• Theology/Bible

    N.T. Wright on Justification at ETS

    I have been in Atlanta this week attending a series of professional meetings for theologians and Bible scholars. The first meeting was the annual gathering of the Evangelical Theological Society (ETS). This year, the theme of ETS was “justification,” and our special guest in one of the plenary sessions was N.T. Wright. Tom Schreiner gave an excellent critique of Wright’s views on justification and actually teased out of him a rather remarkable concession. In fact, I would say that this concession was the most significant thing that happened this week at ETS on the topic of justification. Schreiner critiqued Wright’s published view that justification occurs “on the basis of the…

  • Theology/Bible

    SBTS Panel Confronts N.T. Wright’s View of Justification

    This morning I participated in a panel discussion of N. T. Wright’s views on justification. The panel met during the Thursday chapel hour at the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary (SBTS) in Louisville, Kentucky. Albert Mohler moderated the panel comprised of Tom Schreiner, Mark Seifrid, Brian Vickers, and me. The audio is available at both the Boyce College website and at the Southern Seminary site, or you can listen to it below. Or you can see the video here. [audio:http://www.sbts.edu/media/audio/fall2009/20090903panel.mp3] A colleague here at SBTS has e-mailed some items that we didn’t get to address during the discussion. His questions are in bold below, and my answers follow.

  • Theology/Bible

    Endorsements of Wright’s Response to Piper

    Last week I posted a notice about Tom Wright’s forthcoming response to John Piper on the issue of justification. The work is titled Justification: God’s Plan and Paul’s Vision. The book will be available in Great Britain from SPCK on February 1, and in the United States from Intervarsity in June. Intervarsity has already posted a webpage about the book and has included a list of interesting endorsements. I find three things that are striking about this list.

  • Politics,  Theology/Bible

    More Wrong from Wright

    I have given my assessment of N. T. Wright’s politics in previous posts on this blog (here, here). Readers may remember that Wright is pretty unrealistic in his appraisal of how the West should respond to Islamo-fascism. Not only does Wright excoriate the American-led war in Iraq, he also dismisses America’s toppling of the Taliban in Afghanistan as an “immature lashing out.” Wright has said that “the only way to fight terror is by working for mutual understanding and respect” (He’s serious!). For Wright, the American “empire’s” wars in Iraq and Afghanistan amount to fighting “one kind of terror with another.” One would expect this kind of moral equivalence from…

  • Politics,  Theology/Bible

    Wrong from Wright

    N. T. Wright delivered an controversial lecture last November about America and its war on terror. Wright’s lecture was titled, “Where is God in ‘The War on Terror’?”, and he argues among other things that the American war in Iraq is but an immoral extension of America’s imperial ambition to dominate the world. Here’s his description of the Iraq war: “the angry superpower, like a rogue elephant teased by a little dog, has gone on the rampage stamping on everything that moves in the hope of killing the dog by killing everything in reach.”

  • Book Reviews,  Theology/Bible

    Review of The Last Word by N. T. Wright

    N. T. Wright. The Last Word: Beyond the Bible Wars to a New Understanding of the Authority of Scripture. New York: HarperSanFrancisco, 2005. 160pp. $19.95. I appreciate Bishop N. T. Wright’s willingness to address the church through writing popular books. Wright is the consummate scholar and is perfectly capable of producing the kind of work that would only be accessible to specialists in the field of New Testament studies. Yet over the years he has included among his prolific output books addressed to the interested layman. His recent short work, The Last Word: Beyond the Bible Wars to a New Understanding of the Authority of Scripture, is one such book.

  • Politics,  Theology/Bible

    N. T. Wright and American “Imperialism”

    The Wall Street Journal’s OpinionJournal.com has a great piece on N. T. Wright and his influence on American Evangelicalism. It is titled “Reform Party: A British Theologian Takes Another Stab at It.” John Wilson, the author of this piece, argues that N. T. Wright is “the most influential biblical scholar in American evangelical circles today.” According to Wilson, this fact is a great irony because Wright regularly denounces the “imperialism” of U.S. foreign policy—a criticism that most American evangelicals would not agree with.

  • Publications

    Male and Female He Created Them: A Study on Gender, Sexuality, & Marriage by Denny Burk, David Closson, Colin Smothers This book is a study on gender, sexuality, and marriage. It presents a biblical vision for contested issues such as homosexuality, transgenderism, and marriage. By the completion of this book, readers will have a better grasp on the Bible’s teaching about our identities as male and female, created in the image of God, and know how to apply Scripture to these issues in their ministries at church, home, and work. God’s Glory Revealed in Christ: Essays on Biblical Theology in Honor of Thomas R. Schreiner Edited by Denny Burk, James…

  • Theology/Bible

    Publications

    BOOKS Don’t Call it a Comeback: The Old Faith for a New DayEdited by Kevin DeYoung Kevin DeYoung has brought together a group of twenty- and thirty-something evangelical Christian leaders to produce this collection of essays titled Don’t Call It a Comeback: The Same Evangelical Faith for a New Day to assert the stability, relevance, and necessity of Christian orthodoxy today. My article is “Gender Confusion and a Gospel-Shaped Counter-Culture.” Articular Infinitives in the Greek of the New TestamentThis book is a technical study on a particular point of Greek Grammar, the articular infinitive. It was published by Sheffield Phoenix Press in May 2006. Sheffield Phoenix Press is located in…