-3:

"There was once a time when I devoted my leisure to philosophy and to the contemplation of the world and the things in it. ... At that time I looked down from above, from the air, straining the eye of my mind as if I were looking down from a watch-tower. I surveyed the unspeakable contemplation of all the things on the earth... until I was dragged down and taken by force into the vast sea of the cares of" ... administration. :-)

So it is with great joy that my mind begins to soar once again to contemplate the universe as a professor. In the words of James Bond, "the world is not enough."

The Theologicum

Torey's book brings back memories of a 2004 sabbatical in Tübingen, Germany, on a Fulbright. I spent the better part of those three months drawing on the amazing resources of the Theologicum to write my own Brief Guide to Philo, which I hear remains a helpful jump start for grad students who need a quick entry point into Philo, a crucial source for the world in which Jesus and Paul lived.

So for today I read Torey's Introduction. It is a well-written taste of Philo and overview of the book, which is a compilation of chapters by noted Philo scholars, including scholars from Seland's neck of the woods in Europe. The book is written for MA and PhD students who need to know Philo as part of their background study.

The well worn path is trodden. Philo lived somewhere from about 20BCE to 50CE, being a contemporary of both Jesus and Paul. He wrote more than 70 treatises, some 50 of which have survived. He came from a filthy rich family and was well connected. The opportunities he had as a rich Jewish child came in a window that closed by the time of his death. His nephew had to choose between Judaism and the Roman world, and he chose Rome.

The rest of the first chapter overviews the authors and their topics in the rest of the book. From the introduction, one suspects this is going to be a good read, probably both clearer and more helpful than Adam Kamesar's The Cambridge Companion to Philo.

However, no doubt my book, since I am a Philistine, remains the simple man (or woman's) best entry to the enigmatic Philo and his corpus. :-)

Tom Wright's Romans Commentary

Tucked away in the New Interpreter's Bible from Acts to 1 Corinthians is N. T. Wright's commentary on Romans.

I finished his Introduction to Romans yesterday and let me just say that this is Wright at his best. IMO, there is very little of Wright's eccentricity here but a clear presentation of what I consider some of his most plausible positions without eccentricity.

Looking forward to working through the rest of it.

Summer posting schedule

I want to slow down my blogging schedule this summer. I'm not saying I won't post things when they come to mind. But here's the schedule I'm planning:

1. On Wednesdays, I want to post in relation to books I'm reading.

2. On Fridays, I will continue my novel writing. It seems like a number of people are reading those posts, so I'll try to keep it interesting.

3. On Sundays, I will continue posting my theology in bullet points. I'm almost on the home stretch and I will have written a whole systematic theology!

SP3. The Spirit sanctifies the Church.

This is now the third post in a unit on the Holy Spirit in my ongoing series, theology in bullet points. The first section had to do with God and Creation, and the second was on Christology and Atonement.
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SP3. The Spirit sanctifies the Church.

1. Those of us who live in "Western" Christianity are prone to think of our faith in individualistic terms. When Martin Luther centered Christian faith around the idea of justification by faith, he not only centered Christianity around humanity but he centered it around human individuals. John Wesley also tended to focus on salvation as the focus of Christian doctrine, with my individual salvation taking up a major part of his teaching. [1]

By contrast, the early church grew out of a group or "collectivist" culture, so we are not surprised to find that the Y-O-Us of the New Testament are primarily plural. In a familiar verse for Wesleyan circles, Paul does not express a desire for each individual to be "sanctified" but that the believers at Thessalonica as a whole, together, be sanctified as one body and in one spirit and be preserved blameless (1 Thess. 5:23). The correct priority within salvation and the Church is thus the collective body of Christ first and the individual believer second.

2. The Holy Spirit "sanctifies" the Church (cf. 2 Thess. 2:13). The predominant sense of sanctification is to "make holy." [2] To make something holy is to make it God's, to set it apart as belonging to the realm of the divine rather than the realm of the ordinary. An earlier article mentioned that to say that God is holy was tantamount to saying that God is God and thus set apart from the creation in awesomeness and glory.

The Holy Spirit sets the Church apart as God's and thus creates the Church, the collective body of Christ. The Holy Spirit is the spirit that inhabits the body of Christ, the Church. As we will see in a later article, the Church is the people of God, the collection of all those "in Christ" past, present, and future.

3. A second meaning relates to the first. When the Spirit sets apart the Church to belong to God, he purifies it. To be sure, impurity remains in the Church. The church at Corinth is sanctified (1 Cor. 1:2) and yet there are "fleshly," "unspiritual" people within it (1 Cor. 3:1). An unbelieving spouse similarly can be "sanctified," set apart as connected to God, and yet not as yet be "saved" (1 Cor. 7:14, 16).

Yet on the basis of the blood of Christ, the Holy Spirit washes the Church, like a bride being prepared for an ancient marriage. In the culture of the New Testament world, the bride was washed and presented to the husband "without a spot or wrinkle or anything of the kind" (Eph. 5:27). In the same way, the Spirit prepares the Church for Christ when he returns. The Spirit makes the Church into a "a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, God’s own people" (1 Pet. 2:9).

4. The Holy Spirit also empowers the Church. Perhaps nowhere do we see this dynamic better than in the early chapters of Acts. In Acts 2, the Holy Spirit gives birth to the Church as the collective body of believers on the Day of Pentecost receive the Holy Spirit for the first time in a way the Spirit had never yet come in history.

The pages that follow show the effects of the Spirit on the Church. The Church is immediately empowered for witness as the apostles begin to proclaim the good news to everyone present in Jerusalem. They receive the power of tongues, which in the case of Acts 2 seems to be the ability to speak in languages that they have never learned before, so that they can speak the good news to those present.

This event of tongues is the reversal of what happened at the Tower of Babel, when God separated the people by giving them a diversity of languages. But the event of tongues on the Day of Pentecost signifies another extremely important effect of the sanctification of the Spirit--unity. The Holy Spirit brings unity to the Church in its diversity.

Ironically, the use of "tongues" later at Corinth would create a problem when individuals used it to highlight their individual gift over the unity of the congregation. Paul would attack this use of spiritual gifts as it pulled the church there toward individuality over corporate unity (1 Cor. 12-14). The church is full of individuals with different gifts from God, but the point of these gifts is to accomplish the mission of God and to edify each other.

These gifts point to the mission of God, not some individual mission I'm on. These gifts point to my service of others, not to how special I am as an individual to God or how great I am.

The Holy Spirit thus brings unity to the body of Christ. Where there is division and a dividing of the church into cliques and factions, the Holy Spirit is not behind it. Where the Holy Spirit is, there is unity. [3]

So the Holy Spirit incorporates us into the body of Christ, the Church, through sanctification. The Holy Spirit empowers the Church for unity and proclamation. The Holy Spirit empowers individual believers in a diverse number of ways that serve both the broader mission of God and that build up the body of Christ collectively.

5. The Holy Spirit also directs the Church and leads it to the truth. The Holy Spirit is the Spirit of truth (e.g., John 15:26). John 16:13 indicates that one of the functions of the Spirit was to lead the first disciples into all truth. And since God has given these words in Scripture to the whole Church, we can have confidence that the Spirit is still leading us into all truth.

The Spirit first gave the apostles truth to speak before there was a New Testament. They did not always agree with each other, as we see in Galatians 2. We thus see that the leading of the Spirit into truth does not always come without some conflict and debate.

The Spirit had already "hovered over" the creation of the books of the Old Testament. The Spirit had breathed into them at first and the Spirit continued to breathe into them at the time of Christ. [4] In the writings that would become the New Testament, the Spirit continued to breathe words to his people and through the words to later generations.

It took hundreds of years for the books of the New Testament to come together into their current form, so if we accept them as our Scripture we must also accept that the Holy Spirit continued to inspire the Church to collect these books into their current form. This action of the Spirit, again, did not come without conflict or debate. It is by faith that we believe that the Spirit approved of the way those books came together.

The Spirit continues to reveal and lead into truth. The Gospels allude to this fact when Jesus tells Peter in Matthew 16:19 that he is giving him the keys to the kingdom and that whatever Peter binds or looses on earth will already have been bound or loosed in heaven. Similarly, Jesus tells the disciples in John 20:23 that, with the Spirit inside them, they will even have the authority to forgive or prevent the forgiveness of sins.

These are truths with regard to which Protestants have especially seen great danger. We must assume, for example, that it is only when a church is in sync with the Holy Spirit that its pronouncement of forgiveness or lack thereof is in fact valid. It is only when we ask in sync with the Holy Spirit that things are truly bound or loosed.

Nevertheless, these Scriptures seem to legitimate what in fact must be the case today. Since the apostles are no longer with us and the Scriptures will often not address directly the situations of our days, collections of Christians must "bind and loose" God's authority on earth in various ways. It is legitimate for collections of Christians, such as denominations, to follow the will of God as best they can on earth, humbly seeking and submitting to the voice of the Holy Spirit, leading them into all truth.

6. A final note is that the Spirit is the great equalizer in the Church. Since both men and women receive the Holy Spirit in exactly the same way, both men and women prophesy (Acts 2:17). Because both slaves and free, both Jew and Gentile receive the Spirit equally, then there is no differentiation of status in the kingdom of God (Gal. 3:28).

There is no gift of the Spirit that is particular to men or the free or the Jew. The Spirit leads men into truth and the Spirit leads women into truth. Men can lead in the Church and women can lead in the Church. The slave can lead the master into truth and the wife can teach the husband, if the Spirit is within them. Individual circumstances in history may complicate the application of these principles, but this is the way it is ideally in the age of the Holy Spirit.

The Holy Spirit sanctifies the Church. He purifies it and creates it by setting it apart as God's. He empowers it for unity. He empowers it for witness and gives individual manifestations and gifts for the mission and the edification of other believers. He leads it into truth.

[1] It is no surprise that the historic practice of infant baptism has fallen on hard times among individualistic American Christians, for with such a paradigm, how could my baptism take place at a time when I am not aware of it or when I cannot make my profession of faith?

[2] You can see this obvious dynamic in the Greek words. The verb "to sanctify" is hagiazo. The adjective, "holy," is hagios (the plural hagioi or "holy ones" is often translated as "saints). And the noun, "holiness," is hagiosyne. Obviously these words are all related historically, and their meanings remained intertwined at the time of the New Testament.

[3] Yes, where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom (2 Cor. 3:17), but this is not a freedom for each individual to do what he or she wants (cf. 1 Cor. 10:23). Paul is dealing with the Jewish Law in this comment, which was not binding on Gentile believers.

[4] As we will see in a later article, the inspiration or "God-breathing" of meaning into the words of the Bible has never been static but is an ongoing, dynamic speaking.

The Assessment (Novel 2015)

"You have had a year of physics, a year of chemistry, and a year of calculus in high school, yes?" Dr. Randolph said.

"Yes."

"We do not think in terms of courses. We think in terms of competencies. My job is to determine what you have already mastered and then lead you to master what you have not."

"And how long do we have to do that?" Alan asked.

"Until October, you will meet with me at least once a week, probably more. The point is not so much that you reach a certain goal as that you demonstrate the will and capacity to progress."

"In math and science?"

 Dr. Randolph paused. "You know you will have a choice, if you are approved, at the end of the year."

"Of several different schools? Yes," Alan answered. Dr. Randolph then waited for a moment, as if to allow Alan's thoughts to run their course.

"Then let us begin," Dr. Randolph finally continued. He began to ask Alan questions in physics and calculus. They seemed to wander in a stream of consciousness.

"Is acceleration a scalar or a vector?"

"You can treat it in either way."

"What is the difference between a scalar and a vector?"

"A vector in Newtonian physics implies direction."

"Very good. Do you know anything about vectors in quantum physics?"

"Not much but I would like to."

And so the conversation continued for several hours. Sometime around noon, Mr. Fox poked his head in the door to see if they were ready for lunch, but they didn't even notice he was there.

"Show me the distance formula for one dimension on the board?" Dr. Randolph asked.

"Now show me how to derive a velocity formula in one dimension by taking its derivative."

After about an hour, Mr. Fox left and returned with a tray of tea and sandwiches, but they hardly noticed. Alan could tell that, while Dr. Randolph was wandering from question to question and from motion to Newton's laws, he was slowly checking off a list of knowledge and skills in his mind. At times he would say something like, "Physica 4 point 9," and a problem would appear on the screen. Alan would solve it and they would move on to the next question.

It was late afternoon before Alan started missing questions. He knew the basic equations and concepts. But as soon as Dr. Randolph would begin to probe, Alan would blank. The questions became more general, through thermodynamics and electromagnetism.

Although the day had begun rather seriously, you could see Dr. Randolph's spirits lighten as the day went on. It was about six when he suddenly stopped and looked at Mr. Fox, who had been sitting quietly in the back of the room working.

"Anyone feel like a good carbonara?" he said. "There's a great Italian restaurant in Cambridge."

"What's carbonara?" Alan said.

GPS and Relativity

I'm dawdling through a book called, The Science of Interstellar, by the physicist Kip Thorne. Here's an interesting paragraph on GPS (slightly edited):

"Our smart phones rely on radio signals from a set of 27 satellites at a height of 20,000 kilometers.... Each radio signal... tells the smartphone where the satellite is located and the time the signal was transmitted... The scheme would fail if the signal were the true times measured on the satellite. Time at a 20000 kilometer height flows more rapidly than on earth by 40 microseconds each day and the satellites must correct for this. They measure time with their own clocks, then slow that time down to the rate of time flow on Earth before transmitting it to our phones."

Einstein predicted that time moves more slowly relative to locations close to heavy gravitational objects than it does relative to locations that aren't.

Middle of the Night Novel Writing

Had a coffee about 9pm. Woke up about 2:30. Graded a little. Worried about the state of race relations in America a little. Thought I'd write some novel before sleeping a little more. Happy Tuesday.
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On Wednesday morning, Alan woke as before at 5am to run, only to find Mr. Fox waiting for him in the meeting room with an assortment of items.

"No running this morning?" Alan asked.

"There's a different plan till Friday."

On the table was a parachute and a small backpack.

"I take it I'm going to be jumping out of another plane this morning?" Alan surmised.

"Yes, but this time on your own. Then you will hike 84 miles and find your way to Tynemouth. I expect to meet you in The Priory pub by sundown on Friday."

"Where's Tynemouth? And where are you dropping me?" Alan asked, a little nervous to be pulling the cord himself for the first time. "Will I be alone?"

"You'll be walking the length of Hadrian's Wall, from west to east. We'll drop you over Bowness-on-Solway where the wall path begins. Leave your parachute in front of the old church. Then you'll need to average about thirty miles a day. That's a fast clip but the path is easy and well marked. Once you get to Wallsend, you'll want to take the Metro to Tynemouth. You have enough money in the pack to get there comfortably."

"And what am I supposed to do while walking for three days?" Alan finally said. He had never been alone for a whole day, let alone three days. The thought of merely walking without doing anything sounded excruciating to him.

"Oh don't worry," Fox continued. "Your Latin should be up to speed by the time you get to Tynemouth."

Somehow that seemed even worse than three days of silence.

"Your Latin is better than most first recruits to be sure. But you will need to be able to hold an intelligent conversation in Latin if you expect to go on to the second quarter. I expect you to have mastered a thousand words by Friday and be able to understand any sentence like those you'll be hearing. And it goes without saying that you should be able to speak fairly fluidly in simple sentences by then too."

He pulled out an iPhone and head buds from one side of the pack and held it up. "Start at the beginning, proceed to the end. Repeat."

...

SP2. The Holy Spirit enacts the will of the Father and Son in the world.

This is now the second post in a unit on the Holy Spirit in my ongoing series, theology in bullet points. The first section had to do with God and Creation, and the second was on Christology and Atonement.
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SP2. The Holy Spirit enacts the will of the Father and Son in the world.

The Holy Spirit is God's presence in the world, and the Spirit acts for God in the world.

1. Christian tradition does not hold that God the Father is only beyond the creation (transcendent) and the God the Holy Spirit is only in the creation (immanent). Nevertheless, in terms of the predominant domains where we find the Father and the Spirit operating in Scripture, we find the Spirit overwhelmingly mentioned in relation to this universe.

"Spirit" thus indicates at least two features of the Holy Spirit. First, spirit suggests otherness in the sense of heavenly origins. The Spirit is "stuff" from beyond the creation that is present here in the creation. In this way, the Holy Spirit is the "heavenly gift" and a taste of the "powers of the age to come" (Heb. 6:4-5).

"Spirit" also suggests that God is not limited by embodiment. He is everywhere present in the universe. At the very beginning of creation, we find the Spirit of God hovering over the primordial, unformed waters (Gen. 1:2). The Holy Spirit is thus the primary manifestation of God immanent in the creation, the primary presence of God in the universe in this age.

2. As such the Holy Spirit is the primary agent of God's action in the world. When we read of God's word doing whatever God sends it out to do in Isaiah 55:11, we should think of the Holy Spirit as the one enacting God's will. In Genesis 1, when God speaks and his will is accomplished, we should think of the Holy Spirit as the one accomplishing the creation of light or living things in the waters or the creation of humanity.

When Proverbs 8 uses the metaphor of wisdom working alongside God in creation (8:22-31), we should more literally think of God's Holy Spirit as the one who enacted the will of the Trinity for the creation of the world. Although John 1 ultimately correlates the Logos or "Word" with Jesus, surely much of the biblical imagery about God's word acting in the world should technically be related to the work of the Holy Spirit. When we hear that "the word of God is living and active, sharper than any two-edged sword," we are hearing about the work of the Holy Spirit in the world.

3. In the next two articles, we will discuss how the Spirit works in the Church and in the individual. Yet we have also seen that the Holy Spirit also works in the creation and in the world. Here, the work of the pre-incarnate Christ and the Holy Spirit seem to blur into each other. For example, the hymn in Colossians 1:15-20 is clearly about Christ, but it is arguably based on Jewish traditions about God's word. So some of the poetry about Christ here may more literally relate to the work of the Holy Spirit in the world.

For example, in a poetic sense, Christ holds all things together (Col. 1:17). But in a more literal sense, the Holy Spirit sustains the creation. The different roles that the individual persons of the Trinity play are not always clearly distinguished in Scripture but blur into each other. [1]

Although Christ will come again to judge the world on God's behalf, in this present age the Spirit both convicts the world of sin, righteousness, and judgment (John 16:7-11). The conviction of the Spirit in relation to sin ideally leads to salvation, but perhaps most of the world ultimately rejects the prompting of the Spirit in "prevenient grace," God's reaching out to us before we even know it (Matt. 7:13-14).

The Spirit convicts the world of righteousness in the sense that he works with our consciences to move us to act in the right way. He is an "inner light" that shows us the right way but leaves the choice of how to go to us. To be sure, our consciences are overwhelmingly formed by our cultures and the environments in which we are born and raised. However, the Holy Spirit also reaches out to everyone who comes into the world with God's prevenient grace and prompts us to move in the right direction.

Those who do not respond to the Spirit's prompting may eventually "grieve" the Holy Spirit to where God gives us up on us (Heb. 10:29). Although the Spirit has made it such that we should know God and his power (Rom. 1:20), God may eventually "give us up" (Rom. 1:28). We should assume that those parts of Scripture that talk about God hardening someone's heart (e.g., Exod. 7:3; Rom. 9:18) relate to individuals who have already rejected the initial prompting of the Holy Spirit.

The Holy Spirit also enacts God's judgment in this current time. We see such judgment clearly in the story of Ananias and Sapphira in Acts 5. Peter indicts them for trying to "lie" to the Holy Spirit (5:3) and they both drop dead. It is thus not only clear that judgment takes place in the age of the new covenant as well as the old. But the Holy Spirit is the primary agent of judgment at this time.

4. The idea of an "unpardonable sin" comes especially from Matthew 12:31-32 and Mark 3:28-29. In that context, it refers to attributing to Satan an act of the Holy Spirit. Similarly, Hebrews 6:4-6 and other passages in Hebrews also suggest there is a point of apostasy beyond which one cannot be saved.

Theologically, we must assume that the individuals involved in these passages are people who have decisively rejected the promptings of the Holy Spirit toward salvation. We must assume that the Holy Spirit has already reached out to them, offering them the possibility of reconciliation, but they have rejected the light given them. Therefore, these acts--of blaspheming the Spirit or committing final apostasy--are the embodiment of a pattern of rejecting God. It is not the act itself that is permanently condemning but the permanent condemnation is what results when the Holy Spirit stops prompting.

Repentance, a decisive turn from sin toward God, is only possible by the power of the Holy Spirit. Therefore, anyone who is drawn toward God has not been abandoned by God and thus has not committed an unpardonable sin. Yet there is no promise that the Holy Spirit will prompt indefinitely. Christianity, not even Wesleyan-Arminian Christianity, does not technically teach free will. It teaches that God gives everyone a chance to move toward him.

But there is no promise that this chance will always be present in our lives. We cannot assume that we can wait until our death bed to move toward God. The Holy Spirit may not be around to prompt us toward him any more. We may know we need to repent but not find the power to repent within. We may seek a place of repentance and not find it (Heb. 12:17). We thus need to seek God while he may be found (Isa. 55:6).

The Holy Spirit is God's presence in the world and enacts the will of the Trinity in the universe. He convicts the world of its sin, of what righteousness is, and he administers God's judgment in this current age.

Next week: SP3. The Spirit sanctifies the Church.

[1] This is an important reminder that God did not reveal most of the truths of the Bible systematically but situationally. This is why systematic theology is not only a valid enterprise, but a necessary one. It is also why we would be foolish to ignore 2000 years of Christian reflection on Scripture--surely the Spirit has continued to unpack in his Church both the significance of Christ but also the implications of Scripture.

Reformulating Chemistry

My youngest children take chemistry next year. So I was thinking. What are some different ways that someone could present the content of chemistry? (I actually wrote 65 pages a few years back toward a chemistry novel back when one of my step-daughters was taking chemistry. It was along the lines of Alice in Wonderland.)

1. It seems to me that, for most high school students, chemistry should probably start with things that can be observed and then move to explain them with theory you can't observe. So you can observe many elements. You can observe chemicals. Atoms? Not so much. You can observe gases, liquids, and solids. Covalent bonding, a little harder.

2. For whatever reason, I am really attracted to teaching chemistry from the periodic table. I know it has to do with my personality. I remember things far better if I can see the big picture first. Start with individual details and half of them will evaporate away for me.

The periodic table is like a map. Again, my memory and understanding works better if you approach learning with a spiraling circle. Start with the big picture. Then swirl around the land again in more detail. Then start swirling around the subtopics in the same way. Since there is limited time, don't teach any one area exhaustively before moving on to the next. If you do that, I will know half the topics well and know nothing about the other half.

Some topics in math and science are cumulative, but many aren't. I think you could start with motion, thermodynamics, or electromagnetism in physics, for example. But, inevitably, high school and college students like me end up with a lot of knowledge of motion and very little of electromagnetism. I don't think I had a history class in high school that got beyond World War I. And the surface area or volume of a sphere--I was never in a math class that got that far, even though you could go do a web search and learn it right now.

So I prefer swirling. Go over the whole field in the broadest of strokes. Then go through all the major topics again in greater detail. Then in later courses go into the individual topics in great detail.

3. Another way to teach, and one that would fit with yet another personality, is to start small and go big. You could start with the atom. Then move to molecules. Then move to organic chemistry. Then organelles, then cells. Then move to tissues, organs, systems. Then motion, sociology, eventually astronomy.

4. So in conclusion, how's this for a chemistry curriculum?

• Start as usual by distinguishing mixtures from homogeneous material... compounds, elements. Do it with actual stuff. Goal--to show that all the stuff around us boils down to some basic components and combinations of components.
• Now move to the periodic table. These are the elements. All matter around us reduces to these. Run through it with object lessons. Some are gases, some liquids, some solids at room temperature. Some are more stable than others. Look, here's a helium balloon. Here's a lithium battery. 
• You can combine them together and make compounds. Salt. The oxygen in the air comes in pairs of two oxygens. Etc...
• With hydrogen you can dive into what an atom is. What is the default state of an atom? How do atoms take on charges? How do you get hydrogen chloride (ions)? What are acids?
• You can do some experiments too. Use electrolysis to isolate hydrogen and oxygen, for example.
• With helium you can introduce the noble gases and go down into Neon, Argon, etc. Now comes the octet rule and an explanation of why these are so stable.
• I think you could cover a good deal of the basics in a short time in this way. Atomic mass, metals, alkali metals, semiconductors, precious metals, radioactive elements. Mention types of bonding, electronegativity, etc but save depth explorations for later.
• But before long, you will want to begin looking at reactions. Now we're balancing equations. Now we start looking at energy and heat. For whatever reason, these aspects of chemistry seem harder for people to get their heads around, but we've now been amply prepared for them. 
• Show the reactions, show the experiments. To the extent it's practicable, have students do the experiments.
• Repeat in greater depth...

In my perfect world, you would be doing physics somewhat at the same time in a different class. But the schedule could be arranged so that the topics overlapped at key points. So you can be doing atoms at the same time. You can do thermodynamics and electric charge at the same time. Then when they don't overlap, you can be doing motion and other topics in physics.

But that's for another day...

Friday Novel

Alan walked south gingerly along the river Cam out of Cambridge. He felt quite strange, having lived his whole life in Chicago. Alone, in such open space, he felt exposed, almost naked.

No one was in sight, which was even stranger. There was something idyllic about the walk to Grantchester. It made him realize what peace would be like... and that he had never known it.

He was to meet his new mentor at the Orchard Tea Gardens at noon. It was easy enough to find. Grantchester was the smallest place he had ever visited. He was early enough to wander a little. He didn't know most of the names of some famous Cambridge people who used to visit--Ludwig Wittgenstein, Virginia Woolf. He had heard of a couple others--Bertrand Russell the philosopher and Maynard Keynes the economist.

"Eos scias?" came a voice behind him.

"Let's see. 'Do I know them?'" Alan deciphered the Latin. "Yes, a couple. Keynes, Russell."

"Both studied at the school," the man continued. "Wittgenstein was a mentor... when we could get him to show up."

"Who was Wittgenstein?"

"Another philosopher, like Russell. Very moody. Everything you expect of a genius."

They both continued to look at the history of the Orchard on the wall.

"Want some lunch?" the man finally said.

"So your name is Fox, right?" Alan broke the silence.

"Yes," he answered. "Daniel Fox. I attended the school some twenty years ago in the mid-90s."

"And what exactly is the school,"Alan asked, again trying to get a clearer sense of what was being offered him."

...

Academic "price fixing" at SBL?

I'm on the periphery of a group for SBL that was denied this year even though it had quite a significant line up for this Fall and probably would have been quite popular. I'm trying to process the reason given, which more or less had to do with perceived overlap with other groups that already exist (even though they weren't interested in the specific topic). Also cited was a move away from "fragmentation" in SBL groups.

I'm not quite sure what to make of this decision. I know that decisions by leadership are often complex and involve a bigger picture than an individual decision. It's difficult to see the whole picture from the receiving end. I was really on the edge of this group anyway so I didn't have much invested in it.

But here are the thoughts going through my mind?

1. Did this group and topic appear too "evangelical" and thus not "diverse" enough or too "fragmented"? It would be interesting if the SBL program committee thought so. Was there a bias against confessional scholarship involved?

The line up included prominent individuals from Duke and even had Tom Wright scheduled this Fall. By contrast, the SBL program committee, as far as I can tell, is made up overwhelmingly of individuals from secular schools. There is interestingly some strong bias against Wright as a scholar in the academy. Some of his work drives me nuts but there's no denying that he is one of the most influential scholars of the last twenty years. Who has heard of Ken Schenck (or the author of the linked protest letter)? Wright, him I've heard of.

2. Some steering I've seen at SBL to me has been about as boring as a dead fish. I personally think this phenomenon is something that plagues academia in general, where professors and leaders think they get to decide what people are interested in. And they drive their institutions into the ground with declining enrollment until their departments or colleges close.

I attended a group for about a decade at SBL that started with the seats packed. The topic was brimming with interest. Then it seemed to me that the leadership packed the agenda with just the right balance of "non-fragmented" speakers, including interdisciplinary talks by people from other areas of expertise who frankly looked silly to me speaking on topics about which they weren't experts.

Before long, the leadership seemed to muse at all the papers on the topic being presented in other groups. Attendance didn't seem to be as strong as it started. When interest found other ways to express itself, there seemed to be an urge to find ways to keep power over the topic centralized with the enlightened group. To me, it looked similar to my perception that struggling Methodist seminaries try to use power at their HQ to force ministerial candidates to go to schools they just don't want to go to.

3. What I'm talking about here is "price fixing" in academia, using power to squelch voices you don't agree with. This phenomenon is not conservative or liberal. It's human. Conservatives do it. Liberals do it. Personalities do it against other personalities. It has only to do with who is in power, not what their ideology is.

There is a temptation even within an institution like IWU to try to squelch a program in one part of the university because it might grow over the territory of another program. There are some valid concerns here. But what doesn't make sense is to hamstring a program that looks to be wildly successful just because you don't want a struggling program somewhere else to suffer or die.

4. Oh well. Stuff happens. I suspect the proposed group would have been pretty popular at least its first year. Who knows? It might have been the hot thing this Fall at SBL.

My question is this. What will the "Dead Fish Quotient" (DFQ) be this Fall at SBL? Will there be some topics where the rooms are brimming with interest? Or will most of the sessions be a mirror of many struggling religion departments today, where the professors can't get anyone to sign up for their classes?

Art and Religion in the Curriculum

The fun of my pointless novel continues!

I've brainstormed on material for the protagonist's education in relation to languages, history, science and math, and philosophy. So now I'm on the last brainstorm for art and religion.

Of course religion is integral to the Christian college. But what about a secular university education?

1. The role of art and religion in a college curriculum, IMO, is to teach students how to be human. You can learn about the science of economics, but ethics is essential when it comes to applying that knowledge. (Yes, it is ignorant to assume unthinkingly that the goal is just for anyone who can to make as much money as possible in whatever way possible) You can learn how to do a lot of things, which might make you a fine communist or a fine capitalist. But without values, you're little more than a dumb animal--maybe dumber.

Beauty and value are important because they make life meaningful. Your yearly salary doesn't matter when you're drowning. And it doesn't matter that you've won a Nobel Prize if you never spent any time with your children and have no healthy relationships. The selfish will die one day and will not be missed. I consider legislators idiots who think public school is only about reading, writing, and arithmetic, while they slash funding for music and pay no attention to the resources needed to redirect students on a trajectory to be a burden on society.

2. The problem of course with teaching values is the question of whose values. Religion can be an incredibly positive force for good in the world... and it can be just as incredibly a negative tool of oppression and evil. I would think a classy undergraduate curriculum would expose students to the great religions of the world--Christianity, Islam, Buddhism, secularism, as examples.

There are some axioms that most religions would accept in some form. Most would have a sense that it is virtuous for individual self-interest to come behind the greater good of the many. There is a balance between "the needs of the many outweigh the needs of the one" and "all individuals have certain basic rights." I personally find the idea of a social contract between the members of a society to be perhaps the most useful construct for thinking about human society.

3. Art and literature remind us of a feature of humanity that is almost entirely unique to the human race. Art does not have to represent anything. It does not have to teach anything. I agree with Tolstoy that it is best when it is infectious. But it is valid for its own sake. Literature is the same.

It seems to me that the great art and great literature, even great religions of different world cultures, naturally goes hand in hand with learning their histories and languages.

4. So this alleged first novel focuses on Europe. The first quarter of the novel is in Cambridge. What art and literature of Britain should he study? Shakespeare of course, Dickens, Austin. Locke seems appropriate. The British museum offers a window into some of the art taken from Greece, Turkey, and Egypt in the 1800s.

The second quarter is in Bologna. Obviously that offers all the art of Florence and Rome. In literature there is Dante, Virgil, Augustine, Aquinas. Since Greece is near there is Homer, Plato, Herodotus, and Aristotle. There is Roman and Greek architecture.

The third quarter is in Germany. I suppose there is Goethe and the Brothers Grimm. Of course there is Kant, Heidegger, and Gadamer. There are plenty of museums in Berlin and Munich.

The fourth quarter is in Paris and there is the Louvre. There's Picasso, Seurat, and countless others. For literature there is Sartre and Camus, Foucault. Les Miserables, Voltaire, Montesquieu, Descartes, Rousseau, Pascal.

I'm not sure how much I would weave in or how, but this is part of the territory...

Process Theology versus Open Theism

It should be clear that I am almost a medieval scholastic in my the-ology. I have no time personally for open theism or process theology. However, I would make a big distinction between the two.

1. Open theism, as I define it, is the idea that while God is omniscient and God is omnipotent and God is distinct from the world, he has of his own will decided not to know the future so that we can have free will. This is an Arminian twist and it is a conservative twist on normal theology.

It is an Arminian response to an argument I consider silly. A certain Calvinist says, "If God knows the future, we cannot have free will." The open theist (in my mind) responds, "What if God chooses not to know the future so that we can be free?"

Remember, I am a medieval scholastic who thinks God sees all time in an eternal present. "You are both silly," says I.

It is conservative because it more or less takes the Old Testament literally. "Where are you Adam?" Poetry, says I. "God chose not to know where Adam was," says the open theist. "Silliness," says I.

I don't think Wesleyan-Arminians should worry much about open theism, even if I think it's silly.

2. Process theology is something quite different. Process theology does not believe that God created matter and does not see it as under his control. Sometimes, process theology sees God's nature and character as something that is in a process of change along with the universe.

Let's be clear. Wesleyans believe that God does not choose to direct everything that happens in the world. But Wesleyans believe that God is in control of the universe.

Wesleyans believe that God chooses influence over determination, but process theology usually holds that God cannot determine. That he can only influence.

A Wesleyan can easily believe that God created using evolution, but a process theologian believes that evolution is/was not under God's control or supervision. Indeed, a process thinker believes that God himself is evolving in some ways.

3. So there you have it. Schenck's perspective on these things. Open theism is silly but generally harmless. I would not support a Wesleyan college or university hiring a process theologian.

What's in a PhD dissertation?

I've been an external examiner now for three doctoral dissertations on Hebrews. This is a great honor and also a good way to keep your pulse on Hebrews' studies. It is also very interesting because I'm usually asked in relation to confessional communities that each have their own landmines and understood criteria that the candidates have to navigate.

For example, a doctoral student in a Seventh Day Adventist context has to navigate Ellen White. Someone in a strong evangelical community will navigate critical issues in a certain way. And someone from a conservative Reformed context might navigate issues of second repentance in a certain way.

But what are the key things I look for in a dissertation:

1. The most crucial thing that I am looking for is what you might call a "doctoral spark." This is ultimately the basis for the degree. Where in this dissertation has the candidate demonstrated that he or she can think originally and creatively in a super-competent way that advances the scholarly discussion and isn't just nuts?

2. Obviously we want a clear thesis that is tightly argued throughout the dissertation.

3. We want good organization. The introduction should set down the method followed and give necessary theoretical background on the scholarly discussion up to this point.

4. If I were the doctoral advisor, I would want clear hermeneutical distinctions. This is one area where as an external examiner I feel I need to respect the norms of the institution for which I am examining. For me, a dissertation should not be preachy, should not blur application with interpretation, should evidentiarily oriented (especially to the degree it is exegetical), and a host of other things that indicate hermeneutical competence to me.

5. It goes without saying that an exegetical dissertation should demonstrate thorough knowledge of the primary texts being investigated and the original languages associated with them. In the case of the New Testament, the text must be engaged in Greek, not in English.

6. The dissertation should demonstrate a thorough knowledge of the secondary literature relevant to the topic. This includes scholarship in German and French. It includes books and articles. Popular works should not be used.

In any case, there's a thumbnail sketch of what you should expect if you get a Ph.D.

My View of God and Truth

I'm sure I will not do justice to the impulse beyond this post. But if there are curiosities to my views of God and Truth, they reduce in my mind to this. God is bigger than we could possibly imagine and the Truth, that is his thoughts, is beyond human comprehension.

I respect those who believe in open theism (the idea that God limits his understanding so that we can have free will). If I were to listen to them, I'm sure that I might respect process theologians (who believe that God actually is not all-powerful but is evolving with the universe).

1. But I have no interest in a God who is not all powerful and all knowing. Such a god is not actually God. Such a god is rather a god like the Greeks and Romans, only with Christian values. I am interested in a God who knows every single last thing and who can do anything.

I have a slightly heterodox inkling that even God's "nature" as we know it is a matter of his will, that good is good because God says so. My inkling here (I would not call it a "view," since it is more of an intuition) is that to say God has a nature that he did not determine is again to limit him to being little more than what we are.

But if God decided to be loving, then it means something. It is a matter of his free will. To say otherwise, it seems to me, is to make him a slave to some higher authority that made him that way.

Once again, if my intuition here seems off track, I have it because I want God to be GOD and not just some mere anthropomorphic projection of humanity.

2. The same goes for Truth. I do not think it is unorthodox to say that the Bible reflects God meeting his people within their own understandings. Certainly this perspective gels with my own expertise in biblical studies. The words of the Bible almost always make thorough sense within their original historical and cultural contexts.

But hear the implication here. If God revealed the truths of the Bible in the categories of its audiences, then Truth is something much, much bigger than these divine, incarnated moments. To limit truth, therefore, to these words is to reduce God--at least to some extent--to the paradigms and worldviews he used to communicate to people millennia ago.

I am of course also limited to a worldview that is influenced by my own time and place in history. So do not think I am saying that we, finally, today, have arrived and can see Truth on its own objective terms. No, I am saying that God's Truth is on a completely different playing field, one that none of us will ever play on.

Revelation, insofar as it refers to cognitive thoughts, will always be just a shadow of God's infinity. There is a striking concept in a recent movie called Automata. It talks about how, when they let the robots fix and teach themselves, they started to become smarter exponentially. After an hour or so, they started saying things that no one could understand, they had become so smart.

And so I ask myself, how ridiculous it is for us all in the church today to think we basically have God figured out. How completely stupid we must be making ourselves look! The things we say in our Bible studies, in our sermons, in our classrooms, in our devotions--surely it is all the goo-goo ga-ga of babies.

3. So if I ever say something you think is peculiar, know this. I believe God is greater than anything we can imagine and the Thoughts of his mind are greater than any human language could possibly contain. I believe God is GOD, not the god an ant might imagine.

Notes on Scripture 3

continued from Wednesday

... There is another intuition underlying this most fundamental one. This is the sense that God is more interested in who we are--our motivations and intentions--than even in what we believe or what we do. This is a theme we find in various places in the Bible. In 1 Samuel, when God is telling Samuel who will replace Saul as king, Samuel is tempted to look at outward characteristics. But the Lord informs Samuel that "the Lord does not see as mortals see; they look on the outward appearance, but the Lord looks on the heart" (1 Sam. 16:7). David is thus remembered as being a man after God's "heart." [1]

In the New Testament, Jesus in Mark connects the root of defilement to the heart, not to matters external (e.g., Mark 7:21). In Romans 14:23, Paul conceptualizes sin in terms of a person's faith and how actions play out someone's fundamental intentions (Rom. 14:23). The book of James draws a distinction between temptation itself and a point of decision when temptation "conceives" (Jas. 1:15).

If these are the right priorities, then perhaps God most importantly uses the Bible in a more profound way than simply informing us about cognitive truths or giving us answers to our questions. God may use the Bible to form and transform us, to shape us into Christ-like people and godly communities of faith. Many read Scripture with this spiritual intuition without even thinking about it, reading Scripture with an openness to God, letting him shape them to be more like Christ.

4. How do you prepare to read the Bible in this way? Clearly an expectation is involved, a reason for reading in the first place. Am I reading Scripture to master it and its content, or am I reading it with an openness to the Holy Spirit to change and transform me? [2] In particular, am I reading Scripture with an eagerness for God to empower me to love him and my neighbor more?

Clearly submission is involved. Am I completely surrendered to God and to his will? Not only am I willing to be what he wants me to be? Am I eager for him to change me? Am I eager to be his servant in this world, not as a burden but as a delight?

John Wesley spoke of putting ourselves in a place where we are more likely to experience God's grace by praying, reading Scripture, and participating in worship, to mention just a few "means of grace." [3] If we worship with the community of faith regularly, if we read Scripture and pray regularly, we are more likely to experience God's hand on us than if we hardly give him a thought. The "method" of reading Scripture, in this regard, is simply to read it with an openness to what God might do in us.

To be sure, this sort of experiential approach to Scripture has its dangers. Countless people will have intuitions that are not at all from God. Some have been enculturated to read the Bible for hidden truths and the answers to questions God may or may not have actually tried to answer on the scrolls of the Bible. As far as groups of Christians are concerned, who decides what God is really saying?

God knows the difference to be sure. God knows who is really hearing and experiencing him. God knows who is using the Bible to gain power over others or who is just nuts. But it would be helpful for us to know as well. Do we just trust the leaders of our church or the majority vote of our denomination? History makes it clear that these bodies are often wrong. Do we trust whoever the latest "prophet" is, the one to whom everyone seems to be listening?

Our criteria help us. Anyone who is using the Bible as an instrument of hate toward others is not speaking for God, even if he or she invokes the name of justice. Anyone who tries to use the supposed "love of God" to justify the harm or hurt of others is simply hiding an ungodly heart behind pious-sounding words. But it would help if there were some reliable way of knowing when God was speaking/acting and when he was not.

Contextual Meaning
We are beginning to uncover some of the deeper issues that lie below the surface in our reading of the Bible...

[1] Acts 13:22, referring to 1 Sam. 13:14.

[2] The first chapter of Joel Green, Seized by Truth (Nashville: Abingdon, 2007), does a good job of presenting the difference between reading the Bible to dissect or analyze it and reading the Bible to undergo God's action in us.

[3] Wesley's sermon, "The Means of Grace."