Tonight’s Temple Square theme: drama & spiritual warfare.

As I arrived there was a large group of young believers praying — mostly from Chicago. We scattered and covered different spots around Temple Square. I don’t know how their night went, although I did see a young man from their group at the North Gate named Ben. He was bold! He kept kindly handing out tracts and weathering repeated rejection with an excellent, kind attitude.

Continue reading “Evangelism report” →

• Do you believe that Jesus was God in the flesh, that he died on the cross for our sins, and that he rose again from the dead?
• Are you trusting in Christ alone for your salvation?
• Have you repented of your sins, and do you submit to Jesus as your Lord and Savior?

Therefore I baptize you in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit.

Every Sunday morning is a members meeting. The kind that guests are invited to visit.

The church gathering is that of locally committed, mutually affirming, publicly recognized believers in Jesus.

They are washed by the word. They practice the ordinances, and are led by elders and served by deacons. They are ministered to by people of various gifts that Christ has lavished his people with. They practice the one-anothers, and act in unity by one Spirit. They greet each other in the Lord. They are called out from the world to form an outpost of the kingdom.

How important! How fitting! How beautiful that we gather and govern as Jesus, our True Emperor, laid out in his holy word.

Lord, please encourage believers who are not a part of this to be convinced, to joyfully repent, and to dive in.

• Mary Magdalene separates from other women at some point. Either on the way to the tomb, or at the tomb (before the angels are encountered), or on the way to tell the disciples (before Jesus appears to the women).
• Matthew 28:2-4 is a flashback. The earth quakes and angel descends earlier in the morning, frightening the guards. By the time the women arrive, an angel is inside the tomb. It is from within that he says, “See the place where they laid him” (Mark 16:6).
• The women initially don’t tell anyone (Mark 16:8), but then decide to (Luke 24:10).
• Parts of the story are simplified or consolidated. Simplification: one angel is noted (Matthew 28:5) instead of two otherwise specified (Luke 24:4). Consolidation: the women “told these things to the apostles” (Luke 24:10). This consolidates Mary Magdalene reporting to Peter and John, and the other women reporting to the rest of the disciples.
• “The sun had risen” (Mark 16:2) could anciently mean essentially: at dawn.

See also: “A plausible harmony of the accounts and sequence of events” of the resurrection

Was Paul imprisoned in Ephesus? Did he write Prison Epistles (captivity letters) like Ephesians, Colossians, and Philemon from Ephesus? Perhaps even Philippians? Or were they written from Rome?

Arguments for Rome

• “The elite ancients, and even some ordinary ancients, were far more mobile than we often give them credit for.” (Witherington)
• Onesimus could have gone from Colossae to Rome for anonymity, or Onesimus may have been sent to Rome by Philemon.
• Luke would not have overlooked an Ephesus imprisonment in Acts.
• Colossians reflects later theological development.
• Tychicus is in Ephesus; why write to the Ephesians if Paul can speak through him?
• Paul would have been willing to change/delay plans of traveling to Spain in order to tend to pressing needs of existing churches.
• “Eusebius says that Paul was brought to Rome and that with him was Aristarchus.” (Porter)
• “Some of the persons named in Philemon (and Colossians) are associated with Rome in other New Testament writings: Mark (if it is the same Mark) is associated with Rome in 1 Peter 5:13; Luke is associated with Rome in 2 Timothy 4:11 (and in Acts 28:16 if Luke is the author of Acts); Demas is associated with Rome in 2 Timothy 4:10; Aristarchus is said to have been with Paul in both Ephesus (Acts 19:29) and Rome (Acts 27:2).” (Powell)

Arguments for Ephesus

• The short distance between Colossae and Ephesus is more plausible: It is a shorter distance for Onesimus (runaway slave) to travel. This also makes better sense of Paul requesting a room from Philemon, and anticipating lodging soon.
• Prison epistles have “air of nearness and intimacy.” Journeys in prison epistles “seem to be treated in a rather casual way.”
• Paul mentions extreme adversarial conditions and previous imprisonments in 1 & 2 Corinthians, Romans; these could not have included the later imprisonments in Caesarea or Rome.
• We should not assume Colossians is of later theological development. Colossians and the Corinthian correspondence have substantial parallels.
• Ephesians is circular letter, written not just to Ephesus.
• Aristarchus was dragged before crowd in Ephesus (Acts 19); Paul describes him as fellow prisoner in his letters.
• “Of the ten companions of Paul named in these letters, four (Timothy, Aristarchus, Tychicus, Luke) seem quite certainly to have been in Ephesus with Paul, three (Epaphroditus, Epaphras, Onesimus) could have been there much easier than in Rome, The other three could have been there as easily as in Rome, while for no one of the ten is there any evidence (save inference from these letters) that he was in Rome, at least in Paul’s time.” (Bowen)

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Deep work definition: “Professional activities performed in a distraction-free concentration that push your cognitive capabilities to their limit. These efforts create new value, improve your skill, and are hard to replicate.”

Deep work hypothesis: “The ability to perform deep work is becoming increasing rare at the same time it is becoming valuable in or economy. As a consequence the few who cultivate this skill and then make it the core of their working life will thrive.”

Attention residue: “Every time you switch your attention from one target to another and then back again, there’s a cost. This switching creates an effect that psychologists call attention residue, which can reduce your cognitive capacity for a non-trivial amount of time before it clears.”

Persistent attention residue: “If you constantly make “quick checks” of various devices and inboxes, you essentially keep yourself in a state of persistent attention residue, which is a terrible idea if you’re someone who uses your brain to make a living.”

Four rules for cultivating deep work:

1) Work deeply. Don’t wait for lots of free time. Schedule deep work blocks and protect them.

2) Embrace boredom. Frequently expose yourself to boredom. Don’t “bathe yourself in novel stimuli at the slightest hint of boredom.”

3) Quit social media. Don’t measure social media value only by advantages. Disadvantages outweigh them.

4) Drain the shallows. Shallow work doesn’t require uninterrupted concentration. Aggressively minimize optional shallow work.

• Front cover (First glance)
• Table of contents (statement of faith)
• Author blurbs (Leadership page)
• Flip through pages (recent sermons)
• Publisher (Affiliation, network, convention, denomination, association)
• Foreward at front, recommendations on back (Influences, pastor’s “likes” on FB, resource links)
• Reading the first few chapters (visiting for a few Sundays)
• Committing (joining church body life; expressing commitment in membership)

“For where two or three are gathered together in my name, I am there among them.” (Matthew 18:20)

Read in light of 18:15-19: Christ stands in unity with the gathered, recognized, identifiable church as it acts in agreement in receiving or removing believers from fellowship, after practicing due diligence through gradual escalation and protocol. Even if the church is three people big.

This does not mean that a church (acting properly?) can be a mere ad hoc or irregular or accidental gathering of believers, let alone one that has no regard for protocol, due diligence, measures of escalation, or awareness of membership.

As I survey the landscape of literature concerning the eternal functional subordination of the Son I see five basic views:

1. The Son never submits to the Father, even after the incarnation. Authority and submission are seen as incompatible with intimacy and love and the kingdom of God.
2. The Son submits to the Father only after the incarnation. The incarnation itself is not an act of obedience. Obedience is only creaturely.
3. The Son submits to (or at least obeys) the Father before the incarnation (e.g. in creating the world), but only economically and ad extra (with respect to creation).
4. The eternal Son submits to the Father before creation and ad intra (in the internal life of God) and this is grounded in the Son’s eternal generation from the Father.
5. The eternal Son submits to the Father before creation, but this is agnostic to or in lieu of eternal generation.

Views 3-5 agree that the incarnate Son’s willing submission (or obedience) is suitable or fitting in light of his eternal Sonship, of his “filial identity.”

Views 4-5 see the Father’s primacy of authority as a personal property and not an essential divine attribute.

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Update (Oct 5, 2021). Matthew Barrett describes a spectrum of views:

I very much affirm and teach (1) eternal generation, (2) one divine will in the triune God, and (3) two wills in Christ incarnate (dyothelitism). However, affirming these three doesn’t automatically put me in a “camp.” So hold off your assumptions. Those who have read the Ware/Starke book (and Fred Sanders’ review of it) will recognize that just as there is diversity among those who reject eternal submission, so too is there diversity among those who affirm eternal submission in the Trinity (something carelessly overlooked by the initial responses). This means, then, that some affirm all three of the above points but still see some place for “obedience” or “submission” (some prefer different words) in the Trinity in eternity. In other words, there is a spectrum.

About this spectrum, it’s obvious by now that there are two polar opposites of the spectrum: (1) Those who reject eternal generation, one will in the Trinity, and two wills in Christ and by consequence go the route of a (soft?) social trinitarianism, and, on the other end of the spectrum, those who (2) affirm the three previous beliefs but see absolutely no place for the obedience and submission of the Son to the Father in eternity. I do not align with either polar opposite and my reasons have to do, at least in part, with the pactum salutis…

I think that those who reject any and all forms of obedience in the Godhead in eternity overreact (understandably to the social trinitarianism they see). I agree with them in their affirmation of eternal generation, one divine will in the Trinity, dyothelitism Christology; however, to go to the other extreme and say that there is absolutely no place for obedience in eternity is a problem precisely because it ignores the biblical reality of the covenant of redemption.