Tim Challies delivers an appropriately stinging review of Brian McLaren’s new book A New Kind of Christianity. Among other things, Challies observes that McLaren loves Jesus but hates God. In fact, Challies is convinced that this book is a de-conversion narrative that shows that McLaren has unambiguously apostatized from the Christian faith. He writes: ‘He denies the Fall, he denies original sin, he denies human depravity, he denies hell… ‘Here, in A New Kind of Christianity it’s as if McLaren is screaming “I hate God!” at the top of his lungs. And swarms of Christians are looking at him with admiration and saying, “See how that guy loves God?” I…
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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…
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CNN’s “After Jesus”
If you missed CNN’s “After Jesus” special last night, you didn’t miss much. It was more fanciful musings on the history of earliest Christianity of the sort that we saw last Spring with the release of The Gospel of Judas, the media blitz of Bart Ehrman’s Misquoting Jesus, and the release of the movie The DaVinci Code.
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Rob Bell’s Change of Heart on the Women’s Issue
Gender-News.com has a fascinating report on Pastor Rob Bell’s transition from a complentarian position to an egalitarian position. The story is titled “Engaged by the culture: Michigan megachurch goes egalitarian.†The article also narrates the story of Rob Bell’s role in changing his church’s constitution so that women would be permitted to serve as elders.A few things are troubling about this story and are in stark contrast to my previous post about Al Mohler’s change of heart in the other direction.
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Dan Wallace on Reinventing Jesus
I will be co-hosting the radio program “Jerry Johnson Live†today, and our guest on the show will be my old mentor Dr. Dan Wallace of Dallas Theological Seminary. Dr. Wallace has just published a book titled Reinventing Jesus, in which he takes on the likes of Bart Ehrman and his radical views on the Bible.As you may know, Bart Ehrman has been making the media rounds promoting his book Misquoting Jesus. In this book, Ehrman mounts a full-scale assault on the doctrine of inerrancy. Unlike his more scholarly tomes, Ehrman is reaching a popular audience with this particular book. The wide reach of Misquoting Jesus is attested by Ehrman’s…
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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.
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The Gospel of Judas: A Transparent Fiction
What should we make of the discovery of this new Gospel of Judas that has been unearthed in the sands of Egypt? The media and unfortunately some biblical scholars of note would have us think that this document represents voices from the early centuries of Christianity that need to be given a hearing as we assess who the Jesus of history was. Bart Ehrman and Elaine Pagels are among those scholars of the opinion that earliest Christianity was not a monolithic movement. There were many different Christian groups in the first century, but we just don’t know much about the “other” groups because their voices were suppressed by the orthodox…
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Deconstructing The Da Vinci Code
Photo by James Yacovelli Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary recently held a symposium on Dan Brown’s The Da Vinci Code. Panel members include Bart Ehrman, Andreas Kostenberger, Richard Hays, and Norm Geisler. You can download the mp3 audio of the conversation from the SEBTS Website, or you can subscribe to the Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary Chapel Podcast through iTunes. The title of the discussion is “Roundtable Discussion of The Da Vinci Code.” This is a very fascinating discussion. As for the historical claims of The Da Vinci Code, when Norm Geisler and Bart Ehrman are in agreement on anything having to do with Christianity, you know that something momentous has happened.…
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‘Misquoting Jesus’ in the Washington Post
Neely Tucker reviews Bart Ehrman’s Misquoting Jesus in last Sunday’s Washington Post (click here). Unfortunately, the review takes up some of the tendentious claims that Ehrman puts forth in the book. One such claim is Ehrman’s contention that the variations in the manuscript copies of the New Testament undermine the Christian faith. The Post review writes: Most of these are inconsequential errors in grammar or metaphor. But others are profound. . . [One] critical passage is in 1 John, which explicitly sets out the Holy Trinity (the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit). It is a cornerstone of Christian theology, and this is the only place where it is…