hey what are your views on female pastors and/or leaders?

For the sake of balance I should have summarized my message on verses 6-8 of Titus 1 also. My sermon was on verses 5-9 and in the sermon the *character* of the elder got much more of the airtime than the teaching of the elder – which is the case in Titus also! So I’m not at all surprised by your corrective, it’s a right and scriptural one.

Paul emphasizes what you’re talking about in verses 6-8 – ministry from the heart, reaching people in the context of relationships which are messy. There we see exactly this kind of incarnation of the truth that we know must accompany its proclamation. In the context of that godliness *then* Paul says ‘hold fast the word of faith according to the teaching’.

So can I be very Anglican and say we’re both right?

;-)

Glen

The prophets did not privately interpret with the Spirit moved them to say. And yet we know Jeremiah sounds completely different and is wholly differently motivated than Isaiah. It sounds to me very much like Paul writing with wisdom given to him as opposed to transcribing.

2Cr 2:4 For out of much affliction and anguish of heart I wrote unto you with many tears; not that ye should be grieved, but that ye might know the love which I have more abundantly unto you.
2Cr 3:3 [Forasmuch as ye are] manifestly declared to be the epistle of Christ ministered by us, written not with ink, but with the Spirit of the living God; not in tables of stone, but in fleshy tables of the heart.

It’s the precision that gets me. Over the years I’ve come to value imprecision much more than I ever did. Christ often ministered by expressing His needs. He wanted water from the Samaritan woman. Relationship is sloppy like that, but we minister to each other from the fleshy tables of our own hearts.

Anyway, I hear your point, am quite blessed by everything you write. Thank you for keeping on. God speed.

Amen, Glen! I know some want to characterize one approach as ‘Pastoral theology’ vs. Systematic . . . but I think this is dangerous, and your points and rants are well taken!

One of the things that’s striking me very much at the moment is the need to walk with Jesus Himself rather than appeal to an intellectual Christ-principle. My theological musings are always prone to wander towards the latter. I need the Scriptures to tie me to *Him* – that Nazarene who did and said *those things* and who remains the same yesterday, today and forever.

Look, now you’ve gotten me ranting too…

good post! I couldn’t agree with you more! In fact I become easily burdened and conflicted with this issue. I read systematic theology, and then I read the Bible, and vice versa; typically what I find in scripture, is not corollary in systematics. I hear people talk about positive theology/Christ-centered, but then when it comes right down to it; so often I wonder if we are really talking about the Jesus of the Bible. There is no sense of His presence, so often, when I hear ‘scholars’ (Christian Evangelical ones, even) explicate a Christ-centered trinitarian theology proper. There is no sense of urgency, apparently. Yet when I read the scriptures, this is exactly what I find. A very relational tone, an intimate dialogue between God and His people.

Anyway I’m ranting, I think your points are spot on . . . and systematicians would do well to heed your voice here. Sola scriptura certainly is not the mantra of modern theology; even though there is a head-nod to it every now and then ;-).

Paul’s a good example because Peter makes a point of highlighting how different his teaching may sound (2 Pet 3:15-16). But at the same time Paul kept making it explicit that he wasn’t ‘going beyond what Moses and the Prophets said would happen’ (Acts 26:22). He was able to set before the other apostles the gospel that he proclaimed (Gal 2:2ff) as a thing to be assessed by them and about which he could claim ‘they added nothing’ (Gal 2:6). In 1 Cor 15, he could summarize his teaching as ‘his gospel’ but still he lays out the concrete details of it and insists that this is the gospel by which you are saved (and none other). In the pastorals we see Paul again and again highlighting *the* teaching (often the healthy teaching) to which Timothy/Titus’s teaching must conform. (a bible search on didache or didaskalia is very useful)

Or think of 2 John 9-10:

“Many deceivers, who do not acknowledge Jesus Christ as coming in the flesh, have gone out into the world. Any such person is the deceiver and the antichrist. atch out that you do not lose what you have worked for, but that you may be rewarded fully. Anyone who runs ahead and does not continue in the teaching of Christ does not have God; whoever continues in the teaching has both the Father and the Son. If anyone comes to you and does not bring this teaching, do not take him into your house or welcome him.”

This doesn’t sound a million miles away from the vial illustration I don’t think?

I think your parallel with inspiration is instructive. You could read the bible’s teaching on inspiration from two perspectives – on the one hand yes everyone speaks in their own style (2 Pet 3:15-16). Yet in the same letter we see 2 Pet 1:20f which, by itself, would give you a kind of ‘straight-down-from-heaven thunderbolt’ view.

Peter knows that people internalize the gospel and that their person is bound up with their writing / proclamation of the word. But he still is able to say ‘they spoke from God as they were carried along by the Holy Spirit.’

Perhaps my next post needs to have a 2 Peter 3 flavour, but I still think it’s ok to give a 2 Peter 1 flavour at times.

Yes? No?

I cannot sign on to this one.

I mean, I with you on not sweetening the gospel, and I’m with you on the purity of God’s sacrifice, but it is not communicated in vials apart from us.

The gospel is injected into us, and it is utterly mixed with who we are. We cannot transmit the cure in any pure form. We can only transmit the antibodies as they have been carried within our own bodies.

It gets down to the controversy around inspiration. Were The Writings inspired by dictation or did the authors contribute their own personalities to the “cure.” I think you’d agree that God used the personalities of the “carriers” in writing the scriptures themselves. So wouldn’t you agree that the teacher of the bible must add to the cure as well?