Kevin DeYoung's Blog, page 193

If You Can't Beat Em…

It's Not About You (Even If You're a Student)

The first sentence of Rick Warren's The Purpose Driven Life got it right: "It's not about you." Our reason for being should begin not with our happiness, our ambition, or our giftedness, but with God. We are not the hope of the world. God is.

Which is why I'm often puzzled by the advertisements put out by Christian colleges and seminaries. I understand that an advertisement for higher education is going to emphasize what the school can do for you and what the school will equip you to do in the world. That's fine. The school wants students to enroll; that's why the advertise. So they are bound to make an appeal to the "you" reading the ad. But a little restraint would be nice.

Recently I saw a full page advertisement for a conservative Christian college. The top half includes a picture of the school with the banner: "What the world needs now is…" and the in the middle of the page with a box around it is the word, "You." The text continues:

The world can sometimes appear to pretty empty.

Perhaps it's because the world desperately needs what only you have to offer. Perhaps the world simply needs an irreplaceable, indispensable you.

The you who looks at the world and asks: why is it like this? What's in me that can make it better — rather than just "what's in it for me?"

We're _______. We have a reputation as one of the finest liberal arts colleges in the country — and yet we're one of the most affordable. Our graduates succeed not just in their careers, but in life.

God gave you a mind for higher things. We'll help you learn to use it well.

And that is the first step to changing the world.

A lot of this is pretty standard fare: we'll help you succeed in life; we'll develop your mind; God made you for a purpose. All that is good. But even given the genre of advertisements, doesn't an page like this reinforce a host of unhelpful notions?

Put yourself in these statements and see how it sounds. "Kevin is what the world needs now. The world desperately needs what only Kevin has to offer. Kevin is irreplaceable and indispensable." Doesn't sound right, does it? This language may strike a chord with the self-help culture we inhabit, but is it the message we want to promote to young Christians? Most students already believe they're special, incredible, unique, amazing world-changers. Most upper middle class students at Christian schools don't need help seeing that. They need help embracing the ordinary, admitting their limitations, and setting realistic expectations. I don't expect an advertisement like this to sell these virtues, but it doesn't have to undermine them.

I didn't mention the school because this little rant isn't really about the school. From all I've seen and heard, it's a very good school. And this institution is not alone in advertising like this. Many schools make a similar pitch. I'm not sure if it's a lack of discernment or a disconnect between the school leadership and the marketing department. Maybe the fault lies with parents and churches. Have we trained our children to assume this sort of self-importance. Or maybe these advertisements just plain work: students respond when made the the source of their own inspiration. Whatever the cause, Christian schools could do their part to stop perpetuating the notion that what the world needs now is you sweet you. True, this ad is urging students to think of the world before themselves. But it's hard to stop thinking of myself when I'm told that am unbelievably awesome.

I love Christians schools. I went to one for my undergraduate and graduate degrees. I love students. We have lots of them in our church. But I know what I was like (and am like) and  they are like too. We need help with self-forgetfulness not self-aggrandizement. Let's be proud of our Christian schools because they foster learning, show us more of God, and equip us to serve. That's more than enough to advertise.

We might not change the world, but a good school can help us change our minds, change our character, and maybe even change the way we look at the universe so God is at the center instead of us.

Monday Morning Humor

You may have heard of Straight No Chaser, the acapella group that originated at Indiana University. This is the song that eventually got them a recording contract. More than a decade after this clip, it appears they've been pretty successful with their unique, creative sound. You may be able to catch their New York City concert on PBS.

A Time for War and a Time for Peace

Fred Zaspel:

For nearly a century before Warfield arrived on its faculty, Princeton Seminary had stood out as the scholarly bastion of the historic Reformed faith. And due in large measure to the towering influence of Old Princeton, much of the new liberalizing tendencies in the church had been held back in significant degree. By means of his 2,700 students and his endless literary output, Warfield played an enormous role in this. But the undercurrent was always present, and within a decade after his death, liberal currents of thought would gain prominence in the Presbyterian church and at his beloved Princeton also. Warfield once met the wife of the seminary president J. Ross Stevenson while walking down a Princeton street, and she implored him: "Dr. Warfiled, I hear there is going to be trouble at the General Assembly. Do let us pray for peace." To this he replied, "I am praying that if they do not do what is right, there may be a mighty battle." (The Theology of B.B. Warfield, 55-56)

He Came to Serve

Imagine you are transported back to Bethlehem two thousand years ago.  There you are standing around the manger. The shepherds approach with a question.

"Do you know who this is?" they inquire.

"Actually I do," you say, "his name his Jesus."

"That's right," they tell you. "The angels told us to come and find him here. The whole night has been amazing. We can't stop praising God for leading us to this special child." But then they ask one more question. "Still, we aren't entirely sure what is so special about him. He must be sent from God. But do you know why he was sent? What has this baby come to do?"

What would you answer the shepherds? "Well, he's come to show us how to live." Or, "He's come to heal people." Or, "He's come to show God's love to the world." Or, "He's come to meet people's physical and spiritual needs." All of those answers would have some truth to them. But there's a better answer, more to the point, more to the heart of Jesus' own mission. Jesus us tells us why he came in Mark 10:45.

Why did the Son of God come to earth? What was his one driving ambition that determined everything else he did? It was this: "The Son of Man came not to be served but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many." Jesus healed. Jesus cast out demons. Jesus taught about the kingdom. But all of that was to the end that he might serve his people by death and resurrection. Not just service broadly conceived as blessing people with his care and compassion, but service in the best way possible way, and in the way only Jesus could fulfill, service through suffering on a cross.

Other texts make the same point. Recall the angelic instructions for Joseph: "You shall call his name Jesus, for he will save his people from their sins" (Matt. 1:21). That's why Jesus came–not first of all to set a moral example or to make us feel special–but to save us from our sins. "The Son of Man came to seek and to save the lost," Jesus says in Luke 19:10. Elsewhere: "I came not to call the righteous, but sinners" (Mark 2:17). That was his goal and it could only be accomplished through death. As R.T. France concludes in his commentary on Mark 10:45: "This, then, is the stated purpose of Jesus' mission. His many acts of mercy, healing, teaching, challenging the norms of society, and all the other elements of Mark's story must be seen in the light of this own purpose, to give his life as a ransom for many" (The Gospel of Mark, 421 [note: the last part of the sentence France leaves untranslated in Greek]).

Why did Jesus come? What was the baby sent here to accomplish? What was his mission? Quite simply, Jesus came to serve. And how did he serve? Mark 10 shows us how (full sermon here): He gave up his life (10:45, 32). He drank the cup (10:38). He paid the ransom (10:45). Thank God for the exalted Son of Man who, for our sakes, humbled himself to become our Suffering Servant.

Out of Egypt I Called My Son

Now when they had departed, behold, an angel of the Lord appeared to Joseph in a dream and said, "Rise, take the child and his mother, and flee to Egypt, and remain there until I tell you, for Herod is about to search for the child, to destroy him." And he rose and took the child and his mother by night and departed to Egypt and remained there until the death of Herod. This was to fulfill what the Lord had spoken by the prophet, "Out of Egypt I called my son." (Matthew 2:13-15)

That last verse has caused lots of consternation.  The Holy Family goes to Egypt, and this somehow fulfills Hosea's reference to Israel's exodus? As I mentioned last week, at first glance it looks like Matthew is connecting the dots by the slimmest of connections.

Here's what we read in Hosea 11:1-4:

When Israel was a child, I loved him, and out of Egypt I called my son. The more they were called, the more they went away; they kept sacrificing to the Baals and burning offerings to idols.Yet it was I who taught Ephraim to walk; I took them up by their arms, but they did not know that I healed them. I led them with cords of kindness, with the bands of love, and I became to them as one who eases the yoke on their jaws, and I bent down to them and fed them.

Clearly, Hosea, speaking for the Lord, is harkening back to the Exodus. He is remembering when Israel was just a little toddler of a nation and God delivered them out of bondage in Egypt. "Many years ago, by Moses and the plagues and all that, I called my son Israel out of Egypt, out of the house of slavery"–that's what Hosea 11 is about.

But look again at Matthew. "Out of Egypt I called my son" here refers to God hiding Jesus away in Egypt to avoid Herod's decree and then calling him back from Egypt when Herod is dead. This seems to be unrelated to anything Hosea was talking about. How can Matthew say this flight to Egypt fulfilled the words of the prophet Hosea when the two events seem connected by no more than the word Egypt? How can this possibly be a fulfillment of Old Testament prophecy?

Swing and a Miss

That's a tough question and one that has generated a lot of bad answers. Some, with good intentions, have said "Look, Matthew says Jesus fulfilled this prophecy, so it must be that Hosea is a direct prophecy about the Messiah and only about the Messiah. Hosea knew he was predicting something about the Christ." That does try to make sense of Matthew's language, but you really have to get creative with Hosea to make it look like he was knowingly predicting a Messianic flight to Egypt.

Others have suggested that Matthew was just making a loose connection between two events that had to do with Egypt. He's just playing free association with Biblical prophecy. "Jesus came out of Egypt. Here's something in the prophets about Egypt. So let's put the two together." Not only does this make Matthew look a bit silly and throw into question some basic beliefs about biblical inspiration, this sort of loosey-goosey prophetic fulfillment simply doesn't fit with the rest of Matthew's gospel.

Matthew, more than any gospel writer, goes to great lengths to show that Jesus' birth, life, and death, are rooted firmly in the Old Testament. Jesus was born of a virgin (fulfilling Isaiah 7:14). He was born in Bethlehem (fulfilling Micah 5:1-2). He was sought out to be killed by Herod (fulfilling Jeremiah 31:15). He was preceded by John preparing the way (fulfilling Isaiah 40:3). He healed diseases (fulfilling Isaiah 53:4). He spoke through parables (fulfilling Psalm 78:2). He came to Jerusalem riding on a donkey (fulfilling Zechariah 9:9). Matthew is very deliberate with his use of the Old Testament. So his citing of Hosea 11 must be more than just a connection with the word Egypt.

Jesus as the True Israel

So how do we make sense of this prophecy in Hosea and fulfillment in Matthew? The first step toward understanding Matthew's purpose is to look more carefully at the word "fulfill." The Greek word is pleroō. And it simply means to fill up. That's what Matthew is at pains to demonstrate–that Jesus was filling up the Old Testament. Sometimes this meant very specifically that the Old Testament predicted the Messiah's birthplace would be in Bethlehem and Jesus was, in fact, born in Bethlehem. There you go. That's fulfillment. But fulfillment can be broader than that. It can refer to the filling up of the Old Testament; that is, the bringing to light what previously had been in shadows.

Take Mark 1:14-15, for example. "Now after John was arrested, Jesus came into Galilee, proclaiming the gospel of God, and saying, 'The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God is at hand; repent and believe in the gospel.'" When Jesus said "the time is fulfilled," he did not mean "right now a specific prediction of Scripture is coming to pass." He meant, "with my preaching of the gospel, the time has been filled up and the kingdom is here. The Old Testament is reaching its climax." Likewise, I don't believe Matthew thought Jesus' flight to Egypt was predicted in Hosea 11:1. But I do believe that Matthew thought Jesus' flight to and return from Egypt was filling up Hosea 11:1.

So what exactly is Jesus fulfilling, or filling up in Matthew 2:15? Jesus, as Matthew correctly understands the situation, is filling up the redemptive historical purposes of the nation. In other words, Matthew can claim that this Hosea passage, which talks about the Exodus of Israel out of Egypt, is fulfilled in Jesus, because Jesus is the embodiment of Israel.

Matthew looked back and saw an analogical correspondence between the history of the nation Israel and the history of the Messiah…the Hosea 11:1 quotation by Matthew is not an example of arbitrary exegesis on the part of a New Testament writer. On the contrary Matthew looked back and carefully drew analogies between the events of the nation's history and the historical incidents in the life of Jesus (Biliotheca Sacra 143:325).

In the gospel of Matthew, Jesus is cast as the true and faithful Israel. Matthew is retelling Israel's well known story, but he's putting Jesus right in the middle as the main character in the story. Jesus is the new Israel.

Chapter one starts with the genealogy of Jesus. The very first words, in Greek, are "biblos geneseos Iesou Christou"–a book of the beginning of Jesus Christ. Now why is that significant? Well, because that word geneseos is a form of the word genesis, as in the first book the Bible. I don't think Matthew is trying to be tricky here, but surely he knew the first book of the Bible and realized that when he begins his gospel with "a book of the genesis of Jesus" he is, at least, strongly suggesting that this story of Jesus Christ marks a new beginning for the people of God. The story is starting over. This suggestion is supported by another parallel with the first book of the Bible. Genesis is broken up into ten toledoth sections. Ten times in the book of Genesis, we read "these are the generations (toledoth) of…" Interestingly enough, these toledoth sections are, in a couple of places, translated into the Greek Septuagint with biblos geneseos (Gen. 2:4; 5:1), which further points in the direction that Matthew understood Jesus to be a new generation, a new genealogy, a new beginning for the nation of Israel.


Not only is Jesus the new Genesis, his life embodies the new Exodus. Shortly after Jesus birth, he was rushed away to safety to avoid the wrath of a jealous king who had ordered all the young boys to be killed. Where else does this happen in the Bible? Exodus 1. Pharaoh fears the Hebrews and so he orders that every baby boy be thrown into the Nile. But Moses was spared because his mother hid him in a basket in the river. Likewise, Jesus was spared Herod's decree because his mother hid him in Egypt.


Following right on the heels of Jesus' exodus out of Egypt, we come to his baptism in the Jordan in Matthew 3. Again, I don't think Matthew is trying to be speak in secret code, and he certainly isn't making the stories up, but he has arranged the material in such a way as to retell Israel's story, with Jesus now as the true Israel. So just like the Israelites left Egypt and then passed through the Red Sea (baptized into the sea according 1 Cor. 10:2), Jesus too leaves Egypt and passes through the waters in his baptism.


Just to point out one more parallel, think what happens to the Israelites after they pass through the Red Sea. They wind up in the desert where they wander for forty years. And where is Jesus in Matthew 4 after his baptism? He is in the desert about to be tempted after having fasted for forty days and forty nights.

Matthew clearly wants to portray Jesus as fulfilling Israel's history and bringing it to a climax. Matthew didn't think Hosea 11:1 was a direct prophecy about Jesus and his family going to Egypt. And Hosea certainly didn't mean it as such. The passage is about Israel's Exodus out of Egypt and about her subsequent idolatries and adulteries. Matthew understood that. He wasn't trying to give Hosea 11 a new meaning. But he did see something Messianic in Hosea's words. Jesus would be the faithful Son called out of Egypt, filling up what was lacking in the first faithless son, Israel. From his genesis to his exodus to his baptism in the Jordan to his forty days in the wilderness, Jesus was identifying himself with the covenant people. He was the embodiment of Israel.

With Him He Was Well Pleased

And so when Jesus fled Herod and went to Egypt, it brought to a climax the work of deliverance that began in the Exodus of Israel and was now coming to completion in the Exodus of Jesus. That's why Matthew can say "this was to fulfill what was spoken by the prophet." But whereas the first Israel, God's son, broke the covenant and deserved God's wrath, when God beholds his only begotten Son Jesus Christ, he says in Matthew 3:17, "This is my Son, whom I love; with him I am well pleased."

Far from being a barely connected prophetic fulfillment, this word from Hosea 11 filled up in Matthew 2, is a robust piece of New Testament theology. This text says something weighty about the person of Jesus Christ. Jesus is the one who came to complete all that Israel was designed to perform. All the adulteries and idolatries and rebellion and waywardness that characterized Israel would be recast in the true Israel Jesus Christ. God sent his Son to do himself what his people could not do for themselves. This is the meaning of fulfillment of Hosea 11 and the true meaning of Immanuel, God with us.

Three Things Are Necessary

J.C. Ryle:

There are three things which, according to the Bible, are absolutely necessary to the salvation of every man and woman in Christendom.

Ok, don't read on yet. What do you think the three things are? Keep in mind he doesn't say three "grounds" for salvation or that we are saved on the basis of each one. But Ryle believes every true Christian will have these three things. What are the three?

These three are justification, regeneration, and sanctification. All three meet in ever child of God: he is both born again, and justified, and sanctified. He that lacks any one of these three things is not a true Christian in the sight of God, and, dying in that condition, will not be found in heaven and glorified in the last day.

If Ryle is right, we would do well to have these three things as three of the great themes in our churches. How are we doing?

Assuming Too Much about "Assume" in 1 Timothy 2:12

As most readers of this blog will know, a new version of the NIV is going to be released by Zondervan in 2011. The translation and the introductory notes are already available online. One of the early controversies surrounds the rendering of 1 Timothy 2:12. The 1984 NIV reads: "I do not permit a woman to teach or to have authority over a man; she must be silent."  This verse was changed in the 2005 TNIV: "I do not permit a woman to teach or to assume authority over a man; she must be quiet." The new NIV keeps the TNIV reading (and drops the TNIV footnote unfortunately). Since the 1984 NIV and the TNIV are being made obsolete with this new edition, the NIV now has "assume authority" instead of "exercise authority" for this crucial verse.

Denny Burk has written a fine piece criticizing this decision. I won't repeat his arguments here. I think H. Scott Baldwin and others have demonstrated that the best rendering of the Greek in 1 Timothy 2:12 is "exercise authority." I'm no professional, but from all I've read I think "assume authority" is a mistake on translation grounds. At the very least, it's odd that the NIV thinks the meaning of authentein has gotten less clear from 1984 to 2010, when the scholarship that's taken place in the last 25 years suggests the NIV got it right back then.

But I don't want to talk about Greek. I want to talk about English and what the word "assume" means. Many complementarians object to the new NIV translation, not only because egalitarians have been pushing for this rendering (as Burk points out), but because "assume authority" communicates something different than "exercise authority." For their part, the Committee on Bible Translation (the group of scholars responsible for the NIV) insist that "assume authority" was chosen precisely because it does not side with either egalitarians or complementarians. Craig Blomberg and Doug Moo, for example, maintain that the NIV rendering does not tip the scales one way or the other. Their goal was to stay neutral and bow to no theological agenda.

Blomberg and Moo are among evangelicalism's best scholars (and complementarians too). I use one of their books almost every week it seems. They deserve our respect and trust. We should take them at their word: CBT was not trying to play favorites in the debate over gender roles.

But acknowledging this does not mean we can't still disagree with the CBT's decision on 1 Timothy 2:12. As I said earlier, quite apart from the Greek, I think their English rendering does not do what the committee thinks it does. The new NIV obviously moves away from a complementarian-friendly translation of the text (as per the 1984 edition). The 2011 NIV may strive for neutrality, but on this issue it's definitely migrated in a certain direction.

More to the point, look at these two quotes which defend the CBT approach to authentein. The first from is Blomberg:

I can tell you authoritatively that we did NOT choose this rendering to tip the scales one way or the other. Whether you are a complementarian or an egalitarian, you have some view of what Paul thinks women should not do here, in terms of exercising authority. When they violate that, whatever it is, they inappropriately assume authority. That's all we were saying.

And here is Moo:

Moo wrote, "[T]he translators believed that 'assume authority' could be taken in either direction. We often use this phrase in a neutral way (e.g., 'When will the new President assume authority'?). … [I]t is our intent to provide a translation that is faithful to the text, bowing to no particular theological agenda.

The argument is that "assume authority" is neutral because it can be read in two different ways. Indeed, the first two definitions for "assume (used with object)" in this online dictionary are: "to take for granted or without proof; suppose; postulate; posit" and "to take upon oneself; undertake." The third definition is closely related to the second: "to take over the duties or responsibilities of." So "assume authority" can mean "supposing you have authority (that you don't have)" or "taking on the duties or responsibilities of authority." The first definition in the last sentence sounds more like "usurp," which strengthens the egalitarians case. The second definition sounds more like "exercise authority," which helps the complementarian side (and is truer to the Greek in my estimation, the KJV rendering notwithstanding). The CBT figures "assume authority" plays it safe in the middle; neither side can claim it for their own.

The problem, I fear, is that most English speakers will hear "assume authority" in the "usurp" sense, not in the "exercise" sense. Moo gives the example: "When will the new President assume authority?" He argues this shows "assume authority" can be quite neutral and need not imply a wrongful grabbing of authority, which is what egalitarians hope the verse says, because then Paul is forbidding the illegitimate appropriation of authority not the exercise of authority itself.

But Moo's example may not be the most germane. First off, it's a question. And second, it looks to the future. In asking "when will the President assume authority?" we know by context that a neutral view of "assume" is in view. No one asks, "When will the President begin to assume authority he doesn't have?" By asking a question that looks to the future we know "assume" means something like "take over the duties or responsibilities of." But when we tell someone "do not assume…" most hearers are already thinking of a pejorative sense of the word. Unless we are talking about presidents or generals coming to power, we don't normally use "assume authority" in a neutral sense. I would argue most of us hear "assume authority" as "presuming to have authority (we don't)" or "taking authority for oneself." In both cases, the problem is not with the authority per se, but with the means of obtaining it.

This is the problem with the NIV rendering of 1 Timothy 2:12. "Assume authority" will be heard, despite the intentions of the CBT, as authority inappropriately gotten. People will not think of "assuming the responsibilities of the office" as in Moo's example. Why would Paul prohibit persons from assuming the responsibilities of their office (ala the President) anyway? No, to "assume authority" implies the authority was not simply exercised but was taken wrongfully.

I believe we see a tacit admission of this point in the Blomberg quotation above. "Exercising authority" is used broadly in the second sentence; then "assume authority" is used negatively in the third sentence with the adverb "inappropriately." If "exercise authority" is the best translation, then authority is the problem. If "assume authority" is the best rendering, we are dealing with the inappropriate assumption of authority. This change's Paul's prohibition considerably. The CBT cannot have it both ways. In the Translator's Notes the CBT states, "The exercise of authority that Paul was forbidding was one that women inappropriately assumed, but whether that referred to all forms of authority over men in church or only certain forms in certain contexts is up to the individual interpreter to decide." But is the interpretation really up for debate if it has already been established that the problem in Ephesus was  with authority "women inappropriately assumed"? Does this not suggest Paul's command is about the assumption of authority, not the mere exercising of it? And even if "assume" leaves the door open for a more neutral interpretation, is this really how most English speakers will read the text?

Taking into account the ear of English readers–which is the NIV's translation philosophy–I have to conclude that the NIV rendering of 1 Timothy 2:12 is not neutral. At best, "assume" still implies taking authority. At worst (and more likely), the NIV makes it sound like Paul is against the inappropriate assumption of authority, not women-over-men authority in general. And this understanding is precisely what egalitarians have been arguing for and what, according to recent scholarship, the usage of authentein in Greek literature argues against.

Monday Morning Humor

HT: Paul McCain (via Dane Ortlund)

A Personal Guarantee

An open letter to the owner of the Chicago White Sox…

Dear Chairman Reinsdorf,

As a lifelong White Sox fan I was very pleased to see you doled out the cash to sign Adam Dunn and re-sign A.J. Pierzynski. I'm also glad to hear your General Manager Kenny Williams say the number one priority now is re-signing Paul Konerko. Bully for you.

To make this re-acquisition possible, I just wanted to give you my personal guarantee that if you re-sign Paul Konerko I will attend at least two games at the Cell in 2011. That may not sound like much, but normally I go to zero games each year, and when I do I mooch off of friends who already have tickets. But this time I'm promising to purchase my own tickets for at least two games. I'll even go with someone else, so that's at least four tickets. Plus, I'll buy a hot dog and some nachos. Probably a pop too. Maybe another winter hat from the souvenir stand like the time I went to a game with Ted Kluck in May and it felt like Christmas in Saskatchewan. The dollar signs must be cha-chinging in your head already. Surely with my extra loyalty, and many like me, you will be able to keep #14 in Chicago where he belongs.

And if you have any direct conversations with Mr. Konerko, please let him know that my youngest son is named Paul. Not really after him, but it's a wonderful coincidence. And we call our little guy Paulie all the time.

Best wishes,

Kevin

P.S. Enjoy the video below. It will bring back good memories. You might want to turn down the sound a tad; it's kind of loud. And if you think of it, talk to Major League Baseball about allowing their highlights to be broadcast on YouTube.