The Supposed Warfare between Christianity and Science

Real science arose only once: in Europe. China, Islam, India, and ancient Greece and Rome each had a highly developed alchemy. But only in Europe did alchemy develop into chemistry. By the same token, many societies developed elaborate systems of astrology, but only in Europe did astrology lead to astronomy. Why?

 
The answer lies in the Christian West’s view of God, creation and humanity. Unlike cultures elsewhere, “Christians developed science because they believed it could be done, and should be done.” 
 
Philosopher and mathematician Alfred North Whitehead noted in Science and the Modern World that the medievalists insisted on “the rationality of God, conceived as with the personal energy of Jehovah and with the rationality of a Greek philosopher. Every detail was supervised and ordered: the search into nature could only result in the vindication of the faith in rationality.”
 
Lacking any doctrine of creation, these other cultures could only posit a universe that is, “a supreme mystery, inconsistent, unpredictable, and arbitrary. For those holding these religious premises, the path to wisdom is through meditation into mystical insights and there is no occasion to celebrate reason.” But Christianity, on the contrary, “depicted God as a rational, responsive, dependable, and omnipotent being and the universe as his personal creation, thus having a rational, lawful, stable structure, awaiting human comprehension.”

- Douglas Groothuis, Christian Apologetics: 

A Comprehensive Case for Biblical Faith, 2011.

The Characteristics of Apostleship

 The characteristics of full apostleship—the apostleship of the Twelve and Paul—were as follows:

1. The apostles have been chosen, called, and sent forth by Christ himself. They have received their commission directly from him (John 6:70; 13:18; 15:16, 19; Gal. 1:6).
2. They are qualified for their tasks by Jesus, and have been ear-and-eye witnesses of his words and deeds; specifically, they are the witnesses of his resurrection (Acts 1:8, 21, 22; 1 Cor. 9:1; 15:8; Gal. 1:12; Eph. 3:2–8; 1 John 1:1–3). Note: though Acts 1:21, 22 does not apply to Paul, the other passages do apply to him. Paul too had seen the Lord!
3. They have been endowed in a special measure with the Holy Spirit, and it is this Holy Spirit who leads them into all the truth (Matt. 10:20; John 14:26; 15:26; 16:7–14; 20:22; 1 Cor. 2:10–13; 7:40; 1 Thess. 4:8).
4. God blesses their work, confirming its value by means of signs and miracles, and giving them much fruit upon their labors (Matt. 10:1, 8; Acts 2:43; 3:2; 5:12–16; Rom. 15:18, 19; 1 Cor. 9:2; 2 Cor. 12:12; Gal. 2:8).
5. Their office is not restricted to a local church, neither does it extend over a short period of time; on the contrary, it is for the entire church and for life (Acts 26:16–18; 2 Tim. 4:7, 8).

- Hendriksen, W., & Kistemaker, S. J. “Exposition of Paul’s Epistle to the Romans"

Seven Habits of Godly Life

Definition: 
A godly life - No longer seeking satisfaction through a sinful lifestyle, but now surrendered to God and His will for our life

Seven Habits:
1. A life of prayer (1:35-37)

 - connected & sensitive to God

2. Trust or Faith (Psalm 103:19, Proverbs 3:5-6) 

- build intimacy relationship with Him

3. Meditation on the Word of God (Psalm 63:6-8, 119:133)  

- keep us fresh, alert

4. Obey God (Deut 27:10) 

- obedience

5. Dependence upon the Holy Spirit (Eph 5:18, 4:30) 

- the Holy Spirit indwelling in you will empower you, give you courage

6. Giving to God and to others (Luke 6:38) 

- never in lack of anything

7. Forgiving other people (Eph 4:26-27. 30-32)

Conclusion:
Surrender. God will transform our life because He loves us.

Decision Making

from online source

The General Vocation of All Christians

Two important implications flow from the nature of discipleship. For one thing the lordship of Christ is holistic. The religious life is not a special compartment in an otherwise secular life. Rather, the religious gious life is an entire way of life. To live Christianly is to allow Jesus Christ to be the Lord of every aspect of our life. There is no room for a secular-sacred separation in the life of Jesus' followers. Jesus Christ should be every bit as much at home in our thinking and behavior when we are developing our views in our area of study or work as he is when we are in a small group fellowship. 

Further, as disciples of Jesus we do not merely have a job. We have a vocation as a Christian teacher. A job is a means for supporting ourselves selves and those for whom we are responsible. For the Christian a vocation tion (from the Latin vocare, which means "to call") is an overall calling from God. Harry Blamires correctly draws a distinction between a general and a special vocation: 

The general vocation of all Christians-indeed of all men and women-is is the same. We are called to live as children of God, obeying his will in all things. But obedience to God's will must inevitably take many different ferent forms. The wife's mode of obedience is not the same as the nun's; the farmer's is not the same as the priest's. By "special vocation," therefore, fore, we designate God's call to a [person] to serve him in a particular sphere of activity.' 

--- David Lyle Jeffrey & Gregory Maillet. Christianity and Literature: Philosophical Foundations and Critical Practice. 

What Does the Word "Christian" Mean?

Nowhere in the four canonical gospels are the disciples of Jesus called “Christians.” As “disciples” they were learning the Jesus-way of life and thought. As “apostles” they were sent out to practice the Jesus-way of life and thought in relation to others. But they were not called “Christians” by Jesus, or by anyone else, and certainly not by themselves.

Acts 11:26 - By that time the groups of believers in Jesus, scattered throughout the Mediterranean world, were talking about him as “the Anointed” (Gk. Christos), the one ordained of God to save the world. Outsiders coined the adjective, christianoi, probably with derogatory undertones, to match the outspoken confession of the followers of Jesus. The writer of Acts affirms (1) that the term was used first at Antioch, and implies (2) that the term was applied to the disciples by persons other than themselves. 

Acts 26:28 - “Christian” clearly comes from the mouth of an outsider, an accuser with political power in Judea. His question is more a sarcastic taunt than a sincere inquiry. Notice that Paul’s reply does not repeat the name “Christian” from Agrippa’s mouth. Paul, the ridiculed and accused believer in Jesus, is in chains. At the time of writing Acts, “Christian” was not a title attached to people in polite society, people like Agrippa. It was more a term of shame than honor. In Paul’s case in the narrative of Acts, the shame of chains.

1 Pet 4:16 - when people were labeled “Christian” for believing in Jesus as the Anointed of God in the socio-political context of First Peter, the label was not a badge of honor, but of disgrace. There was no conventional Christos to save believers from their suffering. Yet they continued to confess Jesus as the Messiah. Their accusers thus employed the derisive “Christian” label to degrade and persecute them. But the suffering believers in the context of First Peter are encouraged to bear the name, ironically, to glorify God.

            - excerpt from V. George Shillington, Jesus and Paul Before Christianity: Their World and Work in Retrospect, 2011

When God Was Obvious

Why doesn’t God intervene more? Why doesn’t he directly feed the hungry, heal all the sick and stop all wars? If God really exists, at the very least why doesn’t he make himself more obvious? People who ask such questions often assume that if God ever did spectacularly reveal himself, all doubts would vanish. Everyone would line up to believe in him.
 
Astonishing Reactions
 
Exodus tells of a time when God made himself perfectly obvious. The plagues on Egypt revealed his mighty power. An enormous miracle at the Red Sea provided sensational deliverance. A recurring miracle supplied food for the Israelites every morning. And, if questions about God’s existence arose, doubters needed only to look to the ever-present glory cloud or pillar of fire. It must have been hard to be an atheist in those days.
Yet every instance of God’s faithfulness seemed to summon up astonishing human unfaithfulness. The same Israelites who had watched God crush a pharaoh quaked at the first sign of Egyptian chariots. Three days after a miraculous escape across the Red Sea they were grumbling to Moses and God about water supplies.
 
A month or so later, when hunger pangs began to gnaw at them, they bitterly complained, “If only we had died by the LORD’s hand in Egypt! There we sat around pots of meat and ate all the food we wanted, but you have brought us out into this desert to starve this entire assembly to death” (Exodus 16:3). God responded with a provision of manna (that would continue for 40 years) and quail, but the Israelites were soon grousing about the water supplies again.
 
The Great Rebellion
 
Exodus 32 shows the Israelites at their worst. People who had eaten manna for breakfast, who had just solemnly agreed to keep every word of the covenant, who were at that moment standing beside a mountain stormy with the Lord’s presence—those very people proceeded to melt down their gold jewelry and flagrantly flout the first commandment. “Stiff-necked,” God called the Israelites as he burned in anger against them. Only Moses’ eloquent appeal saved their lives.
 
The history of the Israelites should nail a coffin lid on the notion that impressive displays of God’s power will guarantee faith (Jesus would later say, “If they do not listen to Moses and the Prophets, they will not be convinced even if someone rises from the dead,” [Luke 16:31].) People who had everyday proof of God demonstrated only one thing: the monotonous consistency of human nature.
 
The offenders would pay for their acts by wandering 40 years in a desolate wilderness while a new, untainted generation grew up to replace them. But a pattern was beginning to emerge: If the Israelites failed God in the shadow of Mount Sinai, how would they possibly withstand the seduction of new cultures in the promised land? The next generation, too, would fail God, as would all their descendants. The old covenant, as Paul would so convincingly argue in the book of Galatians, succeeded mainly by proving undeniably the need for a new one.
Life Questions
 

- from NIV Student Bible

To believe in Jesus

 Note on “believing” in the Fourth Gospel The noun “belief” (πίστις) and the verb “believe” (πιστεύω) are each used (by a strange coincidence) 243 times in the NT. Neither word occurs in 2 John or 3 John, while Col, Phlm, 2 Pet and Rev use only the noun. These two terms represent the appropriate human relationship to God and Christ, and they point to the essence of Christianity and its most distinctive feature in comparison with Greek and Jewish thought.
 
John never uses πίστις in the Four Gospel, although it is found once in 1 John (5: 4) and four times in Revelation (2: 13, 19; 13: 10; 14: 12). His preference for πιστεύω over πίστις illustrates his preference for verbs over nouns. The verb “believe” (πιστεύω) is very common in the Four Gospel (98 uses), so it is not surprising this Gospel has been called “the Gospel of Belief.” Sometimes the verb refers to facts (“ believe that,” “be convinced that/ of,” 9: 18; 11: 26b; 16: 27; 20: 31a) and sometimes things (4: 50), but often it is a person who is believed (πιστεύω with dative) where “believe” means “give intellectual credence to (the testimony of)” (4: 21; 6: 30) or “entrust oneself to” (5: 24, 38; 8: 31).
 
But John has a characteristic idiom, “believe in” (πιστεύω with the prep. εἰς; only 9 of the 45 NT uses are outside the Four Gospel and 1 John), used only of a divine object of faith (surprisingly, of God only in 12: 44c; 14: 1a, but usually of Christ), never of a human object of faith. It is in Christ that God meets the individual in salvation so there are not two competing objects of human faith. 
 
This distinctive prepositional phrase “believe in” depicts the total committal of one’s total self to the person of Christ as Messiah and Lord, something more than an intellectual acceptance of the message of the gospel and a recognition of the truth about Christ, although these aspects are involved. For John, belief involves not only recognition and acceptance of the truth but also adherence and allegiance to Jesus as the Truth (14: 6).

 To believe in Jesus is
to come to him (5: 40; 6: 35, 37, 44– 45, 65; 7: 37),
to receive him (1: 12),
to drink the water he offers (4: 13– 14),
to follow him (8: 12), 
to love him (14: 5, 21, 23; 16: 27).
 

---  Murray J. Harris, John, B&H Publishing.

What is the Gospel?

We need a more biblical understanding of the gospel. I suspect if I were to ask you what the gospel is, a number of you would say it's forgiveness of sins. Or, if you're in the divinity school, you'd say justification by faith alone. Thank God, forgiveness of sins is one very important part of the gospel. I never want to stand before our holy God on any basis other than the fact that Jesus died on the cross for my sins. But if the gospel is no more than forgiveness of sins, then you and I can accept Jesus Christ, get our one-way ticket to heaven, and go on being exactly the same racist, environmentally unconcerned, unjust people we've always been.
 
Jesus tells us that the gospel is more than that. Have you ever gone through the Gospels and noticed how Jesus defines the gospel, the good news? Mark 1:14-15 says, and it's a summary of Jesus' whole preaching:
 
After John was arrested, Jesus came to Galilee, proclaiming the good news of God, and saying [in other words, here's the definition of the gospel], "The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God has come near; repent, and believe in the good news."
 
Virtually every time Jesus defines the gospel, he defines it as the good news of the kingdom. What on earth does he mean?
 
Remember what the prophets had said? They looked ahead to a time in the future, beyond the injustice and disobedience of the people of Israel, and they said, "Some time in the future, the Messiah will come. The messianic order will break in, and God will bring a new right relationship with himself. Our sins will be forgiven and the law will be written on our hearts, and there will be a new right relationship with neighbors. There will be transformation vertically and horizontally, and there will be shalom, justice, and wholeness in society."
 
Then, Jesus comes along and claims to be the Messiah, and says that the messianic kingdom the prophets had predicted was breaking into the present, in his own person and word. He meant the two things the prophets had talked about. He meant a vertical thing. He meant that we get into his kingdom not by good works, not by any kind of works righteousness. We get into his kingdom by sheer grace, because God loves even sinners, and eagerly wants them to change.
 
But there's more to this good news of the kingdom than that, because Jesus goes on to call a circle of disciples, a new community. He wasn't an isolated, individualistic prophet. He formed a new society, and this new society began to live differently, to live his kingdom ways. They began to challenge society at all the points that society was wrong, and they cared about the whole person, not just the soul.
 
So what is the gospel then? It's not just forgiveness of sins, although thank God, it includes that. I am still a sinner, and I want to trust in the cross, but it's more than that. It's the fantastic news that the messianic kingdom has broken into history. Now, in the power of the Holy Spirit, you and I can begin to live differently. And in that new community, all of the brokenness, the social, the economic, the ethnic and the emotional brokenness of this old world is being overcome in Jesus' new community. Matthew 9:35 summarizes this: "Jesus went about all the cities and villages, teaching in their synagogues, and proclaiming the good news of the kingdom, and curing every disease and every sickness."
 
Teaching, preaching, and healing. That's what Jesus was about. That's what I'm pleading for. He cared about the whole person. Jesus never thought that all you needed was a good life here on earth, and then everything would be fine. In fact, he said that it's better to lose the whole world than lose your relationship with God and Christ. But he never drew the conclusion that we Christians sometimes do. Sometimes Christians today say, "Well, that means that we should spend most of our time on evangelism, and if we've got a little bit of time left over we can care about the poor, and so on." Jesus never drew that conclusion.
 

--- Ronald J. Sider, “The Whole Gospel for The Whole Person” 

in A Place for Truth: Leading Thinkers Explore Life's Hardest Questions, 2010.

 

Trials, Tests, Temptations

In order to obtain the fruit of patience we must go through periods of testing and trials. They are what make us strong and help us to learn patience. The trials are like a training ground. You don’t just get patience. You must earn it through experience and endurance. Not only do we have to go through the trials, but we must be calm and have a cheerful enduring attitude--as if the trial itself wasn’t enough. I

In this world we will have trials. There is no way out of it. It is part of life. However, even though we must go through these trials, our Wonderful and Mighty God threw in a benefit. The benefit is that when we go through these trials calmly, with a good attitude, and stand strong in our faith, we will become fully developed and lack nothing.

The only way to really overcome temptation is to renew your mind. The only way you can renew your mind is to study the Word. Every sin that we commit started in our mind. When we allow our minds to go astray we are opening the door to sin and death. This does not have to happen. God has given us power over sin. God has shown us through His Word how to overcome sin and death. 

However, it is our choice. We can choose to be overcome by temptations or we can choose to overcome temptation. Remember, we must submit our thought life to Him and stop the thought before it ever becomes a manifestation. 

- Lara Velez. Proverbs of the New Testament.

The Victim Becomes the Victor

    The cross is the seal on a particular kind of life: a life which has turned away from violence, manipulation, domination; a life in which the Son of Man is there not to be served but to serve; a life in which the very act of God is made flesh and blood in a vulnerable human being. Already in the life of Jesus we see that the quality and character of this life and this love are such that death is too small for it. 

    That is why, when we turn to the last book of the Bible, to the Revelation of John, we find there many songs of victory, which are addressed to or which name God and ‘the Lamb’ together. God and the sacrificial victim, they are the ones to whom praise and worship is due because they, together, have won the victory. The Lamb who was slaughtered is worthy to receive praise. The Lamb has conquered. 

    And in a set of very paradoxical and challenging images, the writer of Revelation underlines the oddity of what he’s talking about. The Lamb, the helpless, woolly creature trussed and slaughtered on the butcher’s slab, the Lamb becomes the triumphant conqueror. It is the Lamb who releases the enemy’s prisoners, the Lamb who has led the ultimate successful raid into enemy territory and brought back the prisoners of death and evil. 

    In Revelation 5:9, for example, the Lamb has won, has earned a cosmic triumph. Again in 5:13, the Lamb has conquered and has set us free. The victim has become the victor.

- Rowan Williams, God with Us.

Worshiping is Sentimental and Self-satisfying?

There is a deep hunger for wisdom in our time, but the church offers up little more than sugary nostalgia with a dash of fear. There is a yearning for redemption, healing, and wholeness that is palpable, a shift in human consciousness that is widely recognized—except, it seems, in most churches. 

Strangely, we have come to a moment in human history when the message of the Sermon on the Mount could indeed save us, but it can no longer be heard above the din of dueling doctrines. Consider this: there is not a single word in that sermon about what to believe, only words about what to do. It is a behavioral manifesto, not a propositional one. Yet three centuries later, when the Nicene Creed became the official oath of Christendom, there was not a single word in it about what to do, only words about what to believe! 

Thus the most important question we can ask in the church today concerns the object of faith itself. The earliest metaphors of the gospel speak of discipleship as transformation through an alternative community and the reversal of conventional wisdom. In much of the church today, our metaphors speak of individual salvation and the specific promises that accompany it. The first followers of Jesus trusted him enough to become instruments of radical change. 

Today, worshipers of Christ agree to believe things about him in order to receive benefits promised by the institution, not by Jesus. This difference, between following and worshiping, is not insignificant. Worshiping is an inherently passive activity, since it involves the adoration of that to which the worshiper cannot aspire. It takes the form of praise, which can be both sentimental and self-satisfying, without any call to changed behavior or self-sacrifice. In fact, Christianity as a belief system requires nothing but acquiescence. Christianity as a way of life, as a path to follow, requires a second birth, the conquest of ego, and new eyes with which to see the world. It is no wonder that we have preferred to be saved.
 

- Robin R. Meyers, Saving Jesus from the Church: 

How to Stop Worshiping Christ and Start Following Jesus.

Royal Kingship of Messiah

The term “Messiah” itself derives from the Hebrew word mashiah, which literally means “rubbed with oil”. This term, in English usually rendered “anointed”, and in Greek christos (hence the name “Christ”), denotes a ritual action used to designate and appoint someone for a special task. The two most important applications are the offices of Priest (e.g. Aaron, Exod. 28:41, etc.) and King (the most famous instances are Samuel’s anointing of Saul, 1 Sam. 10, and of David, 1 Sam. 16), but later also that of Prophet (Isa. 61:1).
 
By far the most powerful and formative influence on the early development of a Messianic expectation was the ideology of Kingship in the united monarchy of Israel and later in the Southern Kingdom of Judah. Antecedents of this can be seen in the leadership tradition expressed in the stories of Moses and Joshua, and later those of the Judges. The decisive influence, however, must be sought in the court theology of the dynasty of David.
 
Such a perspective on the monarchy is also found in the Old Testament, particularly in the so-called royal Psalms (especially Psa. 2, 18, 45, 89, and 110). Divine power was seen to guarantee the power of the king and to symbolize and apply the reign of Yahweh over Israel and all the earth, resulting in prosperity and success for his people. In this capacity, the king could even be called the “son of God”, a term which both distinguished him from the rest of Israel and made him the representative of his people (see especially Psa. 2:7; 2 Sam. 7:14; 1 Chr. 17:13, 22:10). Thus he had many divine privileges, but also a significant number of religious and moral obligations: he was the guarantor and enforcer of God’s covenant with Israel. Some kings fulfilled this role well and some badly: the Old Testament assesses them by exclusively moral and spiritual criteria, with little or no regard for their political prowess and achievements.
 
All this might simply have made Israelite royalty a powerful traditional institution with important religious roots, but not necessarily more than that. What planted the seeds of hope for a Messiah firmly in the royal ideology of Israel was the early belief in the permanent rule of the house of David. The key story here is of course Nathan’s prophecy to David in 2 Samuel 7:11–16: “Your house and your kingdom shall be made sure forever before me; your throne shall be established forever” (cf. 1 Kgs. 2:3f.; Psa. 18:50 (18:51 in Hebrew); 28:9; 89:4, 29–38).

- Markus Bockmuehl, This Jesus: Martyr, Lord, Messiah, 2004. 

Contextualization in Preaching

Contextualization in preaching is communicating the gospel message in ways that are understandable or appropriate to the listener’s cultural context. In other words, contextualization is concerned with us and now.

Some preachers spend more time reading and meditating on our contextual setting than we do on God’s Word. We get caught up in sermonizing about our world or city in an effort to be relevant. As a result, we settle for giving shallow impressions of the text. We forget that the biblical text is the relevant word. It deserves our greatest powers of meditation and explanation.

To put it differently, the preacher is bound to miss the mark of biblical exposition when he allows the context he is trying to win for Christ control the Word he speaks of Christ. As I stated in the introduction, this is the undoing of many of our churches. Too many of us unconsciously believe that a well-studied understanding of our cultural context, rather than the Bible, is the key to preaching with power. 

Blind adherence to contextualization alters our preaching in at least three ways, and none of them is for the better. 

First, it impairs our perspective in the study—in his preparation of his sermon, the preacher becomes preoccupied with the world rather than God’s Word. This leads to impressionistic preaching. 

Second, it changes our use of the pulpit—the Word now supports our intoxicating plans and purposes, rather than those of God. This is inebriated preaching. 

Finally, it shifts our understanding of authority—the preacher’s “fresh” and “spirit led” devotional reading becomes the determinative point of truth. I call this “inspired” preaching.

You are looking for things that you know will make an immediate impression upon your listeners. You begin enjoying this momentary diversion. The work is not hard. Soon a main idea emerges. You contextualize well since, just like your congregation on Sunday, you are not that passionate about things historical. In fact, you got this job, in part, because they were impressed with how well you produced attention-grabbing messages from the otherwise inaccessible ancient realism of biblical scenes. A detailed study of the text can wait.

This is impressionistic preaching. 

It happens a lot. In fact, it may be the most significant problem facing preachers today. Impressionistic preaching is not restrained by the reality of the text. It ignores the historical, literary, and theological contours of the text. It brushes past—in a matter of minutes—many of the exegetical tools you spent time developing. Where the realist painter might look at his object ten times before painting a single stroke, the impressionist looks at his text once and puts ten strokes on the canvas of human experience. So, too, the impressionist preacher. 

-  David R. Helm, Expositional Preaching: How We Speak God's Word Today

THE FOUR P’S

Preach - pastors must give ourselves to preaching, not programs; and that’s why we need to be teaching our congregations to value God’s Word over programs.  Preaching the content and intent of God’s Word is what unleashes the power of God on the people of God, because God’s power for building His people is in His Word, particularly as we find it in the Gospel (Rom. 1:16). God’s Word builds His church. So preaching His Gospel is primary.

Pray -  Prayer shows our dependence on God. It honors Him as the source of all blessing, and it reminds us that converting individuals and growing churches are His works, not ours (1 Cor. 2:14-16; 3:6-7).

Personal Discipling Relationships - discipling can function as another channel through which the Word can flow into the hearts of the members and be worked out in the context of a personal fellowship.

- The Deliberate Church: Building Your Ministry on the Gospel