Justin Taylor's Blog, page 345

A Recently Discovered Letter of Critique Written to the Apostle Paul

Co-authored with Jared Wilson

Exclusive: In an exciting example of scholarly cross-collaboration and interdisciplinary research, textual critics and archaeologists have just published a translation of a recently discovered first-century letter, apparently authentic, written to the Apostle Paul himself. Scholars believe it was likely written in the late AD 40s or early 50s. The parchment was remarkably well preserved in a jar buried in a cave on the island of Satiricus. It is surmised that the author of the letter, Parodios, was an elder who had met Paul on one of his missionary journeys.

The translation, published here for the first time, reads as follows:

Parodios, a servant of the Lord Jesus Christ, to our brother Paulos.

Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.

Our church recently received a copy of the letter that you sent to the church of Galatia. We hope you will not mind hearing our humble concerns. In the past we have noticed you are more interested in confronting people rather than conversing with them, but we hope you will receive this letter as an invitation to further dialogue.

First of all, we are uncomfortable with your tone throughout the correspondence. We know it is difficult sometimes to discern tone of voice from written communication, but you should keep this in mind as well. One could gather from your careless use of words that you are losing your temper. You certainly sound angry. This is unbecoming a spokesperson for the faith. As you say yourself, one of the manifest fruit of God's Spirit is gentleness.

Aren't you being a hypocrite to preach grace but not show it to our Judaizer brothers? They may not worship as you do or emphasize the same teachings you do, but our Lord has "sheep not of this fold," and there is certainly room within the broader Way for these brothers. Their methodology may differ from yours, but certainly their hearts are in the right place.

You yourself know that our Lord required personal contact when we have a grievance against another. Have you personally contacted any of these men? Have you sat down to reason with them personally? Have you issued a personal invitation? Some of them may even reconsider their viewpoints if you had taken a different tack. We know that your position is likely that public teaching is open to public criticism, but we can do better than what is expected, can't we?

In one portion of your letter, you indicate you don't even know these persons! "Whoever he is," you write. Our dear Paulos, how can you rightly criticize them when you don't know them? It's clear you haven't even read their material, because you never quote them. We implore you to see that they are plainly within the tradition of Moses and of the Prophets. They understand the context of the covenant in ways you appear deaf to.

Similarly, we find your tone and resorting to harsh language not in keeping with the love of Christ. "Foolish Galatians." "Let him be accursed." "Emasculate themselves." Really? Can you not hear yourself? You think this is Christlike? Does this sound like something our Lord would say? Do you think this flippant, outrageous, personal, vindictive manner of speech speaks well of God's love or the church? It is clear you are taking this way too personally. Indeed, you ask the Galatians if you are now their enemy. Does everything have to be so black and white to you?

Paulos, what will unbelievers think when they read this letter? Do you think this will commend the gospel to them? This kind of harsh language just makes us look like a bunch of angry people. They see we can't even love each other, and over what? Circumcision? This is a terrible advertisement for God's love to an unbelieving world. You have given plenty of people permission now to disregard Jesus, if this is what his mouthpieces sound like.

We hope you will reconsider your approach. We know that you catch much more flies with honey than with vinegar. We are concerned that your ill-worded letter signals a divisiveness that threatens to fracture the church. We beg you to reconsider how important these minor issues are, and how in the future you may speak in ways that better reflect God's love.

The grace—and the love!—of our Lord Jesus Christ be with your spirit, brother.

It is unknown whether the Apostle Paul actually received and read this letter, and history has left no record of a response.

But we think we can make at least two observations.

First, Paul's words to the Galatians were not inappropriate. They were true words, and they were loving words. Even if it runs contrary to our presuppositions and expectations, they were an example of "speaking the truth in love." These words were inspired by the Holy Spirit, so that to critique Paul and his language is ultimately to critique God himself.

Second, this language was not Paul's default. He did not respond to every controversy in the same way. He would be appalled if people took this letter to the Galatians and made it the norm for Christian discourse. Christians should seek to guard their tongue, using gracious speech seasoned with salt, delivered in love, and designed for edification (Col. 4:6; Eph. 4:15, 25, 29). But false doctrine and false teachers can infiltrate the church, and when the gospel is at stake, the means of being loving, edifying, salt-flavored, grace-filled may require harsh words in order to protect the flock, the church for whom Christ died.

May God give us much wisdom in how to speak the truth in love, especially when we have to call a spade a spade.

When Being Calm and Analytical about False Doctrine Is Wrong

Kevin DeYoung:

No doubt, some Christians get worked up over the smallest controversies, making a forest fire out of a Yankee Candle.

But there is an opposite danger–and that is to be so calm, so middle-of-the-road, so above-the-fray that you no longer feel the danger of false doctrine.

You always sound analytical, never alarmed.

Always crying for much-neglected conversation, never crying over a much-maligned cross.

There is something worse than hurting feelings, and that is trampling upon human hearts.

Are You Afflicted?

A few observations from Psalm 119.

God's painful discipline of his children always has a redemptive purpose and is done in faithful love.

67 Before I was afflicted I went astray,

but now I keep your word.

71 It is good for me that I was afflicted,

that I might learn your statutes.

75 I know, O Lord, that your rules are righteous,

and that in faithfulness you have afflicted me.

God's life-giving promise is a comfort in time of affliction.

50 This is my comfort in my affliction,

that your promise gives me life.

God's word sustains us through affliction.

92 If your law had not been my delight,

I would have perished in my affliction.

God can deliver us from affliction, and we can cry out for life.

153 Look on my affliction and deliver me,

for I do not forget your law.

107 I am severely afflicted;

give me life, O Lord, according to your word!

William J. Stuntz (1958-2011)

Harvard Law Professor William Stuntz died last week at the age of 52 after suffering from colon cancer. Both pieces in The New York Times refer to his strong Christian faith. Professor Stuntz developed a distinctly Christian perspective on his field of expertise and in so doing became "one of the most influential legal scholars of the past generation."

Timothy Darymple of Patheos interviewed Stuntz earlier this year: "You Will Call, I Will Answer: An Interview with William Stuntz."

In 2009 he wrote a piece for Christianity Today: "Three Gifts for Hard Times." In that piece he was blunt with regard to his situation: "Cancer will very probably kill me within the next two years."

He had a gift of words to help us understand the torturous reality of chronic pain:

Living with chronic pain is like having an alarm clock taped to your ear with the volume turned up—and you can't turn it down. You can't run from it; the pain goes where you go and stays where you stay. Chronic pain is the unwelcome guest who will not leave when the party is over.

And yet he also knew and celebrated the Gospel of his Savior in relationship to suffering:

Joseph's story foreshadows the central story of the Gospels. The worst day in human history was the day of Christ's crucifixion, which saw the worst possible punishment inflicted on the One who, in all history, least deserved it. Two more sunrises and the Son rose: the best day in human history, the day God turned death itself against itself—and because he did so, each one of us has the opportunity to share in death's defeat.

That is our God's trademark. Down to go up, life from death, beauty from ugliness: the pattern is everywhere.

That familiar pattern is also a great gift to those who suffer disease and loss—the loss may remain, but good will come from it, and the good will be larger than the suffering it redeems. Our pain is not empty; we do not suffer in vain. When life strikes hard blows, what we do has value. Our God sees it.

Let us thank God for a life well lived.

David Platt: "Do We Really Believe What We're Saying?"

A powerful challenge for those critiquing universalism—we must fight not only "intellectual universalism" (taught by "others") but also "functional universalism" (modeled by many of us):

Getting the Creator-Creature Order Right

Many missteps in theology are on account of the implicit idea that God must be like us in some way. In 2003 I read the following from Ardel Caneday and it helped me to see the importance of getting the Creator-creature relationship in the right order. This is worth reading slowly to grasp the point and the import.

Apprehension of God and relation to God are ours only in terms of analogies that derive from the fact that God made man in his own image.

God's imprinted image is organic.

The Creator-creature analogy yields the Bible's five primary analogical relationships within which we relate to God:

(1) king and subject;

(2) judge and defendant/litigant;

(3) husband and wife;

(4) father and child; and

(5) master and slave.

God, who made his creatures in his own image, is pleased to disclose himself to us in keeping with the God-like adornment with which he clothed us.

Here is the essence of anthropomorphism. God reveals himself to us in human terms, yet we must not compare God to us as if we were the ultimate reference point. God organically and indelibly impressed his image upon man so that our relationships to one another reflect his relationships with us.

We do not come to know God as creator ex nihilo because we know ourselves to be creative and imagine him to be greater. Instead, man creates because we are like God. God is the original; we are the organic image, the living copy.

We do not rightly speak of God as king by projecting onto him regal imagery because we think it is fitting for God. Rather, bowing before God who has dominion is proper because man, as king over creation, is the image of kingship; God, the true king, is the reality that casts the image of the earthly king.

It is not as if God looked around his creation and found marital union between male and female to be a fit pattern for his relationship with humans. "Male and female he created them" that they may "become one flesh" (Gen. 2:24). The union of husband and wife is an earthly image or copy of the heavenly union of God, the true husband, with his people, the true bride. Paul understood marriage in Genesis 2:24 this way, for he cites the passage and explains, "This is a profound mystery—but I am talking about Christ and the church" (Eph. 5:32).

—A. B. Caneday, "Veiled Glory: God's Self-Revelation in Human Likeness—A Biblical Theology of God's Anthropomorphic Self-Disclosure," in Beyond the Bounds, ed. Piper, Taylor, and Helseth (Crossway, 2003), p. 163; my emphasis. [The whole book is online for free.]

What Does It Mean to Preach the Whole Counsel of God?

"I did not shrink from declaring to you the whole counsel of God."

—The Apostle Paul to the Ephesian elders, Acts 20:27

D. A. Carson explains what he meant:

When Paul attests that this is what he proclaimed to the believers in Ephesus, the Ephesian elders to whom he makes this bold asseveration know full well that he had managed this remarkable feat in only two and a half years.

In other words, whatever else Paul did, he certainly did not manage to go through every verse of the Old Testament, line by line, with full-bore explanation. He simply did not have time.

What he must mean is that he taught the burden of the whole of God's revelation, the balance of things, leaving nothing out that was of primary importance, never ducking the hard bits, helping believers to grasp the whole counsel of God that they themselves would become better equipped to read their Bibles intelligently, comprehensively.

It embraced

God's purposes in the history of redemption (truths to be believed and a God to be worshiped),
an unpacking of human origin, fall, redemption, and destiny (a worldview that shapes all human understanding and a Savior without whom there is no hope),
the conduct expected of God's people (commandments to be obeyed and wisdom to be pursued, both in our individual existence and in the community of the people of God), and
the pledges of transforming power both in this life and in the life to come (promises to be trusted and hope to be anticipated).

—D. A. Carson, "Challenges for the Twenty-first-century Pulpit," in Preach the Word: Essays on Expository Preaching: In Honor of R. Kent Hughes, ed. Leland Ryken and Todd Wilson [Crossway, 2007], pp. 177-178; bullets and italics added.

What Poetry Does

"Poetry makes the half man whole by saying the things which he feels but cannot say."

—Clyde Kilby, Poetry and Life (New York, Odyssey Press, 1953), p. 3

Oprah, Religion, and the Consumer Culture

Thomas Kidd has a review of what looks to be a serious and fascinating new book, Oprah: The Gospel of an Icon, by Kathryn Lofton.

An excerpt:

Much of religious studies writing these days confounds the reader with purposeless jargon, but Lofton exemplifies the potential of religious studies by riffing on what the 'O' means in our culture, in which purchasing and consuming the right products has become inextricably spiritual, and our supposed path to the fulfilled life.

Lofton's prose is compelling; the effect of the book is like an avalanche. In reading Oprah, I kept stumbling over sentences so carefully wrought that I needed to stop and think. This is not to say that Oprah is an easy or entertaining read. But if you read it, you won't think about the connection between religion and consumer culture the same way again.

How Do You Provide Christlike Leadership to Christ-centered Organizations?

Philip Ryken:

I recommend Christian Leadership Essentials to anyone who is privileged to lead in ministry.

The book's authors are dynamic Christian leaders and educators who have thought deeply and carefully about how to provide Christlike leadership for Christ-centered organizations.

Their practical counsel is grounded in biblical truth, theological reflection, and spiritual discipline, and thus it will help anyone who wants to learn how to cultivate the gift of administration and manage for the glory of God.

Here's the book: Christian Leadership Essentials: A Handbook for Managing Christian Organization , edited by David Dockery (B&H, 2011). Contributors and contributions include:

Robert B. Sloan, "A Biblical Model of Leadership"
Judson Carlberg, "Managing the Organization"
Jon Wallace, "Financial Oversight and Budget Planning"
Evans Whitaker, "Development, Campaigns, and Building Projects"
Carl Zylstra, "Accreditation and Government Relations"
Jim Edwards, "Relationships with Multiple and Various Constituencies"
Phil Eaton, "Employee Relations in a Grace-filled Community"
Barry Corey, "Engaging the Culture"
Randall O'Brien, "The Leader as Mentor and Pastor"