Theology, Church, and Ministry

A Handbook for Theological Education

David S. Dockery

• Publisher: B&H Academic
• Year: 2017
• ISBN:
  9781433645846
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Religion

We live in a precarious time when many are questioning the necessity of formal theological education for ministers. Theology, Church, and Ministry: A Handbook for Theological Education helps readers understand the critical role theological education plays in equipping God-called ministers for service in the church. This distinct resource explains both the development and purpose of theological educationas well as its role in student formation. The contributors include outstanding thinkers and leaders in the field of theological education, including Con Campbell, Tim Tennent, Mark Bailey, Kevin Vanhoozer, Dan Block, Robert Smith, Dana Harris, Malcolm Yarnell, Danny Akin, and Greg Wills, among others.

SECTION TWO

Theological Education: Shape of Ministry Preparation

Chapter Five

BIBLICAL INSPIRATION, AUTHORITY, AND CANONICITY

D. JEFFREY BINGHAM

The Necessity and Nature of the Word of God

Silence is paradoxical. The sages and poets sing much about the virtues of silence.

Even a fool is considered wise when he keeps silent.¹

Rest in God alone, my soul, for my hope comes from him.²

Good as is discourse, silence is better and shames it.³

Then bid me sing of love no more,

But let me silent be;

For silence is the speech of love,

The music of the spheres above,

That suits a soul like thee.⁴

Solace, Order, and Existence

Yet silence can be deceitful when it substitutes for truth. “The cruelest lies are often told in silence,” wrote Robert Louis Stevenson. “A man may have sat in a room for hours and not opened his teeth, and yet come out of that room a disloyal friend or a vile calumniator.”⁵ Silence can be complicit if protest against evil is required. Where an ear yearns for words of love, silence can be hateful. If praise is fitting, silence is demoralizing; when guidance is needed, silence is misleading. Where the gospel is not proclaimed, silence is damning. Repeatedly in Scripture believers plead with God not to be silent. His silence terrifies those in trouble; they view it as passivity, as absence, as apathy, as indifference—or worse. Sometimes it is seen as divine favoritism for the wicked.⁶

In the case of Moses’s account of creation, silence accompanied the chaos, the formlessness, emptiness, and darkness of the initial state of the heavens and earth before God ordered, formed, and filled them. Only when God’s voice shatters the silence is there order and light. The association of silence with disorder and vacuity, however, is only implied in Genesis 1 by the repeated divine decrees that cause the forming and filling of the heavens and earth. Later Jewish apocalyptic interpretation, nevertheless, explicitly joins silence to the darkness of Gen 1:2: “And then the Spirit was hovering, and darkness and silence embraced everything.”⁷ The Genesis account begins with silence and darkness and disorder and emptiness.⁸ Finally, shall we say, blessedly, into the void God speaks his word in the third verse. Nahum Sarna put it this way: “The divine word shatters the primal cosmic silence and signals the birth of a new cosmic order.”⁹ A. W. Tozer, noting the same implication, wrote that when God spoke forth his creative word, “Chaos heard it and became order, darkness heard it and became light.”¹⁰ The word of God replaces the empty terror of silence with divine provision and crafts the cosmos into a good and beautifully arranged structure.¹¹ Here Moses introduces the wonderful gift God gives his creatures for the first time. With it all other gifts, all other blessings, begin. The first gift God gives to his creatures is the grace of his word whereby he breaks the cold, dark void of silence and brings light into being as the first in a grand succession of creatures that culminates in the formation of richly supplied human beings. Here we learn that we exist and remain only because of the grace of his word.¹² Here we learn that unless God speaks, we have no being. Here we learn that we are utterly reliant on God’s words and commandments. Here we learn that divine speech and revelation are the foundation of all well-ordered, bountiful existence. Here we learn that God’s voice gives birth to light. Not only does the word of God create, not only does it bring something from nothing, but it illuminates. Only by means of God’s word are we able to see things as they really are.

Illumination

How good it was of God to speak into the emptiness and darkness and to break the silence! His voice illumines, calms, brightens, informs, and guides. The sheep always prefer the shepherd’s voice to silence, and they recognize it and distinguish it from the voices of imposters.¹³ Such divine benevolence certainly provides the ideal for these words of Israel’s sage: “A timely word—how good that is!”¹⁴ The Genesis text, then, inaugurates the grand biblical theme of the word of God as luminous: “Your word is a lamp for my feet and a light on my path. . . . The revelation of your words brings light and gives understanding to the inexperienced.”¹⁵ The divine act of speaking forth light is fitting for the One who “wraps himself in light as with a garment.”¹⁶

Potency for Life

The Genesis account is also the primer for Scripture’s teaching on the potency of God’s word. Multiple times, for example, prophetic texts describe the power of God’s word to control the history of both Israel and the Gentiles.¹⁷ Two of the most lucid texts on this theme are Isa 55:10–11 and Heb 4:12. The first assures Israel that God’s word always accomplishes the divine purpose. The second promises a group of early Jewish Christians that God’s word is precise in judgment.

Eternal Validity

Finally, Genesis 1 introduces the doctrine of the eternality of God’s word. The divine word, internal to God himself, comes forth “in the beginning” as he inaugurates his creation of the heavens, the earth, and all that fills them.¹⁸ His word was in the beginning with him. John, the evangelist, will later take up this language and apply it to God’s Son and Word, the second person of the trinity, who becomes flesh.¹⁹ Other passages follow through on the notion begun in Genesis 1. Isaiah and Peter contrast the everlasting stability of the divine word with the temporal, transitory natures of field, flowers, and flesh while Jesus contrasts the permanence of his words with heaven and earth.²⁰

Human Flourishing

Several other Old Testament texts echo the teaching of Gen 1:3 that God’s word is his means of creation.²¹ Such texts, along with Genesis 1, establish the word of God as the basis of created nature and, consequently, the divine word as the basis for humanity’s historical existence within the created world.²² Scripture’s account of this world’s genesis establishes that God exercises his sovereignty over this world and its history by means of the divine word. Therefore, the word of God is the basis for the existence of all creatures in this world. Again the pattern of God’s speaking in Genesis 1 manifests the archetype for later, more fully developed biblical themes: Humans live “on every word that comes from the mouth of the LORD.”²³ Blessed and prosperous is the one whose “delight is in the LORD’s instruction.”²⁴ The divine word contains within it divine provision.²⁵

Attention to the divine word is the means by which human beings flourish. God’s words normatively form the charters for the blessed life within defining moments of the history of redemption: Israel with Moses at Mount Sinai, Jesus’s Sermon on the Mount, John with the Spirit on the mountain and his vision of the New Jerusalem.²⁶ Throughout the history of redemption, the words of God are at the root of the creation and flourishing of all redeemed communities.

When God graciously and benevolently breaks the terror and emptiness of silence by speaking his timely, eternal, omnipotent, calming, informative words, darkness is illumined, the heavens and earth are ordered and filled, communities of the redeemed are formed and given hope, and history is governed. We have just seen a few of the results and properties of God’s word as they relate to the first episode of God’s speech at creation. Scripture, however, records many more episodes of divine revelation. We now turn our attention to various testimonies of Scripture about the different ways in which God reveals himself and his relation to his creation.

Revelation in the Bible

General Revelation

Traditionally, divine revelation is divided into general and special revelation. General revelation is when God manifests himself in a manner that is accessible to all people everywhere at all times. For example, the heavens, the refreshing and nurturing rains, and the fruitfulness of crops seen in everyday life have been visible to everyone since the beginning. They bear witness to the benevolent Creator and his glory.²⁷ All of creation testifies to the Creator’s eternal power and divine nature.²⁸ However, even though the physical world and its bounty reveal aspects of God, this does not mean the observer of nature comprehends the content of nature’s revelation correctly or that the content available in nature is sufficient for a saving knowledge of God.

Paul spoke firmly about humanity’s perverted readings of nature. Whereas creation proclaimed the glorious Creator, human observers worshipped the creature and refused to acknowledge God.²⁹ Humans chose not to benefit from God’s self-manifestation. Instead, they reduced him to a creature among other creatures, a thing among other things. They eliminated God and occupied themselves with the foolish religious business of idolatry.³⁰

Humans have an impediment when it comes to interpreting the data of nature. This impediment calls into question all attempts to form a true view of God and his creation, a natural theology, merely by natural means. Paul knows nothing of humanity’s ability in and of itself to arrive at a natural union with God or a natural knowledge of God. Humans in their fallen, natural state do not willingly witness or accurately assess natural revelation.³¹ Although God has been merciful in employing nature as a means of revelation, two limitations exist in construction of a natural theology: (1) nature’s manifestation of God is authoritative, yet incomplete; it does not reveal, for example, the triune being of God or the redemptive work of Christ; and (2) humanity’s comprehension of nature’s revelation is flawed.³²

We can see in several biblical texts, which at first glance may be called upon to justify a natural theology, that in each case, grace and special revelation are required to build a trustworthy, comprehensive theology. In a text such as Acts 14:14–18, for example, it is important to note that those in Lystra had not arrived at a true concept of the divine through general revelation. And, although Barnabas and Paul appeal to natural phenomena (vv. 16–17) in their preaching, they do so by prefacing their remarks with the Scriptures that interpret such phenomena by pointing to the living Creator God (v. 15).³³ In Athens, Paul, in Acts 17:22–31, repeatedly employs the Old Testament as he proclaims a theology of natural phenomena (vv. 24–27) and concludes his sermon with an appeal for repentance in light of the man who is the risen, eschatological judge (vv. 30–31).³⁴ In each case human beings had not appropriated general revelation well, and in each case general revelation required supplementation by Scripture.

Special Revelation

This apostolic pattern of recourse to Scripture in order to explain general revelation provides an important focus on the exigency of special revelation. In contrast to the former, special revelation involves God’s acting in order to manifest himself to particular people at specific times. Such manifestations take a variety of forms. Some are immediate, as a person or persons, without the intervention of a mediator, receive a revelation from God. Others are mediated. In these cases human and nonhuman mediators are employed by God in order to provide revelations of himself to people.

The Bible gives evidence of several forms of immediate revelation: (1) the appearances of God in a theophany or vision; (...

Table of contents

• Foreword: Timothy George
• Preface
• Contributors
• Section One: Theological education: An introduction
• Section Two: Theological education: Shape of ministry preparation
• Section Three: Theological education: Church and ministry
• Scripture Index
• Name Index
• Subject Index