Chad

Bookmark and Share

Goldsworthy: "The gospel achieves noetic salvation for us through the perfect mind of Christ our Savior."

Chad Bresson : April 4, 2011 5:00 am : The Vossed World
“It stands to reason that, if the fall involved an epistemological disaster, then salvation must include epistemological redemption. Sinful thinking is ‘snake-think’, the kind of noetic rebellion proposed by the serpent in Eden. It is diametrically opposed to the mind renewed by the gospel. The godless presuppositions underlying the temptation and fall in Genesis 3 include the following:​
  1. If God is there, he does not communicate the truth.
  2. We do not need God to reveal the rational framework for understanding reality.
  3. Human reason is autonomous, and the ultimate arbiter of truth and falsity, right and wrong.​
“…This noetic fall must be addressed by the gospel if the salvation of fallen humans is to be complete. The gospel achieves noetic salvation for us through the perfect mind of Christ our Savior. This is part of his righteous make-up as the perfect human being. His is the human mind in perfect relationship with the mind of God. To be justified includes our noetic justification. In this sense all believers have the mind of Christ (1 Cor. 2:16). Our noetic sanctification is the fruit of our justification in Christ. It is the gradual formation within us of what we have in Christ through faith. the renewal of the mind is an ongoing process by which our thinking is conformed more and more to the truth as it is in Jesus.”
​
“…Christ is designated as the ‘wisdom of God’ (1 Corinthians 1:24) and also ‘our wisdom’ (1 Cor. 1:30). He is the difference between the world’s wisdom, which in reality is foolishness, and the wisdom of God, which the world perversely assesses as foolishness. The epistemological framework that corresponds with reality is the gospel itself.” – Graham Goldsworthy, Gospel-Centered Hermeneutics, pp. 60-61

Goldsworthy: "Jesus’ mediatorial role is the guarantee of real communication between God and people"

Chad Bresson : March 21, 2011 1:03 am : The Vossed World
The Derived Presuppositions of Christian Theism​
  1. God has revealed himself as rational, and as communicator, as well as sovereign Lord and Creator
  2. Human beings are rational receivers of God’s communication, because that is how he has made us.
  3. Sin consists in, among other things, a willful refusal of truth and the substitution of human reason as autonomous in the place of God’s self-attesting revelation.
  4. Redemptive revelation and the work of the Holy Spirit are necessary to restore humans to a state where they can receive ultimate, but not exhaustive, truth.
  5. The mediatorial role of Jesus of Nazareth is the guarantee of real communication between God and people. The gospel of Jesus Christ reveals him as the Word of God who is the truth. Jesus as the divine communicator, the saving message and the human receiver demonstrates where the heart of true hermeneutics lies. The gospel is the power of God for salvation, which includes hermeneutical salvation.
“…we must resist all attempts to remove the sovereignty of the Creator-Word from our thinking about meaning and communication. Consistent evangelical hermeneutics must begin with God as he has revealed himself in Jesus Christ.” — Graeme Goldsworthy, Gospel-Centered Hermeneutics, pp. 53-54

Goldsworthy: "Christ interprets all facts"

Chad Bresson : March 20, 2011 1:00 pm : The Vossed World
“(The biblical) story tells of events from creation to new creation in a narrative that takes us throught the fall, the call of Abraham, the Redemption of Israel, the fortunes of the nation and the prophetic promises and expectations for the fulfillment of the original covenant promises.  At the climax of the story is the event of the incarnation of the Christ, his life, death, resurrection and ascension to glory. The purposes of God in this story are expressed in such a way as to show that the destiny of all the peoples of the world and of the whole universe is tied to the work of God in Christ…
​
“If the biblical story is true, Christ is the only savior for humankind and there is room for no other way to God. If the story is true, Jesus Christ is the interpretative key to every fact in the universe and, of course, the Bible is one such fact. He is thus the hermeneutic principle that applies first to the Bible as the ground for understanding, and also to the whole of reality. Interpreting reality correctly is a by-product of salvation. Thus, we must assert that the person and work of Jesus Christ are foundational for evangelical hermeneutics…Christ interprets all facts, since all things were created in him, through him, and for him (Col. 1:16). As the one mediator between God and man (1 Tim. 2:5), Christ mediates the ultimate truth of God about all things and thus about the meaning of the Bible.
​
The principle of Christ alone points us to the soteriological and hermeneutical priority of the gospel of Christ.” – Graeme Goldsworthy, Gospel-centered Hermeneutics, p. 48

Greg Beale on New Testament Biblical Theology – audio

Chad Bresson : March 16, 2011 3:29 am : The Vossed World
Dr. Greg Beale provides an audio preview of his upcoming “New Testament Biblical Theology” to be published by Baker later this year. See 11-2-10 and 11-3-10 from the Sizemore Lectures at Midwestern Baptist Theological Seminary.

Vos on Biblical exegetes and hermeneuticizers: "dependent and receptive"

Chad Bresson : March 16, 2011 3:29 am : The Vossed World

“…The beginning of our Theology consists in the appropriation of that supernatural process by which God has made Himself the object of our knowledge. We are not left to our own choice here, as to where we shall begin our theological study. The very nature of Theology requires us to begin with those branches which relate to the revelation-basis of our science.

“Our attitude from the outset must be a dependent and receptive one. To let the image of God’s self-revelation in the Scriptures mirror itself as fully and clearly as possible in his mind, is the first and most important duty of every theologian.” Biblical Theology, by Geerhardus Vos

Horton: We are in a better position than Moses in redemptive history

Chad Bresson : March 16, 2011 3:29 am : The Vossed World

“​…the communication of divine action (is) divinely authorized analogical discourse within the context of a covenant that plays itself out in a world-historical drama… the sensus plenior relates not only to the biblical writers, for whom the ultimate fulfillment of their prophecies was not necessarily comprehended fully, but to us as contemporary readers.

“We are in a better position than Moses in redemptive history, viewing the future from a higher vista in that progress of salvation, but we are still in a less direct line of sight than those who have passed from the theology of pilgrims to the theology of glorified saints, or those who will be witnesses of ‘the end of the age’.” Michael Horton, Covenant and Eschatology, p. 103

Vos: "In theology… the living God proceeds to impart to this subject that to which of itself it would have no access."

Chad Bresson : March 16, 2011 3:29 am : The Vossed World

“Theology is not merely distinguished from the other sciences by its object, but that it also sustains an altogether unique relation to this object, for which no strict analogy can be found elsewhere. In all the other sciences man is the one who of himself takes the first step in approaching the objective world, in subjecting it to his scrutiny, in compelling it to submit to his experiments — in a word, man is the one who proceeds actively to make nature reveal her facts and her laws.


“In Theology this relation between the subject and object is reversed. Here it is God who takes the first step to approach man for the purpose of disclosing His nature, nay, who creates man in order that He may have a finite mind able to receive the knowledge of His infinite perfections. In Theology the object, far from being passive, by the act of creation first posits the subject over against itself, and then as the living God proceeds to impart to this subject that to which of itself it would have no access.


“For ‘the things of God none knoweth, save the Spirit of God.’ Strictly speaking, therefore, we should say that not God in and for Himself, but God in so far as He has revealed Himself, is the object of Theology.” — Geerhardus Vos, Inaugural Address

Vos: "In his sinful condition…man… is absolutely dependent on the self-disclosure of God"

Chad Bresson : March 16, 2011 3:29 am : The Vossed World
“In his sinful condition, while retaining some knowledge of God, man for all pure and adequate information in divine things is absolutely dependent on that new self-disclosure of God which we call supernatural revelation. 
1. By the new birth and the illumination of the mind darkened through sin, a new subject is created.
2. By the objective self-manifestation of God as the Redeemer, a new order of things is called into being.
3. And by the depositing of the truth concerning this new order of things in the Holy Scriptures, the human mind is enabled to obtain that new knowledge which is but the reflection in the regenerate consciousness of an objective world of divine acts and words.” — Geerhardus Vos, Inaugural Address, The Idea of Biblical Theology as a Science and as a Theological Discipline

Vos: "In the resurrection, therefore, we have the assurance that we ourselves also shall be made fit in our entire nature for our habitation in heaven."

Chad Bresson : March 16, 2011 3:29 am : The Vossed World
“Ours is a religion whose center of gravity lies beyond the grave in the world to come… the gospel is primarily intended to prepare man for a future life and that consequently neither its true nature can be understood nor its full glory appreciated unless it be placed in the light of eternity…Christianity does many things for the present life, but if we wish to apprehend how much it can do, we must direct our gaze to the life beyond.
“…the Christian’s main thinking and feeling and striving revolve around the future state; and that, if this goal should prove to have no objective reality, the absoluteness with which the believer has staked everything in its attainment must make him appear in his delusion the most pitiable of all creatures. What a gulf then lies between this statement of the apostle (‘if in Christ we have hope in this life only, we are of all people most to be pitied’ – 1 Corinthians 15:19) and the sentiment we sometimes meet with–that Christianity had better disencumber itself of all idle speculation about an uncertain future state and concentrate its energies upon the improvement of the present world.
“Paul could not have entertained such a sentiment for a moment because the thirst for the world to come was of the very substance of the religion of his heart. He felt deeply that the believer’s destiny and God’s purposes with reference to him transcend all limits of what this earthly life can possibly bring or possibly contain.
“Christ’s work for us extends even farther than the restoration of what sin has destroyed. If Christ placed us back there where Adam stood in his rectitude, without sins and without death, this would be unspeakable grace indeed, more than enough to make the gospel a blessed word. But grace exceeds sin far more abundantly than all this: besides wiping out the last vestige of sin and its consequences, it opens up for us that higher world to whose threshold even the first Adam had not yet apprehended. And this is not a mere matter of degrees in blessedness, it is a difference between two modes of life; as heaven is high above the earth, by so much the condition of our future state will transcend those of the paradise of old.
“It is for this reason that we know so little, and that even in the moments of greatest clearness of our spiritual vision we form such inadequate ideas of what awaits us hereafter. But, thanks be to God, in the resurrection of Christ for once the veil has been lifted. When Christ rose from the grave he rose as one whose human nature had been transformed into harmony with heavenly conditions. This was true not merely of his body, but of all the faculties and powers of his humanity hitherto exercised in humiliation and now set free and made fit for their perfect use in heavenly glory.
“In this respect the resurrection of Christ is prophetic of that of all believers. As we have borne the image of the earthy, we shall also bear the image of the heavenly man (I Cor. 15:49). In the resurrection, therefore, we have the assurance that we ourselves also shall be made fit in our entire nature for our habitation in heaven. It is only by understanding this that we can understand the true significance of the resurrection of the body. Not that our bodies as such shall be restored to us is the great hope of the Christian, but that they shall be restored to us in such a state as to resemble the resurrection-body of Christ; that through them our spirits may dwell in perfect accord with their heavenly surroundings and may lead in its consummate form the life that knows no end.” – Geerhardus Vos, A Sermon on I Corinthians 15:14, Preached in Princeton Chapel on Easter, April 23, 1905

Goldsworthy: the Incarnation is "the substitution of God’s righteous history in Christ for our fallen and condemned histories of rebellion."

Chad Bresson : March 16, 2011 3:29 am : The Vossed World

“The movement from creation to new creation is inevitable. The incarnation as historical event is the focus of God’s rule in world history…the incarnate Word of God brings history to its goal and interprets it.” In the gospel, the “Incarnate God as the Word becomes flesh. This historic Word-event is God’s fullest and final word to mankind.”

But it’s not simply revelation. The Incarnation is a “redemptive word-event that has the power to break through our self-imposed, sinful darkness… Redemption is in the event by which God reconstructs an acceptable human history while judging the unacceptable.” We must have the Incarnation for our Redemption… it is “the substitution of God’s righteous history in Christ for our fallen and condemned histories of rebellion….to be clothed in the righteousness of Christ is to be redefined, not by our own failed histories, but by his perfect history.” The message of the Incarnation proclaims “a message of hope which sees both the end to the history of fallenness and the new beginning of a history that merges with eternity.” — Graeme Goldsworthy, Gospel Centered Hermeneutics, pp. 222-228

« Page 1, 2 »
Bookmark and Share

Comments are closed.