Dr Woodhouse would have reached retirement age at the start of 2014, but has told the Board that after careful deliberation, he believed the time had come for him to plan to step aside from the role.

“It has been nothing but a privilege to serve the College, first as lecturer and for the past ten years as principal” Dr Woodhouse says. “Exciting plans are in train and I am confident there are great days to come. There is nothing dramatic in this decision. It is simply my judgment about what is best for the College at this time.”

“Our staff and faculty are doing a wonderful job, and are more than able to respond to the needs of the years ahead. The body of students that the Lord sends us is, in my opinion, outstanding. I really am excited about the next few years of the College’s life.”

Dr Woodhouse indicated that he has several writing projects to complete, once he finishes his term as principal.

“A commentary on 2 Samuel awaits – and several others in that series. We will also be on the lookout for other ways in which we can serve the Lord in the coming years.” he says.

Archbishop Jensen described Dr Woodhouse as an “outstanding Christian leader and a fine principal of Moore College. He has guided the College through a period of dramatic growth and played an integral role in the fulfillment of our diocesan mission. I am very grateful to God for his personal qualities and godly leadership.”

Archbishop of Sydney Dr Peter Jensen
President, Moore Theological College Governing Board
on behalf of the Governing Board, May 16th, 2012

• See the Sydney Anglican’s story: here
• See the Archbishop’s media release: here

By Con Campbell

Moore College is about to go on mission, in partnership with churches throughout Sydney, northern New South Wales, and Papua New Guinea. Students and faculty are hard at work on their sermons and talks for mission, so I thought I’d repost a series about writing evangelistic talks (lightly revised; original posts are at readbetterpreachbetter.wordpress.com). I’m no expert on the subject, and much of what I’ll say is not original. In fact, lots of it probably comes from John Chapman, who is a national treasure, and was one of my trainers when I was a student minister with Evangelism Ministries. I’ve lost track of which ideas belong to him and which are mine. So with that caveat in place, here’s my (or his?) first thought.

By Greg Anderson

In the Moore College course about Buddhism and Islam one of our topics is folk religion. We include this topic because most Buddhists and Muslims don’t practice their religion according to the textbook accounts, but are strongly influenced by the indigenous spiritual traditions of their areas. There are visits to traditional healers, sacrifices, attempts to ward off evil forces through various kinds of magic, fear of local spirits, attention to omens – all characteristic of folk religion. Folk religion revolves around trying to deal with the unseen spiritual world and spiritual forces in a way that will reduce their harm and harness their power. People in the West tend to discount the existence of spirits and so folk religion appears to them as a host of superstitions. Folk religion is often closely attached to a particular tribe or region, and any one tribe’s sets of practices will differ from others. So folk religion forms part of a group’s identity.

One of the benefits of thinking about how other people act is that this provides us the opportunity of thinking about our own beliefs and actions compared with others. It is easy to point the finger at someone else, but we must acknowledge that we may be doing similar things ourselves (as Paul says in Romans 2). Are there ways that Christians – even ‘Christians like us’ act in ways that are more folk religion than biblical Christianity?

When I was a theological student, our College principal strongly made the point many times that there are no ‘magical’ spiritual techniques that fast-track Christian development. There are many good things that we can do that will help our growth – reading the Bible, praying, meeting with other Christians, living lives of obedience before God, choosing to follow Jesus whether this feels comfortable or uncomfortable. Danger occurs when we start to treat any of these good things as though they are ‘magic’ — what my ‘tribe’ does to guarantee spiritual results. Do we imagine that if we pray longer or with more people that God will be more likely to hear our prayers? Do we imagine that reading the Bible with others will automatically produce Christian maturity? Do we imagine that if we preach a certain way, the church will automatically grow?

When we have successful programs it is easy for us to start thinking that the program is what has achieved results, rather than God in his kindness.

Few of us would accept that we have fallen into that trap. But sometimes our attitudes belie our words, and sometimes our words betray us as thinking ‘magically’. We need to examine our thinking, and check that we are not only entrusting ourselves to our good God and using the helps he has given us without supersition, but also that we are making an explicit mention of these dangers so that others can avoid them.

Greg Anderson is Head of the Missions Department at Moore College.

By George Athas

Did you mean to die like that — was that a mistake?

Or did you know your messy death would be a record breaker?

There are a numbers of ways we could answer the question ‘Why did Jesus die?’ On the historical level, we can say that Jesus was caught between the crunching gears of apocalyptic messianic expectation, Jewish temple politics, and Roman imperial intrigue. On the theological level, there is so much more to say.

On the Sunday before his death, Jesus entered Jerusalem riding a donkey to the frenzied cheers of his followers. It was a provocative messianic stunt, aimed at fulfilling the image of the returning Davidic King in Zechariah 9.9. And his followers were not blind to its significance. Their cry of ‘Hosanna!’ was a slogan meaning ‘To the rescue!’ Here was the Davidic messiah coming to his royal capital to overthrow the current order, free his people, and establish the new Kingdom of God. The following day, in a brash act prefiguring the end of the old order, Jesus marched into the temple complex and overturned the tables of the moneychangers and opened the pens holding sacrificial animals for sale. A small riot seems to have ensued. By doing this symbolic act, Jesus was clearly stating that he believed the temple and the authorities that ran itwere no longer in favour with God. Time was rapidly running out — the time of judgement and the dawn of a new era were now imminent. Jesus was, in other words, playing the part of an apocalyptic prophet.

For the remainder of the week, the temple authorities worked to arrest Jesus. Aftertrying unsuccessfully to discredit him publicly, and fearing the incendiaryriot that a public arrest would probably spark, they managed to arrest him on the sly by bribing Judas Iscariot, a member of Jesus’ inner circle. A summary Jewish trial ensued. In fact, it was probably an illegal trial, since it was held during the midnight hours within the house of the High Priest, Caiaphas. It seems that those present tried to pin the charge of treason on Jesus by implicating him for threats against the temple, the institution that stood at the heart of Jewish identity and piety. This would be akin to charging someone today with a plot to blow up the White House. Given events earlier in the week, one would have thought it would be easy to implicate Jesus. However, the Gospels tell us that the witnesses brought forward could not agree, and therefore Jesus could not definitively be found guilty. However, the High Priest, Caiaphas,used another strategy. He asked Jesus if he was the Son of God. In asking this, Caiaphas was probably not asking Jesus whether he believed he was the second person on the Trinity. Rather, he was asking Jesus whether he believed himself to be the messiah — the son of David who was to sit eternally on the throne of Israel, for the son of David in the Hebrew Bible was also seen as the ‘son of God’ (see 2 Samuel 7.14). Jesus’ response implied that he did believe this. But even more than this, Jesus appealed to the image of the Son of Man in Daniel 7 — an apocalyptic image of God’s chosen one who would bring about the end of the world order and establish God’s eternal kingdom. In the eyes of the authorities, this was an admission of revolutionary intent. Jesus was foundguilty.

Since the Jewish authorities at this time were unable to exact the death penalty (it had been revoked by Rome a few decades earlier), Jesus was hurried off to the Roman Prefect, Pontius Pilate. Politically, Pilate was fighting battles on two fronts. On the one hand, Pilate was probably a protégé of Aelius Sejanus, who had been running the Roman Empire for a few years while the emperor, Tiberius Caesar, enjoyed a leisurely lifestyle on the Italian isle of Capri. However, in October, AD 31, Sejanus was executed for conspiracy against the emperor. Anyone connected to him was now also under suspicion. Pilate, therefore, would have had to watch his steps very closely to demonstrate unambiguously that he was loyal to Tiberius Caesar. On the other hand, though, Pilate had to maintain face and an air of authority over those he governed. In the years before Sejanus’ ignominious death, Pilate had thrown his weight around in various displays of power. Amongst those he needed to keep in check were the Jewish temple authorities. One of the ways he had managed to do so was to plunder the temple’s treasury for public works, and to keep the High Priest’s ceremonial garments under lock and key in the Antonia Fortress. These measures were belittling to the Jewish temple authorities and told them in no uncertain terms who was boss.

So, on the morning of Friday, April 3^rd, AD 33, the Jewish authorities brought Jesus to Pilate to seek the death penalty for him. Normally, it would appear that the Jewish authorities were in the position of grovelling subordinates, and thus for Pilate to agree to the death penalty would simply be a show of his own authority. However, Pilate also had to contend for his own reputation now that he was in the spotlight after Sejanus’ death. He could not afford to show any weakness before those he governed, and acquiescing to their request could now be interpreted as just such a weakness. And yet, he could not be seen to be letting a potential revolutionary go free either. That would endanger his standing with the emperor. Accordingly, Pilate attempted to hand the decision over to someone else — to Herod Antipas, tetrarch of Galilee and Perea, who was in Jerusalem at the time. However, the move backfired. Jesus was returned to Pilate, who now had to make a decision. Not wishing to imply that he was vulnerable or susceptible to weakness, Pilate himself questioned Jesus, flogged him in a display of Rome’s discipline, and was then on the verge of releasing him. By thus overriding the request of the Jewish leaders for the death penalty, Pilate was stamping his authority over them. However, Caiaphas and his comrades were not stupid. They now held the trump card. John’s Gospel tells us that the Jewish authorities said to Pilate, “If you release this man, you are not Caesar’s friend” (19.12). They were implying that if he were to release Jesus, Pilate would be letting an insurrectionist go free to destabilise one of the imperial provinces that Tiberius governed directly (as opposed to consular provinces, which were governed via the Roman Senate). This would implicate Pilate as a traitor to the emperor. To put it another way, the Jewish authorities were asking Pilate, “Whose skin do you want to save: this nuisance from Nazareth’s, or your own?” Checkmate!

On the surface of things, it seems that Jesus was in the wrong place at the wrong time — a victim of circumstance, crushed by political machinations that were far bigger than he could humanly control. Some have pointed to the apocalyptic outlookthat Jesus had, in wanting to draw the old order to a close and establish a new order, concluding that it was idealistic, unreal, and fraught with danger — that his beliefs and motivations just got him in too deep. Indeed, one can understand why most of his followers abandoned him and became so disillusioned by his death. He was an apparent failure. All the expectation surrounding him had come to nought, and like so many others before him, he fell foul of theauthorities and lost his life because of it.

But history also tells us something else. It tell us that not long after these events, Jesus’ followers reassembled and began boldly proclaiming that on the Sunday after his death Jesus had emerged from his tomb alive again. And despite attempts to silence them by the very same authorities who had Jesus arrested and killed, they continued to proclaim the resurrection of their master. He had not been a failure. He had been a fulfiller. He had indeed brought the old era to an end and inaugurated a new one, but had done so in a way that no one had anticipated: through his death. The Acts of the Apostles tell us that on one occasion, after being reprimanded by the Jewish authorities, Jesus’ followers prayed to God affirming, “In this city, both Herod and Pontius Pilate, along with the Gentiles and the people of Israel, conspired against your holy servant,Jesus, whom you anointed, doing what your hand and your plan had predestined to take place” (Acts 4.27–28). This had been no accident of history. In fact, this was what God had been mobilising all of history towards: the death and resurrection of Jesus. It was a moment of supreme fulfilment. This was the central moment of human history that held significance for every man, woman, and child who has ever lived or ever will live. The final bell on the old order, characterised by sin, death, hate, hostility, and human failure, had sounded. The new era offorgiveness, life, love, peace, and reconciliation was now dawning. Jesus had not only met expectations, he far exceeded them.

So why did Jesus die? There are so many things we could say to unpack the significance of Jesus’ death and his resurrection. The Apostle Paul puts it succinctly well, though, in Romans 4.25: “He was handed over for our transgressions, and raised for the sake of our justification.” And our response? Paul again captures it well in Galatians 2.20: “The life I now live in the body, I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me.”

George Athas is Director of Postgraduate Studies at Moore College and lectures in Hebrew, Old Testament, and Early Church History.

By Andrew Cameron

In 2007, a furore erupted when the Catholic Archbishop of Sydney George Pell stated that Catholic MPs might face ‘consequences’ if they supported a bill that would expand stem cell research in 2007. The backlash against him was swift, with the then Emergency Services Minister Nathan Rees saying he considered Cardinal Pell’s statements ‘a clear and arguably contemptuous incursion into deliberations of the elected members of Parliament’. Others accepted his entitlement to his opinion, but said he should keep out of politics.

A similar reaction emerged earlier this year around Melinda Tankard-Reist, a social commentator who opposes the sexualisation of girls and the ‘pornification’ that invades every area of public life. It was charged that her Christian background somehow disqualified her from making statements that might affect others, since any such influence would amount to her ‘imposing’ her beliefs. (It turned out that her most ardent defenders included many who wouldn’t profess to be Christians. They defended her views on their merits, or approved of her taking the time to express them. For these of her allies, it didn’t matter if Christianity affected how she arrived at her views.)

The common denominator in these complaints is a recent cultural theme: that those who attempt to provide cultural commentary should stop, if they are coming from a religious background. Attention then shifts from the subject under discussion (embryos, or girls’ and boys’ sexual well-being) to a ‘meta’-debate over whether the speaker should be allowed to contribute. Of course, those who want to use embryos and sell porn are glad of this distraction, and probably engineer it. But the fact that we fall for this distraction, every time, indicates a deep and abiding unease about the relationship of religious people to society.

Here’s an expression of the view when it comes to the ‘conscience’ votes we give to politicians:

“[C]onscience votes have the potential to undermine one of the defining principles of secular liberal democracy: the separation of religion and politics … When it comes to the issues of gay marriage, euthanasia and abortion, [religion] functions as a Trojan horse carrying sectional religious duties into the party and the public office of the politician, robbing them of the capacity to represent a general electorate.”

Ryan Walter, 29/11/11, SMH.

It’s a paragraph that relies on the emotive force of fear: the ‘Trojan horse’, ‘robbing’ politicians, etc. It also has several wrong assumptions:
• that you can and should ‘separate’ religious people from the political life of their community (without ever explaining how to ‘separate’ them);
• that such a separation ‘defines’ secular liberal democracy;
• that opposition to gay marriage, euthanasia and abortion could only be religiously inspired;
• that non-religious citizens could never find reasons to oppose these proposals;
• that it is undemocratic to oppose proposals that have not even come into law; and
• that politicians are appointed to transmit an average of the views of their electorate, rather than their best judgment about what the electorate needs;

Yet despite all these errors, people still reach instinctively for such argument and for phrases such as the ‘separation of religion and politics’ as their reason for why religious folk should be silent in public, or silenced from speaking in public. This contention is translated into a variety of contexts. It’s expressed in these high-level, high-stakes debates in Federal and State politics, but also in university departments, schools and workplaces, every day. People are expected to ‘leave their religion at the door’ when in public, as if this key part of their identity can be checked into the cloak room. Effectively, ‘separation’ becomes the demand for religious people simply to shut up when the person holding the megaphone dislikes what the religious person says.

Of course Christians can articulate a kernel of truth in these demands. When it comes to discussions about law, we don’t really think it works to use laws to make people believe what we think. Nor do we think the processes of government are a proper way to introduce others to Jesus Christ. We also know that utterances by Christians need to make meaningful sense to people who aren’t. The best Christian responses may have been informed by God’s revelation about what societies need; but will be stated in ways that connect with the experience of others. No matter what we believe, we all have to share the same terrain, so there’ll need to be reasoned negotiation and agreement on how to do that well. Christians don’t particularly want to ‘impose’ ways of living that make no sense and have no reasons that others can understand.

But it does not follow that our voice has no place or relevance in public life. Every participant in public debate thinks and speaks from some ‘private’ conviction. Our thoughts, attitudes and beliefs about how society works best are profoundly shaped by what we believe about the world, our place in it and the future we’re heading for. It’s equally clear that any public debate benefits from a whole range of opinions being given – indeed, we know that the Bible is full of wisdom on how to conduct ourselves within wider society and the networks of relationships that make it up.

So, how are Christians to answer these challenges? In any given discussion, there’ll be no easy way for Christians to counter the fear and misinformation that seeks for them to be silenced. Yet Christians should not ‘internalise’—that is, begin to take on board—the claim that they have no seat at the table, no ‘right’ to speak, or no good reason to be heard. Our best response as citizens will be to ‘seek the welfare of the city’ (as Jeremiah put it long ago [Jer. 29:7]), using our best insights, observations and arguments. We’d not hide where the Bible has shaped our view, but we’d also show how such a view can be deeply intelligible to others with whom we share the planet.

How well or badly that goes depends on a number of factors, some in our control, some not. Only practice and creativity will enable us to speak clearly, winsomely and creatively. Even then, other forces are always at work that can’t be predicted. At best, we’ll change the world a little. At worst, we’ll be martyred. Most likely, the effect or not or our input won’t be evident one way or another. But all of these options are, arguably, more honourable than giving up and staying silent.

At the Centre for Christian Living Open Night on Monday 2 April, we want to think about how to answer the charge that Christian voices shouldn’t be heard in public. Come and join us on the night to hear more about speaking in the public forum as a Christian.

CCL is a new Moore College initiative where we think about ethical and moral issues from the perspective of Christian theology. Open Nights are our monthly evening meeting where we carve out some time to think about a practical issue, such as work. For more information about this and what else CCL is doing, go to www.ccl.moore.edu.au.

Open Nights are $8/person, which includes supper afterward. (Moore College students have free entry.) You can pre-pay here (to avoid waiting in line), or just pay when you arrive.

Andrew Cameron lectures in Ethics at Moore College and is the Director of the Centre for Christian Living.

By Michael Jensen

Abstract doctrines of God have had their day. It is time for evangelicals to take more seriously their affirmation of the deity of Jesus Christ and begin to think about God on a thoroughly Christological basis.

            Bruce McCormack

In thinking about God, Christian theologians have traditionally espoused a position which has become known as Classical Theism. That is to say, they have started with the being and essence of God, and then proceeded to discuss his various ‘attributes’: those characteristics and qualities that belong to the divine being.

Classical theism is distinguished by its method and by its content. As far as method goes the classical theist works somewhat like a philosopher, deducing information about God from certain foundational propositions. This method of course has a relationship to its content: that God’s  being is utterly distinct from the creation and not dependent on it in any way at all. He is therefore changeless, or immutable, and nothing that happens in the world can affect God as far his being goes.

How does this relate to the Bible’s understanding of the God of Israel, and his self-revelation in Jesus Christ? The Christian classical theist can point to many Scriptural passages that support her contentions about God. Is he eternal? Well after all, for Him, ‘a thousand years is like a day’ (2 Peter 3:8). Does God change? ‘I the Lord do not change’? Does he change his mind? No, he is not a man, after all (Num 23:19). If there are metaphysical deductions to be made about the essence and attributes of God from these Scriptural affirmations, then it seems an entirely justifiable process in which to engage.

But the trouble is that this is a selective use of Scripture and, it seems, arbitrarily selective. A strong line of critique has been levelled at classical theism in recent years on the grounds that Scripture contains just many passages which are contrary to the propositions and deductions of classical theism as it does that support it. Or rather, if you read with a different set of passages as a control – especially the affirmation that ‘God is love’, from 1 John 4 – then you will come to a very different conclusion about God’s being.

The chief proponents of this critique are a group of American evangelical theologians flying under the banner of Open Theism. The open theist complains that classical theism is insufficiently Biblical, and influenced far too much instead by the categories of Greek philosophy. In particular, he claims, the future is not known by God, but is ‘open’.

In turn, however, Open Theism fails not the least because it is in fact just as arbitrary in its choice of texts to hold as controls. Although it claims to be more Biblical, it depends just as much on a preconceived and metaphysical determination of what God ought to be like as classical theism does. And it has the disadvantage of being a far more novel approach to the doctrine of God than its opponent. To make matters worse, the description that it gives of its controlling principle, namely ‘God is love’, is not learnt from what God actually does, but is rather a projection of the gooiest sentimentality of contemporary culture. Really…

So: what to do? Already, I have started talking about God from the starting point of the doctrine of the Trinity. I did this not because this is a an alternative abstract concept from which to start thinking about God but precisely because the Trinity draws us into the Biblical narrative of God’s action in the world – namely, in the gospel of Jesus Christ. We may then talk about the various qualities of God – his changelessness and his eternity and so on – from the perspective of what the knowledge of God in Christ reveals to us. Whatever we understand about God’s changelessness, for example, we understand in the light of Christ. God is sovereign, and loving, and holy, not abstractly, but precisely in the way we see these things revealed in Jesus.

Michael Jensen lectures in Doctrine and Church History.

By John Woodhouse

Believers must pray. This is not so much because we are commanded to pray (although that is also true), but because true faith in God cannot but find expression. Faith in God knows (1) our utter dependence on Him for everything we need and long for; (2) His ability to supply every good thing by His power and wisdom; and (3) His gracious will towards us. In Jesus Christ we have so learnt to know God. Not to come to Him in prayer, not to ask of Him as he has invited us to ask, would be a denial of this faith.

The Christian life begins with prayer (‘whoever calls on the name of the Lord will be saved’). Just as it is impossible to begin to be a Christian without prayer, so it is impossible to be a Christian without prayer. Everything that God promises us, he invites us to ask for in prayer. If we believe his promises, we will pray.

We will pray for forgiveness (Matt 6:12), for deliverance from evil (Matt 6:13), for our daily bread (Matt 6:11) and for the coming of God’s kingdom (Matt 6:10). We will pray that the Lord will send out labourers into his harvest (Matt 9:38), and for the advance of the word of the Lord into all the world (cf. 2Thess 3:1).

John Woodhouse is the Principal of Moore College. 

By George Athas

In January, I had the opportunity of introducing students to Hebrew at George Whitefield College in Cape Town, South Africa. This was part of GWC’s summer school program, which occurs annually just before the academic year begins in South Africa. It’s not my first visit to GWC, but as usual I had the privilege of enjoying their warm Christian fellowship and seeing people take their first ‘steps’ in Hebrew. Straight after that, I came back to Sydney to Moore College’s summer school, where I taught intermediate Hebrew to a group of our second year students. We have started dealing with some of the more irregular features of the language, as well as the kind of syntax they can encounter in reading and translating the Hebrew Old Testament. Since the semester has gotten underway, I’ve begun a unit with some of our fourth year students that will take them through the book of Zechariah in Hebrew. I’ve also been initiating a large group of our first year students into Hebrew for the first time. At this stage, we are still making our way through the alphabet (or rather, the ‘aleph-beth), and students are still surprising themselves as their mouths perform gymnastics they never before thought possible in the exercise of pronunciation. Yes, Hebrew has some interesting sounds! And some of the more interesting ones are yet to come. In short, it’s been a very ‘Hebraic’ beginning to the year.

As I’ve been engaged in teaching Hebrew, I’ve had opportunity, albeit brief, to reflect on the whole endeavour. Why do we learn Hebrew? Is it because we have a penchant for intricate linguistic analysis of obscure books from antiquity? Is it merely an academic exercise? Is it because we want to build an ivory tower in which we can sit and pontificate? No. We learn Hebrew because the Old Testament, which gives us the unfolding revelation of God from early antiquity, is mostly in Hebrew. Yes, the books of the Old Testament have been translated into English and other languages. However, as evangelicals, we want to get as close as possible to the texts that God has graciously given us in the process of disclosing himself. We want to plumb their depths, understand the subtleties as well as the broad outlines, and have as clear a picture of the God who inspired these texts as we possibly can. After all, if the Bible is the authority, then we will do our very best to understand it. We want many men and women to come to us who will be able to enact one of the mottos of the Reformation: ad fontes (‘to the sources!’). We want them to be able to handle the Word in season and out of season, in changing and challenging contexts. The Church is gathered by God around his Word. If our teachers are able to understand and appreciate the Bible in all its aspects, including its ‘BC’ element, then they will be motivated to present it clearly and faithfully to others who haven’t had the opportunity of learning Hebrew and studying the Bible in its original languages. And those others will, in turn, be nourished well.

A friend of mine who pastors a congregation told me of a young man in his church who was heading off to study at a theological college. This young man approached my friend for advice on making a choice: should he study Greek when he got to college, or should he study Hebrew? My friend’s response was legendary: “Well,” he said, “when you finish college and get up into your pulpit, do you want to be wearing only your shirt, or only your pants?” Since not many of us should presume to be teachers, we should do our best to make sure that our teachers are as well equipped as possible. Hebrew is just one of the tools of the trade.

But why don’t we just settle for English translations of the Bible? Why bother going through the pain of studying a foreign language or two, especially since we have some pretty good translations out there, and most adults tend to struggle learning a new language?

Well, imagine this scenario, if you will. You’ve just arrived at university and are sitting in your very first Latin literature class. You’ve always loved Roman history and wanted to understand it and its literature better. That’s why you’re there in the lecture room. Suppose then that the professor shows up to teach the course and he mentions that he doesn’t know a single thing about Latin. At this point you are probably wondering whether you’ll get the most out of the course, and whether the professor will be able to do justice to the subject you’ve wanted to know so much about.

It’s similar (though not entirely the same) with the original languages and the Bible. Our teachers in our churches, our theologians and Christian scholars, our Bible translators and missionaries, will inspire more confidence when they’ve done the hard yards of understanding the biblical texts — the authoritative Word of God — in the original languages. It’s not a guarantee to good teaching or sound theology, but it certainly is a good step in the right direction. It’s the responsible act of going back to the sources. It’s why, as evangelicals, we put such an emphasis on language learning and exegesis. And those students who take the difficult decision to do Hebrew (as well as Greek) and go through the struggle of persisting with this foreign antique language are to be commended for their efforts. Please pray for them, whether they are in Australia or Africa, Asia or South America.

<he turns to the first year Hebrew class> “OK class, let’s get introduced to the Hebrew letter ‘ayin’.”

George Athas is Director of Postgraduate Studies and lectures in Old Testament, Hebrew, and Early Church History.