This Week in Housekeeping

Whew! I barely have time to keep up with the fixing and updating project for the theological terms. It’s been a month since I did any work on them at all. Actually, once a month seems to be the rate for the last half year or so.

perfectionism

• Fixed links to Wayne Grudem’s lectures on the doctrine of sanctification: Part 1, Part 2, Part 3. (The Grudem Systematic Theology lectures have been moved around a lot over the years. I’m hoping these are links that last!)
• Added a link to R. C. Sproul’s The Heresy of Perfectionism.

autographs

• Added a link to Michael Kruger’s The Difference Between Original Autographs and Original Texts.

incarnation

• Fixed links to Wayne Grudem’s lectures: The Person of Christ, Part 1, Part 2, Part 3.
• Added related terms advent, ascension of Jesus, crucifixion (of Christ), deity of Christ, humanity of Christ, hypostatic union, virgin birth.
• Added “Filed under Person, Work and Teachings of Christ.”

Theological Term of the Week

cultural mandate
God’s command for the human race to fill the earth and rule over it; also called creation mandate, dominion mandate, or stewardship mandate.

• From scripture:

Then God said, “Let us make man in our image, after our likeness. And let them have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over the livestock and over all the earth and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth.”

So God created man in his own image,

in the image of God he created him;

male and female he created them.

And God blessed them. And God said to them, “Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth and subdue it, and have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over every living thing that moves on the earth.” (Genesis 1:26-28, ESV)

• From ESV Bible study notes on Genesis 1:26-28:

[T]he idea is that the man and woman are to make the earth’s resources beneficial for themselves, which implies that they would investigate and develop the earth’s resources to make them useful for human beings generally. This command provides a foundation for wise scientific and technological development; the evil uses to which people have put their dominion come as a result of Genesis 3. … As God’s representatives, human beings are to rule over every living thing on the earth. These commands are not, however, a mandate to exploit the earth and its creatures to satisfy human greed, for the fact that Adam and Eve were “in the image of God” implies God’s expectation that human beings will use the earth wisely and govern it with the same sense of responsibility and care that God has toward the whole of his creation. 

• From The Christian Faith by Michael Horton:

All human beings, even as fallen, remain God’s image-bearers—with the original commission to rule, guard, and keep, and to “be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth and subdue it,” extending God’s reign with Eden as the capital (Ge 1:26-28, cf. 2:15). Often referred to as the cultural mandate, this original vocation given to humanity remains the source of that indefatigable impulse to build cities and civilizations, farms and vineyards, houses and empires. Every person, believer and unbeliever alike, receives a distinct vocation for his or her calling in the world, and the Spirit equips each person for these distinct callings in common grace. However, God’s Word in the cultural mandate is “law”: the command to subdue, rule, fill, and expand.

Learn more:

1. 9Marks: What is the cultural mandate? Who is it given to?
2. Cornerstone Presbyterian Church: What is the Cultural Mandate? and How the Cultural Mandate and the Great Commission Complement Each Other
3. Greg Johnson: Why the Mona Lisa is going to Heaven
4. John MacArthur: We Must Rightly Understand the Creation Mandate

Related terms:

• creation ex nihilo
• Great Commission
• image of God
• vocation

Filed under Anthropology

Do you have a term you would like to see featured here as a Theological Term of the Week? If you email it to me, I’ll seriously consider using it, giving you credit for the suggestion and linking back to your blog when I do.

Clicking on the Theological Term graphic at the top of this post will take you to a list of all the previous theological terms in alphabetical order.

Linked Together: Bird Watching

Nesting Eagles
Watch a pair of bald eagles incubating three eggs on our local eagle’s nest live cam. (Warning: You may wish to supervise young children, since “[e]agles feed on small mammals and fish,” so “the actions of the eagles in this video feed could contain graphic content.” While I’ve watched, however, I’ve seen nothing but an eagle sitting and tree branches blowing.)

Talking Raven
”Merlyn Williams befriended [a raven], which he has named Raymond, three years ago. The raven has been dropping by Williams’s house for bits of food — and even conversation — ever since” (CBC North).

Ravens aren’t pretty, but who needs looks when you’re the smartest bird around? I’ve written about them here and here. 

(Here’s the whole YouTube video mentioned in the story above. )

A Catechism for Boys and Girls

Questions about the Word, the Church and the Ordinances

132. Q. Should babies be baptized?
          A. No; because the Bible neither commands it, nor gives any example of it.

(Click through to read scriptural proofs.)

Click to read more ...

Sunday's Hymn: In Heavenly Love Abiding

In heavenly love abiding, no change my heart shall fear.
And safe in such confiding, for nothing changes here.
The storm may roar without me, my heart may low be laid,
But God is round about me, and can I be dismayed?

Wherever He may guide me, no want shall turn me back.
My Shepherd is beside me, and nothing can I lack.
His wisdom ever waking, His sight is never dim.
He knows the way He’s taking, and I will walk with Him.

Green pastures are before me, which yet I have not seen.
Bright skies will soon be over me, where darkest clouds have been.
My hope I cannot measure, my path to life is free.
My Savior has my treasure, and He will walk with me.

— Anna L. Waring

Other hymns, worship songs, sermons etc. posted today:

• Update: By Your Side at Gospel Grace
• Down From His Glory at By Grace Alone
• Heavenly Sunlight at The Happy Wonderer
• Just As I Am at Challies.com
• God Is Ascended Up on High at Conjubilant With Song
• Voices from the Past #19 at Tried With Fire 
• Lord’s Day 19, 2013 at The Thirsty Theologian
• You Weekly Dose of Spurgeon at Pyromaniacs: A salute to mothers

Have you posted a hymn (or sermon, sermon notes, prayer, etc.) today and I missed it? Let me know by leaving a link in the comments or by contacting me using the contact form linked above, and I’ll add your post to the list.

Thankful Thursday

It’s late. I’m tired, but thankful:

• for an exhausting but productive day. I took care of my second granddaughter during the day and then went to a long choir practice after supper. 
• for the immigrant communities in my church. Sunday we will sing hymns and read scripture in all the different native languages—Mandarin, Tagalog, Japanese, Slovak, and many more. (That’s what the choir practice was for: learning to sing verses of familiar hymns in the various languages.)
• for warm weather. It’s been a long, long winter, and I’m thankful that it’s finally over.
• for non-drowsy antihistamines—God’s good gift to me every spring.
• for the promise of a slower day tomorrow.
• for a comfy bed and an open window as I sleep.
• that God never sleeps.

Linked Together: The Older Person

As a Blessing
To the grandchildren:

It’s a pretty magnificent vantage point—getting to see close-up our God at work generation after generation, just like he promised. It’s a huge opportunity—having a chance to speak words of grace and truth into little lives opening in front of you like some time-lapse YouTube clip of flowers blooming. It’s the most consuming kind of fun—as you stop and read a story, and everything else in the world just disappears for a few minutes.

(Kathleen Nielson at The Gospel Coalition Blog.)

In the church:

[T]he Bible instructs the pastor to teach the congregation to be there for one another and does so by tying the generations together so that the built-in expertise of old age gets leveraged for every younger generation. It’s a beautiful thing.

In this way older members of the local church become the front line of discipleship and care. They brighten the future of the church by teaching younger members how to live out the faith, how to avoid mistakes, seize opportunities, practically apply the word of God to their lived realities.

(Thabiti Anyabwile at Pure Church.)

As a Burden
To the children:

I hope my children never have to sacrifice for their father when I’m elderly. But, if they do, I pray I’ll be Christlike enough to crucify my pride and receive their love.

(Russell Moore at Moore to the Point.)

Like a Thermometer, Not a Thermostat

Michael Kruger on the proper role of the church in the authentication of the canon of the New Testament:  

The books received by the church inform our understanding of which books are canonical not because the church is infallible or because it created or constituted the canon, but because the church’s reception of these books is a natural and inevitable outworking of the self-authenticating nature of Scripture. Viewing the role of the church in the context of a self-authenticating Bible can bring fresh understanding to the complex church-canon relationship … . The Catholic model [of the canon] insists that the church’s reception of these books is the sole grounds for the canon’s authority. In the self-authenticating model, however, the church’s reception of these books proves not to be evidence of the church’s authority to create the canon, but evidence of the opposite, namely, the authority, power, and impact of the self-authenticating Scripture to elicit a corporate response from the church. Jesus’s statement that “my sheep hear my voice … and they follow me” (John 10:27) is not evidence for the authority of the sheep’s decision to follow, but evidence for the authority and efficacy of the Shepherd’s voice to call. After all, the act of hearing is, by definition, derivative not constitutive. Thus, when the canon is understood as self-authenticating, it is clear that the church did not choose the canon, but the canon, in a sense, chose itself… . [T]he role of the church is like a thermometer, not a thermostat. Both instruments provide information about the temperature in the room—but one determines it and one reflects it.

Quoting from Canon Revisited: Establishing the Origins and Authority of the New Testament Books.

Other quotations from this book:

• A Canon Based on Probability
• Canonical Bookends

Theological Term of the Week

temptation of Jesus
Satan’s temptation of Jesus in the wilderness the beginning of his ministry.

• From scripture:

Then Jesus was led up by the Spirit into the wilderness to be tempted by the devil. And after fasting forty days and forty nights, he was hungry. And the tempter came and said to him, “If you are the Son of God, command these stones to become loaves of bread.” But he answered, “It is written,

 

“‘Man shall not live by bread alone,
but by every word that comes from the mouth of God.’” 

Then the devil took him to the holy city and set him on the pinnacle of the temple and said to him, “If you are the Son of God, throw yourself down, for it is written,

“‘He will command his angels concerning you,’

and

“‘On their hands they will bear you up,
lest you strike your foot against a stone.’”

Jesus said to him, “Again it is written, ‘You shall not put the Lord your God to the test.’” Again, the devil took him to a very high mountain and showed him all the kingdoms of the world and their glory. And he said to him, “All these I will give you, if you will fall down and worship me.”Then Jesus said to him, “Be gone, Satan! For it is written,

“‘You shall worship the Lord your God
and him only shall you serve.’”




Then the devil left him, and behold, angels came and were ministering to him.

• From Systematic Theology by Wayne Grudem:

These temptations were really a culmination of a lifelong process of moral strengthening and maturing that occurred throughout Jesus’ childhood and early adulthood, as he “increased in wisdom  . . and in fear with God” (Luke 2:52 and as he “learned obedience through what he suffered” (Heb. 5:8). In these temptations in the wilderness and in the various temptations that faced him through the thirty-three years of hislife, Christ obeyed God in our place and as our representative, thus succeeding where Adam had failed, where the people of Israel in the wilderness had failed, and where we had failed (see Rom. 5:18-19). 

As difficult as it may be for us to comprehend, Scripture affirms that in these temptations Jesus gained an ability to understand and help us in our temptations, “Because he himself has suffered and been tempted, he is able to help those who are tempted” (Heb. 2:18). 

Learn more:

1. In the Bible: Matthew 4:1-11, see also Luke 4:1-13, Mark 1:12-13.
2. Got Questions.org: What is the meaning and purpose of Jesus’ temptations?
3. Bob Deffinbaugh: The Temptation of Jesus, Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4.
4. D. A. Carson: The Temptation of Jesus (audio)

Related terms:

• active obedience of Christ
• federal head
• humanity of Christ
• impeccability
• incarnation

Filed under Person, Work, and Teaching of Christ

Do you have a term you’d like to see featured here as a Theological Term of the Week? If you email it to me, I’ll seriously consider using it, giving you credit for the suggestion and linking back to your blog when I do.

Clicking on the Theological Term graphic at the top of this post will take you to a list of all the previous theological terms in alphabetical order.

Linked Together: Theology Books for Kids

The Trinity
A few months ago I ordered Joey Allen’s book on the Trinity from her Big Thoughts for Little Thinkers series. It simple and yet deep—and analogy free. (I wish I’d bought the whole series.)

Here’s an interview with Joey on teaching children the doctrine of the Trinity (Credo Magazine.)

The Big Story
Carl Trueman recommends 66 Books One Story, a biblical theology for children. This book, he writes,

presents the basic theme and significance of every single book of the Bible.  It will not substitute for a good children’s story Bible or — of course — for the actual Bible; but it will help give children at a young age that great ‘big picture’ of the biblical story which will help them grow in their knowledge of God’s word.

(Reformation21 Blog)

Speaking of story Bibles, David Shaw evaluates two popular ones, The Big Picture Story Bible and The Jesus Storybook Bible, with regard to 

1. story bible text and Scripture
2. story bible images and Scripture
3. text and image within the story bible
4. the story bible and the child

(Themelios)