The first hymn

The Cyber Hymnal records that the first hymn written in English for public worship was penned by Isaac Watts at the ripe old age of 14 . . .

In a lengthy dis­cuss­ion with his fa­ther, Watts ar­gued that sing­ing on­ly the Psalms in church made them miss much im­port­ant New Test­a­ment truth. Once his con­gre­ga­tion was con­vinced of what Isaac was say­ing, he be­gan turn­ing out a new hymn a week. But this one is the ve­ry first, mak­ing the words Pre­pare new hon­ors for His name, and songs be­fore un­known es­pe­cial­ly mean­ing­ful. This hymn al­so re­veals Watts’ amaz­ing breadth of bib­lical know­ledge (he was on­ly a teen­ag­er at the time); there are al­lu­sions to ma­ny Script­ure pass­ag­es.

And the following is what resulted

Behold the glories of the Lamb
Amidst His Father’s throne.
Prepare new honors for His name,
And songs before unknown.

Let elders worship at His feet,
The Church adore around,
With vials full of odors sweet,
And harps of sweeter sound.

Those are the prayers of the saints,
And these the hymns they raise;
Jesus is kind to our complaints,
He loves to hear our praise.

Eternal Father, who shall look
Into Thy secret will?
Who but the Son should take that Book
And open every seal?

He shall fulfill Thy great decrees,
The Son deserves it well;
Lo, in His hand the sovereign keys
Of Heav’n, and death, and hell!

Now to the Lamb that once was slain
Be endless blessings paid;
Salvation, glory, joy remain
Forever on Thy head.

Thou hast redeemed our souls with blood,
Hast set the prisoner free;
Hast made us kings and priests to God,
And we shall reign with Thee.

The worlds of nature and of grace
Are put beneath Thy power;
Then shorten these delaying days,
And bring the promised hour.

Obviously the main muse for the hymn comes from the book Apocalypse of John.  Watts went on to be a very serious non-conformist theologian and preacher as well as penning nearly 800 hymns.  Of course, my favourite Watts hymn is entitled "Blest is the man whose bowels move." I kid you not, and the second verse is even better than the first line!

Christmas Links

This will be my last post till after Christmas, and I have to say the blogosphere is very seasonal this year, enjoy these and don't forget to turn the computer off and have some quality time with Jesus and some other real people, perhaps your family.

• Christmas thoughts from Kenya
• Christmas in the book of Revelation
• Christmas in the dark
• Christmas unemployement

Nicole on Biblical Egalitariansim

Roger Nicole, reformed Baptist theologian has passed on.  One thing that serparated him from many of those now extolling his virtues was his outspoken egalitarianism.

Since biblical egalitarianism is still viewed by many as inconsistent with biblical inerrancy, it is desirable to state in a very brief manner my position on this subject.

The matter of the place of women in the home, in society, and in the church is not an issue that can be conclusively determined by a few apparently restrictive passages that are often advanced by those who think that subordination represents God’s will for women.

The starting point must be at the creation of humanity, as our Lord himself exemplified by quoting Genesis 1:27 and 2:24 in response to a question by the Pharisees (Matt. 19:4-5, Mark 10:6-7). The climactic point must be at the consummation of the redemptive plan in the wedding supper of the Lamb (Rev. 19:9, 21-22), as St. Paul notes in discussing marriage in Ephesians 5:22-33. These two moments are the only ones in which sin has not damaged the institution. Thus, the line that connects creation and the eschaton of redemption represents the relationship of males and females in its unadulterated form. What comes in between may include factors due to human “hardness of heart” (Matt. 19:8).

Rest of his article on this subject available here.

Unity is bad for Human Health

Whilst sitting in on a lecture on Gen 11, I was struck by Tim's remarks concerning the way human unity is always bad for someone.  Unity is always at the expense of someone, usually a minority.  For example in Iraq, Sudan and Burma conflict is occuring primarily because some factions are trying to bring unity to a geographical area where other resident factions exist which want to maintain their diversity (or bring a different sort of unity).

In NZ there is a popular polemic against difference that suggests everyone in NZ is simply Kiwi, but of course what they mean is that those in ethnic minorities should simply confrom to the majority (pakeha/european).  In conversation with a Maori Christian leader I was told that the churches are always saying to Maori that we should be one in Christ, but the Maori response is "one what?"  Because the implicit message they receive is that to have unity they need to become european.  And yet Christ's prayer in John 17 was for the unity of his church and in Acts 2, 13, Eph 2-4 and Rev 5, (among many others) we are confronted with a vision of a church where in difference and diversity there is unity around Christ. 

And as if that wasn't enough, today we had a Kenyan missionary to NZ speaking and who told us that using other languages and singing the odd song from a different culture wasn't enough but he wanted the church to be interested in the "way" he wanted to worship as an African and that once a year they should let him lead worship.  So I had this vision of him stood up front of his Kiwi church exhorting them to be temporarily more African which I just couldn't see going well.

My hunch is that true multicultural church needs to follow the model of Antioch (Acts 13) and have multicultural leadership.  Are there any churches out there today that are truly managing to be multicultural?  If so what do they look like and how do they do it?

The 7 Cities of Revelation

For those of us reading Revelation this week here is a map showing the location of the 7 cities the letter is written to (their names are in yellow with red dots).  They are all in modern day Turkey.

Scholar Craig Koester has a neat little website which allows you to tour around each city and see photographs of the archaeological sites.  Or you can actually go there with this tour company that specialises in "sacred destinations." 

[Map from here, but I copied it here to spare you the crazy stuff.]

Today!

Today I have printed off my thesis for submission and spiral bound it, I feel giddy.
Today I also entered the illustrious ranks of the Biblioblog top 50 at no.33, making me even giddier.
(and yes Jim you are still #1, but Jesus is #1 in my heart)

Not only that but don't miss

• The way language affects thought
• The need to actually know the Bible
• The August Biblical Studies Carnival
• Hurtado on historically conditioned scripture
• A priceless Gordon Fee quote on Revelation
• A deeper than you think rant on contemporary (sic) worship

look what the cat dragged in

• John Byron wonders about a paradigm shift in peer review for scholarship
• Jason Goroncy tells a tragic tale about pastoral ministry
• Elizabeth McNamer digs up biblical women (HT Jim West)
• Edinburgh University has a blog on Christian Origins with some very respectable contributors
• James McGrath gives us all some tips on evaluating sources
• Tom Wright pontificates on the humanity of Jesus
• Jim West helps us to be more accurate about Jesus' speed and timing in Revelation
• Marc Cortez is giving away a big book on Romans
• Maggie Dawn shares a video on the 21st century enlightenment
• Someone is cleaning up the streets of Britain (HT Jim West)

More good stuff

So much good stuff landing online at the moment, check out:

• NT Wright on CS Lewis
• Gordon Fee on Revelation and understanding scripture
• Ben Witherington on Atonement
• Clayboy's review of a book on "liturgy"
• James McGrath musing and enthusing about education
• Larry Hurtado suggests a reason for Mark's "ommissions"
• Rod points out the contradictions in the way early Christianity is used to bolster people's agendas

Love is NOT all you need

Richard Hays in The Moral Vision of the New Testament, (p202)  gives three reasons why "love" is inadequate as a unifying theme for NT ethics (and by implication why it is inadequate for ethics today).

1.  Mark, Acts, Hebrews, and Revelation "resist any attempt to sythesze their moral visions by employing love as a focal image . . . Despite the powerful theological uses to which the motif of love is put by Paul and John, that motif cannot serve as the common denominator for New Testament Ethics."  Instead Hays suggests "community, cross and new creation."

2.  "What the New testament means by love is embodied in the concretely in the cross."  and so to treat love apart from the cross is to result in "conceptual abstraction, away from the specific image of the cross."

3.  "The term ["love"] has become debased in popular discourse; it has lost its power of discrimination, having become a cover for all manner of vapid self indulgence."  "We can recover the power of love only by insisting that love's meaning is to be discovered in the New Testament's story of Jesus - therefore, in the cross."

So who do you believe, Hays or the Beatles?

McGrath, The Only True God: A Book Review

James F. McGrath, The Only True God: Early Christian Monotheism in Its Jewish Context

[With thanks to the author for a review copy]

McGrath’s book has an argument that for many would seem counterintuitive, that the early Christians did not diverge from Jewish monotheism, even despite their veneration of Jesus. For McGrath this is simply because the modern conceptions of monotheism are not how 1st Century Jews would have defined their monotheism.  The book’s thesis is that while Christians, post Nicaea, are used to thinking about monotheism in terms of ontology, 1st Century Jews defined their devotion to the one God in terms of worship.  While Christians did worship Christ in some respects, McGrath argues that only sacrificial worship to Christ would have made Christ equal to God in a way that would constitute a breach of 1st Century Jewish monotheism.

The book itself has the rare virtue of being blessedly short, a mere 104 pages of text (not including notes, bibliography and index).  That being the case, what McGrath achieves within those pages is all the more impressive.  The book is intended to be accessible to those without a detailed knowledge of the field.  Thus the first chapter takes pains to explain clearly the important concepts and relevant methods.  This is done in a thorough but economical style.  In the second chapter McGrath turns to the question of how Jews in the Greco-Roman era would have understood their own monotheism in the context of a world where the worship of many gods was commonplace.  Given the book’s intention to be accessible to the non-expert it is a shame that some of the more obscure source passages referenced, e.g. Hecataeus of Abdera, do not appear in translation, instead the reader is reliant on McGrath’s précis of the relevant points.  Having established a working definition of 1st Century Jewish monotheism McGrath moves on to examine the writings of Paul (chp 3), the Gospel of John (chp 4), and Revelation (chp 5), against this definition.  In each chapter McGrath continues to develop his thesis and in each case finds the Christian elevation of Christ to be within the bounds of his definition of 1st Century Jewish monotheism.

The sixth chapter moves on from the Biblical material to discuss the “two powers heresy” within rabbinic literature.  McGrath argues that after the destruction of the Jerusalem Temple Jewish monotheism was forced to redefine itself.  One result of this process was the rabbinic response to the two powers heresy which while probably originally targeted at the Gnostics came to encompass the Christians also.  McGrath concludes that certain ideas that were condemned in the late 2nd and early 3rd centuries need not have been controversial in the 1st century.  Thus the schism between Christianity and Judaism over their respective understandings of monotheism is re-dated from the 1st to the 3rd century and, surprisingly, is a result of a change in the boundaries of Jewish monotheism rather than a developing Trinitarianism.  The final chapter briefly summarises the book’s findings and then offers some thoughts on their historical and theological implications.

McGrath’s book is excellently written, the only hindrance to the reader’s enjoyment being the use of endnotes instead of footnotes.  It consistently progresses through his argument with nuance but without wasting space on peripheral issues.  It engages with other scholarship in a respectful but efficient manner and represents a significant contribution to the field.  McGrath’s concluding thoughts are balanced and show a concern for further discussion and for the appropriation of the work by theologians.  I would suggest it is essential reading for anyone interested in NT background, Christology, or the historical development of Trinitarian theology.