Teach Flashcards
(45 cards)
Is every sin the same in God’s eyes?
No
(we say yes bc 1. we don’t want to say other sins are worse than ours 2. genuine humility)
- mosaic law required diff payments/sacrifices for diff sins (varying degrees of severity)
Capital Crime (murder) vs stealing required double payment
- who commits the sin has greater gravity (leaders; kings) (Judas; against children; sodom and gamorrah)
[life doesn’t make sense this way either; disciplining children; government]
- it is true that if you break 1 rule, you break the whole thing
Sins are worse
1. Position (pastors, leaders, parents, etc.)
2. Parties offended (God, parents)
3. Nature of the offense (black or white vs gray; lust vs adultery)
4. Circumstances (public, church)
What is the Bible?
A collection of divinely inspired and authoritative writing; compiled as one book made up of 66 smaller books
Why the Old and New Covenants?
2 covenantal relationships between God and humanity; 1st was ratified at Mount Sinai pointing toward new covenant where the law would be written on people’s hearts
What is Covenant Theology?
(central to Reformed theology)
- a way of reading the whole Bible (we don’t force it on the Bible, the Bible forces it on us…it’s right there)
- a framework for understanding the Bible’s overall structure and meaning; viewing God’s interactions with humanity through the lens of covenants
- Covenant: Promisory agreement between two parties that is ratified by certain rituals that emphasize the binding nature of the agreement
- God relates to his creatures by these covenants
1. Covenant of Works (Adam; life and blessing if perfect obedience_fail)
*Covenant of Redemption: Agreement between Father and Son to redeem (ppl disagree on this though)
2. Covenant of Grace (offers salvation through faith in Jesus; administered in various ways throughout the Bible to make God’s promises to His people clearer and point to the coming of the Savior) (first announced Gen 3:15)
*Noahic = (covenant of continuation) promise to preserve earth and never again send flood to destroy all life (Gen 8:20 - 9:17) (sign = rainbow)
*Abrahamic = promise to bless entire world through one family, multiply his descendants, bring him into the promise land (sign = circumcision)
*Mosaic = (law covenant) legal regulations and sacrificial system; never meant to be a means of salvation - meant to point to Jesus amidst the failure of this law
*Davidic = (royal covenant) chose the fam of Abraham descent to rule Israel permanently; the line of the Savior
*New Covenant = all other covenants fulfilled in this one (inaugurated in Jeremiah 31:31-34) Jesus brought it forth through his life, death, and resurrection. Continued in the ministry of the church and won’t be consummated until the return of Jesus
What is the purpose of the Bible?
To make people wise to salvation by faith in Jesus Christ
- Conviction of sin
- Correction and Instruction
- Spiritual Fruitfulness
- Joy and Delight
- Authority in Doctrine and Deed
How is the Bible organized?
- First 3/4 written between 1400BC and 430BC
- 39 books in Hebrew; a very small portion in Aramaic
- OT term comes from Tertullian (155AD - 240AD) (just got it from the text) (covenant theology)
- Latter 1/4 written between AD 45 and AD 90
- The books in OT are organized topically
Law | Historical Books | Wisdom | Prophetic (Major and then Minor)
Law/Pentateuch (Genesis - Deuteronomy): The origin of the world; beginning of Israel; Promised Land
Historical Books (Joshua - Esther): God’s dealings with Israel, historical narrative
Wisdom and Songs (Job - Song of Solomon):
Major Prophets (Isaiah - Daniel): They are longer, not more important. God’s warnings, instructions, and promises to Israel through his divine spokesmen
- There is not complete uniformity in the manuscripts on the order of the books. This should prevent us from claiming divine meaning from any particular order in our current English Bible.
NT: Paul’s letters are ordered in decreasing lengths (first to communities then to individuals). Hebrews was put last because people thought that he wrote it.
- Perhaps the other NT author letters were ordered by prominence
- As more and more copies were made, there were some attempts at divisions and labels (Eusebius 260-340AD)
- Our current chapter divisions were put there by Stephen Langton (13th century), Archbishop of Canterbury, while lecturing
- Subsequent publications followed his format (again, no divine meaning behind this) There are clearly times when the divisions are not the best
- Verse divisions in OT were made by the Ben Asher family (Jewish scribes) around AD 900
- Verse divisions in NT were made in 1551 by Robert Estienne, a printer from Paris (prior to this, scholars had to use phrases like “halfway through Galatians 4”
- First English Bible with verse divisions was the Geneva Bible in 1560. Pretty much impossible that any other system would challenge this one since it is so solidifed.
God’s jealousy
(Exodus 20:4-5)
“Love in action. Refuses to share our hearts with any rival, because he knows our lives depend on our loyalty to him (salvation from death and also living life abundantly). Jealous for what rightly belongs to him (glory). Jealous for us. Jealous for us not to pursue anything else other than God.
[not jealous in the sinful sense where we want something that doesn’t belong to us]
How does porn affect the brain? What are the effects?
Porn changes our brains
- Porn is conditioned to the pleasure centers of our brain (dopamine hit) causing plastic change (neurons that fire together wire together)
- Real people become less rewarding; fake people become more rewarding
Effects
- Less sexual/relational satisfaction
- Declining cognitive health
- Poor mental health
- ED
- Social anxiety
- Low self-esteem
- Altered sexual taste
- Lack of motivation
- Lack of concentration
- Depression
Dopamine is seeking; opiods is liking
Sexual arousal and orgasm induce higher levels of dopamine and opioids than any other natural reward
Who wrote the Bible - Humans or God?
- Different theories of inspiration
- Verbal Plenary Theory: Dual authorship. Authors wrote as thinking, feeling people, God so mysteriously superintended the process that every word written was also the exact word he wanted to be written - free from all error
- Undoubtedly, authors were more or less conscious of relating divine revelation
- It is in the reality of daily life that God’s word came
- Dual authorship can in some sense be compared to the incarnation (inexplainable)
- Note: Divine/human nature of the Bible concerns its authorship, not its very nature.
- the meaning of the text is often more deep and has meaning that the author doesn’t completely understand
Does the Bible contain error?
- Up until the mid 17th century, essentially everyone who was a Christian accepted that the Bible is completely truthful. But the Enlightenment started to give people skepticism.
- Scripture claims itself as completely true (2 Tim 3:16 // Psalm 12:6 // Hebrews 1:1-2)
What is Inerrancy?
The Bible is completely true in all things that the authors assert
- only applies perfectly to the original manuscripts
- respects the authorial intent and the literary conventions of the author
- allows for partial reporting, paraphrasing, and summarizing
- allows for the report without an endorsement
- does not mean that the Bible provides definitive or exhaustive information on every topic
What is the Trinity?
3 persons, 1 God
- God’s whole and undivided essence belongs equally and simultaneously to each person
- Each is fully God while each is his own personal expression in role and activity
What are incommunicable/communicable attributes?
true of God exclusively // those that we share
What does it mean that God is immense/omnipresent?
God is non-spatial (yet he creates space) He inhabits all the space that he made
How did we get the Canon?
(not authorized collection of books; it’s a collection of authorized books)
(canonization is the process of recognizing that inherent authority)
OT
- some were recognized authoritative immediately due to their prophetic word being fulfilled
- By the time of Jesus, there was little debate about the OT canon. Everyone agreed what was in and what was out.
- Jesus and the Apostles affirmed the OT canon; I do too
NT
1. Apostolic: written or tied closely to an apostle (an authorized eye witness of Jesus)
2. Catholic: widely/universally recognized by the churches
3. Orthodox: not in contradiction to any recognized apostolic book or doctrine
(written AD 45 - 100 // collected in read in churches AD 100 - 200 // carefully examined and compared AD 200 - 300 // complete agreement was obtained AD 300 - 400 [Athanasius letter in 367])
- it is not surprising to find that in an absence of unified ecclesiastical hierarchy and in a situation when documents were copied by hand that church debated what writings were truly apostolic
- Keep in mind the large geographic distances between some Christian communities, as well as the persecutions that made communication and gatherings of decision-making virtually impossible until the conversion of the Roman Empire in the 4th century
- It’s amazing to realize that the whole church came to recognize the NT canon given they just had their own slowly circulating knowledge and experience of the documents. Knowing the diversity in the church, the fact that they all agreed suggests that the final decision was not solely at a human level
Is the Canon closed?
- according to the stipulations, it is impossible
- even if a letter of Paul were discovered, it did not have catholicity and can’t be considered Canon
What are the law books?
Law/Pentateuch: The origin of the world; beginning of Israel; Promised Land
1. Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, Deuteronomy
What are the historical books?
Historical Books (Joshua - Esther): God’s dealings with Israel, historical narrative
Joshua, Judges, Ruth, 1 and 2 Samuel, 1 and 2 Kings, 1 and 2 Chronicles, Ezra, Nehemiah, Esther
What are the wisdom books?
Wisdom and Songs
Job, Psalms, Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, Song of Solomon
What are the Major Prophets?
Isaiah, Jeremiah, Lamentations, Ezekiel, Daniel
What are the minor prophets?
Hosea, Joel, Amos, Obadiah, Jonah, Micah, Nahum, Habakkuk, Zephaniah, Haggai, Zechariah, Malachi
Why did Jesus not baptize during his ministry?
(John 4) It was attributed to him because his disciples did. He probably didn’t want to create divisions - people boasting….1 Corinthians
What were indulgences?
Written documents (later printed) from bishops (best were from the pope) that the holder would receive a reduction in temporal punishment for sins (that were already forgiven through confession) (came from the church’s “treasury of merit”)
- Originally you would get them through acts like prayer, charity, or pilgrimage
- Later they were sold for money (corruption in the church) funded projects like St. Peter’s Basilica
- They started saying it could guarantee salvation or free a soul immediately from purgatory
How did Jewish customs effect early Christianity?
- Continued Mosaic Law beliefs (Sabbath, Kosher, circumcision) out of tradition/New covenant wasn’t really established yet/over time through apostolic teaching it was/people are hard to change that quickly. Wasn’t until Council of Jerusalem in AD 49 (Paul, James, Peter _ debating if Gentiles need to follow law to be saved_Acts 15)
