Piper responds to Witherington
There is some juicy debate on theology going on right now, while I’m studying for finals.
As I reported & commented on this issue in my previous post “Magnifying God in Christ“, Pastor John Piper has just responded to Ben Witherington with his own article, God’s Loving Self-Exaltation:
1. The explicit biblical textual foundation for Schreiner’s thesis is pervasive and overwhelming.
2. God’s exaltation of his own glory is not narcissistic but loving, because it directs our attention away from ourselves to the one glorious reality that can satisfy our souls forever.
3. God’s self-glorification is not the alternative to our glorification but the foundation and goal of it, as Schreiner will make plain.
4. The real cultural bondage today is not that too many people are making God radically God-centered, but that most people cannot conceive of his being loving unless he is man-centered.
5. To suggest that Tom Schreiner is “creating God in our own self-centered image” because he says, with the apostle Paul, that God saves us “for the praise of his glory” (Eph. 1:6, 12, 14) is less an indictment of Tom than of Ben.
Check out also Piper’s Biblical Texts to Show God’s Zeal for His Own Glory, in which he summarizes a few passages in support of God’s loving self-exaltation.
