Phill Sacre

Tag: bible

  • Steve Chalke and the Bible vs Hebrews

    Steve Chalke wants to start a global discussion about the Bible – see the video here or the document here. You may remember, he made his views on same-sex marriage clear last year, and I commented then that I didn’t agree with his understanding of Scripture. He’s gone one step further this time, but I don’t want to waste time discussing it here when others have already written an excellent response. The gist of it is basically that what Steve Chalke is proposing ultimately undermines confidence in the Bible, the opposite of what he was intending!

    Over the past few weeks I’ve been studying the book of Hebrews as part of my college course. Hebrews is a difficult book (I remember reading it as a student and being baffled by much of it!), but it has some important things to say to us regarding how we understand Scripture. Hebrews is interesting because it’s preaching a sermon about Christ, but it uses exclusively Old Testament texts to talk about Christ (it hardly refers to his earthly ministry at all). As such it teaches us a lot about what it means to understand the Old Testament.

    As we all know the best place to start is the beginning – this is how Hebrews kicks off:

    Long ago, at many times and in many ways, God spoke to our fathers by the prophets, but in these last days he has spoken to us by his Son, whom he appointed the heir of all things, through whom also he created the world.

    So. God spoke to “our fathers”, i.e. the Jewish people, through the prophets – but recently he has spoken to us by “his Son”. What’s interesting here is that both the prophets and Jesus are counted as “God speaking”. As we will see, it’s not the case that Jesus is somehow a ‘superior’ revelation to the prophets per se, more that the Old Testament speaks of and points forward to Christ.

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  • The Bible and Clarity

    I’ve had a few conversations recently about epistemology (how we know what we know), especially when it comes to knowing what we know about God. People are becoming suspicious of talking about the Bible being ‘clear’ on any particular issue – Rachel Held Evans’ blog post The Bible was ‘clear’… demonstrates pretty well this kind of attitude. Similarly, 5 churchy phrases that are scaring off millenials:

    Saying, “This is where study and prayer have led me, but I could be wrong,” does infinitely more to secure our trust than The Bible clearly says…

    I can understand this attitude: I think there has been harm done in the past (as Rachel points out) by saying that the Bible is ‘clear’ on a particular topic. But, the suggestion to hold our interpretations with an ‘open hand’… you know, I’m not sure about that either. Let’s be honest here, I think the real elephant in the room – the topic which we’re not allowed to hold a certain opinion on – is sexuality: it is the issue of our day – does the Bible condemn or affirm gay relationships?

    Unfortunately, what I think it means to hold on to an interpretation ‘with an open hand’ is to ultimately diminish its importance so that you’re not really holding to that particular interpretation. If I, for example, believe that the Bible’s teaching on sexuality is authoritative, and that teaching describes a lifelong exclusive relationship between a man and a woman, and that that teaching is fundamental to the Biblical ethic on sexuality, to hold that interpretation with an open hand is meaningless. I think holding it with an open hand means that I might teach what I thought was the Bible’s clear instruction, but in practice be open and perfectly accepting of others who believe differently. In other words, however clear I believe the Bible is on that particular issue, that belief cannot be put into practice fully because other people believe differently. I can’t hold someone else to account for it.

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  • Sermon: The Witness of John the Baptist (John 1:19-34)

    This is the text of a sermon I preached last Sunday morning at Christ Church Cockfosters. The audio isn’t available on the website (which means it may not have been recorded) – if it does appear I will update this post.

    The theme was a traditional one for the third Sunday in Advent – “John the Baptist”. I chose to preach from John 1:19-34.

    John the Baptist – John 1v19-34 – PDF.

  • Don’t rely on one Bible translation!

    Illustration: Bible

    Quick bit of obvious advice today: Don’t rely on a single translation of the Bible when you’re doing some serious Bible study. Today I was preparing a sermon on John 1:19-34. And, because I’ve been learning New Testament Greek over the last couple of years, I feel like I needed to get my money’s worth by looking at the passage in Greek first.

    Anyway, as I was looking at the text and reading the commentaries I noticed that I actually preferred the NIV reading of the text over the ESV. This may not sound like much, but the ESV is often held up as a good example of a ‘literal’ translation for serious study as opposed to the NIV (which is a ‘dynamic equivalence’ translation – i.e. it’s less ‘literal’ but is designed more to convey the sense of the original language). I think many people who move in evangelical circles in the UK hold up the ESV as an example of a good, faithful translation – while the NIV seems to have moved a little bit out of favour.

    But I think there are a couple of examples where the NIV gets it right over the ESV in this passage. Firstly, v24 is treated differently in both translations. The ESV translates it as a paranthetical remark, whereas the NIV links it more explictly with the clause in v25. What’s interesting is that in his commentary, Carson goes for a translation more like the NIV’s – and I think I agree with him. It does seem to make more sense to me: the Greek grammar is a bit unusual here but I think the NIV translation is probably preferable.

    Secondly, the ESV – again, bearing in mind that its major selling point is that it is a literal translation – makes an unusual translation decision between v19 and v34. Here, two Greek words (μαρτυρία and μεμαρτύρηκα) which stem from the same root martyr- (where we get the English word from, and meaning something like ‘testify’ or ‘witness’) are translated differently. v19 has ‘testimony’ and v34 ‘borne witness’. I think that’s an interesting decision: although conceptually the link is there, verbally it has been obscured a little. This is significant because I think the whole passage is talking about testimony, using several different words, and it seems those two words form the bookends around a little section in John. The NIV goes for ‘testimony’ and ‘testify’, which I think maintains the verbal link better as well as the conceptual.

    So, as I said: don’t think one translation is always right. If you’re leading a home group or preparing a sermon or generally trying to understand a Bible passage, it’s always worth at least checking in a few translations to see if it brings something out you might not have spotted otherwise.

  • The Story of the Jews

    One of the things which interests me about modern-day Judaism is how different it is from my understanding of the Hebrew Scriptures (i.e. the Jewish Bible or the Christian Old Testament). Given that Christians and Jews have so much shared Scripture (most of the Bible – 75% or thereabouts – is the Hebrew Scriptures) – how have they ended up in such different places? In particular, modern-day Jews do not offer sacrifices and there seems to be no atonement for sin – the focus seems to be rather on the observance of the law. So I was interested to see that Simon Schama has created a new documentary called “The Story of the Jews” recently (Sunday evenings on BBC2 – at the time of writing there are another couple of episodes remaining in the series). Mrs Phil and I have been watching it, and it’s fascinating. What’s particularly interesting to me is how Judaism has changed and adapted over the years.

    It’s fascinating to see how Simon Schama – and others – interpret the parts of the Scriptures which I am familiar with, and yet put a slant on them which I would be quite unfamiliar with. Present-day Jews have much more history to look back on, and have much more to explain. In a particularly poignant moment at the end of the last programme, for example, Simon Schama talked about the building anti-Semitism in Europe at the end of the 19th century before finishing up at the Holocaust Memorial in Berlin. (more…)

  • Biblical Ethics and Sexuality

    A couple of times lately I mentioned to people that I’d try to write something vaguely coherent about the Bible and sexuality – in particular about homosexual relationships. Were the Bible writers simply writing within their culture? Now that attitudes to sexuality are changing, can Christian attitudes change with it?

    I’ve been putting off writing this because, to be honest, it’s a massive topic and it’s one in which there’s plenty of scope for hurt and disagreement. In order to do full justice to all the Biblical verses on homosexuality you’d need to write a book (such as this one, which someone has kindly already written…) What I’m going to do in this post is try and do a very brief, bird’s-eye-view of the Bible’s view on sexuality without going into too much detail.

    Please note that I’m not trying to offer here a pastoral response to dealing with homosexuality or same-sex attraction. I’m not in any way condoning homophobic behaviour. This is simply examining the issue of what the Bible says about sexuality, not how to respond to it in a practical situation.

    First things first: creation. All Christians are ‘creationist’, in the sense that all Christians believe that God created the world. Genesis 1-2 tells the story.[1] In particular, if you read Genesis 2 you see that Adam (the name literally means ‘mankind’) is lonely and God creates a suitable ‘helper’ for him – a woman. (The translation ‘helper’ may be a bit inadequate, but let’s leave that aside for this post). It culminates in v24, where the narrator says “That is why a man leaves his father and mother and is united to his wife, and they become one flesh.”  (more…)

  • Sermon: Psalm 1 – The Righteous and the Wicked

    Quick post!

    I was preaching at Christ Chuch Cockfosters this evening on Psalm 1.

    My sermon has already been uploaded, and you can hear it online on the Christ Church website.

  • John 19: Jesus’ Trial and Crucifixion

    crossAs alert readers will no doubt be aware, I have been studying John recently (you can read my previous blog posts on the subject here and here). I promised in my last post that I would blog about John 19, and I thought this would be as good a time as any – particularly while it’s still relatively fresh in my memory. I’m not going to spend much time on context here, because frankly – we’d be here all day. So I’m just going to say this post would be most profitable if you’ve read John 19 before we begin (and preferably have it open in front of you, or in another tab, or whatever it is you kids do these days.)

    Note that in this post I’ll only be able to touch on a fraction of what’s there, it truly is an amazingly rich gospel. I’ll just pull out some of the things which really struck me this time.

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  • Saul to Paul: A few thoughts on Acts 13

    One of the things which struck me about our New Testament course this year was the idea of narrative criticism, i.e. reading the text critically (analytically that is – not ‘critically’ in the popular sense) as narrative. I’d never really thought about the gospels in that way before, and it’s been colouring the way I see things now. This goes for Acts as well: one of the big things about our Acts section was how to read it as theological history – not just history, but history with a particular theological point and purpose.

    This past term we’ve been studying Acts in our home group (after having studied it for our New Testament course last term), and I think I’ve even been seeing new things in the text which I didn’t see there before. The way the narrative is structured is far more complex than just “this happened, then that happened…” which I’d always read it as. One such example of this is Paul’s name change in Acts 13:4-12. (more…)

  • The Raising of Lazarus

    LazarusAs I mentioned in my post on the woman at the well, I’ve been doing a class on John’s Gospel the past couple of months. It’s probably been my favourite class of this year, which is no small feat! John is such a rich gospel, and it’s been a real privilege to spend some time in it this year.

    Today we reached John 11, which is all about the raising of Lazarus. This is a key chapter in John’s gospel: it seems to mark some kind of a shift. Some people talk about the ‘Book of Signs’, which culminates with the sign of Lazarus, and the ‘Book of Glory’ which talks about Jesus’ glorification as he is lifted high on the cross. Others talk about his public and private ministry (after this point Jesus’ ministry and teaching seems to move to just his disciples). It seems there there aren’t hard and fast distinctions, but however you look at it this chapter is the catalyst for the changes.

    What I’d like to do in this blog post is just draw out a few thoughts on various aspects of the chapter. I’m going to skip over a lot – there’s so much here, I don’t want the blog post to become massive! – but I hope to draw out one or two key or even surprising aspects.

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