Making choices
A real mess and mix of emotions in preparing to preach on Sunday last week...
...excitement, even exhilaration, at digging into Romans and getting the excuse to read some stuff in depth that's arrived on my shelves since I last approached the letter - especially some typically lively and stimulating Tom Wright (Bishop of Durham and one of the foremost biblical scholars writing today),
...but also a growing sense of what can only be described as foreboding as it dawned on me just what an enormous mouthful I'd bitten off to chew in twenty minutes flat!
The problem is that you just can't preach Romans 3:21-26 in isolation. That's true of all scripture, of course (the old saying "A text without a context becomes a pretext" is spot-on here), but peculiarly true of a paragraph so dense in theologically rich terms ("justified", "righteousness") and that connects so thoroughly into the big story of the Old Testament people of God.
There's a controversy surround the interpretation of the big themes and ideas of Paul's letter that's becoming increasingly bad-tempered and is, sadly, between people that I've always looked up to, read with appreciation and identified with: the likes of Don Carson, John Piper on one side and Tom Wright (amongst others) on the other.
Here isn't the place to try and unpack the argument - and I'm hardly the expert to turn to if that's your thing - but it does put the week-by-week preacher in a tough position. It's hard enough to find the time and head/heart-space in a given week to understand scripture, listen to God and prepare something that nourishes and encourages, without having first to wade through books of finely balanced argument before you can even get going...
But that's life - and in the end, the result of the extra reading and thinking is being forced to think more carefully and deeply about things one might have taken for granted before.
For myself, I think Tom Wright's take on Romans is incredibly helpful and fruitful - though whether it bore fruit in my sermon on Sunday is for others to judge! - and connects Paul's Good News about Jesus with the whole sweep of the Bible's story of God loving and rescuing the created order and humanity.
Interested in taking things further?
I promised on Sunday some links you could follow if you'd like to read more about Romans, perhaps working your way through it during Lent...
My first suggestion is to go to Tom Wright's pair of paperbacks aimed at all Christians - part of his New Testament for Everyone series:
They are arranged such that the Bible's text (in his own, very readable and accurate translation) is set in manageable chunks followed by just 3 or 4 pages of beautifully crafted comment (mini-sermons effectively) from Bishop Tom. Wonderful stuff, very well applied to life and never pulling punches on the big issues.You can even read a sample before you buy on Amazon.
If you're intrigued by the debate I mentioned earlier, you could do much worse than go to Wright's latest book called, simply, Justification - it's a tour de force in making a case - not entirely without flashes of temper, but he's been pretty well villified by fellow Christians for his approach. It's a very readable book aimed at those who know their Bibles pretty well and want to dig in deeply into the heart of what makes the Gospel good news. If you want to read up the other side of the debate, John Piper's book on Wright is easy to dig out on Amazon too.
Over the next few days, I'm going to take a shot at writing up a few of my notes from the past week about some of the big ideas we touched on so briefly in the sermon itself...
A real mess and mix of emotions in preparing to preach on Sunday last week......excitement, even exhilaration, at digging into Romans and getting the excuse to read some stuff in depth that's arrived on my shelves since I last approached the letter - especially some typically lively and stimulating Tom Wright (Bishop of Durham and one of the foremost biblical scholars writing today),
...but also a growing sense of what can only be described as foreboding as it dawned on me just what an enormous mouthful I'd bitten off to chew in twenty minutes flat!
The problem is that you just can't preach Romans 3:21-26 in isolation. That's true of all scripture, of course (the old saying "A text without a context becomes a pretext" is spot-on here), but peculiarly true of a paragraph so dense in theologically rich terms ("justified", "righteousness") and that connects so thoroughly into the big story of the Old Testament people of God.
There's a controversy surround the interpretation of the big themes and ideas of Paul's letter that's becoming increasingly bad-tempered and is, sadly, between people that I've always looked up to, read with appreciation and identified with: the likes of Don Carson, John Piper on one side and Tom Wright (amongst others) on the other.
Here isn't the place to try and unpack the argument - and I'm hardly the expert to turn to if that's your thing - but it does put the week-by-week preacher in a tough position. It's hard enough to find the time and head/heart-space in a given week to understand scripture, listen to God and prepare something that nourishes and encourages, without having first to wade through books of finely balanced argument before you can even get going...
But that's life - and in the end, the result of the extra reading and thinking is being forced to think more carefully and deeply about things one might have taken for granted before.
For myself, I think Tom Wright's take on Romans is incredibly helpful and fruitful - though whether it bore fruit in my sermon on Sunday is for others to judge! - and connects Paul's Good News about Jesus with the whole sweep of the Bible's story of God loving and rescuing the created order and humanity.
Interested in taking things further?
I promised on Sunday some links you could follow if you'd like to read more about Romans, perhaps working your way through it during Lent...
My first suggestion is to go to Tom Wright's pair of paperbacks aimed at all Christians - part of his New Testament for Everyone series:They are arranged such that the Bible's text (in his own, very readable and accurate translation) is set in manageable chunks followed by just 3 or 4 pages of beautifully crafted comment (mini-sermons effectively) from Bishop Tom. Wonderful stuff, very well applied to life and never pulling punches on the big issues.You can even read a sample before you buy on Amazon.
If you're intrigued by the debate I mentioned earlier, you could do much worse than go to Wright's latest book called, simply, Justification - it's a tour de force in making a case - not entirely without flashes of temper, but he's been pretty well villified by fellow Christians for his approach. It's a very readable book aimed at those who know their Bibles pretty well and want to dig in deeply into the heart of what makes the Gospel good news. If you want to read up the other side of the debate, John Piper's book on Wright is easy to dig out on Amazon too.
Over the next few days, I'm going to take a shot at writing up a few of my notes from the past week about some of the big ideas we touched on so briefly in the sermon itself...
Something that struck me as odd (i.e. I didn't understand) but that's stayed with me since was a comment of N.T.Wright at last year's worship central event (which was very inspiring), that the "Reformers should have started with Ephesians rather than the Romans". It totally shot past my head at the time - but I sense this is the 'prod' to understand it at last... Will have a read...
Very interesting comment - did he expand on the Ephesians comment at all - i.e. why Ephesians rather than anything else?
Let me know what you think as you read...
The reassuring thing is that even Peter had problems understanding Paul. I think it's important trying to get to grips with this sort of thing, but we've lost the plot if we start getting bad tempered with people who have a different understanding, as you point out. For most of us, the issue is putting into practice at least some of what we've been taught. Even the practise of a small proportion of what we know is enough to change the world - the rest is just icing on the cake.
How true Jamie; the temper thing. Britain today has become pretty intolerant of difference. The old dogmatic debates of the church were appropriated as a politically correct and distorted kind of morality by the secular world, which adopted a pick n mix approach; and those who disagree with the prevailing PC line are villified. I dare not mention the word Golliwog. Will the thought police, never mind the real police, turn up on my doorstep tomorrow? Now we seem to have re-imported that kind of secular villification into the church debates. We see it in the debates about women priests and homosexuality; now regarding doctrinal issues. It's all nonsense of course. We all get upset if other people don't like our point of view. It's like capitalists saying they like competition, do they heck. Why else, in a discussion, do I find it so hard to change my position? Scientists are just the same in defence of their position. How can they possibly allow the notion that a lifetime's study will prove to have been founded on an incorrect foundation? Is it okay to have a bit of temper a la Jesus when throwing out the traders in the temple - wasn't that okay because it was "wrong"? Was it Voltaire who disagreed with everything somebody said but maintained that he would die to defend his right to say it?
Going back to the meat of your blog Richard. I'm reading Stott's the Cross of Christ (first time it was very hard; this time a delight). He's helped me to see why it matters so much what we believe. Especially on subjects that I've not bothered with very much (justification, propitation etc) and that's because I don't like talking to experts who won't or can't talk English. (Quantative easing? Printing money is so much easier). Why does it matter? Partly because it may be possible to discern what is true and it's always good to know the truth from an intellectual point of view (oh, that's why). Partly and more importantly because it's the truth, the reality, that enables me to grow. I guess it's like knowing the difference between solid soot and caviar. One is better for me than the other.
(I'm new to bloggery; my family is shouting in the background "stop!" you don't even go the the church! If there is an etiquette that I'm breaking by writing all over the place, my apologies.)
The whole issue of tolerating differences of opinion is a particularly tricky one for me and certainly one I haven't yet landed (to use a current Civil Service buzz word). It's hard to marry up how far you continue to challenge someone's opinions that you believe are wholly damaging and indeed that you believe to be wholly in contradiction with what Jesus would have done. One to continue to struggle with and pray on I feel.