As someone who attended a "mainline" Protestant seminary, I've had to "unlearn" some of the instincts that were instilled in me during my seminary days. What I mean is this: in my early days of ministry, I was hesitant to even use words like "command" or "obey", because of a fear of sounding overly "harsh" to modern ears.
Well, that was stupid.
Of course, another such word is "wrath." The very idea of divine punishment was, at least for some of my professors, a deep misunderstanding (at best). While it is certainly true that many people's "pop-theology" embraces a very warped misunderstanding of what the Bible actually teaches on this topic, it remains true that this is indeed a theme of Scripture.
As is often the case, I find that Bishop Barron makes a thoughtful and sensitive case for understanding the Bible's teaching on this point.
A few months ago the great Methodist scholar Dr. David Watson (my Greek teacher in seminary), gave this talk at the "Mere Methodism" Conference on Biblical interpretation. It is called "Shadowboxing with Modernity." As he says in a description of this talk, "The talk had to do with how we Methodists (and other Christians) should deal with the challenges posed by the intellectual currents of our present age. I zero in specifically on the interpretation of Scripture."
When Jesus preached people responded - and not always favorably. But the Word of God has power, and it "pokes" - even "pierces". And it has that power still.
Great discussion and insight-filled discussion of the Temptation of Christ in the wilderness with Jordan Peterson, Jonathan Pageau, Bishop Barron, and others.
The Tabernacle, the Exodus, the Cross, and the Lord's Prayer
Here is a great video from Joe at the 'Young Anglican' channel in which he does a great job showing the symbolic and typological connections between the Story of Israel, the Architecture of the Tabernacle/Temple, salvation through Christ, and even the Lord's Prayer. Very interesting stuff, some of which I had not even noticed before.
Tomorrow is the feast of "Corpus Christi" (The Body of Christ), commemorating the institution of the Lord's Supper. Here are two videos: First is Pastor and Theologian Gavin Ortlund describing how the classical Protestant view of Spiritual Real Presence compares and contrasts with the Roman Catholic view, Transubstantiation. While some centuries-old theological debates are so complicated that I hesitate to "come down hard" on any side, I do think the Reformers were being consistent with Scripture and ancient Tradition by rejecting Transubstantiation while still affirming the Real Presence of Christ's Body and Blood in Communion, as I discuss in the second video.
One Roman Catholic theologian that I have enjoyed reading and profited from is Scott Hahn, a former evangelical Presbyterian pastor (having been at one time a Protestant is a common factor in many of the Roman Catholics that I really like). In this discussion Hahn discusses the "typological" interpretation of Scripture we frequently find among the Early Church Fathers. He uses the example of how the Gospels present Jesus as a "new Moses" to illustrate this.
It seems to me that too many people assume a fundamentalist view of Scripture, that ignores genre, ignores allegorical readings, ignores the entire tradition of interpretation, and instead proposes that every bit of the Bible is intended as a History Text book, and must be accepted or rejected as such. There are Christians who try to maintain this position, though it is untenable; and there are non-believers (many of them former Christians) who use this as their reason for rejecting the faith.
This video examines some of Pope Benedict's writings and his engagement with difficult and dark passages in Scripture. Of course, he's not the only one to do this, or offer this approach. It is well-attested in the universal tradition. Just read, for example, C.S. Lewis' Reflections on the Psalms for some very similar thoughts from another brilliant Christian thinker who was well-grounded in the tradition (Lewis was, of course, an Anglican - nuanced approaches to Scripture are not only found among Roman Catholics).
If you struggle with the Bible, or what it means to accept it as "the Word of the Lord" - this video could be of great help to you.
5 Proofs of the Real Presence of Christ's Body and Blood in Communion
Here is another video from the Rev. Dr. Jordan Cooper, of the Lutheran tradition. Though the Anglicans and Methodists share in common a view of Christ's Real Presence in Communion that is not 100% identical with the Lutheran view, they are in fact pretty close (close enough that some Lutheran bodies are now in "full communion" agreements with both Methodist and Anglican churches).
What all these traditions do agree on (over against some Baptist and non-denomination traditions) is that, as Scripture clearly affirms, when we receive the consecrated elements of the Lord's Supper by faith, we truly receive the Body and Blood and Presence and Grace of Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of our sins and renewal of our souls.
How this works is understood in different ways, I am comfortable leaving it under the heading of "holy mystery". I'm also comfortable with members within the same church holding (with humility) different understandings of how it works, so long as we strive not to contradict the teachings of Scripture.
So, while not a Lutheran myself, I would actually concur with the arguments that Cooper makes in this video to demonstrate that the Real Presence in the Eucharist is, on a careful read of the text, a thoroughly Biblical teaching, and ought to be believed. And that is to say nothing of this also being the undisputed teaching of the Ancient Church for many centuries after the age of the Apostles. Who are we - separated by language, culture, and centuries - to know better than the early Church who shared the same language and culture as the New Testament writers themselves?
Are the Old Testament and the New Testament contradictory?
An issue that many Christians (and explorers of Christian faith) have struggled with is the apparent disparity between God as described in the Old Testament - who is (at times) a God of war and wrath - and the Lord as he reveals himself in the New Testament.
I like Holdsworth's approach to this question, though it is by no means a "final" or complete "answer" to all of the difficulties. I have often pointed out to people that, because the Bible is a progressive or unfolding revelation, you know more about the character and purposes of God by the end of the story than you knew at the beginning. In other words, St. Peter knows more of the character of God than Abraham did - though Abraham really did know the real God.
If you think of it like this, we don't get to the later, more complete revelation, without taking those earlier steps in the process: You don't get Jesus, the New Covenant, and the Moral Teachings of the Sermon on the Mount without first getting Moses and the Law. And so it then is a bit self-contradictory to use Jesus and his teachings as a reason to reject the Old Covenant as being truly from God.
That still doesn't solve the real difficulties of God who is depicted as commanding what we would call "crimes against humanity" when he tells the Israelites to wipe out the Canaanites completely, (and there are more complications in all of that than is often appreciated - including questions around our attempt to judge ancient & pre-Christian methods of warfare by modern standards, which are very influenced by Christianity), but it does make "space" to look again at the Old Testament as genuine revelation of God.
Another aspect of how the Tradition has dealt with this question that Holdsworth doesn't get into here is the fact that many of those troublesome passages that horrify us today, were read allegorically by the Early Church Fathers. They would say to think of the Canaanites as symbols of the sin and idolatry that reside in our hearts and must be completely rooted out. This tradition of reading much of the Old Testament and the Psalms opens a new possibility of hearing a "word" in these passages despite our concerns.
Here is a great video from Jonathan Pageau "doing his thing" and discussing patterns of symbols in Scripture, and in the ways that we actually perceive reality, and how recognizing these patterns helps us understand the Bible more deeply.
One of my favorite "classical commentaries" on the Bible is this Parallel Commentary on the New Testament. John Wesley, Matthew Henry, and Charles Spurgeon are among the most influential thinkers on the Evangelical Protestant tradition, and of course Wesley's Notes are official doctrine of The United Methodist Church and some other Wesleyan bodies.
Here is one on a topic that I addressed in one of my videos a while back.
This has application not only for Lewis' immediate situation (his country was at war, but some were electing not to serve because they were Pacifists), but also to the more general question of the use of violent force to defend justice, or to defend the weak and the helpless from the ravages of wicked actors.
Scripturally, we see that both in his heavenly court (Ps. 82:4) and in his ordaining of human authorities (Rom. 13), God calls upon the strong to use their strength to restrain evil and protect the weak. As Lewis mentions, this has been the consensus understanding of the universal church for many centuries.
