Review - Instruments in the Redeemer's Hands

Tripp, Paul David (2002) Instruments in the Redeemer’s Hands: People in Need of Change Helping People in Need of Change (P & R: Phillipsburg, New Jersey)

Summary
In Instruments in the Redeemer’s Hands (IRH), Paul David Tripp seeks to set forth a biblical model for pastoral counselling. According to Tripp, the task of helping Christians to change is not to be left to trained professionals, but is something to which all Christians are called.
The book can be neatly divided into two. Chapters 1-6 lay down foundations and principles and chapters 7-14 expound Tripp’s model for “serving as an instrument of change.”

[1]

- The gospel teaches us that change is possible – it really is good news! – and that change comes through a person not a system. (chapter 1)
- God changes people as people bring His Word to others, which means not dipping into the Bible randomly, but seeing how our lives fit into the overarching story of redemption. “Lasting change begins when our identity, purpose, and sense of direction are defined by God’s story.” (chapter 2)
- Our status as people in need of help is established by both creation and fall. (chapter 3)
- The central focus is the heart. Not addressing the heart will lead to only superficial change, and indeed can serve to fuel heart-idolatry. (chapters 4-5)
- Christ is our model for being instruments of change. We are called to be ambassadors for God in serving each other in the process of change (chapter 6)

Chapters 7-14 then develop four aspects of a personal ministry relationship that focuses on heart change. We are to love by entering the other person’s world, incarnating the love of Christ to them, identifying with their suffering and accepting them while looking for change. (chapters 7-8) It is vital to get to know the other person, by asking questions and not making assumptions (chapters 9-10). Speaking the truth in love through honest, godly confrontation is vital to helping the other see where their hearts need to change (chapters 11-12). But change hasn’t happened until change has happened, and the goal is to help the other do what is necessary to change, through establishing your own personal ministry agenfa, clarifying responsibility, instilling identity in Christ and providing accountability. (chapters 13-14)

Evaluation
Don Carson commends Mark Dever’s The Deliberate Church for giving an ecclesiology that is both thoroughly biblical and practical.

[2] Something similar could be said of Instruments in the Redeemer’s Hands. The great strengths of IRH are its rootedness in the gospel, biblical theology and a biblical perspective on human nature. The consistent emphasis on the heart as where counselling must focus, with concomitant discussion of themes of idolatry and desire etc. is very helpful, particularly as this fits with an emphasis on the gospel as the means of real change. For the gospel does indeed deal with the human heart – it is the only thing that can! Likewise, Tripp’s approach to the use of Scripture in counselling is helpful. The Bible is not an encylopedia whereby we turn to isolated verses to address issues such as television, schizophrenia or teenagers. Rather, the Bible gives a framework for interpreting life through an overarching story and grand themes that run through the whole.

And on those key foundations, IRH builds a model of personal relationship ministry that is detailed in its practicality. It is one thing to emphasise the gospel, the right use of Scriptures and the importance of the heart, but another thing to apply those truths in ways that will actually practically help people to change! And the second half of IRH achieves that by (a) setting out a biblical approach to particular issues (such as confrontation, the importance of knowing people well) (b) suggesting practical ways to do it (e.g. example questions that could be used to get to know somebody) (c) giving real-life examples of counselling situations that help to see how the principles work out in practice.

[NB. I will address possible weaknesses in the next section, questions]

Questions
IRH emphasises that pastoral counselling is something for all Christians to be involved in. The focus of the book is very much on one-to-one relationships, which leaves me with questions regarding the role of the church in helping each other to grow and change. Is it in the one-to-one relationships that real change takes place? What then of the small group or large congregation gathering, the sermon or bible study? How do these different aspects complement each other? If the focus is on individual change, what about corporate change? Is there a place for an individual’s struggles to be shared in a group wider than a one-to-one relationship (e.g. a homegroup)?

Secondly, in the examples that are given of pastoral problems there does seem to me an abundance of examples of more openly conflictual type problems, such as anger, and less examples of more ‘passive’ issues such as cowardice, depression and indifference etc. – issues which I see more frequently in my own life at least. It would have been good to have given more examples of this kind too.

Connections
Some points that have impressed me:

- “Sinners tend to respond sinfully to being sinned against” (11) People on the receiving end of terrible acts also need to be helped to repent. This can be hard when someone has suffered unjustly, but must be sensitively done. First, though, what is my own response to ‘unfair treatment’ – do I take advantage of the idea of being a victim?

- “Why do we spend hours preparing to teach while we offer important personal direction without a second thought?” (22) People need God’s Word not off-the-cuff personal advice. Will I love others enough to think through prayerfully and biblically what best to say?

- “All of life is counseling or personal ministry” (45) God has made us to be interpreters of ourselves and of the world around us. In addition, the fall means we are susceptible to believing and living on the basis of false interpretations. “We were created with the need for truth outside ourselves to live life properly.” (55) And for this we need each other. Will I strive to be continually seeking to bring God’s interpretation to bear in conversations with others?

- “If we fail to examine the heart and the areas where it needs to change, our ministry efforts will only result in people who are more committed and successful idolaters… We will even use the principles of God’s Word to serve our idols!” (69) Whoah!!

- The challenge of genuine love: “We want ministry that doesn’t demand love that is, well, so demanding! We don’t want to serve others in a way that requires so much personal sacrifice. We would prefer to lob grenades of truth into people’s lives rather than lay down our lives for them.” (118)

- “Asking good questions is doing the work of change.” (173) because it helps people to examine areas of their hearts and lives, it helps them to see themselves in a new light. But it is important not only to ask good questions but also to have someone ask you those questions too.

- “Biblical personal ministry is more about perspective, identity and calling than about fixing what is broken” (185)

- “Our failure to confront one another biblically must be seen for what it is: something rooted in our tendency to run after god-replacements… we fail to confront, not because we love others to much, but because we love ourselves too much.” (201-202) This is a challenge to my unwillingness to challenge and confront where that is the loving thing to do.

[1] There are also 5 appendices, which I haven’t read!
[2] Carson, Don “Foreword” in Dever, Mark & Alexander, Paul (2005) The Deliberate Church: Building your Ministry on the Gospel (Wheaton, Illinois: Crossway) p.p.13-14

Newbigin on the gospel

The gospel: decisive events not abstract ideas

The gospel is not the assertion that in Jesus certain qualities such as love and justice were present in an exemplary manner. If this were so, we could of course dispense with the example once we had learned the lesson which the example teaches. The gospel is not just the illustration (even the best illustration) of an idea. It is the story of actions by which the human situation is irreversibly changed.

The Gospel in a Pluralist Society p.166

Newbigin on the witness of the church

On the witness of God's people to the hope of the gospel:

The Church is not the source of the witness; rather, it is the locus of the witness. The light cast by the first rays of the morning sun shining on the face of a company of travellers will be evidence that a new day is coming. The travelers are not the source of that witness but only the locus of it. To see for oneself that it is true, that a new day is really coming, one must turn around, face the opposite way, be converted. And then one’s own face will share the same brightness and become part of the evidence.

The Gospel in a Pluralist Society p.120

Cricket quote

This quote departs somewhat from the usual stuff I put on my blog, but I thought it was brilliant

On new DVD releases [see 35th over], Ben Dirs (during the India s Pkn ODIs) revealed exclusively that Tendulkar had been carefully ammassing scores of 99 as pre-release publicity for a re-recording of Nena's 99 Red Balloons (as in 'I get to 99, then balloon a gentle catch'). Strangely, I've not seen it in the shops yet - maybe just in India. (My own theory was ice-cream-based.)"

(on bbc text commentary on England v Sri Lanka test)

Newbigin on reason and revelation

There is a profound confusion of thought when it is suggested that reason and revelation are two parallel paths to truth, or when, in a further development in this line of thinking, it is said that alleged revelation has to be tested at the bar of reason. All this kind of language involves a confusion about the terms we are using. The faculty which we call reason, the power of the human mind to think coherently and to organize the data of experience in such a way that it can be grasped in meaningful patterns, is necessarily involved in knowing of any kind. The question at issue, for example, in the debates about the respective roles of reason and revelation is really about how the data of experience are to be understood. They are - to be more specific - debates about whether the events which are narrated in the Bible are to be understood entirely in terms of political, social, economic, and psychological categories such as are used in a secular writing of history, or whether, without denying the usefulness and relevance of these categories, we recognize this story as communicating the personal will of God in acting in and through all the events recounted. Reason is not an independent source of information about what is the case. It is one aspect of the human activity by which we seek to understand the world and ourselves. The difference involved in the long-running debates about reason and revelation is not a difference between two sources of information: it is a difference between two ways of interpreting the data which are (potentially) available to all. The Christian believer is using the same faculty of reason as his unbelieving neighbour and he is using it in dealing with the same realities, which are those with which every human being has to deal. But he is seeing them in a new light, a new perspective.

Lesslie Newbigin (1989) The Gospel in a Pluralist Society

Review: Greidanus - The Modern Preacher and the Ancient Text

Note: I have been doing some part-time theological study with the Northern Training Institute since September. It is fantastic. I hope to publish some of the fruits of my studies

Greidanus, Sidney (1988) The Modern Preacher and the Ancient Text: Interpreting and Preaching Biblical Literature (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans)

Summary
The stated purpose of MPAT is “to set forth a responsible, contemporary method of biblical interpretation and preaching.” (xii) Greidanus’ method is to interact heavily with recent biblical scholarship with the aim of drawing out that which is useful for preaching; in other words, he seeks to bridge the gap between hermeneutics and homiletics. (xi) This method is, in turn, rooted in the author’s convictions about what preaching is. (chapter 1) Preaching itself bridges a gap: “the preacher stands at the intersection of the ancient Scriptures and the contemporary congregation and has a responsibility to both.” (341) Preaching is God speaking and acting: it is through preaching that God’s Word in the past (the Scriptures) becomes God’s Word in the present and is applied to church and world. But “since the Bible is the normative source of revelation for contemporary preachers, they must bind themselves to the Scriptures if they would preach the word of God.” (9) And in order to do that, it is essential that the Bible be interpreted responsibly. MPAT therefore is something of a detailed handbook of hermeneutical and homiletical principles that sets out to help the preacher apply the Word of God properly to his congregation.

This approach is developed through the following stages:

• the construction of a “holistic historical-critical method” against a “naturalistic historical-critical method” which destroys confidence in the historical reliability of the Bible, with devastating effects on preaching (chapter 2)


• the development of a holistic framework for interpretation, drawing together literary, historical and theological aspects (chapters 3-5)


• a definition of good preaching as “textual-thematic preaching”, that is, preaching that “is based on a biblical text and expounds the message of that text”, doing so by focussing on the theme of that text. (chapter 6)


• discussion of the relative merits of the narrative and didactic sermon forms and how the gap between form ancient text and modern congregation can successfully be bridged (chapters 7-8)


• focussing all the preceding discussion onto preaching from four specific biblical genres, namely Hebrew narrative, prophecy, gospel and epistle. (chapters 9-12)[1]

Evaluation
The main strength of MPAT is in its strong commitment to preaching as the proper goal of biblical study. Of course preaching merely in itself is not the ultimate goal, but given that it is a, if not the, principle means for God’s work in church and world, it is vital that that means be constructed soundly. And good preaching – preaching that does responsibly bridge the gap between ancient text and modern world – is constantly in view for Greidanus. Thus he not only argues that good preaching is an exposition of a text, and is based on the theme of that text, but he also shows how that can be done. He shows, using a range of hermeneutical tools, how an appropriate text can be selected, how the text’s theme can be discerned, and how a sermon that is both responsible and relevant can be shaped.

A second significant feature of MPAT is Greidanus’ substantial engagement with recent biblical scholarship (although not so recent now, given it was published nearly 20 years ago), while retaining a high view of Scripture. Two of the potential dangers of biblical scholarship are those of (a) creating a chasm between academy and church and (b) allowing the academy to dictate to the church. I think that through his commitment to preaching, Greidanus helpfully brings some of the fruits of biblical scholarship in service to the preacher. A book on preaching or hermeneutics by no means needs to engage all the scholarly issues Greidanus does but it is useful to have at least one book that does.

Questions
One set of questions related to the status of other forms of communicating or ministering God’s Word besides preaching, which are not discussed at all in MPAT.[2] How do the hermeneutical & homilitical principles elucidated in MPAT apply in small group Bible study, one-to-one discipleship, personal witness, personal bible study etc.? Does God speak today through preaching in ways in which he doesn’t through these other forms?

It is also suggestive to set MPAT alongside a book such as Dig Deeper (Beynon & Sach) whose aim is to make available for the ordinary Christian a range of tools for interpreting the Bible, many of which are simplified versions of those found in MPAT. But if the aim of a book like Dig Deeper is to demistify interpretation and enable the ordinary Christian to do what the preacher can do, what is the role of a book like MPAT which seeks to provide a preacher with a deeper, more technical set of tools, beyond the reach of the average Christian? What is the value of the expertise of the preacher?

These issues lead to questions about spiritual gifts, the priesthood of all believers and the role of pastor in the church etc. which are beyond the scope of this review, other than to comment that both the responsibility of each believer to understand and obey the Scriptures and the higher responsibility of the pastor/preacher to teach the church must be affirmed.

Connections
Here are a few points that have impressed me as being important in my own preaching:

• the huge responsibility that comes from the conviction that “God speaks through contemporary preachers” with the concomitant responsibility to work extremely hard to interpret and apply the Bible rightly


• the importance of working hard at the form of the sermon, not just the content. The form can vary, and should be an appropriate vehicle, rather than a hindrance, to the effective communication of the message of the text.


• that it is crucial to discover the theme of the text, but the theme of the sermon is not always identical to the theme of the text, although it is derived from it. E.g. “When the preaching text is from the Old Testament, the theme of the text must be traced through God’s progressive revelation from the Old Testament to the New Testament.” (138)[3]


• The importance of being responsible in deriving application from a text. Greidanus critiques “improper ways of bridging the gap” (159), namely allegorising, spiritualising, moralising and imitating Bible characters, and helpfully shows how application can properly be made. So, for instance, the hermeneutical principle of authorial intent can be used to discern when we are meant to identify ourselves with certain biblical characters. Likewise, rather than comparing Bible characters with people today, we should be asking “how did the original recipients understand this passage?” (171) We can then draw lines to ourselves because of the continuity of God’s covenant people (recognising discontinuity too)
  

In conclusion, MPAT is a helpful resource for aspiring preachers. Its principles are to be appropriated and worked into one’s preaching over a period of time. As a book on preaching it is valuable, but also as limited as any other book on preaching, because one can only truly learn to preach through practice.


[1] NB I had not read these chapters at the time of writing this assignment.
[2] Apart from this brief comment: “Although the Spirit’s speaking is by no means limited to preachers (think of parents, teachers, friends, and neighbours through whom the Spirit speaks today), contemporary preachers have a special responsibility to proclaim the word of the Lord.” (8)
[3] This point seems to be a little different from Mark Dever’s definition of expositional preaching: “taking as the point of the message the point of the passage”

Deipnosophist

new word came across today:

deipnosophist: one skilled in table talk.

more info here:

The Gospel is better than unconditional love

In an article I found very instructive and stimulating, David Powlinson argues that the biblical category of idolatry is vital for counselling and pastoral care. The category of idolatry gives a powerful perspective on the complexity of human behaviour, motives, desires etc. One section that particularly struck me is on the danger of the tendency of Christian counselling to psychologise, that is, focus on the category of 'need', especially the need for love/self-esteem. The danger is that God can be presented as a way of meeting an idolatrous desire, rather than that idol being challenged.

This quote develops this thought and asks "what happens to the Gospel?"

What happens to the Gospel when idolatry themes are not grasped? "God loves you" typically becomes a tool to meet a need for self-esteem in people who feel like failures. The particular content of the Gospel of Jesus Christ - "grace for sinners and deliverance for the sinned-against" - is down-played or even twisted into "unconditional acceptance for the victims of others' lack of acceptance." When "the Gospel" is shared, it comes across something like this: "God accepts you just as you are. God has unconditional love for you." That is not the biblical Gospel, however. God's love is not Rogerian unconditional positive regard writ large. A need theory of motivation - rather than an idolatry theory - bends the Gospel solution into "another gospel" which is essentially false.

The Gospel is better than unconditional love. The Gospel says, "God accepts you just s Christ is. God has 'contraconditional' love for you." Christ bears the curse you deserve. Christ is fully pleasing to the Father and gives you his own perfect goodness. Christ reigns in power, making you the Father's child and coming close to you to begin to change what is unacceptable to God about you. God never accepts me "as I am." He accepts me "as I am in Jesus Christ." The center of gravity is different. The true Gospel does not allow God's love to be sucked into the vortex of the soul's lust for acceptability and worth in and of itself. Rather, it radically decenters people
- what the Bible calls "fear of the Lord" and "faith" - to look outside themselves.

Powlinson, David "Idols of the Heart and "Vanity Fair"', Journal of Biblical Counselling, Volume 13, Number 2 (Winter 1995) pp.35-50. Quote from p.49

Quote on music in church

Apologies for my five-month absence, during which I have had very little inspiration to blog.

I enjoyed this quote, read today:

Modern church music is so constructed that the congregation cannot hear one distinct word.... A set of creatures who ought to be lamenting their sins, fancy they can please God by gurgling in their throats.

Attributed to Erasmus. Source: Broadbent, E.H. (1931) The Pilgrim Church (London: Marshall Pickering)

Delicious insects

Not quite to my taste, but fascinating nonetheless...

Eating Insects in Thailand