Jesus Creed Admin: March 2009 Archives

We started a discussion a while ago on University Ministry  - a discussion I would like to continue today. And I think the initial question to shape thinking is quite simple:

What is the purpose or aim of a College or University Ministries? Is the aim discipleship? Evangelism? Both? Something else? Is the aim the same or different for local churches and parachurch organizations?

Church based and parachurch ministries fill an important need on our campuses. The fellowship, mentorship, and peer support provided are invaluable to many students and the evangelical outreach has impacted many.  Yet there is room for improvement and there are some important issues we need to address in the future. 

In the second chapter of his book Beginnings: Ancient Christian Readings of the Biblical Creation Narratives Peter Bouteneff discusses the uses of the creation narrative in the New Testament. The most important New Testament references are in the Pauline literature - which Bouteneff takes to include Ephesians, Colossians, and 2 Thessalonians.  He considers the Pastoral epistles separately. 

Paul was an educated Jew of his day and he uses the scriptures in a method entirely consistent with Second Temple Judaism - although his conclusions are distinctively Christian.  He now reads the scripture through the lens of his Damascus Road experience and the corporate experience of the early Christians.  Bouteneff notes:

To Paul - the first Christian interpreter of the OT - the Scriptures speak of, anticipate, typologize, reveal,  Christ, and him crucified. In effect, Paul takes the spectrum of Jewish hermeneutical methods - literal, allegorical, midrashic - and uses these instruments in a completely new way. In so doing, he says things that are revolutionary to the Jews, but in a language and framework very much their own. (p. 36)

One of the revolutionary developments in Paul deals with sin and redemption.  It is suggested by some that  a more traditional Jewish reading sees "sin as an act that can be repented of but Paul sees it as a condition from which we are freed and redeemed in Christ."  Paul uses the creation narratives to tell this story of redemption.

Scot has been presenting a series of related posts pondering the future of evangelicalism and the importance of youth ministry - something that may cover anyone from 12 to 30 or so these days.  There are many aspects to this problem - and different folks will have different issues and priorities - but I would like us to discuss one issue that I find particularly troubling:  the anti-intellectualism, or almost worse, pseudo-intellectualism that plagues much of our church, particularly with respect to ministry among College and University students and young professionals (20-30 year-olds).

Consider this point 5 in the post from Internet Monk (actually his guest):

5. Despite some very successful developments in the past 25 years, Christian education has not produced a product that can withstand the rising tide of secularism.

One statistic that really jumped out at me when going through the ARIS data was the statistics on Education. In the general population, 27% of those of the age twenty-five and older were college graduates. In Baptist churches the figure was 16%, and in Pentecostal churches the figure was 13%. I am seeing more and more of the Western world viewing Evangelicals as ignorant and uneducated and not worthy or participating fully in the public square. Unfortunately the education numbers seem to support their thesis. Are there Evangelicals who are going to rise to this challenge?

The statistics on education are thought-provoking.  But even more troubling is the original observation.  Evangelical Christian education has not produced a product that can withstand the rising tide of secularism. This is an astounding indictment - and one, quite frankly, I find to be far too true. In too many cases evangelical Christian scholars at evangelical institutions do not engage the wider intellectual climate. They provide inbred wishy-washy pseudo-thinking and pass it off as "rigorous" - because the inbred circle agrees. And rigorous evangelical scholars at secular institutions are often regarded with disdain and distrust - from all sides. We have been warned about this by Mark Noll and David Wells.

But one surprising place where we see the impact of this anti-intellectualism or pseudo-intellectualism most profoundly is in University Ministries ... and I mean all of them, within my experience without exception.

I am currently reading a book by Peter Bouteneff, a theology professor at St. Vladimir's Orthodox Theological Seminary, entitled Beginnings: Ancient Christian Readings of the Biblical Creation Narratives. This book explores the use of the creation narratives in Second Temple Judaism (ca. 200 BCE to 100 CE), in the New Testament, and in the writings of the early church fathers through the first four centuries of the church.  This is a fascinating book - a bit academic, but not too strenuous a read.  We will devote a few posts to this book over the next several weeks.

The first chapter of this book discusses the development of the text of the Old Testament - especially the Septuagint (LXX) used by almost all of the NT and early Christian authors.  Bouteneff also talks about the way that the text was used by Second Temple era Jewish authors in non-canonical writing, apocrypha and pseudopigrepha

We have spent several posts looking at Gen 1-3 and at Paul's understanding of Genesis and its role in his atonement theology in Romans 5. In the course of this discussion several different people have brought up Romans 8, especially verses 19-22 as another important passage to inform our thinking. Certainly Romans 8 provides another reflection on Gen 3 and the consequence of the Fall. In Gen 3 we read:

Then to Adam He said, "Because you have listened to the voice of your wife, and have eaten from the tree about which I commanded you, saying, 'You shall not eat from it'; Cursed is the ground because of you; In toil you will eat of it all the days of your life. "Both thorns and thistles it shall grow for you; And you will eat the plants of the field; By the sweat of your face you will eat bread, till you return to the ground, because from it you were taken; for you are dust, and to dust you shall return.

And in Romans 8

For I consider that the sufferings of this present time are not worthy to be compared with the glory that is to be revealed to us. For the anxious longing of the creation waits eagerly for the revealing of the sons of God. For the creation was subjected to futility, not willingly, but because of Him who subjected it, in hope that the creation itself also will be set free from its slavery to corruption into the freedom of the glory of the children of God. For we know that the whole creation groans and suffers the pains of childbirth together until now.

This is a powerful, poetic, and dynamic passage. The whole earth is in bondage to decay on account of the sin of man and the curse of God. The whole earth is in anticipation, NT Wright says "on tiptoes with excitement" awaiting the coming renewal and the coming glory of the children of God.

This leads us to ponder : What is the curse of the ground and the bondage to decay that is set right by the inauguration of kingdom of God and how does it interface with our scientific knowledge of creation?

Michael Kruse brought these articles to my attention earlier this week. An ancient temple at Gobekli Tepe in Turkey revolutionizes thinking about ancient human culture and thought. A prehistoric construction, a "temple" dating from some 8000-12000 years ago.  This...

Romans 5:12-21 is a great passage - and at the center of the passage is the achievement of Jesus through his death and resurrection. In his commentary on Romans NT Wright notes:Though the word "cross" is not mentioned, and though...