Author Archives: Clarke Morledge

About Clarke Morledge

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Clarke Morledge -- Computer Network Engineer, College of William and Mary... I hiked the Mount of the Holy Cross, one of the famous Colorado Fourteeners, with some friends in July, 2012. My buddy, Mike Scott, snapped this photo of me on the summit.
December 15, 2016

People Disagreed With Jesus About the Bible Too

By Clarke Morledge

I am in the middle of posting a five-part blog series on the interpretation of Daniel 9:24-27, the famous “Seventy Weeks” prophecy, one of the most controversial Old Testament prophecies predicting the coming of the Messiah. Some scholars call it the “Dismal Swamp” of Biblical interpretation. After digging into this for about two years, I can believe it really is a swamp.

The passage is really fascinating and amazing, but the pervasive interpretive pluralism among Christians, as to what the prophecy means, can be overwhelming. There have been times where I have been tempted to throw my hands up in the air and give up. Thankfully, I ran into the following re-post from Derek Rishmawy’s blog that serves as a healthy antidote to following such a temptation.

Derek Rishmawy is also a co-host of the MereFidelity podcast, that I sometimes listen to, that combines thoughtful theological reflection and conversation, with engagement in contemporary cultural issues impacting the English speaking world. These guys are smart, and just listening to the British accents of some of the other co-hosts makes you feel a little bit smarter yourself, too. If you need some intellectual stimulus that you are not getting elsewhere, you should check out the podcast sometime at the MereOrthodoxy website.

Derek Rishmawy's avatarReformedish

Jesus talking“Yeah, but there are so many interpretations of that text, so many denominations claiming Scripture for their own, you can’t really say there’s a wrong way of reading it.”

If you’ve been in a Bible study or spent more than about 10 minutes surfing pop theology writings, you have probably run across a claim of this sort. The idea is that with so many different readings of Scripture, it’s either arrogant or hopeless to think we can come to a determinate, or correct understanding of it. In other words, the mere fact of interpretive disagreement ought to put us off from claiming anything very strong for our interpretations of Scripture.

This sort can take a couple of different forms.

First, someone can go full-blown, radical skeptic and just say that the text has no inherent, determinate meanings, only uses. Or maybe that it’s a springboard for our own thoughts about…

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December 12, 2016

Classic-Thinking: Thomas Oden

By Clarke Morledge
Thomas C. Oden wrote A Change of Heart, a theological memoir of how as a thinker he made the journey from Protestant Liberal to a truly evangelical and broadly ecumenical man of faith.

Thomas C. Oden wrote A Change of Heart, a theological memoir of how as a thinker he made the journey from a Protestant Liberal to a truly evangelical and broadly ecumenical man of faith.

“I loved heresy…But the Holy Spirit found me,” so said Methodist theologian Thomas C. Oden (1931-2016), who died December 8, 2016.

Thomas Oden had grown up in the world of mainline Methodism, in the mid-20th century. He fully imbibed the liberal theology of his day, immersing himself in the writings of Rudolph Bultmann and Paul Tillich. He was a leading thinker and theological spokesperson for a radical redefinition of Christianity that swept through American mainline churches in the 1950s to 1960s. He had admired the Vietnamese Ho Chi Min as an agrarian patriot. But then he realized that he had been wrong.

In an interview a few years ago with Southern Baptist leader, Al Mohler, Oden confessed that his enthusiasm for Marx was misguided. “I loved the fantasies and I loved the revolutionary illusions. I truly loved them… I was one of those who was way out on the far left edge of accommodating to modernity. And I don’t know how but the Holy Spirit found me.”

A caring Jewish friend had encouraged Oden to read the patristic writers, those fathers of the early church who wrote extensively within the first few centuries of the Christian movement. Up to that point, Oden “was able to confess the Apostle’s Creed, but only with deep ambiguity. But I stumbled over ‘he arose from the dead.’ I had to demythologize it and could say it only symbolically. I could not inwardly confess the resurrection as a factual historical event.”

When Oden finally realized that the bodily resurrection of Jesus was something that he must believe and eventually did believe, in order to be a true Christian, it reoriented his life. He spent the second half of his life repudiating the hubris behind the very liberalism that nurtured him, and sought to build a case for a consensual model of Christian belief, looking to those early, classic church fathers for guidance. His change of heart was now to serve the church, and not to seek after the latest theological fad of academia.

Oden never broke away from his modest, classically-informed Wesleyan theological leanings. He sought for reconciliation in the predestination and free-will debates that still divides Calvinists and Arminians. He eschewed debates over the age of the earth, charismatic gifts, the “proper” view of the millennium and the “End Times,” and other intramural discussions, in order to focus on the common vision of faith embodied in the early creeds of the church, like the Nicene Creed.

As having read Thomas Oden’s Classic Christianity: A Systematic Theology, as the basic theology textbook in seminary, I can say that Oden was not as strong as an apologist or a textual Bible scholar, but these were not his gifts. His gift was in drawing together the widest range of the greatest teachers in the historical Christian tradition, to give us a “big picture,” consensus view of what it means to believe as a faithful follower of Jesus: Classic Christianity at its finest!!

Michael J. Kruger, at the Canon Fodder blog, offers some lessons learned from Thomas Oden.

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December 11, 2016

Daniel’s Seventy Weeks #3

By Clarke Morledge
The destruction of Jerusalem by the Romans in 70AD -- a painting by David Roberts (1796-1849).

The Roman army under Titus destroyed Jerusalem and its Temple, by the year 70 AD. Does this catastrophic event in the first century offer any insight into understanding the “Seventy Weeks” prophecy found in Daniel 9:24-27?  
(a painting by David Roberts, 1796-1849).

Up to this point in this series ( post #1, post #2), we have been exploring the dispensationalist approach to the “Seventy Weeks” of Daniel 9:24-27. Let us jump into the text again, first:

“Seventy weeks are decreed about your people and your holy city, to finish the transgression, to put an end to sin, and to atone for iniquity, to bring in everlasting righteousness, to seal both vision and prophet, and to anoint a most holy place. Know therefore and understand that from the going out of the word to restore and build Jerusalem to the coming of an anointed one, a prince, there shall be seven weeks. Then for sixty-two weeks it shall be built again with squares and moat, but in a troubled time. And after the sixty-two weeks, an anointed one shall be cut off and shall have nothing. And the people of the prince who is to come shall destroy the city and the sanctuary. Its end shall come with a flood, and to the end there shall be war. Desolations are decreed. And he shall make a strong covenant with many for one week, and for half of the week he shall put an end to sacrifice and offering. And on the wing of abominations shall come one who makes desolate, until the decreed end is poured out on the desolator” (Daniel 9:24-27 ESV).

So, is the dispensationalist reading of this passage the best way to understand the text?

Let us explore some of the issues in this blog post. Different Bible interpreters over the years have looked at Daniel 9 in very different ways. When you examine each approach, you learn that there are some ambiguities in the text that force the interpreter to make some assumptions as to how a particular ambiguity in the text might be resolved.

So, what are these ambiguities? Have you ever heard of Hank Hanegraaff, known in radio-land as the “Bible Answer Man?” Continue reading

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December 7, 2016

Single-Mindedness: Helen Roseveare

By Clarke Morledge

Helen Roseveare (1925-2016) was one of the great missionary spokespersons of the 20th century. Roseveare served as a medical missionary in Zaire, surviving a violent civil war there, where she was brutally raped in 1964. In her moment of utter darkness, she prayed to God, and she sensed the Lord telling her, “You asked Me, when you were first converted, for the privilege of being a missionary. This is it. Don’t you want it? . . . These are not your sufferings. They’re Mine. All I ask of you is the loan of your body.”

I had the privilege of hearing Helen Roseveare speak at the Urbana ’87 missionary conference. Her single-minded devotion to the Lord sustained her in extended periods of loneliness, in her near 20-years ministering in Zaire.

She never married.

Justin Taylor, at the Gospel Coalition, posted a remembrance of her life. She died today.

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December 6, 2016

Daniel’s Seventy Weeks #2

By Clarke Morledge
One of Clarence Larkin's (1850-1924) memorable charts illustrating how to interpret the Seventy Weeks of Daniel 9 from a dispensationalist perspective.

One of Clarence Larkin’s (1850-1924) memorable charts illustrating how to interpret the Seventy Weeks of Daniel 9 from a dispensationalist perspective. Clarence Larkin’s charts were some of the most influential teaching tools in evangelical churches throughout the bulk of the 20th century (click on it for more detail — source clarencelarkincharts.com)

Here we take a closer look at Daniel 9:24-27, in this season of Advent, as we dig a little deeper into this famous prophecy of “Seventy Weeks.” I am surely no “Yoda” (read the first post in this series to get what I am saying), but let me guide you with some things to think about, and then point you towards other resources on the Internet that I think you will find helpful. First, let us read our text again, as it has a lot packed in here:

“Seventy ‘sevens’ are decreed for your people and your holy city to finish transgression, to put an end to sin, to atone for wickedness, to bring in everlasting righteousness, to seal up vision and prophecy and to anoint the Most Holy Place. Know and understand this: From the time the word goes out to restore and rebuildJerusalem until the Anointed One, the ruler, comes, there will be seven ‘sevens,’ and sixty-two ‘sevens.’ It will be rebuilt with streets and a trench, but in times of trouble. After the sixty-two ‘sevens,’ the Anointed One will be put to death and will have nothing. The people of the ruler who will come will destroy the city and the sanctuary. The end will come like a flood: War will continue until the end, and desolations have been decreed. He will confirm a covenant with many for one ‘seven.’ In the middle of the ‘seven’ he will put an end to sacrifice and offering. And at the temple he will set up an abomination that causes desolation, until the end that is decreed is poured out on him” (Daniel 9:24-27, NIV 2011).

 

Scratching your head a bit? Well, let’s start digging!

Continue reading

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