Dr. Tony Evans: Keys To the Kingdom
Submitted by tcblack on Tue, 05/27/2008 - 5:36am
Theology can be either so esoteric that its useless for anything but discussion or it can be so simple that it loses its trancendancy
theology that does not tuch life is great information you can do nothing with
Ecclesiology;
The law of first mention takes us to Matthew 16 because it is the first mention of the church both by chronology and the first mention of the church by it's head.
(Ephesians is Paul's exegesis of the church).
Matthew 16:13-20- you here is plural
who do "y'all" say I am.
Peter answers a question which wasn't addressed strictly to him. ... Peter, he says, is the leader of the group and thus he answers as a group representative.
Simon means pebble
Peter means stone
Rock means a collection of smaller stones coalesced together.
The most important thing you can do is to build a leadership team.
ecclesia is an elected body who would make legislative decisions for the benefit of the people whom they represent.
The Gates of Hell: Throughout the OT the gates is a place of legislation, the elders would meet at the gate for business.
The ecclesia is going to make legal decisions which the gates of hell cannot override.
It's not about sovereignty against free will. It's sovereignty saying at he beginning "Let them rule" Thus it is our will wrapped inside of he sovereignty of God. It's football field. God sovereignly defines the field and we run around on it wherever we want, we just can't cross the lines.
2 peter 3:9 God won't move until we seek him.
Matthew 16:19
bind means to stop, restrict
Loose means to permit,
I'm going to give you the right to say what will and won't work. This is a legal issue.
This is why holding God to his word is critical.
Take up your keyring. Set legislation, take up your word of God and put it into action. When you do that - you will see God respond with what he's doing.
You want the church built? use the keys.
Comments
Not buying into God's ignorance
I saw you made no mention of Dr. Evans statments regarding God's ignorance of the future, especially regarding Abraham's willingness to sacrifice Isaac. I was surprised by his teaching on this topic.
Sounded like Open Theism to me. Also the Rock being unified church leadership is quite a stretch!
Dr. Evans specifically
Dr. Evans specifically denied an open theism link in his comment. Being the sort that tends to think the best of people and knowing what I know of Tony Evans I took his statement at face value as a weakly worded version of what he'd rather say if he had the time. He was already pushing time pretty hard and his point on the authority of the church in terms of "divine legality" lay elsewhere.
FWIW I don't buy God's ignorance either. I happen to believe the psalmist when he says, "Every day of my life was written down before I came to be" (paraphrase of Psalm 139:16). If we read that with an eye on Genesis 22 than we know that God knew Abraham would offer his son, but Abraham's faith wasn't proven until his actions demonstrated the reality of it.
Disclaimer not enough to counter clear statements
True he specifically made that disclaimer but that sort of begged the question when what he was saying was clearly that God did not know what Abraham was going to choose.
He made much of the fact that the text says: "Now I know..."
He also made several statements regarding God being limited by our choices or lack of faith. I found the message very disappointing and disturbing.
I think the best of Dr. Evans which is why the repeated emphases was so disturbing.
After such a God-exalting week of worship and preaching his message left much to be desired!
Now you're making me wish
Now you're making me wish I'd purchased the MP3 so I could listen again and make better comments. Unfortunately I didn't.
Where did the definitions come from?
Dr Tony Evans builds a case on the folowing:
Simon means pebble
Peter means stone
Rock means a collection of smaller stones coalesced together.
I understand where definition 2 comes from but does anyone know where 1 and 3 are derived from, I have never seen these two definitions before.
On Pebble > Rock > Stone
I've never looked into it myself before today but I've heard the pebble/stone story before. Let's do a bit of research here:
Simon is merely a transliteration of Σίμων. Σίμων was considered the equivalent of the Hebrew patriarchal name Symeon (EDNT)1 At best it means hearing (Zodhiates)2. Many resources take care to indicate that Peter means stone but Simon most assuredly does not mean stone. It's a flaw in Tony Evan's exegesis and renders the foundation of his reasoning suspect. (It is possible that I didn't take those notes correctly but I'm nearly positive that this was his progression.)
Out of generosity I will defer that he may have been making a character statement (not likely I know) that Simon was a small man, but Peter was a rock.
Peter is Πέτρος which is variously translated as Stone (ANLEX) and distinct3 from πέτρα or cliff. TDNT notes that the πετρα ανδ πετρος were not always strongly differentiated but in common usage the difference was understood.4 Indeed the rest of the TDNT article is worth reading in it's entirety on the matter especialy subsection C. As a name it is not a normal name until the Christian era. Homer used the word to describe the object of a stone. (EDNT 3:82) Zodhiates clarifies by saying, “Pétros always means a stone, never a rock as referred to by Homer. It is a large stone, a piece or fragment of a rock such as a man might throw.”5 Sophocles went farther using the term of a boulder large enough to form a landmark.6
Upon this Rock: Rock is πέτρᾳ which has been refered to above as differentiated in common practice (TDNT) from stone.
In the common vernacular we might well say “...Simon you are a stone and upon this cliff I will build my church...”
In the Aramaic (can't remember where I read it) the same word is used in both instances. The first part therefore of Tony's argument (Simon=pebble) if it was recorded by me accurately was flat out wrong. But the common application of “you're a small rock” and on this “big rock” I'll build my church” is a reasonably sound one.
1Horst Robert Balz and Gerhard Schneider, Exegetical Dictionary of the New Testament, Translation of: Exegetisches Worterbuch Zum Neuen Testament. (Grand Rapids, Mich.: Eerdmans, 1990-c1993), 3:244.
2Spiros Zodhiates, The Complete Word Study Dictionary : New Testament, electronic ed. (Chattanooga, TN: AMG Publishers, 2000, c1992, c1993), G4613.
3H.G. Liddell, A Lexicon : Abridged from Liddell and Scott's Greek-English Lexicon (Oak Harbor, WA: Logos Research Systems, Inc., 1996), 636.
4The difference in meaning between the two Gk. words is not fixed, though in common Gk. usage ὁ πέτρος tends to denote the isolated rock and ἡ πέτρα the cliff
Theological Dictionary of the New Testament, Vols. 5-9 Edited by Gerhard Friedrich. Vol. 10 Compiled by Ronald Pitkin., ed. Gerhard Kittel, Geoffrey William Bromiley and Gerhard Friedrich, electronic ed. (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1964-c1976), 6:101.
5Spiros Zodhiates, The Complete Word Study Dictionary : New Testament, electronic ed. (Chattanooga, TN: AMG Publishers, 2000, c1992, c1993), G4074.
6Henry George Liddell, Robert Scott, Henry Stuart Jones and Roderick McKenzie, A Greek-English Lexicon, "With a Revised Supplement, 1996.", Rev. and augm. throughout (Oxford; New York: Clarendon Press; Oxford University Press, 1996), 1398.
Thanks Thomas, your
Thanks Thomas, your explanation is as I would have understood this passage before I saw this, personally I would suggest a second flaw in the argument which is the use of the word coalesce making the large rock the joining of many stones my view being that the larger rock in the flow of the text is Jesus Himself i.e. a single large stone. I have to say that I had never heard the pebble thing and searched my Logos Library in vain to find a link between Simon and pebble.