James Barr, noted linguist and biblical scholoar, died last Saturday at the age of 82. Ironically, even though he was a critic of the inerrancy of scripture, his watershed book The Semantics of Biblical Language helped all of us to avoid the linguistic fallacies that bedeviled previous generations of exegetes. Without Barr, errors such as “illegitimate totality transfer” would still be common fare among scholars and pastors alike. Even today, my own teaching of Hermeneutics is impacted by James Barr’s work. James Barr, March 20, 1924 – October 14, 2006. RIP. Obituaries: Times of London Vanderbilt University 

If you live in Texas, you have probably already heard the news coming out of Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary in Fort Worth, TX. Unless you’ve been living in a hole, it’s been rather hard to miss the coverage both on television (CBS 11) and in major state newspapers (Houston Chronicle, Fort Worth Star-Telegram, Dallas Morning News) and denominational press (BP, ABP). Yesterday, the trustees of Southwestern Seminary voted 36-1 to adopt a statement containing the following lines: “Southwestern will not knowingly endorse in any way, advertise, or commend the conclusions of the contemporary charismatic movement including ‘private prayer language.’ Neither will Southwestern knowingly employ professors or administrators who promote such…

Tammi Reed Ledbetter is bringing Southern Baptists up to speed on the ongoing debates over Calvinism in the Southern Baptist Convention. In a pair of very fair articles, she talks about the cancellation of the debate that was to have taken place on October 16 in Lynchburg, Virginia (see my previous posts), and she outlines the theological and historical points of contention that exist between Calvinistic and non-Calvinistic Baptists. Calvinism debate cancelled, but serious discussion still resulted Baptists & Calvinism: Event was called off, but not the debate I have been blogging about this controversy for the last several days, and I have found these two articles to be very…

Those who have been watching the recent debates over Calvinism in the Southern Baptist Convention will be interested in a recent sermon by Dr. Jerry Vines and a response by Tom Ascol. Dr. Vines, elder statesman of the SBC conservative resurgence, preached a message last Sunday against five-point Calvinism.

I’m elated to have received from Amazon.com my copy of God’s Indwelling Presence by my good friend Jim Hamilton. I will eventually post a review of this book, but I want to bring your attention to it now. This book makes the provocative claim that regeneration and indwelling are not the same things. Jim argues that while Old Covenant believers were regenerated by the Holy Spirit, they were not indwelt. New Covenant believers are both regenerated and indwelt. The seminal text in Jim’s study is John 14:26: “The Spirit of truth, whom the world cannot receive, because it does not see Him or know Him, but you know Him because…

I noticed this morning that there is a new entry on Ergun Caner’s blog in which he defines hyper-Calvinism. I guess he felt compelled to define this term since he keeps referring to James White as a hyper-Calvinist. Caner defines a hyper-Calvinist as having two characteristics: (1) hyper-Calvinists believe in “reprobation” and (2) I quote, “If anyone believes that there is even the possibility of an infant (‘non-elect’) going to hell, that would be clear hyper Calvinism.” I don’t understand why Caner defines hyper-Calvinism this way. Historically, hyper-Calvinism has been marked by two characteristics: (1) a refusal to offer the gospel to all without distinction, and (2) a minimization of…

I was looking forward to hearing the debate over Calvinism that was to take place in Lynchburg, Virginia this month. Ergun and Emir Caner were set to take on Tom Ascol and James White on the perennial evangelical dispute over the biblical doctrines of Grace. The Caners were going to argue against the Calvinist position, and Ascol and White were to argue in favor of it. Sadly, the debate has been cancelled just two weeks before the event was to take place. Apparently, the debate moderator changed the terms of the debate without getting permission from both sides to do so. This was most unfortunate as the two sides went…