Author Archives: scott

Beale, A New Testament Biblical Theology

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I’ve recently begun working through G.K. Beale’s A New Testament Biblical Theology: The Unfolding of the Old Testament in the New.  I have the sense of being drawn into a deep, expansive ocean.  In just a few chapters I’ve already been shown new facets of the Biblical revelation that is not only intellectually satisfaction, but imagination enriching.  It makes my Bible feel thicker.

Kuyper on Wealth Inequality

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“God has not willed that one should drudge hard and yet have no bread for himself and his family. Still less has God willed that any man with hands to work and a will to work should perish from hunger or be reduced to the beggar’s staff just because there is no work. If we have food and clothing, then the holy apostle demands that we should content ourselves with that. But where our Father in heaven wills with divine generosity that an abundance of food grows from the ground, we are without excuse, if through our fault, this rich bounty is divided so unequally that one is surfeited with bread while another goes with an empty stomach to his pallet, and sometimes must even go without a pallet.”

– Abraham Kuyper

“If we pay no attention to words whatever, we may become like the isolated gentleman who invents a…”

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“If we pay no attention to words whatever, we may become like the isolated gentleman who invents a new perpetual-motion machine on old lines in ignorance of all previous plans, and then is surprised that it doesn’t work. If we confine our attention entirely to the slang of the day, that is to say, if we devote ourselves exclusively to modern literature, we get to think the world is progressing when it is only repeating itself. In both cases we are likely to be deceived, and what is more important, to deceive others. Therefore, it is advisable for us in our own interests, quite apart from considerations of personal amusement, to concern ourselves occasionally with a certain amount of our national literature drawn from all ages. I say from all ages, because it is only when one reads what men wrote long ago that one realises how absolutely modern the best of the old things are.”

– Rudyard Kipling

“Dilemma wretched: how shall holiness Of brilliant light unshaded, tolerate Rebellion’s fetid slime,…”

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“Dilemma wretched: how shall holiness
Of brilliant light unshaded, tolerate
Rebellion’s fetid slime, and not abate
In its own glory, compromised at best?
Dilemma wretched: how can truth attest
That God is love, and not be shamed by hate
And wills enslaved and bitter death—the freight
Of curse deserved, the human rebels’ mess?
The Cross! The Cross! The sacred meeting-place
Where, knowing neither compromise nor loss,
God’s love and holiness in shattering grace
The great dilemma slays! The Cross! The Cross!
The holy, loving God whose dear Son dies
By this is just—and one who justifies.”

– D. A. Carson