“Some modern theologians say, ‘God doesn’t speak.’ Well, He says, He does.”

J.I. Packer from Lecture at Regent College

God Has Spoken: Revelation and the Bible 3rd Edition

Chapter Two: The Lost Word

Apparently, although I have not scientifically verified it, there is more than one way to skin a cat. Likewise there is more than one way to lose the Word of God.

Losing the Word

In the second chapter of God Has Spoken, Packer draws an analogy between the famine of the Word announced by the prophet Amos to the people of the Northern Kingdom in the eighth century BC and his contemporary situation. That is, while Creator God spoke to the people through the prophets to His people, there came a time when a refusal by the people (especially those with power) to listen to God resulted in God answering with silence. If you won’t listen, then I will stop speaking or I will make you deaf.

Christians have always affirmed the authority of the Bible. The earliest Christians affirmed the authority of the Law, the Prophets, and the Writings which Christ and the apostles read as witnessing to the character, covenant and promises of the God of Israel and to Jesus Christ as the fulfillment of those promises and climax of those covenants. At the same time, particular texts written by the apostles and their close associates were used in much the same way. These are commonly referred to as the Old and New Testaments, respectively. Continue reading “God Has Spoken 2: Reflections on J.I. Packer’s Book” →