Bible, Theology & Philosophy

When answering theological questions, one of the thorniest problems that we face is deciding what counts as evidence. To be sure, we affirm the absolute authority and sufficiency of the Scriptures and, in the case of questions about the church, the finality of the New Testament in all matters of faith and order. Simply believing in the Bible’s authority and sufficiency, however, does not tell us how the text ought to be brought to bear upon our questions.

One very common way of using the Bible is to look for examples of the kind of thing that we are asking about. These examples are then treated as permanently binding. Theological literature abounds with references to the examples or even the “uniform pattern” of Scripture.

The argument is a weak one. Scripture contains examples of all sorts of things, some good and some bad. The mere fact that someone did something is no indication that God wants that thing to be done by others at another time. Even when the example is viewed positively in the text, it may be an isolated instance. One would not appeal to Abraham’s treatment of Isaac in Genesis 22 as a universal pattern for relationships between fathers and sons.

An “is” never constitutes an “ought.” Sound theological method draws a sharp distinction between historical narrative and didactic requirement.

This distinction does not render the examples of Scripture irrelevant. When the Bible communicates a didactic principle, then we may legitimately observe the examples in the text to see how the principle looks in practice. By studying the examples we may also discover something about the rewards of obedience or the consequences of disobedience. By themselves, however, the examples of Scripture are not binding. Historical narrative always needs to be interpreted and applied by didactic discourse.

Republished with permission from Dr. Reluctant. In this series, Dr. Henebury responds to a collection of criticisms of dispensationalism entitled “95 Theses against Dispensationalism” written by a group called “The Nicene Council.” Read the series so far.

For the first time in eight years I am not the president of Central Baptist Theological Seminary. Early last November I initiated a process of transition that came to completion at midnight on June 30.

Why leave the presidency? I have both positive and negative reasons. I shall mention just two.

On the positive side, I have for some time experienced an increasing concern for a different area of ministry. My training and gifts are more academic and literary than they are organizational and political. While both kinds of gifts and functions are important, the community that I serve (Baptist fundamentalism) has a far fewer number of writers than it has politicians.

This imbalance has resulted in a network of individuals, churches, and institutions that has been much more effective at perpetuating (and sometimes enforcing) loyalty to slogans, organizations, and leaders than it has been at explaining ideas and working through their implications. Flaccid thinking has led, first, to a very tenuous grasp of core principles and, secondarily, to an increasing inability to apply those principles to new and changing circumstances. This is the situation that I most wish to address, and I have slowly become convinced that I cannot address it effectively from the position of president.

When I accepted the presidency of Central Seminary, I entertained rather a facile notion of how the position would function. In my naivety, I thought of a seminary president as a senior faculty member, an institutional coordinator, and a theological anchor. I believed that I had seen this model exemplified in presidents like Rolland McCune and Douglas McLachlan. During and since the era of their presidential service, however, the expectations and official functions of a seminary president have changed.

Speakers and writers like words. Sometimes they are utterly fascinated by them, as they are with the words “freedom,” “change” or “networking” in our day. Sometimes when a group of people is talking about a particular subject, one person’s name comes up again and again. Since most of what is said about the person is from sources second or third hand, you have the choice of adopting the views of others or you can find out about the person for yourself. Consider a word “vote” as the person. Consider the subject to be church authority, and you have the idea. People concerned about church order often talk about the word “vote,” then look for it in the Bible (or for it not to be in the Bible, as the case may be).

You will not find the word “vote” itself in the English Bible. You will, however, find its synonym, “elect,” many times over. A direct usage of this word in a passage on church order is found in Acts 6:5. The congregation of Christians in Jerusalem chose or “elected” seven men for a new ministry. The Greek word used is eklego, the same word used to depict God’s election of the redeemed. But eklego was not the standard word for voting used in the Greek-speaking world of the New Testament times. The standard word was cheirotoneo, a word that was full of political overtones (and a really clumsy word today, to those who don’t know Greek!). Cheirotoneo is used exactly two times in the New Testament: in Acts 14:23 and in 2 Corinthians 8:19. Perhaps this should tell us something about church order and church decision-making in pages of the New Testament. Evidently it wasn’t all that important for the New Testament writers or for God what method believers used to make group decisions. The Bible does not codify procedure for the meetings of missionaries, elders, deacons, deaconesses, cell-groups, funeral crews, or congregations. To the delight of everyone except those of us writing about church order, the Bible is blissfully un-byzantine.

Where do you stand on the gift of tongues? Many committed Christians believe one of two views, cessationism or continuationism. Others aren’t exactly sure what to believe about this oft-debated gift. Is there a way to bring the two views together while at the same time explaining New Testament tongues simply and convincingly? I believe there is, and to get there all we need is take a fresh look at the gift as described in 1 Corinthians 14.

Republished with permission. Originally appeared in Think on These Things, (Oct/Nov, 2010).

When Steve Chalk and Brian McLaren accused evangelicals who believed in the substitutionary death of Christ of embracing a form of Divine child abuse,¹ Christians everywhere did a double-take. Having sung with gusto for years that great line penned by Charles Wesley, “Amazing love, how can it be that Thou my God shouldst die for me” Christians could not believe that they were being accused of promoting child abuse by men who claimed to be at least on the fringes of the evangelical community. What McLaren and Chalk had done was bring to the surface for all to see the long-standing debate by theologians about the meaning of the cross. Almost no one in Christian circles doubts the historicity of the crucifixion, but why Christ died has long been contested. Of late, due to the rising popularity of everything from the Emergent Church to the Ancient-Future Faith movement to the New Perspective on Paul, the significance of Christ’s cross-work, often called the atonement, has regained traction. In particular what has often been called “penal substitution,” that the Son, “suffer[ed] instead of us the death, punishment and curse due to fallen humanity as the penalty for sin” has come under intense attack.² It is the purpose of this study to identify the various views held by Christians on the atonement, analyze briefly the three major theories, and then develop a biblical defense for penal substitution as the central meaning and purpose behind the cross.