The Upper Register Blog

My webhosting company, Globat, was down for about 14 hours today. Even their own website was down. From what I read on the blogs, they had to replace a router. They’re finally up again. I had no problems with Globat when I first joined them, but lately their service has been terrible and I’m thinking about looking elsewhere.  What attracted me to Globat in the first place was the huge amounts of diskspace and transfer at very reasonable rates. Due to the heavy traffic on my MP3’s I need a lot of transfer bandwith. My site typically gets 15-30 GB worth of downloads, 70,000 hits, and 13,000 visits per month. I would want to have plenty of extra room beyond that so as not to reach the ceiling and get dinged with costly overages. Currently I luxuriate on Globat’s Terabyte program and never come close to reaching my limits. Any suggestions for reliable hosting, with oodles of diskspace and transfer, at reasonable rates?

In Christ alone my hope is found;
He is my light, my strength, my song;
This cornerstone, this solid ground,
Firm through the fiercest drought and storm.
What heights of love, what depths of peace,
When fears are stilled, when strivings cease!
My comforter, my all in all—
Here in the love of Christ I stand.

In Christ alone, Who took on flesh,
Fullness of God in helpless babe!
This gift of love and righteousness,
Scorned by the ones He came to save.
Till on that cross as Jesus died,
The wrath of God was satisfied;
For ev’ry sin on Him was laid—
Here in the death of Christ I live.

There in the ground His body lay,
Light of the world by darkness slain;
Then bursting forth in glorious day,
Up from the grave He rose again!
And as He stands in victory,
Sin’s curse has lost its grip on me;
For I am His and He is mine—
Bought with the precious blood of Christ.

No guilt in life, no fear in death—
This is the pow’r of Christ in me;
From life’s first cry to final breath,
Jesus commands my destiny.
No pow’r of hell, no scheme of man,
Can ever pluck me from His hand;
Till He returns or calls me home—
Here in the pow’r of Christ I’ll stand.

“In Christ Alone”
Words and Music by Keith Getty & Stuart Townend
Copyright © 2001 Kingsway Thankyou Music

HT: Celucien L. Joseph (link includes YouTube music video)

I just finished listening to the lectures on the History of Ancient Rome offered by the Teaching Company. The instructor is an Irishman who teaches at Penn State. There are 48 30-minute lectures covering the founding of Rome in the 8th century BC down to the Roman Republic, the unraveling of the Republic in the Roman Revolution, the establishment of the principate under Octavian (Augustus), and continuing to the well-known first century emperors Tiberius (who was reigning during Jesus’ earthly ministry), Caligula, Claudius and Nero, the infamous Diocletian persecution, the conversion of Constantine, the division the empire into west and east, and the Germanic invasions that contributed to the fall of the western half of the empire in the 5th century AD.

Some dramatic highlights include the following: 

• Horatius at the bridge
• Hannibal crossing the Alps
• Caesar assassinated before a statue of his archrival Pompey
• Doomed lovers Antony and Cleopatra
• Mad and venal emperors Nero and Caligula

In addition to his delightful way of telling the story, so filled with intense drama and fascinating strong personalities, Professor Fagan also provides helpful context concerning the evolving social characteristics of Roman society. I highly recommend this series for all who are interested in gaining a better understanding of the historical context of the New Testament and early Christianity.

Since I have a long commute for work every day (minimum of 1 hour each way), lectures like these help to pass the time more profitably.

Seyoon Kim, one of my New Testament professors at Fuller, has written a helpful defense of penal substitution.

The spirit of the Enlightenment has led many liberal theologians to reject the penal substitutionary understanding of Christ’s atonement. Recently some feminists and “postcolonial” writers have heightened their criticism of it, and some fainthearted evangelicals have joined them. These objectors argue that the conceptions of God’s wrath and its propitiation are unworthy of our biblical God and even immoral.

Readers should be aware that one of Kim’s unspoken interlocutors is Joel Green (formerly of Asbury, now at Fuller) who downplays penal substitution by appealing to the “multiple” theories of atonement allegedly found in the New Testament (see Green’s “kaleidescopic view” in The Nature of the Atonement). Kim brings some helpful conceptual clarity to this issue by distinguishing between atonement theories per se and the fruits of the atonement:

Those who dislike the penal substitutionary atonement theory typically point to the multiple atonement theories in the NT … Some Anglophone writers use the concept of “atonement” loosely so as to include justification, reconciliation, redemption, etc. as well as expiation/propitiation, and claim these as representing the multiple theories … However, justification, reconciliation, and redemption represent not separate atonement theories, but the fruits of the atonement: on the basis of Christ’s expiatory/propitiatory sacrifice sinners are justified (acquitted of sins and restored to the right relationship to God), reconciled to God, and redeemed from the evil forces (sin, the flesh, the devil, and death), when they appropriate atonement by faith. Therefore these divine actions are not unrelated to the atonement understood in terms of penal substitution.

Kim also goes on to argue that the Christus Victor theory of the atonement, made famous by Gustaf Aulen and more recently making a come-back among pacifist theologians, must not be played off against penal substitution but is rather coordinated with it. Since sin is submission to the devil’s rule, Christ’s taking our place in receiving the judgment due to us for sin constitutes our deliverance from the power of the devil:

But the NT allows us to play off neither the “Christus victor” theory nor the “revelation” theory of the atonement against the penal substitutionary theory. For these three theories not only coexist but are often coordin-ated with one another … If sin is transgression of God’s rule, it is submission to the devil’s rule. Therefore, Christ’s atonement for sin through which we are restored to the rightful reign of God is an event of his overcoming Satan and rescuing us from Satan’s grip … Those who ignore this NT teaching and try to uphold the Christus victor theory of the atonement at the exclusion of the penal substitutionary theory run the risk of falling into a mere shamanistic soteriology (“spiritual warfare”) or a mere political soteriology (liberation from an imperial and despotic Caesar).

The reference to “shamanistic soteriology (’spiritual warfare’)” is probably an allusion to Gregory Boyd, and ”political soteriology (liberation from an imperial and despostic Caesar)” is probably an allusion to N. T. Wright’s Paul and Empire hobby horse (to which Seyoon Kim is devoting a book, Christ and Caesar, forthcoming from Eerdmans).

An additional note: the section of Kim’s article, “Is There Any Basis in the Historical Jesus?” is really important. In it, Kim appeals to the work of German scholars like Heinz Schürmann (a little-known Roman Catholic NT scholar, 1913-1999), Martin Hengel, and Peter Stuhlmacher to argue that the penal substitionary teaching of Paul goes back to Jesus himself - especially the passion announcements, the Last Supper traditions, and the Mark 10:45 lutron saying. The authenticity of all of these Jesus traditions is highly debated among critical scholars, but Kim does a good job (relying primarily on Schürmann’s work) making the case for authenticity and then using this as a spring-board to connect up with Paul’s theology of penal substitution. This is very important stuff and it needs to become more widely publicized. I was blessed to be able to take a Ph.D. seminar with Kim in the Winter of 2006 titled “Jesus and Paul” in which we delved into these issues in depth.

This whole area of showing the continuity between Jesus and Paul may be Kim’s greatest contribution to New Testament theology. He plans to publish a book on the subject, and when it finally appears it is sure to become his magnum opus. If you want to get a foretaste, see his article, “Jesus, Sayings of,” in the The Dictionary of Paul and His Letters (IVP, 1993), republished as chapter 8, “The Jesus Tradition in Paul,” in Paul and the New Perspective (Eerdmans, 2001).

I admire Seyoon Kim’s courage in defending the traditional Reformation and evangelical understanding of the atonement in the face of the current onslaught that is coming against it, not only from the liberals but increasingly even from so-called evangelicals.

HT: In Light of the Gospel

For those of you following my annual Greek New Testament program, I’ve uploaded some new documents:

Read-Greek Calendar 2008
Greek Syntax Notes: Matthew (booklet)
Greek Syntax Notes: Mark (booklet)

In addition, you may apply to join the Read-Greek Google Group. For the rules, see this post.

Enjoy!

C. S. Lewis explains the relationship between prayer and the Trinity: 

An ordinary simple Christian kneels down to say his prayers. He is trying to get into touch with God. But if he is a Christian he knows that what is prompting him to pray is also God: God, so to speak, inside him. But he also knows that all his real knowledge of God comes through Christ, the man who was God – that Christ is standing beside him, helping him to pray, praying for him. You see what is happening. God is the thing to which he is praying – the goal he is trying to reach. God is also the thing inside him which is pushing him on – the motive power. God is also the road or bridge along which he is being pushed to that goal. So that the whole threefold life of the three-personal Being is actually going on in that ordinary little bedroom where an ordinary man is saying his prayers …

And that is how Theology started. People already knew about God in a vague way. Then came a man who claimed to be God; and yet he was not the sort of man you could dismiss as a lunatic. He made them believe Him. They met Him again after they had seen Him killed. And then, after they had been formed into a little society or community, they found God somehow inside them as well: directing them, making them able to do things they could not do before. And when they worked it all out they found they had arrived at the Christian definition of the three-personal God.

This definition is not something we have made up; Theology is, in sense, experimental knowledge.

[C. S. Lewis, Mere Christianity (revised edition; Collier/Macmillan, 1952, 1960), pp. 142-3]

What is the testimony of the Spirit that Paul refers to in Romans 8:15-16? The text reads:  “For you have not received a spirit of slavery leading to fear again, but you have received a Spirit of adoption as sons by which we cry out, ‘Abba! Father!’ The Spirit himself testifies with our spirit that we are children of God.”

Some have thought that the testimony of the Holy Spirit is an inward immediate suggestion, as though God inwardly speaks to us, and testifies that we are his children, by a secret voice or impression. Jonathan Edwards takes a different approach:

We have received … a spirit of love, which naturally disposes us to God as children to a father, and behave towards God as children … The spirit of bondage works by fear for slaves fear the rod: but love cries, Abba, Father; it disposes us to go to God, and behave ourselves towards God as children; and it gives us clear evidence of our union to God as His children, and so casts out fear. So that it appears that the witness of the Spirit the apostle speaks of, is far from being any whisper, or immediate suggestion or revelation; but that gracious holy effect of the Spirit of God in the hearts of the saints, the disposition and temper of children, appearing in sweet childlike love to God, which casts out fear or a spirit of a slave.

[Jonathan Edwards, The Religious Affections (Banner of Truth, 1984), pp. 163-4.]

A reader writes:

Lee, thanks for your latest postings on prayer. They’re starting to revolutionize my view and attitude and habits on prayer. I used to feel a pang of guilt or just avoid addressing God during a driving commute, or any other time besides a set, distraction-free prayer time. If prayer is a reverent reserved time, we certainly can’t talk to God when other distractions and things are going on, why would he bother to even hear us if we are not first removing ourselves from the daily distractions of life? (Is that thinking an implicit denial of the sufficiency of the righteousness of Christ alone to be the basis for our prayers being heard?)

But if those set times for formal prayer don’t work out, well then my prayer life is essentially in shambles. That heaps guilt upon guilt which then leads to the danger of getting back into prayer for the sake of prayer (”It’s something Christians are supposed to do”).

Mixing the formal prayers with the idea of constant promptings from the Spirit throughout the day and throughout our experiences, that really changes things for me. I can see the wisdom in exercising this constant conscious reliance upon Christ and communicating about everything, whatever makes one anxious, as a solid means for spiritual growth.

I wouldn’t go as far as saying that anything less is an implicit denial of the sufficiency of Christ’s righteousness. But this reader is on to something that I hadn’t thought of. Perhaps we could put it this way: once we realize that Christ’s righteousness is sufficient to make our weak and distracted prayers acceptable, then we become less constrained in prayer. We won’t be afraid to address our confused anxieties to the Lord, even if we can’t articulate them as we would like (”groanings too deep for words,” Rom 8:26). We won’t be afraid to pray, even if we know we’ll get distracted. We can pray liberally, at any time, at any place, and in any state of mind. Why? Because our weak prayers are made mighty by the intercession of Christ for us.

The great Southern Presbyterian theologian, Robert Lewis Dabney (1820-1898), described prayer as the Christian’s vital breath. Just as you don’t need to be told to breathe, so you don’t need to be commanded to pray. Even when you are not fully conscious of it, if you are regenerate, if the Spirit of Christ dwells in you, you have ”irrepressible promptings” to talk to your heavenly Father. 

Prayer is the vital breath of religion in the soul. It cultivates our sense of dependence and of God’s sovereignty. By confessing our sins, the sense of sin is deepened. By rendering thanks, gratitude is enlivened. By adoring the divine perfections, we are changed into the same image, from glory to glory. From all this it is apparent that prayer is the Christian’s vital breath. If God had not required it, the Christian would be compelled to offer it by his own irrepressible promptings. If he were taught to believe that it was not only useless, but wrong, he would doubtless offer it in his heart in spite of himself, even though he were obliged to accompany it with a petition that God would forgive the offering. To have no prayer is, for man, to have no religion.

[Robert L. Dabney, Systematic Theology, p. 716]

The great danger is to turn the duty of prayer into a law that leaves you feeling guilty for your lack of prayer. The paradox of law-based motivations to godliness is that the more guilty you feel, the less you will do what you know you ought to do. And the more you fail, the more guilty you feel. It is the never-ending spiral of law-sin-guilt from which one cannot be extricated apart from the gospel.   

So try something new. Follow Dabney’s encouragement and think of prayer as something that you already do without realizing it. Or, perhaps more accurately, as something that your regenerate heart wants to do, if only you would capitalize on those irrepressible promptings from the Spirit and turn them into conscious prayers. Instead of thinking of prayer as something arduous and requiring tremendous amounts of discipline and effort, see it as something easy. As soon as the thought, “I should pray about this,” pops into your heard, do it right then and there. Just talk to the Lord, even if for the briefest moment, even for a second or two (what I call “arrow prayers”).

Even when you have sunk into a pit of spiritual emptiness, where even the thought of trying to crawl out makes you feel exhausted and hopeless, the irrepressible promptings of the Spirit are there, perhaps nothing more than the simple, abject cry, “Lord, help me!” It is not really the case that we are prayerless. It is just that we have such an exalted conception of prayer that we have overlooked the many prayers that we have despised as unworthy of the name of prayer.