biblical theo(b)logy

Dug Down Deep Chapt. 11-Humble Orthodoxy by Joshua Harris

Thu, 29 Jul 2010 11:45:21 -0400

Dug Down Deep Chapt. 11-Humble Orthodoxy by Joshua Harris:

More free books online!

In this chapter of Dug Down Deep entitled “Humble Orthodoxy” Joshua Harris talks about the importance of not only loving and defending truth but also being humble and compassionate toward those with whom we disagree. Truth matters but so does our attitude.

The Glory of God - Christopher W. Morgan (Editor), Robert A. Peterson (Editor)

Thu, 29 Jul 2010 08:42:57 -0400

The Glory of God - Christopher W. Morgan (Editor), Robert A. Peterson (Editor):

Apparently you can read the book online at crossway.org. Here is the link for the chapter by Richard Gaffin on “The Glory of God in Paul’s Epistles.”

DugDownDeep_Carnahan.mov (by Covenant Life Church) So I have...

Thu, 22 Jul 2010 19:06:13 -0400

DugDownDeep_Carnahan.mov (by Covenant Life Church)

So I have seen this floating around the web and everyone talking about how good it was. I finally decided to give up 2 minutes of my life and watch it. And it was very, very good.

A Different Way to Look at the Reformed Faith

Fri, 16 Jul 2010 13:21:20 -0400

There is a very different way to look at the Reformed faith, and I would recommend it as an alternative to Clark’s. We begin with Jesus himself, who by his atoning death and resurrection built one true church (Matt. 16:18, Eph. 2:19-20). After the time of the apostles, he continues to rule that one church from Heaven, granting authority to elders and deacons (1 Tim. 3:1-13, Tit. 1:5-9, Heb. 13:17). He has left no alternative method of ordering the church. Nobody is given the right to leave the one true church and start his own denomination. Nevertheless, the one true church eventually divided. Groups broke away from the fellowship: west broke from east, Protestant from Catholic, Protestant from Protestant. These divisions grieve our Lord, who prayed before his death agony that all his people would be one (John 17:21-23). The blame, of course, is not on everyone equally, but these divisions always resulted from someone’s sin—either the sin of those who illegitimately left the one body, or that of those who illegitimately forced them to leave, or, in most cases, both.

So the one true church is now broken up into thousands of denominations and varying traditions, contrary to our Lord’s will. The church is still one in that it has one Lord, one faith, and one baptism. But there are divisions of theology, practice, ethnicity, of which the Reformed tradition is one.

Christians are committed first to Christ, then to the one body of Christ, and only then to a particular form of the church. They must make the third commitment only because history has made it necessary. Because of the tragic division of the church, one may not be a “mere Christian.” He must join a congregation that does not have fellowship with all other congregations. So he must be Reformed or non-Reformed, not both. But a believer ought to be at least a little sad about this historical necessity. There should be in his heart a purpose to do something, even if he can only do a little bit, to lessen the divisions of the church and to make progress toward the reunion of the church.

If a believer is Reformed, he should give due appreciation to the achievements of that tradition in theology, church government, and other ways. But the focus of his life should not be on his denomination or tradition. It should be on Christ and the Scriptures. He should feel deeply the errors of Reformed chauvinism, the attitude that celebrates and seeks to preserve the distinctiveness of Reformed Christianity from the influence of other branches of the church. He should learn from other traditions [59] and recommend what he learns to his Reformed friends. He should do what he can to avoid the practices I mentioned earlier that are spiritually debilitating.

His church home, contrary to Horton’s “village green” model, is the whole body of God’s elect. His relation to non-Reformed Christians is spiritual oneness with Christ, not “shared interests.” (Shared interests! What a trivializing of the unity of Jesus’ body!)

A Reformed community that maintains its biblical heritage while seeking to grow in its love for the church as a whole is well worth supporting and recommending to others. That is not Clark’s vision of the church, and that I take to be the most serious criticism of the book under review. But it is one I heartily recommend to my readers. [60]

Frame-poythress.org

"Biblical theology forms an organic whole. This means not only that one can approach any part of the..."

Fri, 16 Jul 2010 12:10:10 -0400

“Biblical theology forms an organic whole. This means not only that one can approach any part of the subject by beginning at any other point of the subject (though some vantage points are certainly more helpful than others), but that to treat some element of biblical theology as if it existed in splendid isolation seriously distorts the whole picture.
On few subjects is this more obviously true than with regard to one’s doctrine of Scripture. In this skeptical age it is doubtful if an articulate and coherent understanding of the nature of Scripture and how to interpret it can long be sustained where there is not at the same time a grasp of the biblical view of God, of human beings, of sin, of redemption, and of the rush of history toward its ultimate goal.”

- Take Your Vitamin Z: Another Reason Why Biblical Theology is Vital

- D.A. Carson, Collected Writings on Scripture, p. 19

"The Family Tree of Reformed Biblical Theology"

Mon, 12 Jul 2010 19:47:51 -0400

“The Family Tree of Reformed Biblical Theology”

- Midwest Center for Theological Studies: Owensboro, KY

Nick Patrick - Did Americans in 1776 have British accents?

Sat, 10 Jul 2010 22:40:59 -0400

Nick Patrick - Did Americans in 1776 have British accents?

http://www.ptsem.edu/news/Egreetings/test/institutes.pdf

Fri, 09 Jul 2010 13:37:37 -0400

http://www.ptsem.edu/news/Egreetings/test/institutes.pdf:

A helpful calendar to read Calvin in a year (there are a couple online, but this is the only that first I saw that can be done without breaking the Sabbath).

Salty Mission | Living Within God's Story

Thu, 17 Jun 2010 18:55:59 -0400

Salty Mission | Living Within God's Story:

My latest post over at Living Within God’s Story…

A Redemptive-Historical Overview of John Chapter 3

Wed, 16 Jun 2010 23:08:02 -0400

From J. Dennison

Excerpt:

John 3:16

How does John use this term “cosmos”? Cosmos has no personal force. In John’s gospel the word “world” does not refer to individuals as in the paraphrase “God loves each and every person in the world.” No. rather cosmos has an ethical force in John’s gospel. It means the arena of ethical hostility to God and his kingdom. In other words God’s love is directed to the area rebelling in ethical hostility against Him. It is to this arena that He sends his Son and to this arena whoever believes has life from another arena; the arena of eternity. Therefore all the arguments whether “cosmos” is universalistic or particularistic are muted by tracing John’s use of the term throughout his gospel, his epistle and his apocalypse. Cosmos for John is ethically specific. This arena of sin and rebellion was the object of God’s love. Not the angelic arena, not the infernal arena. This cosmic arena was loved so that believers, however they come to believe, may not perish but have the life of the non-cosmic arena. Who are these believers? They are all the ones who receive heavenly things not earthly things (Vs 12 & 31). They receive the one lifted up as the serpent in the wilderness. They do not take their eyes off of Him. (vs. 14. 15). They receive the Son of God as the Son of Man (Vs. 13, 14, 16, 17, 18). They do not receive those who reject Him (Vs. 33). The receive salvation. They do not receive judgment/condemnation (Vs. 17-19). They receive the light (Vs. 19-21), they do not love the darkness (v. 19). They receive the witness of the Son who the Father has sent. They do not receive the witness of those who deny or ignore Him. (Vs. 11 & 32). They receive eternal life. They do not abide in eternal wrath (v. 36). The eschatological birth brings one into Christological union, soteriological union, eschatological union and the sweetness of that union is as the joy of the friend of the bridegroom, John the Baptist. Christ is better than all suitors. Union with Christ is the soteric ecstasy. Identification with Christ in the eternal heavenly places is the presence of eschatological finality.

Church Planting initiative aims to renew mainline denominations

Wed, 09 Jun 2010 13:37:45 -0400

Church Planting initiative aims to renew mainline denominations

The new way to get Rick Roll’d via i.imgur.com

Tue, 08 Jun 2010 18:43:18 -0400

The new way to get Rick Roll’d

via i.imgur.com

George Orwell: 6 Questions/6 Rules

Mon, 07 Jun 2010 18:55:43 -0400

George Orwell: 6 Questions/6 Rules:

George Orwell has earned the right to be called one of the finer writers in the English language through such novels as 1984, Animal Farm, and Down and Out in Paris and London, and such essays as “Shooting an Elephant.”

Orwell expressed a strong dislike of totalitarian governments in his work, but he was also passionate defender of good writing. Thus, you may want to hear some of Orwell’s writing tips.*

A scrupulous writer, in every sentence that he writes, will ask himself at least four questions, thus:

What am I trying to say?
What words will express it?
What image or idiom will make it clearer?
Is this image fresh enough to have an effect?

And he will probably ask himself two more:

Could I put it more shortly?
Have I said anything that is avoidably ugly?

One can often be in doubt about the effect of a word or a phrase, and one needs rules that one can rely on when instinct fails. I think the following rules will cover most cases:

Never use a metaphor, simile, or other figure of speech which you are used to seeing in print.
Never use a long word where a short one will do.
If it is possible to cut a word out, always cut it out.
Never use the passive where you can use the active.
Never use a foreign phrase, a scientific word, or a jargon word if you can think of an everyday English equivalent.
Break any of these rules sooner than say anything outright barbarous.

* From Orwell’s essay“Politics and the English Language”

Union in Christ: A Declaration

Sat, 05 Jun 2010 09:15:00 -0400

“Union in Christ: A Declaration for the Church”

“He is before all things and in him all things hold together”

(Colossians 1:17)

With the witness of Scripture and the Church through the ages we declare:

I.Jesus Christ is the gracious mission of God

to the world

and for the world.

He is Emmanuel and Savior,

One with the Father, God incarnate as Mary’s son, Lord of all, The truly human one. His coming transforms everything. His Lordship casts down every idolatrous claim to authority. His incarnation discloses the only path to God. His life shows what it means to be human. His atoning death reveals the depth of God’s love for sinners. His bodily resurrection shatters the powers of sin and death.

II. The Holy Spirit joins us to Jesus Christ by grace alone, uniting our life with his through the ministry of the Church.

In the proclamation of the Word, the Spirit calls us to repentance, builds up and renews our life in Christ, strengthens our faith, empowers our service, gladdens our hearts, and transforms our lives more fully into the image of Christ.

We turn away from forms of church life that ignore the need for repentance, that discount the transforming power of the Gospel, or that fail to pray, hope and strive for a life that is pleasing to God.

In Baptism and conversion the Spirit engrafts us into Christ, establishing the Church’s unity and binding us to one another in him.

We turn away from forms of church life that seek unity in theological pluralism, relativism or syncretism.

In the Lord’s Supper the Spirit nurtures and nourishes our participation in Christ and our communion with one another in him.

We turn away from forms of church life that allow human divisions of race, gender, nationality, or

economic class to mar the Eucharistic fellowship, as though in Christ there were still walls of separation dividing the human family.

III. Engrafted into Jesus Christ we participate through faith in his relationship with the Father.

By our union with Christ we participate in his righteousness before God, even as he becomes the bearer of our sin.

We turn away from any claim to stand before God apart from Christ’s own righteous obedience, manifest in his life and sacrifice for our sake on the cross.

By our union with Christ we participate in his knowledge of the Father, given to us as the gift of faith through the unique and authoritative witness of the Old and New Testaments.

We turn away from forms of church life that discount the authority of Scripture or claim knowledge of God that is contrary to the full testimony of Scripture as interpreted by the Holy Spirit working in and through the community of faith across time.

By our union with Christ we participate in his love of the Father, manifest in his obedience “even unto death on the cross.”

We turn away from any supposed love of God that is manifest apart from a continual longing for and striving after that loving obedience which Christ offers to God on our behalf.

IV. Though obscured by our sin, our union with Christ causes his life to shine forth in our lives. This transformation of our lives into the image of Christ is a work of the Holy Spirit begun in this life as a sign and promise of its completion in the life to come.

By our union with Christ our lives participate in the holiness

of the One who fulfilled the Law of God on our behalf.

We turn away from forms of church life that ignore Christ’s call to a life of holiness, or that seek to pit Law and Gospel against one another as if both were not expressions of the one Word of God.

By our union with Christ we participate in his obedience. In these times of moral and sexual confusion we affirm the consistent teaching of Scripture that calls us to chastity outside of marriage and faithfulness within the covenant of marriage between a man and a woman.

We turn away from forms of church life that fail to pray for and strive after a rightly ordered sexuality as the gracious gift of a loving God, offered to us in Christ by the power of the Holy Spirit. We also turn away from forms of church life that fail to forgive and restore those who repent of sexual and other sins.

V. As the body of Christ the Church has her life in Christ.

By our union with Christ the Church binds together believers in every time and place.

We turn away from forms of church life that identify the true Church only with particular styles of worship, polity, or institutional structure. We also turn away from forms of church life that ignore the witness of those who have gone before us.

By our union with Christ the Church is called out into particular communities of worship and mission.

We turn away from forms of church life that see the work of the local congregation as sufficient unto itself, as if it were not a local representation of the one, holy, catholic and apostolic Church called together by the power of the Spirit in every age and time until our Lord returns.

By our union with Christ our lives participate in God’s mission to the world:

to uphold the value of every human life, to make disciples of all peoples, to establish Christ’s justice and peace in all creation, and to secure that visible oneness in Christ that is the promised inheritance of every believer

We turn away from forms of church life that fail to bear witness in word and deed to Christ’s compassion and peace, and the Gospel of salvation.

By our union with Christ the Church participates in Christ’s resurrected life and awaits in hope the future that God has prepared for her. Even so come quickly, Lord Jesus!

In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.

_________________________________________________________

The Commentary is pretty amazing in this little, gem of a book.

Union in Christ: A Declaration for the Church (Paperback)

Sistine Chapel

Sat, 05 Jun 2010 08:45:00 -0400

Sistine Chapel:

Pretty neat look at the Sistine Chapel. I think something gets lost when we only look at some of the paintings abstracted from the rest of the building. It is rather breathtaking…

Here’s some more info on it.

HT: Jim Hamilton

Score of Redemption

Thu, 03 Jun 2010 11:00:00 -0400

They are just lines, circles, and dots upon paper. Artistically, they don’t make sense; they don’t communicate. But it sprawled the page, fragile enough to be destroyed by a tear, crumble, or rip.

They sit lifeless on the page, unable to do anything. Each mark connected to the next, part of an unfolding progression eagerly awaiting a receptor. Each mark awaits for a falling hammer.

The result is not found in the notes themselves. The music was never intended to be constrained to an inanimate, lifeless page; it misses the experiential dimension. The various notes produce empty sound if they merely stay on the page. They indicate something more, with the power to envelop the listener and even elicit tears. It could never be a complete work without a falling hammer.

It began as a soft solo, a divine promise. It unfolded, slowly crescendoing more and more. Growing louder as others joined the chorus in resounding forte. The musical notes in the Score of Redemption found their finale and completion in Christ, on whose hands the hammer fell.

Wrightians and the Neo-Reformed: 'All One in Christ Jesus'

Wed, 02 Jun 2010 13:52:25 -0400

Wrightians and the Neo-Reformed: 'All One in Christ Jesus' :

A very interesting article contrasting the T4G conference with the Wheaton conference.

For the T4G folks, protecting disputed doctrines against heresy is where good theology is born. Clear thinking comes from friction and protestation, from Hegelian dialectics (R.C. Sproul spoke on this), but not from compromise. The Patristic Fathers got it right whenever they were ironing out disputed doctrines and fighting against heresy, said Ligon Duncan in his talk. But on matters that were not disputed, he said, their thought sometimes got muddled up.

The exact opposite point was made at the Wheaton Conference by Kevin Vanhoozer, professor of systematic theology at Wheaton, who suggested that theologians like Wright (and, presumably Christians in general) are more often correct in matters they collectively affirm than in matters they dispute. This statement reflects the contrasting spirit of the Wheaton Conference as regards unity: It’s what we affirmthat matters. Are we on the same page on the core issues? Can we agree on the claims of the creeds? Yes? Then let’s hash out the details of theological minutia (which is definitely important) in a spirited, friendly debate as the people of God exercising the renewal of our minds (Rom. 12:2).

Free Audiobook Download of the Month

Tue, 01 Jun 2010 12:03:43 -0400

Free Audiobook Download of the Month: Forgotten God: Reversing Our Tragic Neglect of the Holy Spirit (Unabridged) by Francis Chan

A follow up to the profound message of Crazy Love, Pastor Francis Chan offers a compelling invitation to understand, embrace, and follow the Holy Spirit’s direction in our lives. In the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. We pray in the name of all three, but how often do we live with an awareness of only the first two?

Intellectual Autobiography of John Frame

Mon, 31 May 2010 20:57:17 -0400

Intellectual Autobiography of John Frame

Four Models of Counseling in Pastoral Ministry

Sun, 30 May 2010 20:12:13 -0400

Four Models of Counseling in Pastoral Ministry:

This is probably the best introduction to the various schools of Christian Counseling