From The Briefing:
flickr: adrigu
If you insist to a friend that the ‘real meaning of Christmas’ is the birth of Jesus Christ, there are two kinds of response you’re likely to get.
If your friend is a traditionalist, they’ll probably agree with you. They might bemoan with you the fact that Christmas is becoming so commercial, and long for the good old days when the centre of nativity scenes was Mary and Joseph and baby Jesus rather than elves and Santa Claus. In that case, the traditions surrounding Christmas might give you a great opportunity to speak about the stunning implications of God becoming human in the person of Jesus.
But it’s also possible that your friend will disagree with you. They might tell you, for example, that what we now call ‘Christmas’ was originally a pagan midwinter festival which was ‘Christianised’ by the medieval catholic church. Or they might reply that they prefer to think of Christmas as a time of celebration, family, generosity and peace, and they don’t particularly need the religious element. If this is your friend’s response, then your claim that Christ is the ‘real meaning of Christmas’ might just seem to them like an out-of-touch religious traditionalism from a bygone era. Should you keep insisting on it?
Well, you’ve got to admit that the Bible won’t back you up. There’s no commandment in the Bible, “Thou shalt celebrate the incarnation on December 25th.” Nor does the Bible tell us the date of Jesus’ birthday; some people have even cheekily pointed out that midwinter is the least likely time for Jesus to be born, because there were shepherds in the fields at night. Anyway, the Bible warns us against making a big deal about festivals and seasons. An unhealthy obsession with seasons is, in fact, a sign that we’ve moved away from Christ himself (e.g. Gal 4:9-10, Col 2:16-17).
It’s also a bit hypocritical to argue that the word ‘Christmas’ is derived from ‘Christ’. After all, the word ‘Easter’ is derived from the pagan fertility goddess Ēostre, but we don’t insist that the ‘real meaning of Easter’ is an idolatrous fertility cult.
It’s not very easy to argue from history, either. Christmas has meant different things to different people at different times in history. In 17th century Cromwellian England, for example, Christmas was generally regarded as an excuse for drunkenness, greed and sexual abandon. This was one of the reasons that the ‘godly’ parliament of the time tried to clamp down on Christmas! In fact, historians point out that the modern Anglo-American obsession with Christmas as the most celebrated holiday festival of the year probably owes more to the likes of Charles Dickens and Prince Albert than to a long-standing church tradition.
So if you ever feel that you have to argue that Christ is the ‘real meaning of Christmas’, you’ve already lost the argument. Why not, instead, concentrate on Christ himself? Invite your friend to consider why, from your point of view, the birth of Jesus Christ is stupendously amazing, and why Christians continue to take the time each year to celebrate it. Christ’s coming into the world actually changes things for the better. When we take an honest look at the world around us, we can see that Christmas isn’t actually a time of celebration, family, generosity and peace. Without Christ, these are just hollow ideals. In reality, Christmas without Christ is a time of drunken office parties, stress, family bickering and rampant consumerism. What better time of the year, then, to celebrate the coming of God into our world? Jesus’ birth tells us that God has not abandoned us to our crazy messed-up lives. God himself has come to us. Through Jesus’ life and death, God has brought forgiveness, a relationship with God himself, transformation of our relationships with one another, and the hope of everlasting life and peace.
After all, we don’t just want to win people for Christmas. We want to win them for Christ.
I have become all things to all people, that by all means I might save some. I do it all for the sake of the gospel, that I may share with them in its blessings. (1 Corinthians 9:22-23)
Comments at The Briefing.
A message about some of the latest language flashcard resources from my friend Rene Hamburger:
If you were planning to revise your Greek or Hebrew vocab or grammar, using Anki might be a great help!
Anki is probably the best and most popular free flashcard testing program that is available for a large number of platforms (e.g. Windows, Max, Linux, iPhone, Android). One of the great advantages over other programs is that it supports an automatic sync over the internet. So you can use it at home or on your smartphone on the go, and your flashcards will always be in sync!
If you are using paper cards, you might well want to stick with them. But there are actually several advantages testing software like Anki has over paper cards. Firstly, it is much better than us in keeping track of when certain cards should be reviewed next, so you are less likely to waste time reviewing cards you know very well (which will be a few hundred cards even after the first year of Greek or Hebrew) and less likely to forget cards, you didn’t review early enough. Secondly, there are lots of mnemonics on the vocab cards I uploaded, which again will make the memorisation much easier. Thirdly, it may save you time creating your own flashcards (which is, of course, not a bad way to learn them…).
If you want to give it a go:
- Download Anki
- Download one of the shared decks I put online (“File | Download | Shared Deck” on the desktop version of Anki):
- “NT Greek Vocab (Oak Hill College)” Vocab following lists from Duff & Trenchard (about 1200 words)
- “Biblical Hebrew Vocab (Oak Hill College)”: Vocab following lists from Kelley & Mitchel (also about 1200 words); this appears to be currently the only Hebrew vocab list available for Anki that works on Android.
- “NT Greek Grammar (Oak Hill College)”: Grammar summary of Duff, so very basic
- “Biblical Hebrew Grammar (Oak Hill College)”: Grammar summary largely following Kelley. This file does not work on Android yet, but the other three do.
- For fonts you may need or for how to set it up on Android, follow the instructions which can be found in the “shared deck” download dialog and on the first card of the deck.
Enjoy!
Rene
My friend Mike Taylor, who studied at Moore College in Sydney, is now principal of the Munguishi Bible College in Tanzania. Theological education is one of the most useful things we can provide for our African brothers and sisters. Mike is looking for supporters – perhaps you could help?
Here’s Mike’s letter:
Munguishi Bible College is the Diocesan Training College for the Anglican Diocese of Mt Kilimanjaro. It is situated in Arusha, Tanzania. We are a reformed evangelical College. Currently we have about 40 students, from all over Tanzania, who are trained to be ‘evangelists’ and ‘pastors’.
One such student is Musa (pictured here with his wife). He lives in a traditional Maasai area, with no access to electricity or water. Still only 22 he is head of his late Father’s extended family. He became a christian as a young adult, and has recently graduated from our 1 year Evangelist course. Christian Maasai are despised by their people and face many difficulties in proclaiming the gospel. Most Maasai, especially men, see the gospel as an affront to their custom and refuse to accept it. Musa patiently perseveres in proclaiming Christ against this hostility, and by the grace of God, the gospel is bearing fruit. We hope, under God, that Musa will return to do our Pastors Course, be ordained and continue church planting in ‘Maasai-land’.
All of our students are subsidised by donations to the college. They cannot study, and we cannot train them without the generosity of our brothers and sisters around the world. A student will typically pay about $70 per year for tuition and board. Realistically it costs about $1200. We continue to look for more partners in sponsoring students and funding our College to do this important ministry.
Munguishi Bible College has some income generating projects with a view towards self-sufficiency. We rent some land, and farm some more land. Our farm provides maize and beans for all the students and staff each year with enough left over to sell. Currently we are investigating a Solar-Light selling project run by the Anglican Church of Tanzania. This has enormous potential – but will take some time to bear fruit.
The college is carefully managed, and accountable to the Diocese and College Board. We strive for efficiency and accountability in all that we do. We meet the requirements of the Province of Tanzania for our Awards. Over the next few years we will start a Degree program. Our current budget is $70,000 per year. This budget includes Tanzanian faculty and other staff salaries, stationery, food and water, utilities, maintenance of buildings and other running costs.
It is our hope and prayer that you will partner with us in this strategic ministry. The church in Tanzania is crying out for humble, faithful, godly and well trained leaders—men and women who understand the gospel and proclaim the grace of Christ in word and deed. By God’s grace, Munguishi is producing faithful leaders for his church.
Please, will you consider giving a small grant to enable and sustain our ministry here. There are two ways of giving,
- provide a scholarship for one student: $1200 per year.
- give a donation directly to the College.
Thank you for considering this, and for your partnership with us.
Mike Taylor
Principal.
If you can help, please get in touch with Mike to let him know: mktaylor@cms.org.au
I recently completed a course in reading French at Durham University. While taking the course, I adapted my Greek and Hebrew flashcard program to test the 1,600 most common French words. The list of words was originally developed by Etienne Brunet, and translated by my teacher, David Tual. David has kindly given permission for the flashcard program containing his list to be made freely available online.
The French flashcard program is available here.
This sermon is part 3 in a 3-part series on 1 Kings 17-22.
Outline:
- The manic street preacher
- Who rules Israel? (vv. 1-16)
- God’s word versus the king (vv. 17-29)
- God’s word, God’s kingdom and us
A while back I was looking through my father-in-law’s collection of old newspapers and found this little piece in the London Gazette (Monday August 26, 1768, Number 118; Twopence-Farthing). It’s either a letter to the editor or an editorial comment; I’m not sure which! It comes just after the announcement of a soiree to be held by Mrs Grant-Forsdyke and just before a description of a French pirate ship at large:
ABHORENT PRACTICE OF SLAVE TRADING: The hunting of Human Beings for the purpose of making slaves of them is a practice to be much abhored.
It is therefore of great comfort to Englishmen of Christian Ideals to note that the group of Evangelicals continues to be active in condemning the trading of slaves.
It would be approximate to say that some 50,000 Negro slaves are transported a year from the Continent of Africa to the American colonies, in conditions of the most appalling suffering.
We are sure all thinking men will deem the work of the Evangelicals to be of ultimate necessity and will encourage them to continue in it.
This sermon is part 2 in a 3-part series on 1 Kings 17-22.
Outline:
- Looking for a revelation?
- Things fall apart (vv. 1-3a)
- Elijah: back to the Fathers (vv. 3b-7)
- Elijah: back to Moses (vv. 8-14)
- Elijah: back to work! (vv. 15-18)
- Looking for a revelation?
This sermon is part 1 in a 3-part series on 1 Kings 17-22.
Outline:
- What do you need?
- Scene 1: God’s word alone meets Elijah’s needs (17:1-7)
- Scene 2: God’s word alone meets the needs of his enemies (17:8-16)
- Scene 3: The man of God’s word brings life (17:17-24)
- Scene 4: Obadiah is afraid (18:1-16)
- Scene 5: God’s word versus Israel’s religion (18:17-40)
- Scene 6: God’s word alone meets Israel’s needs (18:41-46)
From The Briefing:
Much of our Christian life is a process of becoming more and more like God. God is holy, so we are to be holy. We love, because God first loved us. In fact, our English word ‘godliness’ implies that the Christian life is, by definition, ‘God-like-ness’. But sometimes, the opposite is true. Sometimes, ‘godliness’ is about being completely unlike God. Here’s an example:
Beloved, never avenge yourselves, but leave it to the wrath of God, for it is written, “Vengeance is mine, I will repay, says the Lord.” (Romans 12:19)
This verse doesn’t quite say what we expect it should, does it? When it urges us to avoid revenge, it’s not telling us to be like God at all. It doesn’t say, “Don’t avenge yourself, because God doesn’t avenge, and neither should you.” Rather, it says (to paraphrase), “Because God is a wrathful, avenging God, don’t try to do God’s job.” In other words, retributive justice isn’t our responsibility. We should leave that up to God, who is powerful and just.
This doesn’t mean, of course, that you should always be silent about wrongs that have been done to you. It may be that God brings about his justice using the appropriate state authority, whom the Bible describes—just seven verses later—as “the servant of God, an avenger who carries out God’s wrath on the wrongdoer” (Rom 13:4). So it might be right and proper for you to appeal to the state justice system, which (in whatever imperfect way) is part of God’s process of retributive justice. On the other hand, it’s possible that you will never see final justice done until the last day, when God judges the secrets of all people through Jesus Christ. On that day, you may even find that the person who did the wrong to you is found ‘in Christ.’ In that case, you will see that the God of perfect justice has taken the evil done to you so seriously and personally that he has taken it upon himself and dealt with it in the horror of the cross of Jesus Christ. In all of these scenarios, God’s justice wins.
“Never avenge yourselves… Vengeance is mine, I will repay, says the Lord.” This is a wonderfully liberating teaching, especially if you’ve suffered some great hurt from someone. It frees you from the burden of seeking to make everything right all by yourself. It gives you the space and the strength to get on with the tasks that are ahead of you, which can sometimes be long and drawn out and painful. You can acknowledge the hurt that was done to you and feel rightly angry without needing to strike back. You can pursue a process of emotional and spiritual healing for yourself, even if the other person is unrepentant, because you can rest assured that God sees and cares and will not let the guilty go unpunished. You can even seek to forgive, knowing that your forgiveness will always be muddled and mixed and imperfect, because God can sort it all out. God is just. Even God’s forgiveness, grounded in the cross, is always perfectly just because it takes sin perfectly seriously. Hold on to that, but don’t worry about the mechanics of how that will work in every case. That’s God’s job, not yours.
God is God. You aren’t. And sometimes, in your Christian life, you need to seek to be as unlike God as possible.
Comments at The Briefing.
My review is now on Themelios. I’ve also included the full text below:
In 1 Cor 9:19-23, Paul seems to wear his Jewishness very lightly. He claims, for example, that he is not “under the law” and that he “became as a Jew” in order to win Jews. These claims are often cited as evidence that Paul was indifferent to Jewish identity and Torah observance. David Rudolph’s monograph seeks to demonstrate that this “consensus” reading of 1 Cor 9:19-23 cannot be sustained. Rudolph’s primary aim is to demonstrate “that scholars overstate their case when they maintain that 1 Cor 9:19-23 is incompatible with a Torah-observant Paul.” As a secondary aim, Rudolph also seeks to show “how one might understand 1 Cor 9:19-23 as the words of a law-abiding Jew” (p. 19).
In part I (chs. 2-4), Rudolph aims to destabilise the consensus reading of 1 Cor 9:19-23. Chapter 2 deals with intertextual issues. He first argues that key texts often used to support the idea that Paul’s Jewishness is erased or inconsequential in Christ (esp. Acts 16:3; Rom 14; 1 Cor 7:19; 10:32; Gal 1:13; 2:14; 3:28; 5:6; 6:15; Phil 3:8) do not clearly support this idea. Rather, the texts can be interpreted to mean that Paul’s Jewishness is less important than his belonging to Christ. Rudolph then examines other key texts (esp. Acts 21:17-26) which suggest that Paul viewed Jewishness as a distinct “calling in Christ”. Chapter 3 examines 1 Cor 8:1-11:1, arguing that Paul’s whole approach to idol-food fits well within the bounds of Torah-observant Judaism. Paul was not indifferent to idol-food; he simply took a more nominalist Jewish position (what matters is a person’s intention in eating) as opposed to a realist position (idol food is intrinsically dangerous). Paul’s instructions can, in fact, be read as a contextualised application of the apostolic decree (Acts 15). Chapter 4 discusses 9:19-23 directly. He first argues that Paul’s “all things to all people” discourse is consistent with the Jewish practice of accommodation in table-fellowship. Although there was variation in the interpretation of food-laws amongst first-century Jews, there is also ample evidence that many Jews were willing and able to share meals with others (stricter Jews, less strict Jews and Gentiles) without compromising their own purity. Rudolph then examines individual phrases within 9:19-23, showing that they are compatible with the view that Paul was a Torah-observant Jew. For example, the phrase “under the law” does not necessarily mean “under the authority of the Mosaic law”; it might simply refer to those who live according to a strict Pharisee-like interpretation of the law.
Chapter 5 offers his proposed interpretation of 9:19-23. Paul is a Torah-observant Jew who does not personally violate the biblical dietary laws, and he is as “strict” about his Torah-observance as the Pharisees. Paul imitates the gospel-tradition concerning Christ’s accommodation towards others and open table-fellowship. Thus, when Paul claims that he “became like a Jew”, he means that he received the hospitality of various kinds of Jewish hosts. He did not adopt a chameleon-like approach to Jewish identity and practice.
Rudolph’s most interesting contribution is his formulation of Jewish identity as a distinct “calling in Christ” (pp. 75-88). On the one hand, Paul did not view Jewish Torah-observance as a means of eschatological salvation. On the other hand, Jewishness is not erased or inconsequential in Christ. Rather, for Paul, Jewish Torah-observance is a distinct “calling” or a “vocation” within a more fundamental Christian identity (7:19). The Mosaic law, therefore, applies to Jewish Christians and Gentile Christians in different ways. Paul understood this difference; hence he lived consistently as a Jew, but never insisted that Gentile converts do the same. This nuanced formulation of Paul’s Jewish identity undergirds the cohesiveness of Rudolph’s entire thesis. It also helps to integrate Paul’s letters with evidence from other sources, for example, the story of Paul’s law-observant actions in the temple in Acts 21:17-26 (pp. 53-57). Furthermore, it has significant implications for other important areas of discussion, such as Paul’s view of male-female distinction in Christ (e.g., p. 31), Paul’s reliance on Jesus-traditions (e.g., pp. 179-90), and the role of Paul’s letters in Jewish-Christian dialogue (e.g., p. 211).
However, Rudolph’s presentation of Torah-observance as a “calling in Christ” also raises significant unresolved tensions concerning the role of the Mosaic law in Paul’s theology. When discussing the law, Rudolph focuses almost entirely on questions of halakhah—that is, how did Paul live day by day, and how did he expect others to live? Yet apart from a brief discussion of the ambiguity of the phrase “under the law” (pp. 154-59), Rudolph does not adequately deal with the soteriological implications of Paul’s use of the word “law”. He tends to skim past Paul’s frequent (often negative) utterances concerning the relationship of the law to eschatological blessing and salvation. However, most expressions of the “consensus view” Rudolph is seeking to oppose are written in the context of these soteriological considerations. Ultimately, then, if Rudolph’s thesis is to be convincing, it needs to be integrated and reconciled with a more comprehensive understanding of Paul’s view of the Mosaic law, particularly its relationship to salvation in Christ.
Lionel Windsor
Durham University
Durham, England, UK
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