Living Journey

Dr. Calvin Smith of Midlands Bible College is in the middle of doing some research for a new book and he would like some help with comments and different opinions from all over the blogosphere.

So, first things first, the following is just a blurb about what it is he is actually doing and how anyone else can help if they feel they want to …!!!!

“What of Israel?” This is for two reasons. First, I want the new category to serve as a resource for those interested in Christian responses to Israel. Moreover, while I have strong views on this issue, it is important that this resource posits alternative views, questions, doubts, and concerns which need to be explored and dealt with. Only by exploring the whole range of Evangelical opinion can such a work be considered truly authoritative and scholarly.

This leads to the second reason for my desire to create a new category on this issue. Of course, I regularly interact with students and fellow colleagues on a whole range of theological issues. But my desire is that as I research this subject, distance learning students, friends of the college, and other Christians can also contribute to the debate, thus ensuring the whole effort is at least a collaborative one. So I am not simply looking for agreement with my views (though it is nice to know when arguments crafted are both persuasive and effective). In fact, I am interested in hearing from both sympathisers AND opponents, as ultimately this will enable me to consider and deal with the full range of issues. All we ask is that contributions are thoughtful, genuinely concerned with establishing truth (a concept out of fashion in today’s postmodern milieu), and which are not unnecessarily aggresive (though we encourage passionate expression of views).

Thus, my request from our readers is simple. First, please circulate details of this blog and particularly the “What of Israel?” category as widely as possible, to fellow Christians, your church, and elsewhere, both as a resource and to encourage Christian to debate the subject of Israel. Second, please contribute your thoughts, questions, and ideas to this section of the blog as much as possible. Some of these will help me, as well as also challenge readers, so making all of us more effective in our views. (The phrase “iron sharpens iron” comes to mind). Third, just as you contribute to this particular discussion (or in New Labour parlance, a “Grand Conversation”), be prepared to engage with the issues raised and the views of others fairly, openly, and above all from a biblical perspective. My aim is for a collaborative effort that produces a debate which seeks biblically-sound, theologically-viable, politically-sophisticated and non-rhetorically-driven conclusions on the very many facets of this issue.

I make no apologies for taking a pro-Israel stance, which is where I currently stand at the present stage in my research (though my position is far from slavish or subjective… I have grappled with these issues for years). It has led to the college being singled out by at least one Christian organisation as one of only three or four UK mainstream Bible colleges that take a position in support of Israel on the issue, though it should be noted that our faculty have a free view on the issue. Neither does the college include a statement along these lines in its core beliefs and values. Moreover, yet once again for the record I reject an “Israel right or wrong” stance. After all, if biblical Israel sinned and angered God, it is folly to say, as some extreme Christian Zionists suggest, that Israel today is totally guiltless of sin and can do no wrong. All such views do is make support for modern Israel all the more difficult to justify. So honesty rooted in good biblical theology, devoid of the philosophical agenda of the current political Zeitgeist, is what I am after.

Therefore, please help me in this project as I seek genuine discussion which is biblically-based and prayerfully-driven. I want to hear all views, regardless of how far advanced in your studies you are, or how much (or little) time you have devoted to this issue. Even the simplest of questions demonstrate what the current Evangelical thought on the the issue might be and how Christians should respond. Thank you.

© Calvin L. Smith 2007.

You can find more at the ‘Midlands Bible College Blog’ under the category called ‘What of Israel?‘.

So go on over and have a read of some of his posts and add your comments, keep it respectful and remember he wants to hear it all, the good with the bad!

2Co 2:14-17 But thanks be to God! He always leads us triumphantly in Christ and through us spreads everywhere the fragrance of knowing him. To God we are the aroma of Christ among those who are being saved and among those who are being lost. To some people we are a deadly fragrance, while to others we are a living fragrance. Who is qualified for this? At least we are not commercializing (corrupt) God’s word like so many others. Instead, in Christ we speak with sincerity, like people who are sent from God and are accountable to God.

Corrupt the word of God - Margin, “deal deceitfully with.” The word used here (καπηλεύοντες kapēleuontes) occurs nowhere else in the New Testament, and does not occur in the Septuagint. The word is derived from κάπηλος kapēlos, which signifies properly a huckster, or a retailer of wine, a petty chapman; a man who buys up articles for the purpose of selling them again. It also means sometimes a vintner, or an innkeeper. The proper idea is that of a small dealer and especially in wine. Such persons were notorious, as they are now, for diluting their wines with water (compare the Septuagint in Isa_1:22); and for compounding wines of other substances than the juice of the grape for purposes of gain. Wine, of all substances in trade, perhaps, affords the greatest facilities for such dishonest tricks; and, accordingly, the dealers in that article have generally been most distinguished for fraudulent practices and corrupt and diluted mixtures. Hence, the word comes to denote to adulterate; to corrupt, etc. It is here applied to those who adulterated or corrupted the pure word of God in any way, and for any purpose. It probably has particular reference to those who did it either by Judaizing opinions, or by the mixtures of a false and deceitful philosophy. The latter mode would be likely to prevail among the subtle and philosophizing Greeks. It is in such ways that the gospel has been usually corrupted:
(1) It is done by attempting to attach a philosophical explanation to the facts of revelation, and making the theory as important as the fact.
(2) by attempting to explain away the offensive points of revelation by the aid of philosophy.
(3) by attempting to make the facts of Scripture accord with the prevalent notions of philosophy, and by applying a mode of interpretation to the Bible which would fritter away its meaning, and make it mean anything or nothing at pleasure. In these, and in various other ways, people have corrupted the Word of God; and of all the evils which Christianity has ever sustained in this world, the worst have been those which it has received from philosophy, and from those teachers who have corrupted the Word of God. (Barnes)

… Corrupt the word of God; by “the word of God”, may be meant the Scriptures in general, which are from God, contain his will, and which he uses for the good of men, and his own glory, and may be corrupted by false glosses, and human mixtures, and by adding to them, or taking from them; or the Gospel in particular, which is the word of truth, of faith, righteousness, reconciliation, and salvation, and which was corrupted by these false teachers, by making merchandise of it; they huckstered the word of God, made gain of it, sought merely their own worldly interest and advantage in it, and so mixed it with their own vain philosophy, to please the carnal ears and hearts of men; they blended law and Gospel, grace and works, in the business of salvation; they did, as peddling merchants do, mix good and bad commodities together, and then vend them for sound ware; or as vintners, who mix their wine with water, and sell it for neat wine. (John Gill)

I just thought the above was an interesting read, so I thought I would share it!