smerickson.com the personal website of steven m. erickson

I recently finished reading David Peterson’s Engaging with God – A Biblical Theology of Worship. This book is strong on both theology and exegesis – a combination which is sadly lacking in most contemporary books on this subject. Peterson’s task is a formidable one. He sets out to trace the ways in which terms like worship and service are used throughout Scripture. His study is significant in that it seeks to ground our understanding and language of worship Biblically. I found his conclusions to be really helpful. On the whole, Peterson’s work shows that there is a significant shift in the location of language concerning worship after the incarnation. In the Old Testament, the language of worship and service are often found in connection with those activities which occur in and around the temple often in the context of sacrifices and rituals. With the life death and resurrection of Christ, this all changes. Jesus taught his disciples that his life, death and resurrection fulfill that to which the Jewish cultic practices pointed. Jesus is the true temple, the final and perfect sacrifice, and the only priest or mediator between man and God. As a result, terms like worship or service are used in new ways by the early church. They are transmuted to refer broadly to the entirety of one’s life and attitude. It is shocking to realize that the New Testament authors do not use the term worship in the way we do today. Very rarely, if at all, is the term worship used to refer to what the church does when it gathers together on the Lord’s Day, let alone to an extended time of singing. More often worship is used to refer to a life lived in response to God’s work in Christ on our behalf. The implications for this understanding are many. In the end, Peterson’s book is a helpful corrective to common conceptions about worship today. We often hear that we should worship God with our whole lives, but that takes on a greater significance after reading the exegesis of relevant passages offered in Engaging with God. Would that many in our churches better understood the language of worship in the Bible and were then better able to plan gatherings which glorify God and edify his people and who seek to worship God in all areas of their life.

The past couple days I’ve listened to the lectures on NT Wright by Bill Wilder at the Center for Christian Study. They were very interesting and helpful in terms of setting the context for controversy surrounding the covenant and justification today. If you would like to know more about this issue, these lectures would be helpful. For those who have listened to it, here are some of my brief notes. I’d love to hear what others thought of the lectures.

I thought that Wilder did a fair job of briefly describing covenant theology and NTW (NT Wright) broad purposes in most of what he writes. There were points near the end of the second lecture that I started to lose a sense of the exact differences between Covenant theology and what NTW is saying. In the way that Wilder presented it, it seemed as though the two were talking past each other or saying differing things.

In the third lecture, Wilder addressed the issue of imputation. I found this presentation to be somewhat weak. While some of the texts used to describe imputation were brought up, it didn’t seem as though reformed people were quoted on how they understand those texts. I was disappointed that the oft quoted statement by NTW about righteousness not being an object was addressed approvingly. I find that to be a broad mischaracterization of the reformed understanding and it doesn’t seem helpful to me for others to continue to quote it. Wilder tried to downplay imputation language in favor of incorporation with Christ. I heartily affirm the need to focus on the fact that Christians are “in Christ” or are “united with Christ” and therefore vicariously participate in his experience. But it seems misguided to me to play that off against imputation. John Calvin didn’t seem to think that the two were different positions. He is known for clearly articulating the Reformation position on justification against the Council of Trent and most often he uses the language of union with Christ to explain imputation. Furthermore, perhaps, I am too Reformed, but to cut imputation out of the soteriological equation seems to remove the necessary link for being in Christ. How is it that God can see sinners as being united with Christ if they have not first been counted as righteous in his sight? Also, by subsuming all of redemption under the cross and resurrection begs the question of the soteriological significance of Christ’s life. If the death and resurrection of Christ is sufficient for justification, does this minimize Christ’s life?

The summary of Westerholm’s contributions to the conversation I found to be very helpful. I should look into getting that book.

Near the end of the lecture Wilder was strong on emphasizing that he does think that there are excellent reasons to read and appreciate NTW. With sufficient qualification, I too might be able to affirm this, but it seemed like an odd thing to say given Wilder’s strong disagreement with Wright about the definitions of righteousness and justification. In affirming so much of what Wright has done, Wilder seems to minimize the significance of the controversy surrounding justification as central to our understanding of the gospel. What is more, based on this presentation, I’m a little confused about how the positive aspects of what NTW has said is new or different from what is already present and affirmed in Reformation theology.

During the time of question and answer at the end of the last lecture, I found it odd that the debate came up about justification and sanctification. Some of the students in the class were very concerned that the declarative emphasis of justification removes any motivation for further growth in holiness. Wilder did a wonderful job of showing the need to never separate justification and sanctification but the value in distinguishing them. I’m not sure why the students were so adamant about combining justification and sanctification. The Reformers would have found their suggestions very odd.

Well, those are some of my very brief, rough and scattered thoughts after listening to these 6 hours of lectures. You can listen to the lectures yourself at the links below.

LINKS: NT Wright Lectures JollyBlogger’s excellent thoughts on Wright

1. Engaging with God by David Peterson
2. Carl F.H. Henry by Bob Patterson
3. Lectures on Calvinism by Abraham Kuyper
4. Is There Meaning In This Text by Kevin Vanhoozer
5. The Institutes by John Calvin (I don’t plan to finish this, but I would like to start)
6. Worship: Adoration and Action edited by D.A. Carson
7. Covenant and Eschatology: The Divine Drama by Michael Horton
8. Lord and Servant: A Covenant Christology by Michael Horton

Well, there you have it. What are you planning to read?

Welcome to the brand new smerickson.com!! Please reset your bookmarks to point to http://www.smerickson.com I will be at that domain for a long time. I’m really proud of this site and have lots of plans for development in the future. In this post I hope to highlight some of the “features” of the site so that you can better understand how to use it.

About:

The about page tells all about me. If you want to know about the site or the author head over there.

Blog:

The blog is the main part of the site. As I see it the blog serves many purposes. Blogs are great tools for quickly communicating information to lots of people. They allow for discussion and interaction and provide the context for small communities to form. I like all of these things. This is my personal blog and so it is a good representation of who I am. It includes lots of different things – from theology, to computers/technology, to personal updates, it has a little of everything. This blog has an RSS feed which you can subscribe to. RSS feeds are great and I highly recommend them. If you have no clue what they are go here. Each entry also has a comments section, feel free to join the conversation there.

Sidebar:

Recent:

This is a quick list of the most recent posts on the site.

Reading:

This is a short list of the books which I am currently reading. They are linked to Amazon.

Listening:

This is a short list of the music I am currently listening to. Each of the songs are linked to iTunes if you want to hear more.

Library:

This is a short list of objects which have most recently been added to the Library (more below).

Clippings

Clippings are links that I come across around the web. I’m constantly finding little things here and there that I would love to share with people. There are two sections: noteworthy and random. The noteworthy section contains those links which I think are important. The random section is for those links that are funny, silly or just plain weird. Both groups have RSS feeds which you can subscribe to.

Categories:

The categories section is a list of all the categories of posts as well as the number of posts in that category. You can use this to quickly navigate the site.

Meta:

This is all of the meta information about the site.

Archive:

1. Date – find posts by when they were posted
2. Starred – find posts that I have marked as important
3. Weighted Archive – find posts by date where the size of the text indicates how many posts were made during that month.
4. Weighted Categories – this is similar to the above but with a list of categories.
5. Keywords – This is a list of the keywords which can be found in one or many posts.
6. The last way to find things from the past is by searching. There are two ways of searching. a. Live Search – Live searching allows you to perform a search in realtime without having to go to another page. If you start typing your query in the orange search field and wait for a second, a list of the posts which correspond to your search term will appear. You can then arrow down and press enter on the post you would like to select; or you can use your mouse. b. Search – You can also perform a “normal” search by simply entering your text and hitting enter or pressing the search button.

Library:

The other main feature of this site is the Library. The Library is the place where I plan on storing most of my digital resources. There is a wealth of information available on the internet today, but it can often be difficult to find valuable resources. This site is an effort to curb that problem. I am constantly coming across articles, books, and lectures around the web which are significant and I would like to hold on to for future reference. The Library is the place where I will store these and they are all freely available to you. I will keep it updated often you make sure you keep it bookmarked. Some of the features of the Library include livesearching, an RSS feed and a Firefox search plugin.

Well, that’s probably more than you ever wanted to know about a website. I will be making a number of updates to this site in the coming weeks, it is still a work in progress. In the end I hope that this site is a helpful resource for a number of different types of people. Please come back often and feel free to contribute to the site. Take Care.