The Tapestry of Scripture

Tony Reinke Biblical Theology, Scripture, spurgeon

That list of biblical references running down the gutter of each page the ESV Study Bible is a compilation of thousands of cross-references that point to other thematically related parts of Scripture. All told the ESVSB has 80,000 of those cross-references.

There’s a history to who actually made those connections. The references found in the ESVSB were compiled by a team of Bible scholars from Oxford and Cambridge Universities over 100 years ago. Their work was first used in the English Revised Version (RV), a version that appeared in 1881.

A few years back Lutheran pastor Christoph Römhild wondered if an infographic could capture cross-references like these for the purpose of visualizing the tapestry of Scripture. He contacted Chris Harrison, who said yes, and together they created this:

Each bar along the bottom represents a chapter from Genesis (left) to Revelation (right). The length of the bar correspond to the length of the chapter (Psalm 119 is easy to find in the middle). The cross-references are arched and colored by arch length. In all this graphic represents 63,779 colorful cross-references (I’m unsure how they arrived at this number, cross-referencing being something of an art — the Thompson’s Chain-Reference Bible has over 100,000, for example).

Beautiful graphic, isn’t it? This is a wonderful visual reminder of the thematic unity of Scripture, and it serves as a great personal reminder to read every verse in light of the bigger biblical storyline.

You can find a large version of the graphic and more information here.

Interview on Book Reading

Tony Reinke .Lit!, Books, Reading

By reading his blog and his books over the years I have a deepened respect for my friend Trevin Wax. If you don’t read his blog, you really should take the time to subscribe.

Today Trevin posted an interview with me on the topic of book reading and my new book Lit!. Trevin is an experienced interviewer and asks questions that get directly at important points. He asked questions like these:

  • What are the different ways one should read a book? Why should certain books be read one way and other books read another way? And how can you tell the difference?
  • How much time and attention should we give to classic literature?
  • How have you found classic literature to be spiritually beneficial?
  • You recommend marking up books. Why?
  • Name a few novels that you’d recommend Christians consider reading.
  • How can we read discerningly from Christians in other theological streams?

You can read the full interview here.

On Dispensing Religious Jargon

Tony Reinke Helmut Thielicke, Preaching, Sin, Sin in Culture, Sin in the church, Writing

Here’s a wise caution for all preachers, teachers, and writers who frequently draw from the vocabulary of the faith — words like sin, grace, Christ, and a host of other sanctified terms that emerge over time within our particular circles — but who are tempted to use the terms without ever stopping to explain their meaning. Helmut Thielicke explains the danger, and then proposes one helpful practice, in his book The Trouble with the Church: A Call for Renewal (Harper & Row, 1965), pages 36–38:

Where is the average person today who, when he hears the word “sin,” really hears what the New Testament meant by that word? For whom today does this word still say that here man is being addressed at the point of his resistance and opposition to God, that this means man in his will to assert his autonomy, his insistence that everything centers in man, his incredible passion for security, his lostness in preoccupation with the moment and that which is tangible and immediately at hand? And yet all this must be heard when we hear the word “sin,” if for no other reason than to understand that it is possible for a sinner to be at the same time an example of moral perfection and that he need by no means be a criminal, an antisocial, or even a person who lacks seriousness. Were not the Pharisees ethically very respectable people? And yet for Jesus they were more drastic examples of sin than publicans and prostitutes.

And the word “Christ” itself? What would really be the result if we were to investigate the exchange value of that term in the psychological substructure of the average man today? What we would come out with would probably be some idea of a fabulously wise man or a perfect human being.

The point is that we need to say what we mean by these terms; we dare not throw them at people as supposedly valid coins whose value is immediately recognized. Otherwise we shall all too thoughtlessly reach out for them with the notion that they are perfectly familiar, whereas the truth is that the metal begins to glow and burn only when we have some idea of what these coins really signify. …

I once experimented with students, having them prepare sermons in which the conventional terms like “God,” “sin,” “grace,” etc. did not appear. The words had to be paraphrased. I think this is a good exercise, even though it has importance only as an interim practice. For we should not discontinue the use of these words in the pulpit; all we need is a withdrawal-cure because of the thoughtless use we make of them. We need to learn to overcome the temptation to string together the old words in different variations, because then souls remain underfed and are lost.

Daily Renewal and Resurrection

Tony Reinke Resurrection, Sanctification

It’s very easy to dislocate daily renewal (personal growth, progressive sanctification) from the much broader picture of God’s redemptive plan for your life and from future personal bodily resurrection. Our hope of resurrection does not negate the value of our daily progress; daily progress does not diminish the incredible transformation that must happen in the resurrection. In that light Murray Harris makes an important point in his comments on 2 Corinthians 4:16, and the place of this text within the broader flow of Paul’s book. Harris writes:

For Paul, the spiritual body was not simply the state of the renewed “inner self” at the time of the believer’s death, but it seems a priori likely that he saw a relationship between the two, that he regarded resurrection not as a creatio ex nihilo, a sudden divine operation unrelated to the past, but as the fulfillment of a spiritual process begun at regeneration. The daily renewal of the “inward person” (2 Cor 4:16) contributed toward the progressive transformation of the believer into the image of Christ (3:18) in a process that would be accelerated and completed by resurrection. Paul does not explicitly say that his ἔσω ἄνθρωπος [“inner self”] is the embryo of the spiritual body or bears its undeveloped image, but the natural transition of his thought from 4:16 to 5:1–4 shows that this sentiment would have been congenial to him. As a result of the final convulsion of resurrection, the butterfly of the spiritual body will emerge from the chrysalis of the renewed “inner person.”

[Source: Murray Harris, The Second Epistle to the Corinthians, 360.]

While the Gospel is Silenced

Tony Reinke Martin Luther, Reformation, Reformation Day

The same day he nailed his 95 theses to the door of Castle Church in Wittenberg, Martin Luther wrote a letter to Cardinal Albrecht, the Archbishop of Mainz (October 31, 1517). In it he writes:

Works of piety and love are infinitely better than indulgences; and yet [the indulgence preachers] do not preach them with an equally big display and effort. What is even worse, [the preachers] are silent about them because they have to preach the sale of the indulgences. The first and only duty of the bishops, however, is to see that the people learn the gospel and the love of Christ. For on no occasion has Christ ordered that indulgences should be preached, but he forcefully commanded the gospel to be preached. What a horror, what a danger for a bishop to permit the loud noise of indulgences among his people, while the gospel is silenced, and to be more concerned with the sale of indulgences than with the gospel! Will not Christ say to [such bishops], “You strain out a gnat but swallow a camel”?

[Source: Luther’s Works, vol. 48, page 47.]