Kingdom Ready

FYI . . . over at Parchment and Pen, Rob Bowman just announced that he will be having a “debate” with Christadelphian Dave Burke concerning the doctrine of the trinity.  The date is a ways off (April). Notice that Kingdom Ready is represented in the resource section of the post. They are limiting themselves to 5,000 words per post–that’s probably less than some of the recent posts on this site. I’m not familiar with Dave Burke.  Any one know about him?

I thought this recent posting by Michael Bird at his blog Euangelion was quite interesting from a Unitarian understanding of the Scriptures.

Thursday, July 23, 2009
How Divine Were ANE Kings?
I’m reading through J.J. Collins and A.Y. Collins King and Messiah as Son of God and am enjoying it very much (I wish I had this book a year or two ago!). I’ve always enjoyed John Collins’ work on Daniel and the rise of messianism. This book looks more explicitly at the links between divinity and messianism.

I thought I would do a 2-for-1 for this post.  The first is raising the question, who raised Jesus from the dead? This almost seems like a trick question.  I recently came across an article by this title on the Alliance of Confessing Evangelicals web site.  For those of us who believe that the Scriptures teach one God, the answer is quite simple.  It gets a little more complicated if you believe in the trinity. Here is an excerpt from that article:

Yesterday, I ran across two different blogs that quoted Kierkegaard in regards to interpreting the Bible.  I have to admit I don’t know much about the man, but I found his statements thought provoking.  For those of us who love to study God’s Word and read scholarly books about the Bible, his quotes help to remind us what the goal is.

“The matter is quite simple. The Bible is very easy to understand. But we Christians are a bunch of scheming swindlers. We pretend to be unable to understand it because we know very well that the minute we understand, we are obligated to act accordingly.

What “recipe” do we use to find the truth of God.  For Christians, we say, “The Scriptures, of course.”  And that’s certainly the way to go.  But what happens when we say, “The Scriptures plus . . .”  I recently came across this quote from Eugene Robinson, bishop in the Epicopal Church, USA.

We all know that how a particular version is translated can make a huge impact on what a person believes to be the truth of Scripture.  This is very important when it comes to understanding who God is and who Jesus is.  Below is a sample of some English translations of Philippians 2:6.  One can see that if all someone did was read certain of these translations alone, it would be almost impossible for them to come to a correct understanding of who Jesus is.  I’ve put a “*” next to the ones that I thought should be on probation, “**” next to the ones that should be on double probation; “***” next the ones that should be on triple secret probation.  How would you rate them?

New American Standard Bible

Genesis 17:20 As for Ishmael, I have heard you; behold, I have blessed him and will make him fruitful and multiply him greatly. He shall father twelve princes, and I will make him into a great nation. [ESV]

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(For those of you who don’t like the ESV, ( 🙂 ) here’s the NAS: “As for Ishmael, I have heard you; behold, I will bless him, and will make him fruitful and will multiply him exceedingly He shall become the father of twelve princes, and I will make him a great nation.)

Philippians 2:9-11  For this reason also, God highly exalted Him, and bestowed on Him the name which is above every name, so that at the name of Jesus EVERY KNEE WILL BOW, of those who are in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and that every tongue will confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father. [NASB]

For trinitarians, these verses present the idea that Jesus in not only God, but that the name God has given him is Yahweh, which the Old Testament identifies as the name of God.  Below are the notes from the ESV Study Bible for these verses:

We find throughout the New Testament, sections which speak to how followers of Jesus Christ are to behave toward fellow believers or the attitudes which they should have or not have toward fellow disciples.  Here is a list of some of these.  The Christian walk can keep us quite busy.  Of course, these things are all predicated on our love for God.  The phrasing is from the KJV.

I’ve lately been looking at the sections of the Scripture that pertain to the birth of Jesus (it’s just a coincidence that’s it’s late December).  One of the things I’ve noticed is how much information about this child is given in the various angelic announcements, dreams and prophecies.  Matthew, chapters one and two as well as Luke, chapters one and two, tell us much about who this Jesus is and what he will accomplish.  In Jesus’ adult years, many wondered who he really was–if only they could have been privy to the things that God revealed to Mary, Joseph, the shepherds and Simeon.  Here is a list of some of things God made known to these various individuals: