Karl Giberson really showed his hand in his response to Albert Mohler’s open letter. He acknowledges that he is not a theologian, but he nevertheless makes a weighty theological pronouncement. But I don’t sense that he realizes how weighty it really is. Here he is in his own words. “Is it not here that we find the central truth of our faith? Our sinful nature is a simple reality… But is it not possible that we might have different ideas about how we came to have that nature? Does the saving power of Jesus vanish if sin becomes something that developed through natural history, rather than appeared all at once…
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Mohler Responds to Giberson
In short, Mohler concedes an historical detail but presses Giberson on the larger theological point. Giberson and the folks at BioLogos need to grapple with the substance of Mohler’s argument. The dating of Darwin’s lapse into unbelief is not what this debate is about.
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Mohler vs. Theistic Evolutionists
Albert Mohler’s address on the age of the earth has rattled the cages of the evolutionists at the Biologos website. If you missed Mohler’s address, you can watch it here or read a transcript here. In short, Mohler argues that many of the theistic evolutionists are simply allowing general revelation to trump special revelation and that the most straightforward reading of the creation narratives in Genesis presents a young earth view of creation. As I noted a month ago, Mohler’s address has provoked a spirited conversation with the theistic evolutionists. At the Biologos site, Peter Enns, Darrel Falk, and Karl Giberson have all responded to Mohler. And now, Karl Giberson…
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Meant To Be Found
Gotta love Allen Levi. He’s a musician and storyteller, and I’ve been a fan for about 12 years. If you’ve never heard him before, now’s your chance. I just came across these videos on the internet and thought I’d pass them along. Here’s his page on Amazon.com.
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Six Reasons to Try the Olive Tree Bible App
I have been using Olive Tree’s BibleReader app on my iPhone since late last year. Without question, Olive Tree’s Reader is the best Bible app that I have ever used on a mobile device. For what I use it for, it simply has better features than any of its competitors. So here are my six reasons for commending to you the Olive Tree BibleReader.
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Theological Journal
The July 2010 issue of the journal Themelios came out earlier this week, and the entire journal is available as a free download. I have an article in this issue about the debate among Christians over the moral status of homosexuality. You can download that single article here: “Why Evangelicals Should Not Heed Brian McLaren: How the New Testament Requires Evangelicals to Render a Judgment on the Moral Status of Homosexuality” There are some outstanding articles in this issue that you should check out as well. Fred Zaspel’s essay on B. B. Warfield is an important one. B. B. Warfield is often cited as the prime example of an evangelical…
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McKnight Interviews McLaren
Scot McKnight recently sat down and asked Brian McLaren three questions about what exactly McLaren believes (see above). I have the three questions transcribed below, but I think the last question is the most important. In the third question, McKnight asks McLaren if he’s a universalist. Don’t hold your breath for a direct answer because McLaren doesn’t give one. McLaren says that he is not an exclusivist but that he can’t say that he’s a universalist either. He won’t commit to either view. McLaren’s says that he’s working within a new “narrative” in which those old questions of heaven and hell don’t make sense anymore. In spite of McLaren’s obfuscation,…
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Kevin DeYoung Gives Me My Purpose in Life
Kevin DeYoung’s message from the NEXT conference is outstanding. He calls us to cease our fixation with ecclesiastical revolution and instead to become “visionary plodders.” That little phrase—visionary plodders—is one that you can hang your hat on. The idea is that we should take the long view on our Christian walk. Revolutions can occur, but they are more likely to occur over a lifetime. What that means is that we are called to be faithful in the small things every day. A life that accumulates that kind of faithfulness over the long haul is a revolutionary life. Kevin DeYoung hasn’t literally given me my purpose in life, but he has…
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Another Complementarian Caricature
Egalitarians sometimes promote their point of view by equating complementarianism with oppressive forms of patriarchy. Often this is done through caricature rather than through engaging with mainstream complementarians and their stated beliefs. Unfortunately, another instance of this has happened in a recent article by Jana Chapman Gates. In an opinion piece for Christianity Today, Gates writes about her recent move from Manhattan to an undisclosed location in the Midwest. She joined a church and enlisted in a small group Bible Study that was going through a series on marriage. She was shocked to discover that her new friends held some fairly disturbing views on gender relations. In short, she learned…
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Review of Douglas Campbell’s “Deliverance of God”
Briefly Noted: In the latest issue of the Bulletin for Biblical Research, Tom Schreiner has a brief but helpful review of Douglas Campbell’s mammoth work on justification, The Deliverance of God: An Apocalyptic Rereading of Justification in Paul (Eerdmans, 2009). Even though the book is a massive work of scholarship, Schreiner is critical. I’ve been reading the book myself, and from what I’ve seen Schreiner’s critique is right on the money. Campbell essentially adopts a novel interpretation of Romans that understands different parts of chapters 1-4 not as the voice of Paul, but as the voice of his opponents. So what you read in Romans 1-4 is not always Paul,…