Devouring the Psalms

One of my great pleasures this year has been meeting with one of the young men from our evening service each week.
We choose a Psalm that may be helpful as a response to the reading and sermon, and then rework it as a corporate prayer for the congregation (often doesn't require that much in the way of rework)
This fella is a very enthusiatic, emotional guy, and has just devoured the Psalms. A few weeks in he said ' These are great! I just want to read the whole Psalms so I know which one to choose'. So he now has read through the whole of Psalms and is starting again.
The congregation seems to be enjoying it too.
This year, Moore College's School of Theology (September 12 and 13) is on the Psalms.
Perhaps I'll drag along my young friend

I am very happy to be in a church system that is Reformed, but generally thoughtful and historically aware.
Peter Leithart points out the terrible results when a particular stream of Reformed theology claims it is the only one that is truly reformed.
So, so, so glad that I don't live in America

An interesting proposal for Archbishop of Sydney

A good friend had a fascinating proposal for the next Anglican Archbishop of Sydney.
Keith Condie
Think about it.
Gentle but firm. Affectionately known at College as the smiling assasin.
Very well thought through
An appreciation for Anglican history.
Well respected.
I reckon he would be a good media player too.
Hmm...

Chiasms in Isaiah 40-66 by Kenneth Bailey

I've been reading Kenneth Bailey's Paul Through Mediterranean Eyes: Cultural Studies in 1 Corinthians. I thought it would be an interesting Middle Eastern perspective on 1 Cor and there are helpful comments on the way. What I've discovered is that it is a very rigorous structural analysis of 1 Cor using chiasms or ring composition as he calls them. (It is not the only rhetorical device he observes.)

What is new to me is the argument that this type of structure comes from the Jewish prophets and not Hellenistic Greek. He has done an extensive structural analysis of Isaiah 40-66 which you can download here. 

I've been reading through this Isaiah translation with a guy at church and finding it helpful. Actually it is especially helpful in reading the prophets because it explains the argument of otherwise confusing passages, and relatively simply. I'm trialing it with a few other people at church to see if it helps with the ease of reading the prophets.

Has anyone else used this?

Not Amill?

Just to clarify on the last post, I still do hold some kind of Amillenial position.
At the moment I'm calling it 'iterative amillenial'
I still think that the 'eschatological texts' of the New Testament (which, is kind of all of them, but you know what I mean) are incredibly relevant for us, setting out a pattern of how we are to live between Jesus' resurrection and his final return.
But I think they mean something for us now because they actually meant something for their original readers. And sometimes they aren't (simply) about Jesus final return.
And that's where I think idealist amillenialism breaks down. So I'm reading Greg Beale on 2 Thessalonians 2. He wants to argue that the temple that gets defiled here is the church. Which, is kind of persuading. But his presupposition is that the appearing of Jesus must be the 'final' appearance of Jesus. He works from this presupposition to say that the appearance of Jesus is the final appearance. Round and round we go.
What it leaves him with is actually a kind of futurist interpretation (both of Daniel and Thessalonians), one day there will be a massive apostasy within the church away from the true church and that is when Jesus will return. But it is kind of now, but not really, but it is, but not.

In a sense, I like Beales interpretation, but by cutting the chapter loose from history, the content of the apostasy can be filled with whatever sins are unfashionable in the evangelical world at the moment, and  then we can all start speculating about Jesus return.
While I agree that the emphasis in the New Testament is on the church as the 'temple of God', I wonder whether what we are dealing with in the New Testament is the seam in history where one Temple//cosmos is being dismantled and another replacing it.
Beales application is (kind of) where I want to get to, without sacrificing the flesh and blood, historical reality that Paul is talking about.


in other rambling thoughts on iterative vs idealist amillenialism, I reckon this changes quite drastically how we speak about politics.
If the world power is always evil (as in idealist amill), then all christians can say is, 'you are bad', no matter what the politicians are actually doing. If however, political power is being pilloried in the New testament because of it's claims to divinity, we can honestly say that world powers that dont do this are doing better. And if they started making such claims, well then we could yell at them again.
time for bed

2 Thessalonians 2- do we have to choose?

So I'm trying to nut out 2 Thessalonians 2 at the moment.
I've put aside the 'this is what happens all the time (and so never really happens)' kind of amillenial interpretation, and I'm trying to figure out what Paul is referring to. with the 'man of lawlessness'

Two options press hard.

First is some kind of reference to the Imperial cult of Gaius Caligula. James Harrison marshals some pretty interesting evidence, to do with Caligula's descriptions of himself as divine, his attempt to install a statue of himself as a new Zeus, manifest divine in the Jerusalem temple as a background to Paul.

Option 2 is seeing the 'man of lawlessness' as some kind of reference to apostate Israel, who has rejected her Messiah. Perhaps as the High priest. The faithful suffering of God's true people commends God's right judgement about them, while the false people commend themselves as God's.

It's the chestnut of a lot of eschatological judgementy stuff in the NT. Is the target Rome or Israel?

i'm starting to wonder whether we need to choose so clearly.

Who was it that was persecuting the Thessalonian church?

Acts 17:5 But the Jews became jealous,17 and gathering together some worthless men from the rabble in the marketplace,18 they formed a mob19 and set the city in an uproar.20 They attacked Jason’s house,21 trying to find Paul and Silas22 to bring them out to the assembly.23
Acts 17:6 When they did not find them, they dragged24 Jason and some of the brothers before the city officials,25 screaming, “These people who have stirred up trouble26 throughout the world27 have come here too,
Acts 17:7 and28 Jason has welcomed them as guests! They29 are all acting against Caesar’s30 decrees, saying there is another king named31 Jesus!”

The problem for the thessalonians seems to be both jealous Jews and the challenge of the gospel to the imperial cult.

I'm not quite sure how this is going to work out in 2 Thessalonians yet, just bubbling away in my head

Now, Not yet, and the shape of history

In the circles I travel in, the explanation of New Testament eschatology as 'Now but not yet' is so common as to be banal. Visually it is represented like this.
The idea is of an 'overlap of the ages'.
It's advantage is that it allows us to see God's eschaton beginning before the end of the old age.
But I'm starting to think it has serious limitations.
In the image above, the two ages never really interact, the new age never really breaks into the old (it floats of to heaven and is located there.
Also, the new age and time is seen as the same as the old, simply on a different register or plane.

So, I want to suggest a significantly more complicated picture

Where the ancients saw history as circular and eternal, we know that only God and his kingdom are eternal. History proceeds in a straight line, and not a straight line toward God's kingdom, but (initially) away from it. (the lines).
God intervenes, in actions that are both comprehensible and actual on that linear progression, yet are glimpses and real anticipations of the eschaton. (the circles)
This is true of Gods rescue of Israel from egypt, of every sabbath rest, of the return from exile, of Jesus resurrection, the coming of the Spirit, each sunday morning as we anticipate the first morning of the new creation. These interventions of God curve the linear progress of history toward the eschaton (though at no point could history be left to itself and find the eschaton)
The advantages of this picture, (I reckon), is that it allows us to see continuiy in God's activity between the old and new. it also allows us to apply similar interpretive strategies to prophecy in the Old and New Testaments, that is is, it allows us to say that some events are 'Then and not yet', rather than simply in an ever present now. This means that we can take things like the destruction of Jerusalem in 70 AD as genuine events in the action of God, genuine interventions of the eschaton onto actual, flesh and blood history, fulfilling prophecies in the NT, and yet which still give us a lense into the future (ie, we aren't full preterists who  think there is no more eschaton to come.)

Thoughts?