• Book Reviews,  Theology/Bible

    Restoring Integrity in Baptist Churches

    I’m writing this note to draw your attention to a new book titled Restoring Integrity in Baptist Churches, edited by Thomas White, Jason Duesing, and Malclom Yarnell (Kregel, 2008). This book is a collection of essays taken from the “Baptist Distinctives Conference” held on the campus of Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary in September of 2006. Mark Dever, Danny Akin, Greg Wills, David Allen, Malcolm Yarnell, and others are all contributors. The sundry essays address the topics of church membership, baptism, the Lord’s Supper, church discipline, and the priesthood of belivers.

  • Book Reviews,  Theology/Bible

    Review of The Nature of the Atonement: Four Views

    James Beilby and Paul R. Eddy, eds. The Nature of the Atonement: Four Views. Downers Grove, IL: IVP Academic, 2006. 208pp. $20. It is no accident that Intervarsity has chosen to publish a “four views” book on the meaning of Christ’s atonement. The topic is very much in dispute right now, even among those who are associated with the evangelical movement. Not long ago, the consensus among evangelicals consisted more or less of an affirmation of the penal substitutionary view, but this is no longer the case. As evangelicalism has splintered, so has its tacit orthodoxy concerning atonement. Now, we are not surprised to hear certain pastors and theologians castigating…

  • Book Reviews,  Theology/Bible

    Uneasy in Babylon

    I am about five years behind everyone else in reading Barry Hankins’ Uneasy in Babylon: Southern Baptist Conservatives and American Culture. I actually began reading the book a couple of years ago, but then got distracted and only picked it up recently to finish it. But don’t be deceived by the narrative of my history with this book. Uneasy in Babylon is a great read and will be of interest to anyone who wants to understand the history of the conservative resurgence in the nation’s largest Protestant denomination, the Southern Baptist Convention (SBC).

  • Book Reviews,  Politics

    The Baptist Perspective on Religious Liberty

    I’ve just begun reading a new release from Broadman and Holman, First Freedom: The Baptist Perspective on Religious Liberty. The book is a collection of papers that were read at the 2005 Baptist Distinctives Conference held at Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary in Fort Worth, Texas. Among the contributors are Russell Moore, Richard Land, and Paige Patterson. I just finished Russell Moore’s contribution, and it is provocative to say the least. It’s titled, “Conservative Christians in an Era of Christian Conservatives.” Here’s a snippet in which he takes a whack at the emerging church:

  • Book Reviews,  Theology/Bible

    The Historical Jesus Equals the Jesus of the Bible (part 2)

    Yesterday I wrote that I had begun reading two books that address the so-called “Quest for the Historical Jesus.” The first book I discussed was John Piper’s What Jesus Demands from the World. The second book is Richard Bauckham’s Jesus and the Eyewitnesses: The Gospels as Eyewitness Testimony. This book is written on a totally different level than Piper’s book. It is written by a world class scholar, and it is written for scholars. The main argument of Bauckham’s book is an important one as it confronts one of the key assumptions of Jesus Questers.

  • Book Reviews,  Theology/Bible

    The Historical Jesus Equals the Jesus of the Bible (part 1)

    Over the last four-hundred years or so, critical scholars of the New Testament have been on a quest to apply the methods of historical research to the canonical Gospels in order to discern what the historical Jesus was really like. The assumption underlying much of this work over the years is the idea that the Gospels do not give us an accurate portrait of Jesus, so we have to go behind the scripture to find out who Jesus really was.

  • Book Reviews,  Theology/Bible

    Review of Richard Hays’ Faith of Christ

    Richard B. Hays, The Faith of Jesus Christ: The Narrative Substructure of Galatians 3:1-4:11, The Biblical Resource Series (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2002). lii and 308 pages. $29. In 2002, Eerdmans printed a second edition of what has turned out to be a major contribution on the theology of the apostle Paul. What follows is not a full-blown review of Richard Hays’ watershed book, but I do want to offer a few reflections on it.

  • Book Reviews,  Theology/Bible

    Graeme Goldsworthy’s According to Plan

    In any given year, I teach about five sections of hermeneutics at the College where I am a professor. Beginning this semester, I modified my hermeneutics course so as to include a module on biblical theology. At the suggestion of my good friend Brian Vickers, I am requiring my students to read Graeme Goldsworthy’s introduction to biblical theology, According to Plan: The Unfolding Revelation of God in the Bible. I have been a student of biblical theology for many years now, but I had never read Goldsworthy’s primer on the topic until just this semester as I was preparing lectures. Having read the book, I can now say that I…

  • Book Reviews,  Theology/Bible

    Review of BibleWorks7

    BibleWorks 7: Software for Biblical Exegesis and Research. Norfolk, VA: BibleWorks, LLC. $349.00. For many years, the Accordance software was the gold standard for scholars and pastors working with the primary texts of biblical studies. Its main drawback was that it only worked on Macs, thus relegating the myriads of PC users to one or more of the inferior programs that were available for the Windows operating system. The release of BibleWorks 5 and 6 began to close the gap between Mac users and PC users. With the release of BibleWorks 7, however, the gap is gone, and a new standard has been set for serious students of the scripture…