David Mathis has posted a scathing review of N. T. Wright’s most recent book on justification. Mathis identifies five critical areas of weakness in Wright’s Justification: God’s Plan & Paul’s Vision, and each one of them is worth the reader’s careful consideration. Not only has Wright failed to engage his most serious critics (e.g., John Piper), he also fails to produce any close exegesis of the relevant biblical texts. Mathis puts it this way:
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Tiger Redemption
Last Saturday night I was driving I-10 from New Orleans to DeRidder, Louisiana. During my trip, I listened on the radio to LSU’s gut-wrenching loss to Ole Miss. The announcers didn’t do a good job describing the finish. All I could make-out was that the Tigers were about to score, mismanaged the clock, and lost the game. From fans to players to coaches, everyone was disgusted. How could the Tigers have blown that game? Much controversy followed all week long. Who would have figured that exactly one week later the Tigers would have a chance to redeem themselves? With about a minute and a half to play, the Tigers had…
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‘No Idols’ High School Conference
Josh Harris, Al Mohler, and Russell Moore will be the featured speakers at Boyce College’s conference for high school students on March 19-20, 2010. The theme for the conference is “No Idols: Calling Students to Single-hearted Devotion.” Grammy-nominated Boyce College student “Flame” will perform, and “Shane and Shane” will be leading the worship in music for the weekend. Speakers / Lodging / Schedule / Registration / Contact Last year’s conference was a great success, and I expect this one will be even better. It will be a Christ-exalting, gospel-centered, Bible-focused weekend. So please tell your pastor or youth leader about “No Idols.” You don’t want your students to miss this…
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Beauty Will Rise at Thanksgiving
Rose Kennedy buried four of her own children–all of whom met tragic ends. Her oldest son Joe was killed in action in World War 2. Her daughter Kathleen died in a plane crash in Europe. Her sons John and Bobby died by the assassin’s bullet. At the end of her life she wrote this: “It has been said that time heals all wounds. I don’t agree. The wounds remain. Time—the mind, protecting its sanity—covers them with some scar tissue and the pain lessens, but it is never gone.” I have never known that kind of grief. It is hard to imagine. And I would not dare gainsay her experience. Nevertheless,…
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Piper and Mohler at ETS
John Piper and Albert Mohler sat on a panel last week at ETS to discuss a recent effort to bridge the theological divide between Muslims and Christians. The effort resulted in a document titled “A Common Word Between Us,” and I wrote about it in early 2008 (read it here). I was at the panel discussion which featured two Muslim scholars and one Christian scholar in favor of the proposal, and Piper and Mohler who were opposed. Desiring God has made the audio available, and I commend it to you. J. P. Moreland moderated the discussion, and I have arranged the audio below to reflect the original order of presenters.
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Why Mohler Signed It
Dr. Albert Mohler explains why he signed the Manhattan Declaration in an article on his website (see my remarks here). Here’s his reason in a nutshell: “There are several reasons, but they all come down to this — I believe we are facing an inevitable and culture-determining decision on the three issues centrally identified in this statement. I also believe that we will experience a significant loss of Christian churches, denominations, and institutions in this process. There is every good reason to believe that the freedom to conduct Christian ministry according to Christian conviction is being subverted and denied before our eyes. I believe that the sanctity of human life,…
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Render Not to Caesar What Is God’s
I just finished reading and signing The Manhattan Declaration (MD), and I urge you to do the same. The Manhattan Declaration is a document affirming the sanctity of human life, the sanctity of marriage, and the rights of conscience and religious liberty. All three of these items are under siege in our culture today, so a group of Orthodox, Catholic, and evangelical Christians have drafted this statement and call upon others to defend life, marriage, and religious liberty. You need to read the entire document, but I would like to highlight the end. It commits signatories to civil disobedience under certain conditions. It’s punchy and dead-on: “Because we honor justice…
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Piper in Prison
John Piper left the ETS meeting in New Orleans on Wednesday to go and preach to the inmates at Angola prison in Louisiana. Louisiana is my home state, and Angola is infamous here. As Piper notes, “This prison is the largest maximum-security prison in America. It is one of the most famous prisons in the whole world. It has only murderers, rapists, armed robbers and habitual felons. The average sentence is 88 years, with 3,200 people in one place serving life sentences. Ninety percent of the inmates will die here.” As I said Louisiana is my home state, but I did not know about the wonderful, redemptive work that is…
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Google Brain-teaser
Tim Challies posted a link this morning to “15 Google Interview Questions That Will Make You Feel Stupid.” It turns out that Google is hiring again, and they like to ask hard questions in their interviews. In fact, you might say that their interview questions are like taking the GRE. Here’s one of the brain-teasers they use when interviewing product managers. See if you can figure it out before looking at my answer in the comment section. Let me know if you got it right. You have eight balls all of the same size. Seven of them weigh the same, and one of them weighs slightly more. How can you…
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Democratic Virtues of the Christian Right
The New Yorker recently published a must-read interview with Jon Shields, the author of The Democratic Virtues of the Christian Right, about the history of the organized opposition to abortion and its evolving relationship with American politics. Among other things, Shields says this: “The pro-life cause has indeed resonated in a liberal, rights-oriented culture far more than other “culture-war” issues. Even as attitudes toward gay marriage and gender roles have rapidly liberalized, abortion opinion has been remarkably stable since the early nineteen-seventies. The remarkable spread of social liberalism, therefore, has not left our nation any more pro-choice than it was in 1973, when Roe v. Wade was decided. There is…