While preparing to teach on regenerate church membership and believer’s baptism in my church tomorrow, I came across one of my favorite quotes from Charles H. Spurgeon. It’s from his autobiography, and I couldn’t agree more with him. “If I thought it wrong to be a Baptist, I should give it up, and become what I believed to be right… If we could find infant baptism in the word of God, we should adopt it. It would help us out of a great difficulty, for it would take away from us that reproach which is attached to us,—that we are odd, and do not as other people do. But we…
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Mohler Interviews Plummer on ’40 Questions’
Albert Mohler’s interview with Rob Plummer aired yesterday on “The Albert Mohler Program.” The discussion was all about Plummer’s new book 40 Questions about Interpreting the Bible. I reviewed the book a few weeks ago, and you can read it here. You can listen to the interview below. [audio:http://www.sbts.edu/media/audio/totl/2010/AMP_06_24_2010.mp3]
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DeYoung takes on Complemegalitarianism
Kevin DeYoung picks apart John Stott’s chapter on “Women, Men and God” in the book Issues Facing Christians Today. Stott argues for a middle-way between complementarianism and egalitarianism, but DeYoung shows that Stott’s exegesis is not at all compelling. He writes: “If anyone could present a strong case for women elders and pastors, or something less than full blown complementarianism, surely John Stott could. But in actuality, a close examination of Stott’s exegesis shows just how weak the middle-of-the-road position (not to mention the egalitarian position) really is.” Part 1 of DeYoung’s critique appears today, and part 2 will appear tomorrow. Read it here.
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New Andrew Peterson Album
Andrew Peterson previews his new album in this video. The album will be released on July 27. (HT: Jim Hamilton)
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Theology for the Church
In an article today at “Between the Times,” Danny Akin and Bruce Ashford remind us that the calling of SBC seminaries is “to serve the churches of the SBC.” They issue four challenges to that end, but it was number two that caught my eye as an educator in an SBC school: “A second challenge for the seminaries is to produce ministry-minded graduates instead of seminary eggheads. The brutal fact is that seminaries sometimes produce students who can discourse on theological abstractions but who are detached from real-life ministry.”
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Richard Hays on Homosexuality
I’ve been working on an article about the New Testament’s teaching on the moral status of homosexuality. In my research, I have been helped time and again by Richard Hays’s careful scholarship. Today, I’ve been reading an article that he wrote back in 1986 on the meaning of “nature” in Romans 1:26-27. In particular, Hays confronts an assumption that is often held by Christians and non-Christians alike. The assumption goes like this. Actions are sinful only if they are chosen. If an action is not chosen, then it cannot be sinful. With respect to homosexuality, some people argue that homosexuality is an orientation that one is born with, not something…
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Rob Plummer’s 40 Questions
I mentioned a while back that I’ve been reading through Rob Plummer’s new hermeneutics primer 40 Questions about Interpreting the Bible. It has been an excellent read, and I highly recommend it to anyone who wants a smart, introductory-level text on biblical interpretation. I’ll wager it’s the only hermeneutics book in history with endorsements as illustrious and varied as Darrell Bock, Kevin Vanhoozer, and Jerry Vines. Don’t let the title fool you though. This is not a book of 40 random questions thrown together haphazardly. The book has four parts treating the following topics: (1) text, canon, and translation, (2) interpretation and meaning, (3) biblical genres, and (4) issues in…
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Are you a Varsity or JV Christian?
For many years, I believed that Christianity had a Varsity squad and Junior Varsity squad. The JV squad consisted of those who had accepted Jesus as their Savior, and the Varsity squad of those who had accepted Jesus as their Savior and Lord. I saw members of both squads in my own church. I believed that baseline Christianity was JV. These were the people who were going to Heaven but who nevertheless didn’t care very much about Jesus. I believed that Elite Christianity was only for the few varsity players. These were the people who not only weren’t going to hell but who also followed Jesus in this life on…
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The Life of the Mind and the Love of God
Here’s the really sharp promo for the Desiring God National Conference on the “The Life of the Mind and the Love of God.” It is to be held in Minneapolis, Minnesota on October 1-3, 2010. Register here.
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JBMW Online
We have introduced a significant change with the release of the latest issue of JBMW. We have moved to an exclusively online format. That means all of our articles will be immediately available for download for anyone who wants to read them. We will still produce two fascicles per year, and the first one for 2010 has just appeared at the CBMW website. Starting with this issue, readers have the option to download the entire journal in one PDF document. Readers can also view individual articles in HTML or download individual articles in PDF. Current subscribers to the print version will be receiving a letter next week explaining the changes.…