The God of love (3): Impassibility and the possibility of a good law
Thought
We have been turning our attention to the question of whether God is impassible—that is, that God is in no way affected by the creatures he has made, and cannot die or suffer. Last time around, we explored how impassibility was a key element in the early Christian understanding of creation—that God made everything from nothing, and did so as a free choice out of pure goodness. This time around, we turn our attention to God’s law. (more…)
The God of love (2): Impassibility and the possibility of a loving creator
Thought
(Read part 1.)
We have been looking at the question of whether God is impassible—whether God is ever the object of other people’s actions or only ever the subject of his own—whether he moves others but is never moved by them. As I suggested last time, this often raises the question for people of whether God has emotions—whether God is moved by what happens to us, good or bad. As it seems to us fairly obvious that God has to have emotions to be able to love, the notion that God is impassible is a prime contender for the ‘Most Unbiblical Abstract Philosophizing Award’. We just know that emotions are everything.
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It is not death to die
Life, Sola Panel
I was driving the kids home from school when I saw something you don’t expect on an arterial road heading into a major city. It was a horse-drawn carriage, taking up the left-hand lane, slowing the traffic to a crawl.
Where have all the miracles gone?
Thought
Who would you regard as the more significant influence upon your Christian life and thinking: John Stott or Mark Driscoll?
In Sydney, where I live, nearly everyone over the age of 40 has only one answer to that question: through his books and articles, and his occasional visits over three decades, John Stott shaped a generation of Sydney evangelicals. If we add other names like JI Packer and Dick Lucas, it is uncontroversial to say that English evangelicalism has had a profound influence on the thinking, practice and ‘culture’ of Sydney evangelicalism over the past four decades—much more influence than, say, North American evangelicalism, even including the contributions of men like Billy Graham and Bill Hybels. (more…)
A continuing story: 19th-century Methodists, charismatics and me
Thought, Sola Panel
The Trellis and the Vine (Colin Marshall and Tony Payne)
Resource Talk
The Trellis and the Vine: The ministry mind-shift that changes everything
Colin Marshall and Tony Payne
Matthias Media, Kingsford, 2009. 196pp.
Naked God
Review
Paul Grimmond: What’s it been like to write your first book? (more…)
Podcast: Naked God: An interview with Martin Ayers
Audio
Martin Ayers has recently published his first book, ‘Naked God’. Paul Grimmond caught up with him recently to talk about what motivated the book and what it’s like to be an author for the first time (MP3).
The problem with pre-evangelism
Everyday Ministry
I have never really been 100 per cent behind the ‘point of contact’ view of evangelism. Leaving aside the pretty stark dichotomies in the Scriptures (e.g. “what fellowship has light with darkness?”—2 Cor 6:14b), which appear to suggest that there is absolutely no common ground between truth and error, it just seems to be filled with all kinds of problems.
The God of love (1): Star Trek and the impossibility of impassibility
Thought
Spock vs. Data
Star Trek, in all its reincarnations, is a great show. It is so pretentious in its aspirations to say something meaningful and so inane in its working assumptions, that it works as an almost perfect mirror of the values and concerns of the society that existed when it was televised. The highly evolved and civilized Federation of the future almost always reflects the concerns of the slightly left-of-centre-leaning portion of North American society who were the target of the show’s producers. The ‘Federation’ is simply ‘the Democratic Party writ large’. And so the show acts like a great expression of the cultural intuitions of the societies to which we belong and live and minister in. (more…)
God’s sovereignty; human responsibility
Life, Sola Panel
Recently after a sermon on 2 Timothy, we received the follow comment on the topic of election. My answer follows.
Question: You said that God calls all people everywhere to repent and follow him. But we are also taught that only the elect are able to turn back to God. So how, then, are the non-elect culpable for their actions when they are given no opportunity to turn back?
Do we need a bit more suffering?
Life
Here in Mexico, many middle-class people spend a significant amount of time and money reducing suffering and the potential for suffering. I suspect Mexicans are not alone in their engagement of this pursuit. (I’m using ‘suffering’ in a very broad sense here—anything from ‘annoyance’ to ‘effort’ to ‘persecution’.) For example, here in Mexico, you can perform many tasks in ‘drive-thru’ mode to reduce the ‘suffering’ of having to get out of your car and walk. Buying lunch, going to the ATM, buying the paper, buying new windscreen wipers (!) and taking your kids to school are all activities it is possible to undertake in a suffering-free manner.
Apostasy and God’s faithfulness
Thought, Sola Panel
The National Director of the Australian Fellowship of Evangelical Students (AFES), Richard Chin, has begun preaching through 2 Timothy at our church. When he covered chapter 2, we received a couple of questions. I ended up answering them as the pastor here.
Question: 2 Timothy 2:13-14 says, “if we are faithless, he [Christ] remains faithful—for he cannot deny himself”. Can you explain to whom is God faithful?
Ministry-minded ageism?
Life
According to TS Eliot, you know you’re old when you wear the bottoms of your trousers rolled.1 But in Christian circles, it seems, you know you’re old when you start thinking older people haven’t passed their use-by date. It would appear that I’m old, and perhaps that’s why I’m noticing just how much ageism has snuck into our ministry mindset and fellowships.