Archive for the ‘Theology’ Category

Posted on October 8, 2009 - by Stephen Murray

Blogging Embarrassment

So the blog has revived a bit with this trip to New York – I haven’t really written about much else lately. I do feel a little bit of reluctance in some ways to make this blog, as it stands, a priority. Not because I don’t think blogging is valuable and not because I’ve got too much other important work (and I do) but rather because I’m not sure I’d stand 100% behind everything I’ve ever written here in the past 3 years – I’m maybe even a little embarrassed by the odd post.

There are posts I wrote from which I think I’ve now shifted theologically, there are statements that I think I’ve shifted culturally away from and there are tones I took that I now think are inappropriate. So what do you do? Do I leave it up there as a kind of testimony to my journey as gospel minister? Do I strip down the blog so that I’m never incriminated for something I might not actually adhere to? Do I start over? Is this a significant question for future ministry? I’m not sure I know.

Posted on November 29, 2008 - by Stephen Murray

Paid Pastoral Staff? A Calling to the Ministry?

Andrew Hamilton has an interesting post, something I haven’t thought very hard or long about. In it he asks this question:

“Can anyone provide a compelling biblical argument for the existence of paid pastoral staff within a local congregation?“

It’s an interesting question. He concedes that you could probably make more than one good pragmatic argument for paid pastoral staff he then also mentions his own experience of calling to ministry as perhaps a compelling argument. That got me thinking even more. If I re-phrased his question then we have another question that is often taken for granted or thought very little about:

“Can anyone provided a compelling biblical argument for the existence of a subjective call to the ministry of a local congregation?“

Life is becoming more and more complicated the more I study the Bible – the questions just keep on coming, and often they’re questions that impinge upon me directly – like questions about paid pastoral ministry. Anyone got any thoughts on these questions?

Posted on November 6, 2008 - by Stephen Murray

Narrative-Realism or Preterism? Help Me

Can anyone help me out with a bit of theological jargon and terminology that I’m trying to get my head around? I’ve been reading a fair bit of the articles on Open Source Theology and I keep coming up against, what many of their authors call the ‘narrative-historical argument’ or the ‘narrative-realist’ approach. Andrew Perriman, one of the authors, even describes himself as doing ‘biblical theology after Christendom in a narrative-realist mode’. In reading the various articles however this narrative-realism seems to sound a whole lot like classic preterism. My question for all the budding theologians out there is what is the difference between the two (preterism and the narrative-realist approach)? Or are they pretty much the same thing – in which case this narrative-realist approach is not really all that new. Help me please…

Posted on September 23, 2008 - by Stephen Murray

Theology of the Fall for Dummies

Theology of the fall in popular culture.

Posted on June 17, 2008 - by Stephen Murray

Healthy Critique

Some of the heat that has been directed my way due to my post about Hillsong Cape Town has disturbed me somewhat at the ability (or lack thereof) of Christians to critique and ask hard questions of themselves. I understand that when one is part of something that you believe in you’ll defend it tooth and nail – but shouldn’t Christians be slightly different? After all we should be fighting tooth and nail for one central issue and that is the Gospel of Jesus Christ and its centrality to life and practice. For everything else shouldn’t we be prepared to critique and be open to critique?

In the last two years of blogging I’ve followed a lot of different types of Christian blogs and if truth be told I’ve learned an absolute ton from Christian traditions other than my own. I’ve learned things from (wait for it…) Roman Catholicism, the Emerging Church, Eastern Orthodoxy, Neo-Monasticism, Pentecostalism and even stuck in the mud Reformed folks. By reading widely and interacting with the different expressions of faith I’ve been able to critique my own expression and refine it in order to be more faithful in following Christ. Going back and forth between the scriptures and these various traditions has been a thoroughly fruitful exercise. And so I think that when we become unable to critique we lose much and are worse off for it. We also might be (and I say this tentatively) exposing the idols in our life and practice when we discover areas that we are unable to critique (i.e. what do I value above the gospel?).

Posted on June 7, 2008 - by Stephen Murray

The Sexuality of Jesus and the Gospels

My brother, who got a much bigger share than me from the family gene pool when it comes to academic intelligence and skill, has a fascinating question about the sexuality of Jesus and the Gospels.

Posted on May 20, 2008 - by Stephen Murray

Tim Chester on the Sermon

Tim Chester has begun posting a dialogue that he has had with an enquirer regarding the role of the sermon in church life. Its something I need to think more about from a theological point of view. In some ways its a bit scary to think about just in case I discover that it puts me out of a job!

Posted on April 10, 2008 - by Stephen Murray

Cultural Influence – The Decision we All Face

I engaged in a fascinating tutorial today which my church history professor took on the subject of the rise of scholasticism in Medieval Christianity. We spent a significant amount of time discussing the impact that the re-discovery of the works of Aristotle had upon the western church. As the westerners came into conflict with the Arabic speaking world through the crusades they came back into contact with large amounts of Aristotle’s work which had been faithfully preserved by the Arab scholars. The Aristotelian worldview and the culture it created confronted the lethargic western church and forced it to respond. Now what is fascinating from a historical point of view is the church’s response. Historically the church has responded to these cultural shifts in one of three ways:

1. One of the most common response is to condemn this foreign influence as being from the devil, damn it to the pit of hell and completely reject it.

2. Another approach is to adopt it wholesale to the point that it completely replaces one’s Christian worldview.

3. The third approach is to find some sort of compromise and integrate the foreign influence or new culture with the Christian worldview.

These three responses are evident so often in the pages of church history. We see them being expressed in the enlightenment period and how the church confronted Darwinism – we see it a bit today as the church confronts the current culture shift and post modernity. What I find interesting is the that many evangelicals tend to see the third response in a purely negative light. We’ve been trained to think of the concept of compromise in completely negative categories. This is actually extremely arrogant because it has to presuppose perfect knowledge of the divine revelation and its interaction with culture. When we paint the concept of compromise in purely negative terms it highlights a smug belief that we hold about our personal possession of absolute truth and that, functionally, we see ourselves as completely above reproach in all areas pertaining to the clash between divine revelation and culture. Yet the Bible itself tells us that this is not true – we don’t know all and are constantly revising and (hopefully) bettering our understanding of divine revelation and its relationship to the prevailing culture. Compromise CAN be positive when a new culture causes us to reflect upon the divine revelation with fresh insight and re-adjust our previous convictions that were in fact based upon faulty interpretations often derived from previous cultural influence.

The acknowledgement of this should bring about a great humility when dealing with the clash between the text and the culture. Its not a call for cultural relativism but rather a careful realization of existing cultural presuppositions and the onset of new ones. The reality is that everyone (even the fundamentalist) is working with and trying to negotiate these cultural presuppositions as they aim to be faithful to the divine revelation. I suppose the decision we all face then is whether or not to be honest about our cultural baggage and humble when we come to the Bible.

Posted on January 24, 2008 - by Stephen Murray

Can you Defend Contextualization Exegetically? An Open Forum

Here’s a post by Gordon Cheng that suggests that Paul’s address to the Athenians in Acts 17 doesn’t really advocate contextualization (be sure to read the comments). What do you think?

As for me, you’ll know if you read this blog that I’m a bit more in the contextualization camp – but in terms of defending my position exegetically (defend from scripture – sorry for the jargon) I need to give it a bit more thought.

Alright peeps – your turn (and remember no essay length comments!)…

Posted on January 21, 2008 - by Stephen Murray

Harmon on New Testament Unity

Matt Harmon outlines 5 reasons in support of the theological unity of the New Testament documents. He also helpfully points to further reading on the subject.