Between Two Worlds

From one of my favorite ministries: "STR has a new feature - a 14-week series of short lessons on 'Tactics in Defending the Faith' that will be delivered to your email inbox. It's a free and practical resource from STR's most popular topic."

Be on the lookout this September for Greg Koukl's new book, Tactics: A Game Plan for Discussing Your Christian Convictions (Zondervan). Koukl is not only a great thinker, but also a wise and winsome communicator.

Check out a number of videos of him answering objections to the faith on YouTube.

Mollie Ziegler Hemingway writes today in the Wall Street Journal about the odd case of the Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod canceling its popular, nationally syndicated radio program "Issues, Etc."

In listening to an old lecture recently by J. I. Packer, he made the comment that it was not until after the 17th century (as far as he could tell) that people started doing silent prayers and reading as opposed to praying and reading out loud.

For most evangelicals, silence represents the vast majority of our reading and praying. But I wonder if that's to our detriment. One of the great enemies to Bible reading and praying is a wandering mind--and one of the great ways to make your mind wander is to do everything in your mind without involving your voice and ears!

With regard to reading the Word, one thing I've found helpful is to hear and read the audio at the same time. For example, in the ESV you can go to Psalm 1. Notice that next to the chapter reference there's a little button where you can listen (for free) to Max McLean read whatever portion of Scripture you've selected.

Here's something else to consider: the entire Bible on audio is usually about 75 hours (or 4500 minutes). If you commute to work 5 days a week, that's about 260 days a year. And if it takes you, say, 17 minutes to commute each way to work--and if you listen to the Bible on audio during your drive each way--you'll get through the entire Bible twice in a year. That's a good start on Psalm 1:2.

Good thinking and teaching on the biblical office of deacon is rare these days. Here's an insightful post by Thabiti Anyabwile on the topic.

Anthony Bradley of Covenant Theological Seminary was recently on Glenn Beck's TV show on the Headline News Network to answer some brief questions on black liberation theology:



Eric Redmond was interviewed the other day on this issue by Al Mohler, and you can also read online a partial transcript. (Speaking of Redmond, but sure to check out his forthcoming book, Where Are All the Brothers?: Straight Answers to Men's Questions about the Church.) And don't miss Rev. Redmond's pre-primer on Black Liberation Theology.

Finally, Thabiti writes (and I agree): "This is probably the best review and interaction with Obama's speech on race that I've read from someone opposing Obama's basic political philosophy and outlook. It's 'fair and balanced' in a way that most reviews are not."

Adam Cheung interviews Tom Schreiner about his forthcoming book, New Testament Theology: Magnifying God in Christ.

News has just been made public regarding yesterday's special meeting of the Board of Trustees at Westminster Theological Seminary (Philadelphia), which met to address "the disunity of the faculty regarding the theological issues related to Dr. Peter Enns' book, Inspiration and Incarnation: Evangelicals and the Problem of the Old Testament." The Board decided to suspend Professor Enns at the close of the school year, with a process in place to consider whether he should be terminated from his employment at the Seminary.

Here is the letter from the Chairman of the Board:

March 27, 2008

Thank you very much for your prayers for the special meeting of the Board of Trustees that was held on March 26 to address the disunity of the faculty regarding the theological issues related to Dr. Peter Enns' book, Inspiration and Incarnation: Evangelicals and the Problem of the Old Testament. After a full day of deliberation, the Board of Trustees took the following action by decisive vote:

"That for the good of the Seminary (Faculty Manual II.4.C.4) Professor Peter Enns be suspended at the close of this school year, that is May 23, 2008 (Constitution Article III, Section 15), and that the Institutional Personnel Committee (IPC) recommend the appropriate process for the Board to consider whether Professor Enns should be terminated from his employment at the Seminary. Further that the IPC present their recommendations to the Board at its meeting in May 2008."

In order to provide the entire Westminster community with a more complete understanding of the Board's decision and to offer an opportunity for questions and dialogue, the Chairman and Secretary of the Board will join the President on campus for a special chapel on Tuesday, April 1 at 10:30 am. Students and staff are encouraged to attend and participate. Following that special chapel, they will hold a separate meeting with the faculty.

Our concern is to honor the Lord Jesus Christ and assure a faithful witness for Westminster for years to come. To that end, please pray for everyone involved during the next two months.

Jack White
Chairman of the Board

(HT: Sibboleth)

No matter where you stand on the issues (for a review of the debate over Enns's book, see this post), this is a difficult day for Westminster Theological Seminary, and I would encourage prayers for all involved.

Update: More links about the book here.

Lee Irons: "John Fonville (of Gospel Driven Blog) has created some very helpful chapter-by-chapter outlines of Walter Marshall’s 1692 book The Gospel Mystery of Sanctification, using the modern English version edited by Bruce McRae. I highly recommend this book as well as these tools enabling us to access its contents more readily. Do you desire to grow in sanctification? Are you tired of legalistic, law-driven approaches? Let Walter Marshall show you the way as he points you to Christ and your union with him in his sin-killing death and life-giving resurrection. See also my three lectures on sanctification that draw heavily on Marshall."

The latest 9Marks interview: "Proud to be a Protestant? R. Kent Hughes, pastor emeritus at College Church in Wheaton, Illinois, discusses with Mark Dever his 40 years of pastoral ministry."

Russell Moore weighs in.

The Baptist Press reports. Praise to God.

HT: Denny Burk

I've mentioned the book Why We're Not Emergent a number of times. It's now available from Amazon.com. Tim Challies reviews it today.

You can go to the book's website and read the first chapter and see the endorsements.

Ligonier has posted a video of R.C. Sproul interviewing Ben Stein, whose new documentary, Expelled (on Darwinism and intelligent design), opens April 18.

I would also recommend reading Sproul's book on related issues: Not a Chance: The Myth of Chance in Modern Science and Cosmology.

(HT: Challies)

A new interview here, where Keller is asked "a few questions about his ministry and understanding of communicating the gospel, and then a few questions from a skeptics' perspective to see how he would answer."

The following is an interview I conducted with Craig Blomberg, Distinguished Professor of New Testament at Denver Seminary.

Can you tell us a bit about your own personal experience in coming to embrace the historical reliability of the gospels? Was there a period of time in your life when you seriously doubted the historical integrity of the gospel accounts?

I was raised in a fairly liberal branch of the old Lutheran Church in America, before the merger that created today’s ELCA. I vividly remember being very puzzled in confirmation class when I was taught/shown how the Synoptic accounts of the Last Supper contradicted each other as an illustration of how our doctrine of Scripture should focus on the main points and basic thoughts of the text but allow for contradictions in the details. Even in junior high, it seemed to me that there were plausible ways of combining the texts into a harmonious whole and seeing each as a partial excerpt of a larger narrative, but our pastor didn’t countenance that option.

In college, at an LCA school, all five of our religion department professors were ordained Lutheran ministers but not one of them believed that Jesus said or did more than a significant minority of the things attributed to him in the canonical gospels. Our Campus Crusade for Christ director on campus, however, pointed us to a lot of good literature that presented credible scholarly alternatives to the skeptical views on numerous subjects that the religion department promoted. Our college library also included quite a large volume of more conservative religious scholarship from a slightly older era because, until the 1960s it had housed a seminary as well as an undergraduate college, and the real move toward liberalism didn’t hit the Lutherans until the 1960s, just one decade before I was in college. So I realized that things weren’t nearly as cut and dried as I was being taught in class.

I also discovered that a disproportionate number of the more evangelical works of the 1970s, at least among those written in America, came from profs at Trinity in Deerfield, which is one of the main reasons I went there for seminary. That was a wonderful time as I encountered so many more credible responses to skeptical approaches that I had been interacting with in junior high, senior high, and college. And credible evangelical scholarship has only blossomed in pretty amazing quantities ever since.

One can easily find blogs and websites claiming that Jesus never existed. Even if we didn’t have the New Testament, what would we know about Jesus from non-Christian sources?

The best source here for a book-length answer is Robert van Voorst’s Jesus outside the New Testament (Eerdmans, 2000). Here is my composite summary:

Jesus was a first-third of the first-century Jew, who lived in Israel, was born out of wedlock, whose ministry intersected with that of John the Baptist, who became a popular teacher and wonder-worker, who gathered particularly close disciples to himself, five of whom are named (though some of the names are a bit garbled), who consistently taught perspectives on the Law that ran afoul of the religious authorities’ interpretations, who was believed to be the Messiah, who was eventually crucified under Pontius Pilate, Roman procurator in Judea (which enables us to narrow the date for that event to somewhere between A.D. 26 and 36), and who was allegedly seen by many of his followers as bodily resurrected from the dead. Instead of dying out, the movement of his followers continued to grow with each passing decade and within a short period of time people were singing hymns to him as if he were a god.

What are some of the major categories of alleged gospel contradictions?

Theological distinctives, numerical discrepancies, similar events that may actually reflect separate episodes or teachings in his life, partial excerptings from longer events, approximations that would not have been seen as inaccurate by the standards of the day, occasional tensions with extra-biblical data, and the like.

Could you give us a couple of examples of alleged contradictions that have plausible solutions?

Did the centurion come to Jesus right off the bat and ask him for his servant to be healed (as in Matthew 8) or did he first send some Jewish elders as an embassy to ask on his behalf (as in Luke 7)? Probably, the latter, since to act on behalf of another person could have been reported as acting oneself. We have the same convention when the media report that “the President today announced. . .” when in fact it was his press secretary.

Did the Sanhedrin condemn Jesus to be sent on to Pilate for execution during a nighttime trial (as in Luke) or first thing after dawn in the morning (as in Matthew and Mark). Probably both. It was illegal to come to a capital verdict at night, but in the flurry of events and eagerness of the authorities to do away with Jesus, it is hard to imagine them not beginning to interrogate him during the night and come to provisional conclusions. But to create the aura of legality, a quick rubber-stamp formal hearing involving the legal essentials, first thing in the morning, is equally likely.

Let me ask about one in particular, because it has been highlighted by Bart Ehrman as being decisive in his journey from evangelical to agnostic. It began, he says, after writing a graduate paper attempting to harmonize the fact that Mark 2:26 has Jesus saying that David entered the temple to eat the bread of the Presence in the days of Abiathar the high priest—but in point of fact, 1 Samuel 21 clearly says that Ahimelech was the high priest during this episode. How would you respond? Was Jesus mistaken?

The Greek here is very unusual. The construction is a two word prepositional phrase, epi Abiathar, which literally means “upon Abiathar.” Obviously, some kind of idiom is being used. One possibility is “in the days of A.” But in Mark 12:26, Mark uses the same construction, epi tou batou (literally, “upon the bush”) where most translations render it something like “in the account of the bush” or “in the passage about the bush”. This makes very good sense of Mark 2:26 as well. Jesus could very well have been saying, “in the account/passage about Abiathar.”
The next question, then, is what Jews in Jesus’ day would have considered an “account” or “passage.” We tend to think today in terms of fairly small chunks of text, but ancient Jews read all of the Torah annually straight through in weekly synagogue readings and the rest of the Old Testament in a triennial cycle of readings. To do so required multiple chapters to be read during worship each week. Each of these multiple-chapter accounts had names to help identify them, sometimes as short as one word. Often the names were the names of a key character in the text. Unfortunately no list of all the names used for the passages has survived. The only ones we know of are those that are mentioned sporadically in the rabbinic literature in the context of some other kind of discussion. But it is hardly implausible to imagine that Abiathar might have been the name given to a multiple-chapter segment of 1 Samuel that included chapter 21 and the details about Ahimelech, since Abiathar appears in the very next chapter of 1 Samuel and became the better remembered of the two figures in Jewish history. I might add that John Wenham set all of this out in a brief article in the Journal of Theological Studies way back in 1950.

Ehrman, in his introduction to Misquoting Jesus, tells the story of writing a paper at Princeton in which he defended a resolution to this problem, though he doesn’t tell us what it was. It wouldn’t surprise me if it was something along these lines, since the article would already have been well known when he was a student. Ehrman goes on to describe how it was his professor’s response (asking him why he did not just say that Mark made a mistake) that revolutionized his attitude toward Scripture. And it was all down hill for him from there.

There are a lot of things I would like to say in response to Ehrman’s autobiographical reflections. But I’ll limit myself here to saying two things. First, if one was prepared to abandon all pretense of Christian faith on the basis of one apparent error in Scripture, one’s faith must not have amounted to much in the first place. I have no problem with accepting as Christian the approach that allows for minor historical mistakes in the Bible but still acknowledges the main story line. That’s not the approach that I take, but I know far too many solid believers who do opt for such an approach to dismiss it as not an option for a genuine Christian. But second, I wonder what else made Ehrman reject his original paper and/or an approach like Wenham’s. I have yet to hear anyone give me a good reason why it is improbable.

Are there certain mistaken hermeneutical presuppositions made by conservative evangelicals that play into the hands of liberal critics?

Absolutely. And one of them follows directly from the last part of my answer to your last question. The approach, famously supported back in 1976 by Harold Lindsell in his Battle for the Bible (Zondervan), that it is an all-or-nothing approach to Scripture that we must hold, is both profoundly mistaken and deeply dangerous. No historian worth his or her salt functions that way. I personally believe that if inerrancy means “without error according to what most people in a given culture would have called an error” then the biblical books are inerrant in view of the standards of the cultures in which they were written. But, despite inerrancy being the touchstone of the largely American organization called the Evangelical Theological Society, there are countless evangelicals in the States and especially in other parts of the world who hold that the Scriptures are inspired and authoritative, even if not inerrant, and they are not sliding down any slippery slope of any kind. I can’t help but wonder if inerrantist evangelicals making inerrancy the watershed for so much has not, unintentionally, contributed to pilgrimages like Ehrman’s. Once someone finds one apparent mistake or contradiction that they cannot resolve, then they believe the Lindsells of the world and figure they have to chuck it all. What a tragedy!

The first edition of The Historical Reliability of the Gospels was published over 20 years ago, and I know that it has been instrumental for many in recovering a basic belief in the reliability of the gospel accounts. The following question might be difficult to answer, but could you give any generalizations about the ways in which perceptions have changed—positively and negatively—in the last 20 years, in the academy, in the pew, and in the marketplace of ideas?

I am very encouraged by most of the developments of the last twenty years. Scholars of all stripes far more often engage evangelical scholarship today than they did two decades ago. Whether or not they engage my book directly, they certainly engage many of the writings of the scholars I rely on most heavily. The so-called third quest of the historical Jesus, which really began in earnest in mid-1980s, continues unabated and is strikingly more optimistic about what we can recover from the canonical texts about the historical Jesus. It is a pity that what has dominated the average American’s attention during this period includes primarily the Jesus Seminar (during the 1990s) which was a largely non-representative and idiosyncratic slice of the scholarly world and now increasingly (during this decade) whatever makes it to the Internet rather than whatever represents the best scholarship even if available only in hard copy form.

The democratization of information that the Internet has created is a very mixed blessing. Without the peer-review process that academic publishers require, anybody can say anything, however, outrageously skewed or downright false, and far too many people read Internet publications far too gullibly. Indeed, if I hadn’t written the peer-reviewed works that I have that people can consult, they shouldn’t necessarily be believing me on this blog! Who knows whether I’d be telling the truth or not?

With regard to the marketplace of ideas, what can evangelicals be doing better to engage the culture on these issues? Evangelical scholars have done an outstanding job of producing top-notch books that defend truth. But what role, if any, do you see new media playing in the next phase of the defense of the faith?

Boy you’ve arranged these questions well. Each one seems to follow from the previous one! In my opinion, the answer has to be both-and. We must continue to publish peer-reviewed works, even if for awhile that still means they will not be Internet accessible. But we must co-operate with each other, even as you and I, Justin, are doing on this blogposting, so that people who ill-advisedly choose not to read anything that can’t be accessed with a split-second Internet connection will find solid scholarship disseminated, and popularized, in the media they are employing. An excellent, new example of this, to which I am contributing, is the brainchild of Darrell Bock at Dallas Seminary and is called Prime Time Jesus. It can be accessed at http://blog.bible.org/primetimeJesus/. A dozen North American evangelical historical Jesus scholars take turns posting blogs related to new developments in research and responding to new stories and media events that are making news. No one is overworked, we can all interact with each other, no one can pontificate idiosyncratically without some checks and balances, and anyone in the world can have quick access to the fruits of the best scholarship on this continent germane to the issues at hand.

Finally, what books are you currently working on?

Although my Jesus and the Gospels: An Introduction and Survey been in print for only eleven, rather than twenty, years, Broadman & Holman have asked me to do an updated version, which will, Lord willing, come out some time in 2009. Because the book, to my delight (and somewhat to my astonishment), has been widely adopted all around the world as a textbook, it is more crucial to keep it up-to-date. It won’t be revised nearly as much as Historical Reliability was, but all the literature and footnotes will be made much more current, small additional sections are being added, and the text is being reworded slightly in places where I realize that very recent scholarship requires it.

Thank you for your time, and for your many years of studying and writing in order to serve the church and to be a faithful witness.

You’re very welcome. Thank you for the invitation to participate in this blog.

Dan Wallace writes about new NT manuscripts that have now been discovered.

Andy Naselli writes:

The second essay in Christ on Campus Initiative’s series was released this morning: Craig Blomberg’s “Jesus of Nazareth: How Historians Can Know Him and Why It Matters.” The CCI essays are (1) by evangelical scholars, (2) geared for campus evangelism, and (3) edited by D. A. Carson.

This is an excellent essay, well worth reading and making available.

Andreas Kostenberger has posted a helpful biographical sketch of D.A. Carson. I believe this was originally published in Bible Interpreters of the 20th Century: A Selection of Evangelical Voices, ed. Elwell and Weaver (Grand Rapids: Baker, 1999), pp. 423-433.

The Harris Brothers' book, Do Hard Things, is currently ranked #8 overall at Amazon.com. As I've mentioned before, especially if you're a parent or teen, this is a book well worth reading.

Scot McKnight on Klyne Snodgrass's massive new book, Stories with Intent: A Comprehensive Guide to the Parables of Jesus:

... a book comes along and you make a decision about its importance. This book, you decide, ends the need for a dozen or so other books on your shelves. You go to your shelf, pick up those books, put them in your "To Sell" (or "To Give Away") stack, and put that one book on your shelf that replace the others. Yes, I've got such a book for you:

Klyne Snodgrass, Stories with Intent, is such a book. If you purchase this book, you won't need another book on parables for at least a decade. It's available on Amazon right now for almost 40% off. Sure it's a big book, about 800 pages, but there are 32 parables ... and he's got solid chps on interpreting parables, on parables in the ancient world, and a few charts at the back.

I know Klyne; he's been at this book for 20 years. He wrote this book for you: for those who want to study parables. It's not a theory, it's a handbook. If you want to know:

The parable type
The issues for interpretation
The helpful primary source material (Bible, Jewish sources, Greco-Roman, early Christian, later Jewish -- much of it cited right there)
The parallels to this parable (if in the Gospels)
Textual features worth noting
Cultural information worth knowing about
Explanation of parable with options and decisions on the issues
Adapting the parable
Bibliography

It's all here. Helpful, concise, accessible.

Did I say I like it?

I have a shelf of books on parables; I will keep them for one reason. I may have to write something that requires citing a variety of books on the parables. But, I'm not kidding you, this may be the only book on parables a pastor or a student ever needs.

Tim Challies reviews John Eldredge's latest book.

This fall Crossway Bibles will be releasing an all-new major study Bible, called The ESV Study Bible. As some of you may know, I have the privilege of being the managing editor on this project.

A website has been set up, www.esvstudybible.org, where you can sign up to receive updates about it. Look for more information on April 15, 2008.

I try not to over-use the label, "must read," but sometimes it's virtually inevitable when commending Carl Trueman's writing. Here he looks at what Luther's practice and theology can teach us about "the problems caused by words that create hurt or are spiteful, words that reshape our realities in ways that do us harm on numerous levels." Read the whole thing.

Peter Jones reviews Viola and Barna's Pagan Christianity. Here's the conclusion:

The apostle Paul gives the best definition of paganism (and do we ever need it in today’s world!), namely, the worship and service of the creation rather than the Creator (Romans 1:25). Here is an explicit comparison of biblical theism and pagan monism, of the truth and the lie, of the truth of the Creature/creature distinction and of the lie of the divinity of Nature preached by the prophets of the New Spirituality. Of this true paganism, Viola seems dreadfully or naively ignorant. What could have been a significant book, as the title ambiguously suggests, by containing a solemn warning about the inroads of neo-paganism into the culture and the Church today, will alas succeed in doing the very opposite. By evacuating from the term "pagan" any real theological content, and by failing to identify the re-emergence of ancient idolatry in the form of modern mystical spirituality, this book, with the name Barna emblazoned on the front cover, will simply ensure that many will be inoculated from seeing the real thing, namely, the invasion of real "Pagan Christianity," which, as the next great impending apostasy, will threaten the Church to its very roots. From that, Viola’s "liver quiver" gatherings will not save us.

Larry Hurtado, Professor of New Testament Language, Literature and Theology at Edinburgh University Divinity School, has a short essay in Slate.com on The Curious Idea of Resurrection.

Graeme Goldsworthy delivered the following lectures at Southern Seminary last week:

The Necessity and Viability of Biblical Theology (MP3) (PDF)

Biblical Theology in the Seminary and Bible College (MP3) (PDF)

Biblical Theology and Its Pastoral Application (MP3) (PDF)

Andreas Kostenberger posts a helpful chart showing the 11 recorded post-resurrection appearances of Jesus in the NT.

Here is something you might find fruitful while contemplating the events leading up to our Savior's death and resurrection: an attempt in Google Earth to show the locations of the major events (to the best of our knowledge) along with descriptions and biblical passages describing those events:



The KML file lets you interact with this map in Google Earth, allowing you to rotate the view and zoom in from various angles.

Crossway has just published a couple of "on the go" devotionals by Lydia Brownback that I would recommend for women of all ages. Here's the description:

An easy-to-carry “pocket book” that steers women away from the world’s weak remedies for anxiety and fear and points them to their security in Christ.

While fear-provoking headlines fill our days, and struggles with anxiety are a fact in a fallen world, Scripture says fear does not need to be a fact of life for Christians. This little carry-along “pocket book” for women focuses on the Bible’s great truths about what lies beneath their fears and the means to overcome them—for those who worry just a little, those who suffer a gnawing, controlling fear or actual panic attacks, and every woman in between.

. . . On-the-Go Devotionals easily tuck into a purse or gym bag and make great gifts. Each lesson is self-contained, with Scripture and a paragraph or two of teaching that will steer women away from worldly coping techniques, away from themselves and their circumstances, and onto God and their security in Christ.

The two published volumes are Trust: A Godly Woman's Adornment and Contentment: A Godly Woman's Adornment.

You can read for free online one of the book's Contents and the Introduction and Four Devotions.

Here are some blurbs for the series:

“Skillful devotionals for those who face the challenge to ‘fit it all in.’ Biblically rigorous and deeply perceptive. Godly insights from a godly sister.”
Elyse Fitzpatrick, author of Because He Loves Me: How Christ Transforms Our Daily Life

“A ready resource for keeping our thinking focused on God himself. The devotionals helped me understand my fear or discontent and our Heavenly Father’s provision.”
Barbara Hughes, author of Disciplines of a Godly Woman and, with her husband, Disciplines of a Godly Family

“Lydia Brownback calls Christian women to lift their eyes upward and find security, rest, and peace in a sovereign God whose promises never fail!”
Nancy Leigh DeMoss, author and Revive Our Hearts radio host

Millard Erickson recently delivered the Gheens Lectures at Southern Seminary:

• Can Theology Learn from History?
• Can Theology Learn From Physics?
• Can Theology Learn From Economics?

USA Today has an article today asking, "Is sin dead?" The answer: "No, not by a long shot. Yet as Easter approaches, some pastors and theologians worry: How can Christians celebrate Jesus' atonement for their sins and the promise of eternal life in his resurrection if they don't recognize themselves as sinners?

Among those quoted in the article: the Pope, Al Mohler, Joel Osteen, Michael Horton, Tim Keller, and Mark Driscoll.

Collin Hansen has a must-read interview with Thabiti Anyabwile, author of The Decline of African American Theology and The Faithful Preacher: Recapturing the Vision of Three Pioneering African-American Pastors, about the appeal of black liberation theology.

I've been spending some time working on a harmony of Holy Week (which I may link to later). In working on it, I was reminded again of an outstanding resource: Craig Blomberg's Jesus and the Gospels: An Introduction and Survey. If I could only own one book on the topic, this would be it. (Written over 10 years ago, I hope there will be a forthcoming updated edition.)

From Blomberg's introduction:

This book is designed to be a "one-stop shopping" textbook for courses on the Gospels. It is hoped that it will be of interest to thoughtful laypersons who desire to deepen their biblical roots, as well as to pastors and scholars looking for a current summary of the state of a wide swath of scholarship. But the book is written first of all with theological students in mind. . . . As I have studied on the Gospels first as an undergraduate and then as a graduate student, and as I have taught similar courses at both levels, I have discovered five topics that lecturers consistently want to introduce: (1) a brief history of the period between the Old and New Testaments as a historical backdrop for studying Jesus and first-century Israel; (2) the critical methods that scholars use to study documents like Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John; (3) an "introduction proper" to each Gospel, that is, a discussion of who wrote it, when, where, to whom, with what kind of structure, under what circumstances, and with what distinctives; (4) a survey of the life of Christ, with comments on Jesus' primary teachings and actions; and (5) a synthesis of the major issues surrounding the historicity and theology of Jesus himself. But I am aware of no textbook that sets out systematically to treat all five of these topics. . . .

As a result, I committed myself to writing out word for word everything I most wanted my students to know--in other words, to writing this book. Now I tell my classes that if they master nothing other than this one book, they still will have the heart of a very solid introduction to the four Gospels.

Again, I would highly recommend this book.

Written over 20 years ago and published in the Journal of the American Medical Association, this article goes into graphic detail about the physical pain that Jesus would have endured in his beatings and crucifixion--which pales, of course, to the spiritual and emotional pain of bearing the wrath of his Father on behalf of God's children.

"I believe that those sermons which are fullest of Christ are the most likely to be blessed to the conversion of the hearers. Let your sermons be full of Christ, from beginning to end crammed full of the gospel. As for myself, brethren, I cannot preach anything else but Christ and His cross, for I know nothing else, and long ago, like the apostle Paul, I determined not to know anything else save Jesus Christ and Him crucified. People have often asked me, "What is the secret of your success?" I always answer that I have no other secret but this, that I have preached the gospel,—not about the gospel, but the gospel,—the full, free, glorious gospel of the living Christ who is the incarnation of the good news. Preach Jesus Christ, brethren, always and everywhere; and every time you preach be sure to have much of Jesus Christ in the sermon. You remember the story of the old minister who heard a sermon by a young man, and when he was asked by the preacher what he thought of it he was rather slow to answer, but at last he said, "If I must tell you, I did not like it at all; there was no Christ in your sermon." "No," answered the young man, "because I did not see that Christ was in the text." "Oh!" said the old minister, "but do you not know that from every little town and village and tiny hamlet in England there is a road leading to London? Whenever I get hold of a text, I say to myself, 'There is a road from here to Jesus Christ, and I mean to keep on His track till I get to Him.'" "Well," said the young man, "but suppose you are preaching from a text that says nothing about Christ?" "Then I will go over hedge and ditch but what I will get at Him." So must we do, brethren; we must have Christ in all our discourses, whatever else is in or not in them. There ought to be enough of the gospel in every sermon to save a soul. Take care that it is so when you are called to preach before Her Majesty the Queen, and if you have to preach to charwomen or chairmen, still always take care that there is the real gospel in every sermon."

-CH Spurgeon, The Soul Winner.

HT: Michael Miesen

Mark Dever: "Registration will be open until March 30, 2008. However, there are only about 300 registration spots left. Registration will close when all the spots sell out, so be sure to register soon if you plan to attend."

Register here.

At the New Republic blog.

Michael Medved:

When a TV network offers new programming that’s entertaining, inspiring and substantive it’s enough to renew our faith in miracles. HBO’s epic eight hours on John Adams is precisely that sort of pop culture miracle: a lovingly-rendered tribute to the most misunderstood, most under-rated of our founding fathers. Aside from admirable attention to historical detail, the HBO miniseries offers perfect casting—with Paul Giamatti as an Adams who’s simultaneously brave, pompous, and selflessly patriotic. The luminous Laura Linney captures Adams’ wife Abigail, with dialogue based frequently on actual letters, providing a singularly moving portrait of a romantic, richly functional, lifelong marital partnership. The series also stresses the nobility of politics – without which, even battlefield heroism could come to naught. David Morse is appropriately noble, charismatic and dignified as George Washington while Tom Wilkinson enjoys the role of Ben Franklin nearly as much as Franklin himself enjoyed his long life. Every American over the age of ten should see this rewarding piece of work – while prepared to see brief, disturbing glimpses of war time violence. The John Adams miniseries runs on HBO every Sunday night through April.

Owen Strachan:

This is one of the best books you will ever read about the Christian ministry.

That is a dramatic claim. Right now, you're asking yourself if it's true. After all, this book written by New Testament scholar D. A. Carson and published by Crossway Books in 2008 is just shy of 160 pages; it doesn't treat a figure of major historical significance; it doesn't claim to be an exhaustive primer on the Christian ministry. Indeed, it's rather paradoxical in nature--it's written by the preeminent evangelical New Testament professor of the current day, and yet it's a professedly humble little book. Why, then, the rather breathy claim that the just-published Memoirs of an Ordinary Pastor is an excellent book? The answer is very simple: it's a straightforward reflection on everyday ministry written by a godly critical thinker, himself involved in the work of ministry. Those who read it will come away with a realistic picture of Christian ministry, an accomplishment rarely achieved with such accessibility and clarity.

Read the whole thing.

Tony Reinker on Sinclair Ferguson's talk at the Ligonier conference:

He said John Owen’s book, The Doctrine of Justification By Faith, Through the Imputation of the Righteousness of Christ; Explained, Confirmed, and Vindicated, is one of the best treatments on the topic of justification (vol. 5 of Works).

Ferguson especially centered his attention on chapter 15 (“Of Faith Alone”). Owen here makes the following observations about the nature of saving faith:

1. That faith whereby we are justified is most frequently in the New Testament expressed by receiving.

2. Faith is expressed by looking.

3. It is, in like manner, frequently expressed by coming unto Christ.

4. It is expressed by fleeing for refuge.

5. It is a leaning on God, or casting ourselves and our burden on the Lord.

I would recommend reading the (surprisingly short) chapter here.

For a few more days you can watch for free the video of Ferguson's talk on The Substitutionary Atonement of Christ.

Tony Reinke:

The Sovereign Grace Leadership Interviews feature a roundtable discussion among C.J. Mahaney (president of Sovereign Grace Ministries), Jeff Purswell (dean of our Pastors College), and Joshua Harris (senior pastor of Covenant Life Church). The three gather on a regular basis to discuss a wide array of theological and practical leadership issues.

In the second episode, the topic turns to care for the pastor’s own soul. Harris’ opening question sets the stage:

Pastors are obviously called to care for the souls of others, and yet today we want to turn the focus and ask: How does a pastor make sure that he is caring for his own soul? What does it look like for a man to pursue his own personal relationship with God and make sure he is growing spiritually?

The full hourlong podcast, “The Pastor and His Soul,” can be downloaded here.

Update: Here's the text of the speech.

Barack Obama is scheduled to give a major address this morning (10:15 E.T.) on race and religion and unifying the nation. I think this is the right move.

I suspect it may be carried live on the web at http://www.barackobama.com/tv/.

Jonah Goldberg highlights the sort of issues that Obama should address (but undoubtedly won't):

Obama righteously deplores "divisiveness." And yet he literally worships at the altar of division. He wants to transcend race, but his black nationalist church and his liberation theology pastor consider race permanent and central issues.

Obama claims that he's a different kind of politician, but his "repudiation" of Wright last week is traditional pol-speak and nothing more. To listen to Obama, you'd think he was the only person in Chicago not to know that his minister is a hatemonger. Either Obama is the worst judge of character in living memory or he's not the man he's been portraying himself as.

Or there's a third option. Perhaps Obama didn't hear Wright's bilious rhetoric because it blended in with the chorus around him. This is the fact that Obama really needs to address if the "Obama movement" is about more than getting the junior senator from Illinois elected. . . .

Obama preaches unity. Well, real unity requires real truth-telling and the ability to tell right from wrong, and Wright from right. . . .

Obama's power base is made up of black voters and the upscale left-wingers who condescend to them. Well, it is time he spoke truth to that power. If the eloquent, self-proclaimed truth-teller and would-be first black president can't manage that, he should go straight from would-be to never was.

Thomas Lifson has a more plausible prediction.

More thoughts from Ross Douthat.

Joe Carter weighs in.

Update: Quick reaction, for what it's worth: a very good speech; I can't imagine one better given the circumstances. But not perfect, for I still think it's a walking contradiction for Obama to be a post-racialist candidate while investing deeply for 20 years in a deeply racialist church. Obama didn't choose his grandmother; he did choose his church.

Update: Good commentary here from Douthat.

Update: Video here:

Just a quick post here on Barack Obama and his spiritual adviser/former pastor, Rev. Jeremiah Wright. The Obamas have been members of his church in good standing for 20 years; Rev. Wright married them; he baptized their children; he inspired the title for Obama's The Audacity of Hope; he was serving on Obama's African American Religious Leadership Committee, etc.

Here's the story that set off the firestorm:



In short, this is a major, major, major problem for Obama. If it doesn't cost him the Democratic nomination, I think it may very well cost him the general election.

Obama has denounced and repudiated these statements, saying that he wasn't in attendance when they were made.

You would expect conservatives to see this as a problem.

Here's Victor Davis Hanson (the whole post is well worth reading):

So the question will simply be left to the American voter:

EITHER: 'Obama probably knew what was going on at Trinity, but, given the complex circumstances and Obama’s other strengths, it doesn’t matter enough to affect my vote;'

OR: 'Obama’s attendance and his feeble reaction to the criticism of Wright provide a valuable warning of why someone so inexperienced and yet so familiar with extremists should not be President of the United States next year.' It's left to the electorate, as it should be.

But liberals are seeing it as a big deal, too. Here's Michael Crowley, the senior editor for the left-of-center The New Republic:

There are two separate issues here. One is political, and that one's not too ambiguous: This is really bad news for Obama, both in the primary and if he makes it to the general. He's worked successfully to escape the image of the "angry black man," and here he is linked to that image in the most emotionally searing way.

The second issue is how we should feel, normatively, about the fact that Obama maintained ties with Wright, even after presumably realizing that he held views Obama now calls deplorable. I'm not prepared to render judgment on that here. But I do worry that this lays bare a very grim truth: That even middle-class black American culture is more angry and alienated than most whites understand, and that our country is simply not yet at the point where even an ostensibly post-racial black candidate can escape that dynamic entirely. (Indeed not only was Wright perfectly acceptable to Obama and his Chicago circle, but it seems likely that it would have been difficult for Obama to separate himself from the preacher had he wanted to, lest he be accused of not being an "authentic" member of the south side black community.) In other words, what's happening here is far bigger than the particulars of Obama and Wright, it's about cultural dissonance that was going to bubble up one way or another. And as a colleague put it to me today, in terms I hope are too pessimistic: "It makes me think it's going to be at least another generation before we see a black man elected president." If Obama can prove him wrong then he really may be a world-historical figure.

And here is Obama supporter Gerald Possner, writing at the Huffington Post:

If the parishioners of Trinity United Church were not buzzing about Reverend Wright's post 9/11 comments, then it could only seem to be because those comments were not out of character with what he preached from the pulpit many times before. In that case, I have to wonder if it is really possible for the Obamas to have been parishioners there -- by 9/11 they were there more than a decade -- and not to have known very clearly how radical Wright's views were. If, on the other hand, parishioners were shocked by Wright's vitriol only days after more than 3,000 Americans had been killed by terrorists, they would have talked about it incessantly. Barack -- a sitting Illinois State Senator -- would have been one of the first to hear about it.

Can't you imagine the call or conversation? "Barack, you aren't going to believe what Revered Wright said yesterday at the church. You should be ready with a comment if someone from the press calls you up."

But Barack now claims he never heard about any of this until after he began his run for the presidency, in February, 20007.

And even if Barack is correct -- and I desperately want to believe him -- then it still does not explain why, when he learned in 2007 of Wright's fringe comments about 9/11 and other subjects, the campaign did not then disassociate itself from the Reverend. Wright was not removed from the campaign's Spiritual Advisory Committee until two days ago, and it appears likely that nothing would have been done had this story not broken nationally.

Come on, Barack. I'm backing you because you are not 'one of them.' You have inspired me and millions of others because you are not a typical politician. You tell it like it is, don't fudge the facts, and don't dodge and weave with clever words to avoid uncomfortable truths.

Tell it straight. Was Reverend Wright so radical that his post 9/11 comments did not cause a stir at the Church, and you never learned about them until 2007, nearly 6 years later? Why, when you did learn about them, did you not ask Revered Wright to step down from his role in your campaign?

Give us the plain truth. You won't lose us by being brutally honest. You only risk shaking our faith in you if you seem like so many other politicians that crowd the field.

J. I. Packer pens a delightful article about the happy surprises that God has brought into his life. His closing line summarizes his point well: "Look for the happy surprises, for they will help you to keep expressing proper gratitude to God all your days."

(HT: Steve McCoy)

Alex and Brett Harris--whose forthcoming book, Do Hard Things: A Teenage Rebellion Against Low Expectations, I recommend--are doing an innovative experiment in book marketing. They're calling it the Amazon Book Bomb. The idea is to solicit commitments to order the book on March 25 in order to drive up the sales ranking. If you've planned on purchasing the book, consider signing up at their site.

The four fellas are looking for some help.

If your entry is selected, you'll be listed as one of the co-authors of the book.

(Not really--but check out the contest anyway.)

Yesterday Jim Hamilton a lecture at Southern Seminary on The Typology of David’s Rise to Power: Messianic Patterns in the Book of Samuel. (The link takes you to the manuscript; audio is not yet up.)

Google has now launched Google Sky. Here's some info about it:

Traveling to the stars has never been easier To help you explore the far reaches of our universe, we have teamed up with astronomers at some of the largest observatories in the world to bring you a new view of the sky. Using Google Maps this tool provides an exciting way to browse and explore the universe. You can find the positions of the planets and constellations on the sky and even watching the birth of distant galaxies as seen by the Hubble Space Telescope.

We are particularly excited about the ability to view the universe at different wavelengths, to see how it would look if our eyes worked in the x-rays or infrared. As you explore these new layers, play with the transparency to blend between the different wavelengths and see how different parts of the universe light up at different wavelengths.

If you are interested in what's happening on the sky tonight or over the next few months then check out the podcasts from Earth and Sky or search for the position of your favorite planet.

HT: Matt Reimer

An important post here by Al Mohler, referencing a recent NY Times article on the topic, as well as a sermon by Cornelius Plantinga.

Tim Keller's The Reason for God will be at #7 next week on the NY Times Bestseller List (for non-fiction). Which, of course, means that more than just evangelical Christians are buying it--a good thing indeed.

I know the announcement is a bit late, but note that the Ligonier Conference (going on now) is being live-streamed, simulcast in Spanish, and live-blogged.

Speaking of Tyndale and David Instone Brewer, he writes:

Time is too short to keep opening programs or hunting for web pages for simple things
like looking up a Bible text or finding bibliography.

So I wrote the Tyndale Toolbar to save time. It works in Firefox on PC & Mac, and in IE on PCs.
It isn't the prettiest toolbar on the planet, but for Biblical scholars it is the most useful.

You can download it here.

(HT: James Grant)

Tyndale House in Cambridge (where many of the finest evangelical scholars in the world travel to do their research and writing) is asking for help in redesigning their webpage. Here's David Instone Brewer:

You are probably familiar with Tyndale's webpages. Informative but not inspiring.

At least, that's what I'm told. I'm not good at this visual stuff. So I need your help.

If you produce an inspired design, you could be on every page ("page design by....).

It might be the start of a new career!

Simply copy the page at http://www.tyndalehouse.co.uk/library.htm and redesign it.

So get out your Photoshop or whatever program makes you feel the most creative,
or even Word or Publisher if you wish, and send me a mock up of the web page.

You don't need to produce any code or stylesheets or working menus. I'll do that.

Your contribution is the design - the colors, layout, font, graphics, menu position etc
Please include colours for Hover over and Visited links (if these are different).

Send your entry to me, attached to a reply email. Closing date: May 1st.
The best will go on show and the winner will be famous.

I will be one of the judges, so let me tell you what I like and don't like:

I like usability
e.g. having a full menu always available so you can go anywhere from anywhere
(many websites send you to the home page or obscure part of the page to find the full menu)

I like clarity
e.g. using a plain background which doesn't interfere with reading the text, and using fonts which can be rescaled by the user (using the menu View: Text size)
(many sites use CSS with fixed font sizes so you have to zoom the whole page)

I like easily updated pages
Personally, I hand-craft html, php & MySQL, but most people prefer WYSIWYG.
Unfortunately CMS (Content Management Systems) are often too limiting, so if you propose one, make sure it is very flexible - ie you can add code easily and put anything anywhere. GooglePages are a good compromise, so I integrate these into the site for pages which other people need to update - e.g. staff pages. See mine at http://www.tyndaleHouse.com/Staff/Instone-Brewer/
So the design has to allow for this kind of integration of pages within a frame.

Actually, most of this doesn't apply to your design. I'm just getting it off my chest.
So let your imagination go! And show me what you've come up with.
Don't worry about the technical side of things. If it looks good, we can probably find a way to make it work. Attach it to an email to me.

I hope so will take the up the challenge. (For more info on their important work, see the interview I did last year with Peter Williams. For those who want to consider supporting this ministry financially, see here.)

Tedd and Margy Tripp have co-authored a new book, Instructing a Child’s Heart, which is a sequel to his book, Shepherding a Child’s Heart.

You can watch a 3-minute video clip about the book, as well as read the table of contents and the preface.

Great news here from our friends at Logos:

Note: For a limited time, we are offering The Works of John Owen at the incredibly low Pre-Pub price of $174.95. On Friday, April 4, the price will be adjusted to $224.95. Lock in now to take advantage of this special introductory offer! And spread the word to others!

John Owen counts as one of the most influential and inspiring theologians of the seventeenth century. His works capture the essence of theological inquiry in Puritan England, and have shaped and influenced theological reflection ever since. Owen was a proficient writer, composing numerous theological treatises, meditations, discourses, and sermons. His reflections are made more compelling by the context of political turmoil and religious persecution in which he wrote. God still speaks, says Owen, when the world is in flux and the church finds itself in seeming peril—words as important to his original audience as they are to contemporary readers. His writings and teachings spoke to the struggles in his time, and have continued to inspire the generations that have followed.

Logos is pleased to offer the Goold edition of John Owen’s works, with the original Latin treatises completely retained in portions of volume sixteen and the entirety of volume seventeen. Unlike modern reprints of Owen's work, which leave out the Latin, this edition offers Owen's original, untranslated works. That makes the Logos edition of The Works of John Owen a vital tool for research on Owen’s original writings and the preeminent academic standard for Owen scholarship.

"Do you not know that in a race all the runners run, but only one receives the prize? So run that you may obtain it." (1 Cor. 9:24)

"The one who endures to the end will be saved." (Mark 13:13b)

Here's a sad clip that may provide a mental image to help us remember the truths above:

Peter Robinson:

With just a single exception, the non-Muslim population of every country in Europe now has a birth rate at below replacement levels. (The exception is Malta, and God bless it.) Why, I ask Bruce Thornton today on Uncommon Knowledge, do Europeans so steadfastly refuse to reproduce?

Because, replies the author of Decline and Fall: Europe’s Slow-Motion Suicide, “children are expensive. They require you to sacrifice your time and your interests and your own comfort. If your highest good is pleasure, if your highest good is a sophisticated life, then children get in the way. Why would you spend so much money and so much energy on children if your highest good is simply material well-being? That's sort of the spiritual dimension of the problem."

“The spiritual dimension of the problem.” There are so few children in Europe, in other words, because there are so few believers.

There’s more. (Look for Chapter 4 of 5).

Owen Strachan looks at two angles: (1) a response to an evolutionary biologist who weighed in on Gov. Spitzer's adultery through prostitution; and (2) a reminder for all of us (esp. men) to be diligent in pursuing holiness.

Kevin DeYoung passed along today an excerpt from chapter 2 of Timothy Tennent's book,
Theology in the Context of World Christianity: How the Global Church Is Influencing the Way We Think About and Discuss Theology (p. 48):

This study has sought to clarify many of the issues that lie behind the question, "Is the Father of Jesus the God of Muhammad?"

First, I pointed out the importance of differentiating between those predicates about God that we share with Muslims and those predicates about God that are distinctively Christian. We observed not only how crucial the distinctively Christian predicates are to Christian identity, but even how a truly Christocentric perspective transforms the shared predicates.

Second, I attempted to demonstrate that the long and sustained use of the word "Allah" by Muslims has altered its connotation such that, for Muslims, it has become a name for the Islamic God, not just the Arabic equivalent of the English word "God" as it is used by Arabic speaking Christians and Jews. For the Muslim, the word "Allah" is becoming more like the equivalent of the Jewish Yahweh (YHWH) than the more general words el or theos, which, like the English word "God," have a broader application.

Finally, we reflected briefly on the pastoral and evengelistic implications of our question, since this issue has major ramifications for large communities of people who follow the "God of Muhammad" and the "Father of Jesus" respectively.

The result of this survey has concluded that although "Allah" and "God" are etymological equivalents and, as monotheists, we only believe in one God, it would fragment our very identity as Christians to accept the statement that the Father of Jesus is the God of Muhammad.

The reason is that the statement is not essentially an etymological or an ontological statement, but an attempt to identify the predicates associated with the Islamic and Christian use of the words "Allah" and "God" respectively. The phrases "God of Muhammad" and "Father of Jesus" are spoken by communities of faith with important books of revelation that provide hundreds of predicates, all helping to set forth the full context for the meaning of thee two phrases. From the perspective, I must conclude that the Father of Jesus is not the God of Muhammad.

A thought-provoking and helpful article here by Gilbert Meilaender, Professor of Theology at Valparaiso University: Vocation: Divine Summons. (Originally published in the Nov. 1, 2000 issue of Christian Century).

Meilander draws from Virgil and Augustine and Dante and Herbert and Lewis to look at the the meaning and significance of God's summons upon our lives and our vocation.

Meilaender's article was recently cited in an article by John Ortberg in Leadership Journal. Ortberg's piece, God's Call Waiting, is also worth reading.

A new CDC study suggests that at least one in four teenage girls has a sexually transmitted disease. "The study by CDC researcher Dr. Sara Forhan is an analysis of nationally representative data on 838 girls who participated in a 2003-04 government health survey. . . ."

I'd be interested in any comments by anyone with expertise in this area, or in the area of statistics. (If you just have a guess or an opinion, no need to comment.)

I don't want to be naive, but this has just doesn't sound right to me. 1 in 4 have an STD??

I confess that I've been suspicious of teenage sex surveys ever since middle school, when guys in my class were eagerly filling in the bubbles indicating multiple partners when, in reality, they were still trying to get up the nerve to actually go and first talk to a member of the opposite sex.