- J.I. PACKER
CHAPTER 2: THE LOST WORD (p.17- 43)
God dropped his bombshell in the form of Amos. He came as a prophet of doom for Church and nation. He said that God was going to judge His people, the retribution wheel is already spinning and it would spin faster. Recent disaster like earthquake, drought, and famine, epidemic showed God’s displeasure clearly, but this was just the beginning. As in verse Amos 8:11, because of the many sins of Israel and Judah, and the ‘falling away’ of Church, God sent a famine in the land. Not famine of bread or thirst, but of hearing the words of the Lord.
INFECTION OF UNCERTAINTY
Amos is a prophet for today. His words show the present state of Christendom. The New Testament represents the Church as inheriting through Christ all God’s promises of spiritual life and welfare. Therefore, Church has the promise of constant instruction, assurance and guidance from God, as the Old Testament of Israel. To the extent of lack of clarity on these matters, it is forced to conclude that that Church is unhealthy and out of sorts. For at one time, perhaps, since the Reformation have Protestant Christians as a body as unsure, tentative and confused as to what should be believed and followed.
NEW VIEWS OF REVELATION AND INSPIRATION
The era of biblical criticism has been remarkable, not only by the intense study of biblical text, but also by an interest in the subjects of revelation and inspiration. Yet, the Word of God is lost. The answer is same. The weakness of theological discussions, as of the biblical studies, a wedge was created between the living God in His revelations and the written word of the Bible. Hodge mentions that neither in the Bible nor in the writings of men, a simpler or clearer statement of the doctrines of revelation and inspiration mentioned. He points out that Revelation is the act of communicating divine knowledge by the Spirit to the mind; Inspiration is the act of the same Spirit, controlling those who make the truth known to others. The Bible is the link between revelatory events of past and knowledge of God in present. Inspiration is one of a long series of steps that God has taken to make him known to men and ought to be treated as such.
THE ENFEEBLING OF CHURCHES
The loss of historic conviction that what Scripture says, God says, has weakened Protestant Church life in a number of ways. First, the preaching is undermined. Secondly, the loss of belief about the divine truth of the Bible has undercut teaching. Thirdly, faith is lost with the uncertainty as to whether Bible teachings are God’s truth. Fourthly, differences of opinion about Holy Scripture have discouraged Bible reading. Fifthly, the skeptical attitude about the Bible has hidden Christ from view.
Our condition will never be resolved until we try to retrace our steps to the point where the first mistake was made.
CHAPTER THREE: GOD’S WORD SPOKEN (I) (p. 45-63)
The New Testament message is that God has spoken a word for this world, all men of all ages and generations are summoned to listen and respond. Revelation is a divine activity. It does not mean man finding God, but God finding man. In this chapter, the theme of revelation shall be seeked upon by exploring the significance of three questions.
THE CHARACTER OF GOD
The first question about who is the God who has spoken and what sort of a being is he, author explains as follows. God Himself was the supreme object of revelation from the beginning. First, he has shown himself as personal being. God showed Himself as a tri-personal being when He brought His work of revelation to climax by sending into the World His Son and His Spirit. Second, God has shown Himself as a moral being. One who is concerned about being right and wrong, whose dealings with men must be understood in moral terms, since he is determined by moral considerations. Third, God has revealed Himself as source, stay and end of all creation and of humankind in particular.
THE PURPOSE OF GOD
Second question is why has God spoken? The answer that the Bible gives for this question is that God’s purpose on revelation is to make friends with us. He created us with the ability to think, love, hear and speak because He wanted a genuine personal affection and two-sided friendship between us.
THE PLIGHT OF MAN
Third question is what is the plight of human beings to whom God speaks? In what condition does His revelation find them? The biblical answer to this question is that it finds them ignorant to God. Man’s ignorance of God is complex. Packer explains that, being creatures, we cannot know God unless He makes Himself known to us. We can know God only if we receive revelation. Secondly, being sinful creatures, we suppress ourselves from the revelation of God, when it reaches us in our ordinary course of life. Hence, the world remains ignorant to Him, though He reveals to all men.
NON-CHRISTIAN RELIGIONS
This consideration shifts the focus on to the nature of non-Christian religions. The popular view is that all men share a basic affinity with God, while the only ultimate difference between world’s religions lies in the degrees of success with which they cherish and express God-consciousness.
CHAPTER FOUR: GOD’S WORD SPOKEN (II) (p. 65-87)
This chapter deals with special revelation. Author has pointed out that, the second major truth which Hebrews teaches us is that, revelation is a verbal activity. It tells that God has spoken to man by means of significant utterances using statements, questions, commands either on His own or through the His messengers.
THE PROPHETS
The writer asks a question, ‘Who and what were the prophets?’ The answers according to New Testament lexicon is, prophetes means a Greek word meaning ‘proclaimer and interpreter of divine revelation.’ According to Old Testament, it gives a fuller definition as the one who was moved by the Spirit of God and hence his organ or spokesperson declares to the men what he has received by inspiration.
REVELATION IN CHRIST
The writer tells us that God has now spoken ‘in His Son’. He regards the verbal revelation as the essence of God’s own revelatory ministry. The array of evidence compels to recognize the revelation in Christ; it did not breach the principle that revelations of God are made known to men through verbal instructions from God Himself.
A CURRENT ALTERNATIVE
According to this view, God revealed Himself in history through some significant observers of events, who perceived what the events mean, in terms of God’s character and plan. The events thus gained revelatory status through coincidence of divinely enlightened minds. As Temple put it, there is nothing called as revealed truth. They are propositions from minds of people who had correct thinking concerning revelation. They are not directly revealed. Many find this view appealing, but the approach is vulnerable on many grounds.
GOD REVEALED THROUGH HIS WORDS
Revelation from one standpoint is the act of God, from other, it is His gift. From both standpoints, it is the man’s knowledge about God as on one hand an experience, on the other a possession. As God’s act, revelation is a personal self-disclosure of knowing Him as our God and savior. As God’s gift, revelation is the knowledge about Him that He gives us as a means to this end.
CHAPTER FIVE: GOD’S WORD WRITTEN (p. 89-124)
This chapter deals with the view of Holy Scriptures. It starts with the ‘critical’ method. It is so called from the biblical scholarship of earlier days because it approaches the Bible as a book of ancient history and studies in the light of a view of history as a developing process with its own casual laws inherent with itself. Though such distorting pseudo-scientific assumptions are to be rejected, historical study of the Bible is a theological necessity. Those who follow the current conventions of criticism reject Austine’s axiom that what Scriptures says, God says, divide sharply over the questions of how God’s truth reaches us and what its content is. Thus, for instance, Anglican ‘broad churchmen’ in the Platonist tradition think of revelation in terms of a quickening conscience to embrace moral and spiritual imperatives based on a robust cosmic optimism. By contrast, ‘dialectical’ theologians hold that the Word of God in Christ with which the Bible confronts us in a reality, which has to be set forth in the categories of apostolic teaching about sin and salvation. Word of God sometimes needs recasting and improving. A third ‘existentialist’ type of view is that the Word of God is, neither Holy Scripture nor Jesus Christ, but God confronts the individual in a way which produces within him a liberating assurance, assuaging his otherwise incurable anxiety. Of all these varieties of Renaissance theology and with them the crossbred ‘dialectical’ theology, three things have to be said. First, these positions are all subjectivist in character. Second, these positions are all unstable, for they do not recognize no objective criterion of truth or method of establishing it. Third, as far as they fail to uphold the authority of the Spirit in the Scriptures over the Spirit in the theologian and deviate from the task of expounding.
CHAPTER SIX: GOD’S WORD HEARD (p. 125-137)
Bible says God has spoken; and godliness is hearing his word. Hear in its full sense means paying attention and applying the heard God’s words in life. According to Hebrews, hearing God’s words means receiving and responding to God’s propositional Word that He has spoken from heaven through His lips, also through the utterances of prophets and apostles. God’s personal Word appears as center of His propositional word both when spoken and written. Three aspects of life of godliness are viewed as a life of hearing God’s words.
Promises: Firstly, it is a life of faith in God’s promise. Law: Secondly, godliness involves obedience to God’s laws. Truth: Genuine godliness is always marked by delight in God’s truth.
In the first place, God’s word can actually not be heard where Bible is not studied. Bible has to be given its right place personal and Church life. Even then, hearing God’s words depends on one’s openness to the work of the Holy Spirit. Spirit brings us to acknowledge the divinity. Christ on one hand and the Scriptures on the other lead us to bow to the conjoint authority of both.
REFERENCE
- J.I. Packer, GOD HAS SPOKEN (Michigan: Baker Book House)
