Antinomism

Antinomianism means “opposed to law.” Antinomian views are those denying that God’s law in Scripture should directly control the Christian’s life.

Dualistic antinomianism appeared early in the Gnostic heresies, like those opposed by Peter and Jude (2 Pet. 2; Jude 4–19). The Gnostics taught that salvation was for the soul only, making bodily behavior irrelevant both to God’s interest and to the soul’s health. The conclusion was that one may behave riotously and it will not matter.

A “spiritual” antinomianism puts such trust in the Holy Spirit’s inward prompting as to deny any need to be taught by the law how to live. Freedom from the law as a way of salvation is assumed to bring with it freedom from the law as a guide to conduct. In the first 150 years of the Reformation era this kind of antinomianism was common. The Corinthian church may have been in the grip of this error, since Paul warns them that a truly spiritual person acknowledges the authority of God’s Word (1 Cor. 14:37; cf. 7:40).

Another kind of antinomianism begins from the point that God does not see the sin in believers, because they are in Christ, who kept the law for them. From this they draw the false conclusion that their behavior makes no difference, provided they keep on believing. But 1 John 1:8–2:1 and 3:4–10 point in a different direction. It is not possible to be in Christ and at the same time to embrace sin as a way of life.

Some dispensationalists have held that since Christians live under a dispensation of grace, not law, keeping the moral law is at no stage necessary for them. Rom. 3:31 and 1 Cor. 6:9–11 clearly show, however, that keeping the law is a continuing obligation for Christians.

It is sometimes said that the motive and intention of “love” is the only law God requires of Christians. The commands of the Decalogue and other ethical parts of Scripture, although they are ascribed to God directly, are regarded as no more than guidelines that love may at any time disregard. But Rom. 13:8–10 teaches that specific commands reveal what true love is. The law of God exposes the counterfeit love that will not accept its responsibilities toward God and neighbor.

The moral law revealed in the Decalogue and expounded in other parts of the Bible is an expression of God’s righteousness, given to be a code of practice for God’s people in every age. The law is not opposed to the love and goodness of God, but shows what it is in action. The Spirit gives Christians the power to observe the law, making us more and more like Christ, the archetypal observer of the law (Matt. 5:17).

Whitlock, L. G., Sproul, R. C., Waltke, B. K., & Silva, M. (1995). The Reformation study Bible: bringing the light of the Reformation to Scripture: New King James Version. Nashville: T. Nelson.

Weekly Torah studies for children



We attend a Baptist church and they have a well organised children's programme except they have a curriculum that seems to go all over the place and it isn't communicated at all to parents.  Ironically the previous senior minister of this church had talked to me about how important expository teaching was a foundation of his work.  Somehow his idea hadn't filtered through to the children's programme.

So we as parents decided to run a bible study program for our children on Saturdays.  To give it some structure we adopted the Parasha reading system that was in place in Jesus' time. This reading system takes the first five books of the bible and divides it up into weekly portions. After a year, the system starts at the beginning again.

My children are aged, 3, 5, 7 and 9 years of age.  Each parasha covers quite a lot of ground, too much to take in, in one session, therefore I like to pick some aspect of the parasha and make that the focus.  This also means there's plenty of material for future years.

Having given it some structure it's then a matter of thinking how to present the material in a way that is engaging, interactive and learnt.  I think its important to be guided by the personalities, interests and passions of your children. If they like Lego, use Lego.

When they were younger, doing the narrative chapters was really easy as there is plenty of visual material for children to see and comprehend.  The passages that focus on the commandments (mitzvot) are much more tricky as the information is really abstract.  For these I put together PowerPoint slides with pictures to illustrate the commandment.  This was easy for the dietary laws (Kashrut), as all you needed were photos of the various animals.  You just have to use your imagination to work out how best to convey your topic. 

As the children got older, the older two needed more of a challenge, so I introduced the "Why" question.  So the idea is as they hear the story, they have to think of a "Why" question.  Sometimes they are quite prosaic, "Why is the man's hair colored blue in the cartoon?" and other times unsettlingly profound, "Why did Joseph hide the cup in the bag?"

Resources I have found useful include:

1. Torah Tots.  Lots of pictures to color in.  Good commentary from an orthodox Judaic perspective. 
2. Infographics from Logos Software give great illustrations of various elements of the Tent of Meeting (Tabernacle) and its various elements; and priestly garments.
3. The Brick Testament uses Lego pieces to illustrate various bible stories.  Beware that sometimes the author doesn't depict the stories in a sympathetic manner.  Otherwise, its very useful for engaging children with a passion for Lego bricks.
4. The Trank Brothers have put together a great series of YouTube videos in Monty Python style that summarise each Parasha in only 60 seconds.  Easier for Grade 3 and above as he speaks very quickly.  Even if younger children don't understand what he's saying they are captivated by the engaging graphics. 
5.  G-dcast, is a non-profit production company dedicated to raising basic Jewish literacy using media and storytelling styles that speak to today's youth. Since 2006, G-dcast has created over 75 animated films enjoyed worldwide by hundreds of thousands of people from diverse religious backgrounds.  They have a YouTube channel that has a small video that covers each individual Parasha.  Their website has lots of resources for purchase.
6. Logos' First Hebrew Primer has been invaluable for getting an appreciation of the process for developing classical Hebrew literacy.  Based on the outlines laid out in this Primer, I developed exercises for my children to learn the alephbet, vowel sounds, learn Hebrew phonics and develop their classical Hebrew vocabulary.  It's no longer available from Logos but you can still get it from EKS Publishing.  I've had to mix in a bit of modern Hebrew so that the children can use their Hebrew in everyday life.  For example, there is no word for TV in classical Hebrew.

I have been asked to put together a set of resources and lesson plans for other parents to follow.  This is easier said than done because how I went about things was very much a mix of my own nature as a parent and the nature of my children.  Instead I have put this blog together. 

At this point in time, my children know:

• How the Earth came to be
• How humankind sinned and left Eden
• The increasing dissociation between humankind and God;
• How God saved humankind through Noah;
• How God began his redemptive plan with the call of Abraham;
• The story of the patriarchs;
• The story of Joseph which leads to Moses;
• How the Torah was given;
• How the torah's commandments showed humankind how God intended them to live;
• That the festival (moedim) are appointed times to meet with God and that they are observed today;
• That the bible can be read in its original languages;
• Their place in the history of God's people;
• That in God's kingdom He only intended to have one people of believers and that all ethnicities and nations were to join with it.

If you like, these can be turned into learning objectives. 

Most of all, I have found that it is important to be disciplined about it.  After Shabbat dinner on a Friday night and all the visitors and family members have gone home, I spend about an hour preparing for the children's Torah studies the next morning.  This is important as it allows you as the Parent to really get familiar with the material beforehand.  Sometimes the children's sport or some other event prevails but we just reschedule for the following afternoon or the next day.  Since we always have done it since the children were aged three, they don't argue about doing it.  Its part of their routine. 

Although I emphasize discipline it doesn't take much for children to have fun while doing it.  Too often, I think parents can make the mistake of getting too familiar with the children and they lose respect for them as parents.  I think its important to maintain the parent-child relationship.  It mustn't devolve into a child-child relationship.   I've observed the teachers at school maintain this hierarchy of relationship and the children seem to respond positively to this approach.

During the week, we often revise some of the Hebrew and other aspects of their Torah studies at the dinner table.  This has reminded me why teaching Torah as a parent is so much more effective than any children's programme run on a Sabbath.  In fact, I might go so far as to suggest that such children's programmes need to enlist the participation of parents to reinforce and interact with their material during the week.  I offered this to my children's programme superintendent at my church but it wasn't taken up. 

I hope these notes help you in teaching Torah to your children. 

Faith in the Old Testament

The idea of faith is threaded throughout the OT.

The OT concept of faith is broader than the commonly held idea of faith. The commonly held idea is a a mental or cognitive assent to a belief.

The Hebrew word for "Emunah" is often better translated as Faithfulness of which the majority definition of "faith" is but a subset.

Thus in Hebraic thought, if you have faith, you act a certain way. And if you acted in a certain way, you are exhibiting faith.

This doesn't mean that the Hebraic view eliminated the cognitive assent since the idea of having the law written on your heart is clearly an allusion to an inward state, which should result in outward obedience.

Thus there is no clash between Paul and James regarding faith and works. They are both likely to be dealing with the corruption of the idea of emunah by an over-emphasis of the Greek understanding of faith.

E P Sanders argues that the widely held idea that 1st Century Rabbinic Judaism is based on a false premise of justification by works is incorrect. If true, then we have made a misjudgement that has far reaching consequences on our understanding of Pauline thought.

Instead of viewing Paul as the Hellenised Jew who reformed Judaism by recasting the mode by which justification is achieved, how would we view Paul's writings if we thought of him merely as a Rabbi who believed his Messiah had come?

Torah is "Law"?

Not even Jews consider the Pentateuch to be merely a system of pejorative laws like Westerners do in the sense of a Roman or English Common Law system. It is certainly one aspect of it but to consider the text in only this light would be to take a very narrow view.

They call it Halakah which derives its meaning from the same root as verb "to walk." Thus a more balanced perspective is to see the Pentateuch as God teaching humankind how it should "walk."

This should have particular meaning for Christians since an early name for the sect was "The Way."

Spirit vs Law?

Does the Spirit obviate the Law?  If a truly mature believer was completely led by the Holy Spirit would the Law become an artefact?

If the Law is a part of Torah, and if Jesus is the Torah made flesh, and if Jesus, the Holy Spirit and God the Father are one in the Trinity then if any of these three are present anywhere, then there will be Law. Law is an inalienable manifestation of God's nature.

The subject of what place the law has in Christianity has been the subject of much debate. The Law was given to teach us how we should live. It is manifested in the Scriptures which according to John, became flesh. Jesus therefore embodies or in some may consists of the Law. To reject the Law at any level, is a rejection of Jesus. Law is a part of God and therefore Law is a part of the fabric of creation. Law and Spirit do not operate in the absence of the other. Since they are different manifestations of the same God, how can they? The Spirit acts as an enabling agent to obey the Law. One can flout the Law by arguing for a spirit-led life excluding any reference to the Law but such a life cannot disobey it without negative consequence nor impunity.

Christians have underestimated the power of sin to disorientate them from God's ways and so Christians have mistakenly put aside the Law leaving themselves in an exile of ignorance.

The Sabbath, Today

First Century Judaism debated the definition of work as they considered how best to obey the fourth Commandment.  Just as in Christianity there can be a diversity of opinion, Judaism was not of one mind on the definition of work.  Jesus took a purposive interpretative stance.  The Sabbath was given to refresh the believer.

With the undermining of a designated day of rest across western society, family life has been impinged and the days where whole families would head out for a day trip or to the family beach house, is much less common.

The Sabbath is also a day where the demands of this world, as well as the need to accumulate assets is put aside, and time stops -- for one day.

On this day, the sovereignty of God over all things is acknowledged as we rest, reflect on God and enjoy our families. God promises that we may gather double on the sixth day to cover our requirements for the seventh day.

Thus it is a day to celebrate shalom, a sense of peace and completeness. I'm mindful that one Jewish theologian, A J Heschel wouldn't allow arguments in his household.

With free markets, deregulation, recessions, and natural disasters, which may bring hardship to many, commitment to a Sabbath is tested. Yet God does not shy away from bringing us to a dilemma of faith, a precipice where we must choose between a leap of faith that goes beyond our sight to connect with the eternal.  This is Grace.

Electricity Industry Reform: Neo-communism?

In New Zealand the two largest opposition parties have announced a plan to return the electricity industry back to a centralised planned model. The idea is to have one monopoly buyer  who effectively sets the price for wholesale electricity.

We had decades of centralised planning for the electricity industry and that resulted in much oversupply. Deregulating the industry, creating the spot market, introducing competition (albeit oligopolistic) have constrained energy prices.

This may seem contrary to experience but the world has seen a period of sustained energy price inflation in recent years. Yet we have seen higher electricity price rises than that experienced elsewhere. NZ has its own particular circumstances that should be taken into consideration.  For example, the exhaustion of the Maui Gas field has meant that Gas-fired generation is now fed by more expensive fields. 

I believe Electricity prices would have been higher still without market constraints.  Instead of large chunky investments in new generation, smaller increments have been installed, better matching demand growth.  NZ Windfarms, an independent power generation capacity investor based in New Zealand, bet that electricity prices would rise to levels that would sustain them. This proved false. Not surprisingly capital investment in generation has slowed.

The 20th Century (should have) taught us that centralised planned economies are poor at allocating resources. Counter-intuitively the seeming chaos of free markets has proven to be more efficient.  The painful experience of the Soviet Union, China, the Eastern Bloc and indeed modern day North Korea stand as prominent warnings for us all. Humanity lost up to 100 million lives teaching us this lesson by famine, some other form of deprivation or in the Gulags. Most Left wing thinkers I have met tend to be highly intelligent and hold above average levels of education. Can this lead to over confidence in our abilities to manage an economy? 

The biblical role of government is to regulate commerce from corruption and in this context, prevent monopolies from abusing their positions. Consequently if a part of the electricity needs immediate scrutiny from Government it should be the elements that are naturally monopolistic in nature, the electricity network companies.

For further reading:

World bank. 
Lantau Group.

Grown ups

Grown-ups love figures. When you talk of a new friend, they never ask questions about essential matters. They never say to you: "What does his voice sound like? What games does he prefer? Does he collect butterflies?" They ask you: "How old is he? How many brothers does he have? How much does he weigh? How much money does his father earn?" It is only then that they feel they know him. If you had mentioned to grown-ups: "I've seen a beautiful house with pink bricks, with geraniums on the window sills and doves on the roof..." they would not be able to imagine such a house. You have to say to them: "I saw a house worth £100,000." Then they would exclaim: "Oh! How lovely."

Source: de Saint-Exupery, Antoine (1995).  Wordsworth Editions Ltd. Pages 21-22.

Monopolies

Recently I have been considering the problem of monopolies in our society.  New Zealand is a relatively small country (Pop. 4 million) and in a relatively small amount of time, most industries become oligopolies or duopolies.  As a result, monopoly rents become possible on all sorts of products and services. 

In recent weeks there has been a considerable amount of debate on how house pricing can be constrained so that first home buyers can purchase or build their first home.  Even my next door neighbour raised it over New Year's drinks as he worried for his daughter who is going out with a "loser" that has persuaded her to use her savings for an overseas trip instead of a deposit on a house.

His story reminded me of an old Jewish joke where a suitor came to ask her father for her hand in marriage.  When he asked the boy how he was going to provide a home for his daughter, the boy said bravely, that God would provide.  He asked how he would provide for a family, the boy answered in the same way.  Later as his wife asked expectantly about how the interview went, he replied that the boy thought he was God.

As a first step to thinking about this, I thought I would put down a few observations I have noted of the real estate market:

1. In Christchurch 2-3 families have been land banking for decades and tie up quite a large proportion of the undeveloped land within the city limits.  One of them even has their own construction company and a kitchen manufacturing firm.  They only release enough lots to keep their factories busy and to keep the price up.
2. Land zoning puts a collar around the city and as the city population grows, demand for land grows more quickly than supply, ensuring prices continue to rise.
3. With increasing prices, homeowners can further leverage their homes by taking out additional mortgages or increasing existing mortgage loans to purchase or build more homes which they can rent to those who can't afford to purchase their home.
4. Relaxed overseas investment criteria mean that New Zealanders have to compete with well capitalised foreigners who are often absentee landlords.
5. Developers wanting to ensure that they maximise their profits do not build homes intended for first time buyers because smaller homes de-value their neighboring houses.  As a consequence, many developments do not cater for budget buyers.  
6. Even when budget housing is included in a new development well-capitalised existing home owners looking for investment homes outbid first time buyers anyway.
7. It is in the interests of existing landowners, homeowners, real estate agents mortgage lenders and developers to ensure that house and land prices continue to inflate.  If values were to fall then mortgaged owners would see their equity vanish, real estate agents would see their commissions fall, banks would be concerned that their borrowers may default and developers would see margins and demand fall.  
8. Therefore politicians cannot enact laws that create significant downward pressure on land and house prices since that would lose the significant political support of these groups.  Yet all that these groups have done has contribute to the creation of land monopolies which can only lead eventually to civil strife.  
9. In hard times, families would pool their resources to survive.  After 50 years of comparative prosperity, two generations have grown up with very independent mentalities.  The physical, cultural and social distance between individuals is so great that many of the skills needed to negotiate healthy relationships in extended families need to be relearnt.  Instead the generation in their sixties relish the thought of their regular SKI (Spend the Kids Inheritance) holidays, selling their lands and purchasing motorhomes in a glamorous display of conspicuous consumption. 
10. We have plenty of land, we have willing people to work and build their own homes.  But the game of monopoly is disenfranchising people.  We are on the way to rebuilding a stratified feudal society.  
11. In this society, we spend our 20s getting educated and building up student debt, our 30s paying it off and our 40s scrambling to get a deposit for our first home, and having a (small) family, spending the rest of lives paying off the mortgage and retiring in a "rest home" far from our families surrounded by other people who discuss their doctor's and their latest treatments, and going to someone's funeral.

Land is not the only monopoly we have built in Western society.  Why is health care so expensive?  One of the reasons is that we limit the numbers of medical practitioners that can be produced even though there are many people who could sit and pass the theoretical and practical exams.  The same could be said for dentists, lawyers, accountants, engineers and technologists.  We arbitrarily limit class sizes for all these disciplines.

In Christchurch we have young people seeing back street dentists for fillings.  Across the city there are extraordinarily high levels of stress, insomnia, anxiety, depression, eating disorders, self harm and suicide.  These levels cannot be solely attributed to the earthquake.  These problems are high in other urban centres too. 

We've been through a financial crisis and it has become one of unemployment and inflation.  Sure it's been exacerbated by the earthquake, yet I have met few who have heard messages from the pulpit on the Global Financial Crisis, about watching out for neighbours who might have been made redundant, or small business owners who maybe facing ruin.  Instead I have heard many sermons on how triumphant the Christian walk truly is.  Are we so disenfranchised from reality?

Does God not have answers for these problems?  What does His Bible say?  Who knows what's in it?  Why are these issues not being discussed from the pulpit? Why are the believers so disempowered?  How did we get this way? 

Where are the Believers who confidently say that God has set out a way that we should live which solves these societal problems?  What have we done to our people that they can be so silent at a time of such great need?  Who are we that we cannot speak prophetically to our society in such a way that their hearts can be touched and that they will give us license to propagate much-needed change?  It is time we asked ourselves "WHO AM I?" for we are not what we ought to be.

Logos 4 on a Windows 8 Tablet PC

A while ago, I wrote a few observations about using Logos 4 on an XP Tablet PC and a stylus. I've recently upgraded my Tablet PC to Windows 8.

Windows 8 has modified the way it supports stylus input. Gone is the floating Tablet Input Panel (TIP) that appears when the stylus hovers over any text input area on a page. Instead it waits for the user to activate it by tapping the keyboard icon in the app bar area at the bottom of the screen. It is always docked at the bottom. In portrait mode the keyboard takes up half the screen.

This new panel works largely the same as the original TIP.  Except... there are new gestures for editing and correcting mistakes. Highlighting a word makes it appear in the TIP. Tapping it in the TIP presents the word in letter by letter mode. Letters can be changed by writing an top of an existing letter. Letters and words can be deleted with a single horizontal line. A space can be inserted by drawing a vertical line to the left or right of a letter. Groups of letters can be conjoined by drawing a curved line, like a rope bridge between them.

The HWR accuracy is better. Probably about 5% -10% better than the XP system. And the XP system was pretty good. I got about 90% accuracy with it. Windows 8 is even better.

Otherwise interacting with the Logos 4 interface is much the same. Tapping on any screen element is equivalent to a mouse tap, tapping and holding for a second until a smell circle appears around the contact point and then removing the stylus is equivalent to a right mouse click.

Logos has written a couple of Windows 8 apps that support the live tiles on the Start Screen. The first app is free and provides a " verse of the day".  The second app is also free. It provides access to a few bible and commentaries if one isn't already a Logos user with a website account. If one is a signed up user then the app will allow any resource already purchased to be download for viewing with the app. A bit redundant if one owns and uses all these resources in the full Logos Windows desktop  application.

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Handwritten on an X-Series ThinkPad Tablet

Blackaby on Faith

"You may say, "I love God, but I just have difficulty trusting Him." Then you are not pleasing to Him. You cannot struggle at the core of your relationship with God and still enjoy a vibrant fellowship with Him! Faith does not eliminate problems. Faith keeps you in a trusting relationship with God in the midst of your problems. Faith has to do with your relationship with God, not your circumstances. Some may say, "I'm not much of a person of faith. I am more of a practical person!" Yet you will never do anything more practical than to place your trust in the Lord! Nothing is more secure or certain than that which you entrust to God."
Blackley H T (2006) Experiencing God Day by Day. March 3.

He is God, you are not.

"You may have stopped following Jesus, but now you want to follow again.  When you stopped following Jesus, you did so on your terms.  But the returning to Jesus is strictly under his conditions.  He is God, and you are not.  Are you willing to follow Jesus anywhere, at any time, under any condition?  That is the only way you can follow him."

Henry Blackaby, Experiencing God Day by Day. February 19.

Intellectual honesty

"Intellectual honesty is one of the supreme goals of philosophy of religion, just as self-deception is the chief source of corruption in religious thinking, more deadly than error.  Hypocrisy rather than heresy is the cause of spiritual decay.  "Thou desirest truth in the inwardness" of man (Psalm 51)."  --Abraham Joshua Heschel.  God in Search of Man. Page 10-11.