The Call to the Ministry: A Crucial Subject Again, what is the “Desire”? We are looking into the subject of the Call to the Ministry. Last time we considered the “desire” of 1 Timothy 3:1, and we saw that whichever way you cut it, this desire must be qualified in order to exclude carnal and fleshly impulses, overly romanticized fleeting impressions, the cocksure preenings of proud self-assuredness, or the recognition of persons in breach of biblical morality. Thus, a true …
Author: Paul Henebury
I have been wanting to repost this and another piece for some time, and now seems as good a time as any. While I am aware that good people disagree with the view set out below, I am content to stand with many names from the past on this issue. Giving attention to the Call I would like to say something about what is called “the call to the ministry” or “the call to preach.” In my opinion this …
Part One 3. Allegorical Interpretation continued. But what we must keep in mind is that allegorical interpretation was not foreign to Jewish understanding of their Scriptures in the first century. Maier can say, “Jewish interpreters of the first century were convinced that the Holy Scriptures contained more than what the sensus literalis offered.” – Gerhard Maier, Biblical Hermeneutics, 68. Thus, we should not yield to the naïve temptation to think that the Jews held to single-sense literal hermeneutics. So what did …
PART FIVE Natural Theology and Methodological Naturalism How can scientific naturalism be a child of Christian theology? That is a good question. One would think that such a methodology, disposed as it is to serve the worldviews of materialists and atheists, and presented by them as indispensable to good science, would have been contrived by them, but such is not the case. In fact Cornelius Hunter contends that, What we need…is a clear understanding of what naturalism is. Naturalism’s adherents …
This is a note from a book I am trying to write. We must too be aware that a prophet foretells. The term “prophet” (nabi) basically means “mouthpiece” or “spokesman” (Cf. Exod. 7:1-2 with 4:16; Deut. 18:17-18). They were preachers, proclaiming the words of God to their contemporaries. But in the Bible the most prominent function of a prophet was to proclaim God’s word about future events (see e.g., Jer. 1:7-16; Amos 7:7-9, 14-17; 1 Ki. 1:22). As we shall …
This is one which came out a couple of years back. Thought it deserved a rerun: When one is associating a belief with the text of Scripture it is never wise to choose texts from obscure, debated or overly figurative portions of the Bible. Why go to a vision of Zechariah when you can go to an epistle of Paul for the same doctrine? When tying a doctrine concerning the Church to Scripture we find good men like F. Turretin …
Part Four The Definition of Science In the course of writing about the idea of science in his Systematic Theology, Reformed writer Michael Horton notes that “Britain’s Royal Society was founded by Puritans.” – The Christian Faith, 339 n.48 The Puritans saw no clash, either ontological or methodological, in pursuing science as a response to God’s revelation. The fact that God created the world and created man in His image meant that to find out what God had done was …
Part Five C. Phinehas (‘Priestly’) Since I have treated this covenant elsewhere in some detail I shall just briefly rehearse the salient facts. Owing to the zeal of Phinehas, Aaron’s grandson, a devastating plague was stopped and God’s wrath appeased (Num. 25: ). Although Phinehas could have had no idea what God would do next, his honoring of God’s holiness elicited a quite un-looked-for covenant between God and Phinehas’s offspring (Num. 25:13; Psa. 106:28-31). This covenant stands behind the promise …
PART THREE After the Impossible Hurdle Evolution is the atheists’ way out. It is his escape clause from having to face the God who created him. People like Richard Dawkins may convince themselves that it makes atheism intellectually respectable, but they must first convince themselves that naturalism is intellectually respectable. The problem here is that, as in many walks of life, it is possible to arrange our arguments selectively and with rhetorical conviction while ignoring the issues, even the most …
PART TWO Life not from Earth It is a universal law which, as all scientific laws, has not witnessed an exception: life does not come from non-life. Yet evolutionists, of the non-theistic sort) must teach that it does. Going further back, ex nihilo nihil fit, out of nothing comes nothing. No one has ever seen or heard of something (i.e. that which has properties and permits predication) coming into existence from nothing (that which has no properties and does not permit …
