Tuesday, October 27, 2009

A Steep Ascent

By Tom Petter
Assistant Professor of Old Testament
Last week was pretty busy here on campus. Several hundred people gathered for the conference “Renewing the Evangelical Mission” in honor of David F. Wells who recently retired from teaching at the seminary. Few would question the profound impact Dr. Wells has had upon the Evangelical movement in recent years. This could certainly be seen by the distinguished list of speakers, a literal Who’s Who is current Evangelical Protestant thinking: Mark Noll, Bruce McCormack, Cornelius Plantiga, among others. For me, one particularly gratifying aspect was to note among the conference attendants several of my former fellow Gordon-Conwell students of the 1990’s (I’m sure there were plenty of alums from before my time as well). They are now pastors, professors and/or occupying various positions of leadership in the Body of Christ. Yet, they chose to carve time away from family and busy schedules to come back to Gordon-Conwell to see their teacher and friend. This reminded me that Dr. Wells’ influence has been felt not only in print but also in (and out) of the classroom. Well done good and faithful servant.
A highlight of the conference for me was Dr. Bruce McCormack’s presentation on the atonement. In his own words, he took us on a “steep ascent” into the mysteries of the relationship between the Father and the Son in the atoning death of Christ. I will look forward to digesting some of the specifics of his arguments when the paper comes out in an edited volume. For a more immediate reaction, McCormack’s (professor of Theology at Princeton Theological Seminary) characterization of Protestant identity framed by both the authority of Scripture and forensic justification (the so-called formal and material principles) seems particularly a propos. In the current climate where the Protestant doctrine of justification is being questioned and/or revised (see Jack Davis’s blog on NT Wright’s new book on justification), McCormack’s (and David Wells’) clarion call is a timely reminder for us to rise up and defend that which defines us at the core. My sense is that, we too are on a “steep ascent” of sort as we try to articulate and contextualize these traditional core beliefs for our generation.

Tuesday, October 20, 2009

Paul’s “Opinion” in 1 Corinthians 7:12

By Roy Ciampa, PhD
Associate Professor of New Testament
I have heard it several times before. I just heard it again in a recent Sunday School class I observed. Someone was teaching on the inspiration of Scripture and they suggested, on the basis of 1 Corinthians 7:10, 12 that “Paul differentiates between things said with God’s authority and things said with his.” The verses in question read as follows (according to the ESV):
  • 1 Corinthians 7:10: “To the married I give this charge (not I, but the Lord): the wife should not separate from her husband….“
  • 1 Corinthians 7:12: “To the rest I say (I, not the Lord) that if any brother has a wife who is an unbeliever, and she consents to live with him, he should not divorce her.”
While it is true that Paul clarifies what he can say on the authority of Jesus’ own words and what he says on his own authority, the impression is given, I think, that Paul’s teaching in verse 10 carries divine authority while his teaching in verse 12 is a matter of personal opinion and does not carry divine, but merely human authority. This reflects serious confusion and it perpetuates a theologically misleading and even spiritually dangerous misunderstanding.
In those verses Paul is referring to the fact that in one case (in verse 10) he is drawing on something that Christ himself said about divorce during his ministry with his disciples. Christ’s teaching on divorce was already known in the churches and came to be recorded in all three Synoptic Gospels (Matthew 5:32; 19:9; Mark 10:2-12; Luke 16:18). Explicit reference to Christ’s teaching during his time with his disciples is extremely rare in Paul’s letters, but this is a very widely recognized case of just that. Paul is NOT suggesting that what Christ taught has divine authority and what he teaches does not carry such authority. If that is what he meant we would have to conclude that virtually everything Paul wrote except 1 Corinthians 7:10 would have to be placed under the category of mere human opinion rather than divine authority. Rather than being a case where Paul differentiates between things said with God’s authority and things said with human authority, it is a case where Paul differentiates between things said by Jesus himself during his earthly ministry and things that are spoken with divine authority expressed through apostles (and prophets), the latter being what we find throughout most of Scripture.
To get an idea of the authority that Paul himself thought applied to his teaching we should consider, among other texts, 1 Corinthians 14:37-38 (ESV, emphasis added): “If anyone thinks that he is a prophet, or spiritual, he should acknowledge that the things I am writing to you are a command of the Lord. If anyone does not recognize this, he is not recognized.”
This is not his comment about something Jesus himself taught during his earthly ministry. He is commenting on what he has been sharing as his own (authoritative) view, which is to be recognized as “the command of God”! He makes it clear that what could have been mistaken as one man’s opinion and argument should be understood to carry the divine authority of prophetic speech.
Once the contrast Paul is actually making in 1 Corinthians 7:10, 12 is understood, it becomes clear that he is not distinguishing between levels of authority, but sources of authority. As already suggested above, to imply that verse 10 carries divine authority but that verse 12 does not would lead us to the conclusion that about the only thing Paul ever said with divine authority is what he said in 7:10. I hope that anyone who thinks they are a prophet or spiritually gifted (cf. 1 Corinthians 14:37) will see that that is not a wise road to walk down.

Tuesday, October 6, 2009

The Incarnation and Male Priests as “Icons of Christ”?

By John Jefferson Davis
Professor of Systematic Theology and Christian Ethics

I have recently completed an article titled “Incarnation, Trinity, and the Ordination of Women to the Priesthood,” which follows an earlier article on I Tim.2:12 and Paul’s use of the creation texts in Genesis. In this new article I address the issue of the ordination of women in an Anglican context, and respond to an argument by C.S. Lewis from the nature of the incarnation in which Lewis concludes that the fact that Jesus was incarnate as a male indicates that women can not properly represent the character of God to the congregation.
I argue that Lewis’s argument from the incarnation is not convincing, in that it overlooks the changed nature of the priesthood in the New Covenant, the analogical nature of human language about God, and the divine purpose to assume a human nature, rather than an exclusively male nature (cf. sarx, not aner – in Jn.1:14), for the purpose of redeeming both men and women, who both equally reflect the image of God.
If this is an issue that is of interest to you – and apart from the question of the ordination of women, the discussion raises significant points regarding our understanding of the nature of the incarnation – you can read an excerpt of this article by clicking on this link: [to be uploaded]
The complete article is scheduled for publication in the January 2010 issue of Priscilla Papers.