Between Two Worlds

The following, from Westminster Theological Seminary in Philadelphia, strikes me as a excellent way to use technology for edifying instruction:

Art, Music & Apologetics: An Interactive Course
Bill Edgar

Dr. William Edgar offers an in-depth look at the history and philosophy of Christian apologetics while exploring the ways in which art, music, and popular culture give the insightful apologist opportunities to better understand his audience and to offer a gospel of hope. Apologetics, Dr. Edgar argues, is the essential art of making that hope present to the world around us. The course is illuminated by the creativity of Dr. Edgar himself as he gives a jazz concert, analyzes Woody Allen’s films, looks at Renaissance and modern art, and explores the lives and times of America's greatest jazz artists.

This is a full-length, graduate-level course that includes over 23 video hours of lecture and interaction, offered here in the e4 learning software. e4 is a new environment for learning, one that combines the best of the classroom with the best of technology and the web. When you use the e4 courseware you are not only viewing top-quality video—you also have access to an outline and transcript of the full course, as well as a large research library linked to keywords in the text. You also become part of a wider learning community with web-based features like private study groups, weblogs, and the ability to share notes with other e4 users.

A 23-hour interactive video/web course that covers the history and philosophy of Christian apologetics while exploring the ways in which art, music, and popular culture provide opportunities to present a gospel of hope. Features jazz piano performances by Dr. Edgar himself!

1. Lecture 01: Christian Apologetics
2. Lecture 02: Foundations
3. Lecture 03: History
4. Lecture 04: Art & Cultural Analysis
5. Interaction: Apologetics & Art
6. Lecture 05: Christian Worldview
7. Interaction: Culture
8. Lecture 06: Faith & Reason
9. Lecture 07: Post(modernity)
10. Interaction: History
11. Interaction: Theology
12. Lecture 08: Unbelief
13. Lecture 09: Homecoming
14. Interaction: Apologetics
15. Lecture 10: The Problem of Evil
16. Lecture 11: Reflecting on Evil
17. Lecture 12: Worldwide Apologetics
18. Interaction: Pain & Evil
19. Lecture 13: Jazz and Spirituality (Concert)
20. Lecture 14: Pluralism and Truth
21. Lecture 15: Worship
22. Interaction: Redemption
23. Lecture 16: Reflections

Watch a video preview

Here is Paul Helm's response to Kevin Vanhoozer, which ends their exchange on Hodge's theological method.

D. A. Carson has penned a brief memorial and appreciation of Leon Morris.

Newsweek's Jon Meacham profiles Billy Graham in the cover story for Newsweek. Lots of things in the article will generate discussion, I'm sure. (Meacham returns over and over again to the idea that Graham is now a humble moderate on all sorts of things from inerrancy to inclusivism.)

Here's one paragraph that stuck out to me.

If he had his life to live over again, Graham says he would spend more time immersed in Scripture and theology. He never went to seminary, and his lack of a graduate education is something that still gives him a twinge. "The greatest regret that I have is that I didn't study more and read more," he says. "I regret it, because now I feel at times I am empty of what I would like to have been. I have friends that have memorized great portions of the Bible. They can quote [so much], and that would mean a lot to me now."

Marty Peretz, editor in chief of the left-of-center magazine The New Republic, writes in Monday's WSJ about the race between Sen. Joe Lieberman (D-Conn.) and his Democratic opponent and peace (or appeasement) candidate, Ned Lamont.

Regarding Sen. Lieberman, Mr. Peretz writes that he is "muscular on defense, assertive in foreign policy, genuinely liberal on social and economic matters, but not doctrinaire on regulatory issues. He had marched for civil rights and is committed to an equal opportunity agenda with equal opportunity results. He has qualms about affirmative action. But who, in his hearts of hearts, does not? He is appalled by the abysmal standards of our popular culture and our public discourse. Who really loves our popular culture--or, at least, which parent? He is thoroughly a Democrat. But Mr. Lieberman believes that, in an age of communal and global stress, one would do well to speak with the president (even, on rare occasion, speak well of him) and compromise with him on urgent matters of practical law. Yes, Mr. Lieberman sometimes sounds a bit treacly. He certainly is preachy, and advertises his sense of his own righteousness. But he has also been brave, and bravery is a rare trait in politicians, especially in states that are really true-blue or, for that matter, really true-red. The blogosphere Democrats, whose victory Mr. Lamont's will be if Mr. Lamont wins, have made Iraq the litmus test for incumbents. There are many reasonable, and even correct, reproofs that one may have for the conduct of the war. They are, to be sure, all retrospective. But one fault cannot be attributed to the U.S., and that is that we are on the wrong side. We are at war in a just cause, to protect the vulnerable masses of the country from the helter-skelter ideological and religious mass-murderers in their midst. Our enemies are not progressive peasants as was imagined three and four decades ago."

Democrats would do well to heed his conclusion: "Ned Lamont is Karl Rove's dream come true. If he, and others of his stripe, carry the day, the Democratic party will lose the future, and deservedly."

Read the whole thing.

Many thanks to Greg Gilbert for filling in for me while I was away. Greg himself had just returned from vacation and was battling a nasty cold for the week, so I especially appeciate his kindness and generosity in keeping this blog alive and kicking.

I was able to get online a few times and stopped by. (Nothing confirms the immediacy and the immaturity of the blogosphere than seeing an undegraduate John Piper publicly rebuked for his critique of N.T. Wright on justification--before seeing the manuscript!)

Glad to be back--and looking forward to the week ahead.

JT

Posted by GDG

Francis Collins is Director of the National Human Genome Research Institute. Yesterday he sat down for a discussion with NPR's Ira Flatow on how a world class scientist balances his career with his religious faith. I wouldn't agree with everything Collins says, but it is nonetheless an interesting conversation.

Listen here. (Click on one of the audio links in the box on the right-hand side of the page.)

Gg

Christian publishing house Multnomah has been acquired by Random House. Reuters story here.

Gg

Posted by GDG

Desiring God has published a lengthy report from John Piper on his sabbatical from March through July. You'll want to read it, especially for his announcement that he's written a manuscript responding to N.T. Wright's view of justification. Here's what he says:

The other book is a response to N. T. Wright on the doctrine of justification. I have no immediate plan to publish it until I get the feedback from critical readers. My motivation in writing it is that I think his understanding of Paul is wrong and his view of justification is harmful to the church and to the human soul. Few things are more precious than the truth of justification by faith alone because of Christ alone. As a shepherd of a flock of God’s blood-bought church, I feel responsible to lead the sheep to life-giving pastures. That is not what the sheep find in Wright’s view of Paul on justification. He is an eloquent and influential writer and is, I believe, misleading many people on the doctrine of justification. I will keep you posted on what becomes of this manuscript.

The evangelical world waits with bated breath . . .

Gg

Posted by GDG.

Suzanne Hadley conducted a series of interviews back in May at the New Attitudes Conference here in Louisville. The first of those, with Eric Simmons, is up now at Boundless. Look for other articles in the future, including one featuring none other than Justin Taylor (which I'm sure he'll link to).

The article up now is helpful in thinking about how we ought to be doing evangelism. Suzanne and Eric cut a middle way between a "lifestyle evangelism" which never results in speaking the gospel, and the kind of "close-the-deal" evangelism which has historically led to thousands and thousands of "decisions" but really very few Christians.

Gg

Posted by GDG

One of the best devotional books in print today, I think, is Valley of Vision, a collection of Puritan prayers.

Bob Kauflin and the folks at Sovereign Grace Ministries have announced the release of a CD project based on the prayers in that book. No doubt it will be good food for the Christian soul.

Gg

Posted by GDG

President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad of Iran gave a speech today in which he offered several ideas for how the Middle East crisis might be solved. Here's what he said:

"Although the main solution is for the elimination of the Zionist regime, at this stage an immediate cease-fire must be implemented," Ahmadinejad said, according to state-run television in a report posted on its Web site.

Well . . . . I guess sometimes you just have to settle for second-best.

HT: Taranto

Gg

Skye Jethani at "Out of Ur" has posted an article on the problem of plagiarism in the pulpit. The article goes beyond just lamenting the problem, though, and goes on to ask what might be some of the factors driving pastors to think they need to use other people's materials on Sunday mornings. I think Jethani's thoughts are interesting, and I think they get at some real questions about today's evangelical culture. This is worth some more thought.

Posted by Greg Gilbert

I posted a question on the elders' blog at Third Avenue Baptist Church a few days ago, but I thought it would be interesting to see what you all thought about it. While I was on vacation, I read a book called The Great Influenza: The Epic Story of the Deadliest Plague in History. The book is a history of the 1918 influenza pandemic, which killed somewhere between 50 million and 100 million people in the space of a few weeks. It really is a tour de force--a primer on everything from the history of medicine to biology, immunology, World War I, sociology, chemistry, pharmacology, the philosophy of medicine, and other fields as well. And it’s a riveting story, to boot.

It’s been subtle, but there’s been a theme running through the book that one might describe as the gloating of science over theology. There are statements along the lines of, “They could hope in God, but it was science that would save their lives.” Not exactly that, but that’s the idea. One of the most obvious examples of this is that the old practice of “heroic medicine”—epitomized by the belief that disease was an imbalance in the body’s humors that could be remedied by purging, especially bleeding—is ridiculed, blamed for thousands of deaths, and . . . attributed to belief in God.

All of this essentially comes down to the old argument, “Look, science has cured disease, tamed electricity, put airplanes in the sky, made iPODS possible. And theology? What has theology ever done for humanity?” I imagine we could all make the very sound argument that science never would have developed without Christianity, but what about that other question? What has theology done for humanity? Can it even begin to compete with science on that playing field?

Gg

Posted by GDG

John Piper has done several interviews over the past few days on Dennis Rainey's "Family Life Today" radio. Here are some links:

On Living Every Day for Christ
On Financial Stewardship and Generosity
On Taking Up the Cross

Gg

Posted by GDG

One of Yale's residential colleges is called "Jonathan Edwards College," an act of tribute to the great theologian which is lost on most of those who live and work around it every day. A few months after I was introduced to Edwards by one of my professors, I decided to do an impromptu survey of some of my fellow students who lived in "JE." So I walked into the courtyard and started stopping random people. I asked them, "Do you know who Jonathan Edwards was?"

One person gave what ended up being a pretty average answer (at least as much as you can take an average from the only five or six people I interviewed). She said, "Yea, sure. Isn't he that guy who preached a sermon about a spider and told all the Indians they were going to hell?" I gave up.

The spider sermon, of course, is "Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God," and that is about as far as most Americans are familiar with Edwards. That's a shame, because as marvelous and truthful and poignant and sink-you-down-in-your-couch convicting that sermon is, if it's all you ever read of Edwards in your ninth grade English class, it doesn't very well communicate the sweetness and tenderness of his love for Jesus Christ.

A lot more evangelicals are familiar now with JE's "End for Which God Created the World," thanks to John Piper's efforts, and that, too, is a theological tour de force that every Christian--and every student, especially--should read several times. But even you read "End" along with "Sinners," you still won't get a sense of JE's sweetness and compassion.

So in the interest of introducing some readers to a part of JE they may never have experienced, let me encourage you to read in your devotional sometime his sermon "The Excellency of Christ." It is one of my favorites. Here's a taste:

Christ's holiness never so illustriously shone forth as it did in his last sufferings, and yet he never was to such a degree treated as guilty.

Christ's holiness never had such a trial as it had then, and therefore never had so great a manifestation. When it was tried in this furnace it came forth as gold, or as silver purified seven times. His holiness then above all appeared in his steadfast pursuit of the honor of God, and in his obedience to him. For his yielding himself unto death was transcendently the greatest act of obedience that ever was paid to God by any one since the foundation of the world.

And yet then Christ was in the greatest degree treated as a wicked person would have been. He was apprehended and bound as a malefactor. His accusers represented him as a most wicked wretch. In his sufferings before his crucifixion, he was treated as if he had been the worst and vilest of mankind, and then, he was put to a kind of death, that none but the worst sort of malefactors were wont to suffer, those that were most abject in their persons, and guilty of the blackest crimes. And he suffered as though guilty from God himself, by reason of our guilt imputed to him; for he who knew no sin, was made sin for us; he was made subject to wrath, as if he had been sinful himself. He was made a curse for us.

Christ never so greatly manifested his hatred of sin, as against God, as in his dying to take away the dishonor that sin had done to God; and yet never was he to such a degree subject to the terrible effects of God's hatred of sin, and wrath against it, as he was then. in this appears those diverse excellencies meeting in Christ, namely, love to God, and grace to sinners.

Gg

Posted by GDG

Bob Kauflin is hosting his fifth annual "Worship God '06" Conference next week in Maryland. If you are one of those few unfortunate souls who is not yet familiar with Bob's music and Sovereign Grace Ministries, you really ought to take a few minutes and browse around their website. Bob's blog is already linked on this page, but here it is again.

The songs that Bob and his team are writing and producing are some of the most Christ-exalting, heart-expanding pieces of music on the scene today. I am reminded by them--probably daily--of the unspeakable salvation Jesus Christ wrought for me on the cross.

Registration for the conference is still open, I think. If you're in the Gaithersburg, Maryland area and could make it to any of the sessions, it would be well worth your time. I promise you would learn and you would worship. Gg

Posted by GDG

Gregory A. Boyd, of open-theist fame, was profiled Sunday in the New York Times for bucking against the conservative politics of most evangelical Christians.

I tried to find one choice excerpt which could substitute for the whole, but there really isn’t one. So you should go read the whole article. Honestly, I think Boyd makes some important points, and ones that aren’t straw-men. For instance, I know first-hand of churches which have had Fourth of July services complete with pictures of F-14s and Jesus looking up adoringly at the American flag. That stuff really happens, and I think Boyd is right to point out the foolishness and error of all that.

But I also don’t think that’s what the New York Times finds so endearing about him, either. What makes him newsworthy is that Boyd and others (like Brian McLaren, who’s also quoted in the article) are taking issues like abortion and marriage, slapping the label “Republican” on them, and then saying that Christians shouldn’t speak to those things because Christians shouldn’t talk about politics.

Let me say as clearly as I can that the pulpit should never, ever be turned into a rostrum for political stump speeches. That’s shameful. The pulpit is meant for the exposition of Scripture, plain and simple. But if I’m expositing, for instance, Psalm 139, it’s not “conservative politics” for me to preach about the evil of abortion. If I’m expositing Genesis 1 and 2, it’s not “Republican” for me to preach about the institution of marriage. It’s simply faithful exposition.

Life and Marriage have been swept up into our national politics in the last thirty years. Both of them are undeniably “political issues” now. But long before they became that, they were issues about which God spoke to us in Scripture, and that doesn’t change just because the nation has developed an interest in them. It’s true that the church should never become just a wing of any political party. But the church has to speak where Scripture speaks, and Scripture most definitely speaks about abortion and marriage. Whether one political party or another decides to agree with us is beside the point.

BTW, Boyd has a new book out on these issues: "The Myth of a Christian Nation: How the Quest for Political Power Is Destroying the Church." Anybody know of any good reviews? Gg

Posted by Greg Gilbert

Many thanks to Justin for inviting me to post on his blog this week. I'm looking forward to the conversations we might launch here this week, and I'm especially looking forward to meeting and interacting with the community of people that's grown up here.

Keep checking back through the week. I don't have any agenda that I'm planning to push, no series of articles or progression of thoughts. In fact, I'm just planning to post on a few things that catch my interest through the week, and see if they catch yours, too.

I think it'll be a fun week. Good to be with you. Gg

Starting this afternoon I'll be on a weeklong vacation.

This blog will go dark for a few days, but next Tuesday it will be in the capable hands of a new friend, Greg Gilbert.

Here is a brief bio:

Greg currently serves as the director of theological research for the president of The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary. Having graduated B.A. from Yale in 1999 and M.Div from SBTS in 2006, he intends to complete a PhD and then pastor.Greg is an elder at Third Avenue Baptist Church in Louisville, Kentucky, and a writer for 9 Marks Ministries. He and his wife Moriah have two sons, Justin and Jack.

"While men are talking, and writing, and studying about religion, and hearing preaching, it may be with great delight (as those in Ezek. 33:32), [but their] conscience, unless thoroughly awake and circumspect and furnished with spiritual wisdom and care, will be very well pacified, and enter no rebukes or pleas against the way that the soul is in. But yet all this may be nothing but the acting of that natural vanity which lies in the mind, and is a principal part of the sin we treat of. And generally this is so when men content themselves, as was said, with the notions of truth, without laboring after an experience of the power of them in their hearts, and the bringing forth the fruit of them in their lives, on which a decay must needs ensue."

John Owen, Indwelling Sin, chapter 14

Colin Hansen has a great interview with former Bush speechwriter and adviser Michael Gerson "on how evangelicals should comport themselves in the public square."

Alan Dershowitz on the nomination of John Bolton to represent the US at the UN:

As a liberal Democrat, I listened carefully to the opposition voiced by many Democratic senators to the nomination of John Bolton as our chief representative to the United Nations. Mr. Bolton has been representing us at the United Nations since August. During the current Middle East crisis, I have been able to listen for myself to what Mr. Bolton has been saying at the United Nations.

On the basis of his performance, I have become a Bolton supporter. He speaks with moral clarity. He is extremely well prepared. He is extraordinarily articulate. He places the best face on American policy, particularly in the Middle East during this crucial time.

. . . I have observed Mr. Bolton's performance with regard to Israel and its conflicts with Hezbollah and Hamas. On many other fronts he has proved himself a staunch advocate of freedom and human rights — specifically in Sudan, North Korea and Cuba. Some critics have argued that Mr. Bolton is better in his public role as advocate than in his behind-the-scenes role as conciliator. But at this point in history, the United States needs a public advocate who can further its case in the court of public opinion. No one does that better than John Bolton.

Roger Overton reviews the (beta) ebible.com.

Russ Moore interviews sociologist Alan Wolfe about Christian retailing.