Jim West was Wrong??????

No, just Zwingli. Which will leave my world rocked for weeks, if not days. I knew Zwingli believed in that dogma, just not that he was also wrong. But I should have known, since the dogma is wrong.

Nevertheless, see Jim West's most offensive post to date: here.

Translation Considerations

The owner of this blog, http://bibleandtech.blogspot.com/, whose name I embarrassingly cannot find posted this gem for helping Greek translators.

It's pretty awesome.

Dallas Willard on Preaching

The missing component in Barth's presentation in question format:

"Does the gospel I preach and teach have a natural tendency to cause people who hear it to become full-time students of Jesus?

Would those who believe it become his apprentices as a natural "next step?"

What can we reasonably expect would result from people actually believing the substance of my message?"

Dallas Willard, The Divine Conspiracy, 59.


And then,

"In the seeking and teaching to be done, we will of course open up ever term-God, Father, Maker-and so on, as carefully and as fully as we can to the disciples. We will use the goldmine of conceptualization in the scriptures for this purpose and the best of human thinking and writing available to us. Of utmost importance, we will take care to do this work in constant interplay with the rest of the education that we have received or are receiving at the time." Conspiracy, 328

Willard's idea is that we need not only to explain the Biblical data, but also to explain the gospel in a way that impinges upon the lives of those who hear it. So, though Karl Barth is right, preaching, to be divine, must be direct explanation of the text of Scripture, it must also be done for the purpose the Bible was written, to witness to Jesus Christ. And the witness of the Bible is that he wants disciples. 

Topics of Importance

Certain things are important for seminary students. Reading the Church Dogmatics or Baxter's Directory is important.  

Some even say life changing.

Even more important is reading through the Greek New Testament. I would wager that the Church Dogmatics takes about the amount of time to read as it does to learn Greek, use tools, and read the GNT.

Even more important for folks disinclined to do any of these things is reading your English Bible, and simply doing something Jesus said.

Karl Barth on Preaching

Why everybody quotes this guy befuddles me. I've enjoyed everything he has written, but I feel like most bloggers that quote him rarely preach or actually teach the Bible. That is probably why they quote the most convoluted of his arguments about this or that ontic structure of European thought. Oh well, one day people will read his book on preaching and actually try it out:

 "If the preacher sets himself to expound a particular idea, in some form or another-even if the idea is derived from a serious and well-informed exegesis-then the Scripture is not allowed to speak for itself; the preacher is discoursing on it. To put it more positively preaching should be an explanation of Scripture; the preacher does not have to speak 'on' but 'from' (ex), drawing from the Scriptures whatever he says. He does not have to invent, but rather repeat something. No thesis, no purpose derived from his own resources must be allowed to intervene: God alone must speak...He must follow the special trend of the text, and keep to it wherever it may lead him, not raising questions about a subject which may, as it seems to him, arise from the text." - Karl Barth,  Preaching I.7

That makes sense to me, though I think that Dallas Willard, who I will quote later, is correct that people need to be instructed in various modes of obedience as well, so pure exegesis won't do, but explanation of the life with God in obedience from the Scriptures is necessary. Though Barth briefly touches on this a few pages later, he does not quite explain it well enough.