Archive for 2009
Dec 28
Why You Should Bring Your Bible to Church
Jonathan Dodson has a good post that should be passed around on why Christians should bring their Bibles to church (assuming they live in a country where they can own a Bible). His main points are:
1. It allows the Bible to make up your mind about meaning, not you make up your own mind about the meaning.
2. It allows you to read the Bible in context.
3. It helps you avoid confusing the medium for the message.
Some good quotes from his piece:
- Follow the argument of Scripture, not just the argument of the preacher.
- When we read in context we get to see the Bible, not in bits and pieces, but as an awe-inspiring whole.
- Reading in PowerPoint prevents us from seeing the Bible as complete thoughts that hang together in context.
Nov 19
Jerram Barrs Resources
We had a great time this weekend with Professor Jerram Barrs at our Prizing the Privilege of Prayer Weekend. If you missed the conference, make sure to download or listen to the audio here.
If you are interested in further resources from Jerram, you can purchase these books at our Resource Center or online by clicking on the following links:
- Learning Evangelism From Jesus
- The Heart of Evangelism
- The Heart of Prayer
- Through His Eyes: God’s Perspective on Women in the Bible
Also, you can hear more messages from Jerram on such topics as Art and Literature, Ethics, Vocation, and much more at The European Leadership Forum or Monergism.com.
Nov 12
Book Recommendation Page
We just put up a new book recommendation page on the website. This page includes an extensive list of what we consider to be the best books available in such categories as:
- Biblical Interpretation
- New and Old Testament
- Christian Life and Growth
- Prayer
- Spiritual Disciplines
- Suffering
- Evangelism
- Church History,
- Biographies
- Men’s Issues
- Women’s Issues
- Bibles and Books for Kids
- And many more
Some of the categories are marked with an asterisk, which means that those lists have been categorized beginning with more accessible and popular-level books and working down to more academic and technical books.
If you click on a link through our book recommendation page and purchase that book, DSC will get a percentage of the sale. If you want a book that is not listed on our page, you can search for it by using the search box at the top of the book recommendation page and DSC will also get credit for purchases made this way.
Nov 4
What Is a Parable?
Here is an instructive definition of what a parable is, from Snodgrass’ Stories with Intent, the same book mentioned in the last post.
The immediate aim of a parable is to be compellingly interesting, and in being interesting it diverts attention and disarms. A parable’s ultimate aim is to awaken insight, stimulate the conscience, and move to action. The primary reason Jesus’ parables are stories with intent is, as we will see, that they are prophetic instruments, the tool especially of those who have a message from God. They do not occur in sections of the Bible focused on Torah or history or in the writings of the early church. They are used by those who are trying to get God’s people to stop, reconsider their ways, and change their behavior. Biblical parables reveal the kind of God that God is and how God acts, and they show what humanity is and what humanity should and may become. Parables are not merely informative. Like prophets before him, Jesus told parables to prompt thinking and stimulate response in relation to God. Parables usually engage listeners, create reflection, and promote action. They are pointed and clinching arguments for a too often slow-minded or recalcitrant audience. They seek to goad people into the action the gospel deserves and the kingdom demands. One of the major problems of Christian churches, of Western Christianity in particular, is our stultifying passivity. The parables compel us – for Christ’s sake literally – to do something! Parables do not seek the “mild morality†about which Kierkegaard lamented but radical cross-bearing, God-imitating response worthy of the name “conversion.â€
In most cases then a parable is an expanded analogy used to convince and persuade. As we will see, this is the way ancient Greeks also used the term, and it is sufficiently broad to cover the majority of the ways the Evangelists use the word. The logic of Jesus’ parables is proportional analogy. Corresponding to the German terms Sache and Bild, the English terms tenor and vehicle are used to explain how analogy functions. Tenor refers to the theme being compared, the item for which insight is sought, and vehicle refers to the pictorial image, the parable, the instrument by which insight is conveyed. An analogy explicitly or implicitly draws one or more points of resemblance. For example, a disciple is to God (tenor) as a slave is to a master (vehicle) with respect to unsurpassable obligation (point of resemblance).  According to John Sider every parable labeled as a parable in the Gospels involves more than one point of resemblance – the exact opposite of Jülicher. Analogy by its very nature can easily become “allegorical.†(emphasis original, pp. 8-9)
Nov 4
Characteristics and Interpretation of Parables
Since Ryan has been preaching through some parables recently, here are two lists that offer helpful guidelines for understanding Jesus’ parables. Both of these lists are from Klyne Snodgrass’ Stories with Intent: A Comprehensive Guide to the Parables of Jesus. These are just the headlines of each point, so if you want to read more you can either purchase the book or read some of it online here.
Characteristics of Jesus’ Parables (pp. 17-21)
- Jesus’ parables are first of all brief, even terse.
- Parables are marked by simplicity and symmetry.
- Jesus’ parables focus mostly on humans.
- The parables are fictional descriptions taken from everyday life, but they do not necessarily portray everyday events.
- Parables are engaging; they were told to create interest…
- Since they frequently seek to reorient thought and behavior, in keeping with Jesus’ teaching elsewhere parables often contain elements of reversal.
- With their intent to bring about response and elements like reversal, the crucial matter of parables is usually at the end, which functions something like the punch line of a joke.
- Parables are told into a context.
- Jesus’ parables are theocentric.
- Parables frequently allude to OT texts.
- Most parables appear in larger collections of parables.
How Should Parables Be Interpreted? (pp. 24-30)
- Analyze each parable thoroughly.
- Listen to the parable without presupposition as to its form or meaning.
- Remember that Jesus’ parables were oral instruments in a largely oral culture.
- If we are after the intent of Jesus, we must seek to hear a parable as Jesus’ Palestinian hearers would have heard it.
- Note how each parable and its redactional shaping fit with the purpose and plan of each Evangelist.
- Determine specifically the function of the story in the teaching of Jesus.
- Interpret what is given, not what is omitted. Any attempt to interpret a parable based on what is not there is almost certainly wrong.
- Do not impose real time on parable time. The narrative time of parables is not real time chronology… [For example,] Luke 14:15-24… has a truncated chronology that assumes that the servant has gone out, done as instructed, and returned.
- Pay particular attention to the rule of end stress. …what comes at the end is the clinching indicator of intent.
- Note where the teaching of the parables intersects with the teaching of Jesus elsewhere. …it will help prevent errors in interpretation.
- Determine the theological intent and significance of the parable.