So writes Mark Dever in a new book based on a conference honoring J. I. Packer at Beeson Divinity School on September 25–27, 2006:

Timothy George, ed. J. I. Packer and the Evangelical Future: The Impact of His Life and Thought. Beeson Divinity Studies. Grand Rapids: Baker, 2009. [Amazon | WTS Books]

Sample pages as a PDF include the TOC, preface, and opening chapter by Alister McGrath.

Here’s the opening paragraph of Mark Dever’s chapter, entitled “J. I. Packer and Pastoral Wisdom from the Puritans”:

There are some people for whom it is an honor to be asked to honor, and J. I. Packer is certainly one of them. And this is a surprising honor, considering that I disagree with him on baptism, church, and the resources of and prospects for rapprochement between Protestants and Roman Catholics. After all, I am a fundamentalist, Calvinistic, separatist Baptist—I barely believe in rapprochement with Presbyterians! (p. 87)

In the final section of his essay, titled “Puritans on the Definition of Justification and Questions of Church Cooperation,” Dever respectfully disagrees with Packer on Evangelicals and Catholics Together (pp. 93–96).

In Packer’s response to this book’s essays, he playfully picks up a metaphor in which he is Robin Hood, Timothy George is “Little George,” etc. He writes,

I saw in my Baptist brother Mark Dever a latter-day Sheriff of Nottingham, giving me a passing grade on the doctrine of grace but a firm “F” in ecclesiology. (p. 172)

Related: Mark Dever interviewed J. I. Packer ten years ago.

WTS Books just stocked this book:

John Wenham. Christ and the Bible. 3rd ed. Grand Rapids: Baker, 1994. Repr., Wipf and Stock, 2009.

Here’s what Mark Dever says about it in the last paragraph of his essay “Inerrancy of the Bible: An Annotated Bibliography“:

I’ve saved the best for last. If I could just recommend one book on the inerrancy of the Bible it would undoubtedly be this one—John Wenham, Christ and the Bible (Tyndale Press, 1972 [UK]; IVP, 1973 [US]). Wenham’s book has been through three editions and makes the simple point that our trust in Scripture is to be a part of our following Christ, because that is the way that He treated Scripture—as true, and therefore authoritative. (Robert Lightner, a professor of Systematic Theology at Dallas Seminary published a similar book a few years later, A Biblical Case for Total Inerrancy: How Jesus Viewed the Old Testament [Kregel, 1978].) Wenham had first put these ideas in print with a little Tyndale pamphlet in 1953 called Our Lord’s View of the Old Testament. In Christ and the Bible, Wenham, who taught Greek for many years at Oxford, an Anglican evangelical, has done us all a great service in providing us with a book which understands that we do not come by our adherence to Scripture fundamentally from the inductive resolutions of discrepancies, but from the teaching of the Lord Jesus. Only because of the Living Word may we finally know to trust the Written Word. May God use these resources of those who’ve gone before us to equip and encourage us in so trusting.

Dever concludes by giving Wenham his top recommendation:

To get up to speed on this issue, and to help you with your ministry, consider the following recommendations.

MUST READ: Wenham

SHOULD READ: Warfield, Packer’s “Fundamentalism” and the Word of God, Lindsell [The Battle for the Bible and The Bible in the Balance], any one of the edited volumes of your choosing!

Last night I listened to an MP3 of Mark Dever speaking on church membership to a group of pastors in South Africa in January 2007. (I’m not sure if this MP3 is available online.)

Dever concludes by presenting what he calls a twelve-step recovery plan for pastors to regain meaningful church membership in the congregation. Step two sheds some light on Dever’s recent controversial statement that it is wrong to include millennial views in a church’s statement of faith. In my radio interview last week, I mentioned that the viability of Dever’s statement turns on his view of the function of statements of faith. Here’s how he stated his view on that in 2007 (53:33 to 55:39 in the MP3; emphasis added):

2. Have and use a congregationally agreed-upon statement of faith and church covenant.

Now I’m aware we’re from different polities at this minister’s conference, and that’s great. If you have a denominational statement, depending on your structure you can take your denominational statement and use that. If you’re a congregational independent church, you can come up with one yourself or use one that other churches before you have used. But with membership in the congregation comes responsibility, and the statements of what the congregation together believes (and in our church we call that our statement of faith) and of how we will live (we call that our church covenant) are very useful tools. They are a clear ground of unity, a tool of teaching, [and] a fence from error and from the worldly who would erase such distinctions or [from] the divisive who want to see them more narrow. We can point to the fact that, “We’ll actually, this is what we’ve agreed on.”

So, for example, I’ll give you something else provocative. Our church’s statement of faith talks about the second coming of Christ, and it basically says, “He will come back; he will raise the dead; he will judge them; and they will go some to eternal felicity with God and some to eternal torment in hell.” That’s it! “But Mark, what about the rapture? What about the nation of Israel? What about the seven-year tribulation? What about the millennium?” You know, praise God, our statement of faith was written in the 1830s, so Christians hadn’t thought of all that stuff yet. They were just about to get divisive about that in the late nineteenth century, but our statement of faith is so old we only have this really clearly biblical stuff about the return of Christ. And then we can disagree—we can argue with each other—as best we see implications of these other precious truths.

So every Christian in the church should believe a lot more than what’s in your statement of faith, but what you’re trying to define in your statement of faith is “What do we need to have agreement upon in order to be a church together?” And I think we need to know that Jesus is coming back and that he told his disciples that he could be coming back at any time, so they need to be ready. Beyond that, well, you and I can argue about it. We can [dis]agree. We can read and write books.

Kevin Bolin, host of “Knowing the Truth” radio program, contacted me a couple of hours before his hour-long radio program this afternoon and asked me to be his guest to discuss the issue I highlighted in my recent blog post on Schreiner’s and Dever’s positions on millennial views.

Kevin, a gracious host, entitled the program “Are Millennial Views Essential?“ The interview is available from SermonAudio as a 55-minute MP3.

Update: See “Mark Dever on the Function of Statements of Faith.”

D. A. Carson and Mark Dever ministered together to pastors in South Africa in January 2007, and they jointly conducted four edifying Q&A sessions:

part 1 | part 2 | part 3 | part 4

Related: Dever interviewed Carson on June 13, 2008:

• Part 1: “Observing Evangelicalism with Don Carson” (73-minute MP3)
• Part 2: “On Books with D. A. Carson” (56-minute MP3)

Mark Dever interviews D. A. Carson: “On Books with D. A. Carson” (56-minute MP3). The interview occurred on June 13, 2008 at Trinity Evangelical Divinity School, and 9Marks just released it.

This interview is part 2 of 2. Cf. part 1: “Observing Evangelicalism with Don Carson” (73-minute MP3).

Mark Dever interviews D. A. Carson: “Observing Evangelicalism with Don Carson” (73-minute MP3). The interview occurred on June 13, 2008 at Trinity Evangelical Divinity School, and 9Marks just released it this week. (It is part 1 of 2.)

Mark Dever just posted this short article on the 9Marks blog: “Mark Dever doesn’t practice separation”?

He concludes:

To sum it up, I want my separation from the world to be more pronounced than my separation from other Christians.  Does this make sense?

The latest 9Marks interview by Mark Dever is now available: “Fundamentalism and Separation with Mark Minnick: Pastor and Bob Jones University professor Mark Minnick presents the case for the Fundamentalist doctrine of separation.”

Related:

• 9 Marks interviews and Henry Forums
• Mark Minnick MP3s
• Minnick: “Theology Matters”

I just discovered this accessible pair of articles by a couple evangelical scholars who used to teach NT together at Aberdeen:

1. P. J. Williams, “Modern Old Testament Study“
2. Simon Gathercole, “Modern New Testament Study“

Related: See Mark Dever’s interview “The New Perspective on Paul with Simon Gathercole and Peter Williams” (MP3).

All of the MP3s for the general sessions and panel discussions are now available for free downloads. Brief bios of the speakers are available here.

I’d recommend listening to these in order:

1. Ligon Duncan: Sound Doctrine: Essential to Faithful Pastoral Ministry
2. Panel Discussion 1: Dever, Duncan, Mahaney, Mohler
3. Thabiti Anyabwile: Bearing the Image: Identity, the Work of Christ, and the Church
4. Panel Discussion 2: Anyabwile, Dever, Duncan, Mahaney, Mohler
5. John MacArthur: The Sinner Neither Able Nor Willing: The Doctrine of Absolute Inability
6. Mark Dever: Improving the Gospel: Exercises in Unbiblical Theology
7. Panel Discussion 3: Dever, Duncan, MacArthur, Mahaney, Mohler
8. R.C. Sproul: The Curse Motif of the Atonement
9. Panel Discussion 4: Dever, Duncan, Mahaney, Mohler, Sproul
10. Albert Mohler: Why Do They Hate It So? The Doctrine of Substitution
11. Panel Discussion 5: Dever, Duncan, Mahaney, Mohler
12. John Piper: How the Supremacy of Christ Creates Radical Christian Sacrifice
13. Panel Discussion 6: Dever, Duncan, Mahaney, Mohler, Piper
14. C.J. Mahaney: Sustaining a Pastor’s Soul

Related:

• T4G 2008 Highlights and Pictures
• T4G 2006 MP3s (general sessions and panel discussions listed in order)
• More T4G 2008 Pictures

I thoroughly enjoyed attending T4G 2008 last week (thanks to T4G’s generosity!). It was edifying and God-glorifying.

Here are some highlights and pics:

Continue Reading »

Mark Dever posed his eighth “T4Free question” on the T4G blog earlier this week, and I was surprised that my answer was selected. (Perhaps mine had the least misspelled words and the most Piper-like hyphenated ones! Regardless, I’m grateful for this happy providence and eager for edification along with about 5,000 other people at T4G in mid-April 2008.) Here’s Mark’s question followed by the 100-words-or-less answer I submitted:

Q: “What Christian book (other than the Bible) do you think has been read by the most people attending T4G 2008, and why?”

A: “John Piper’s Desiring God

“This richly theological and warmly devotional best-seller has been the means for sending countless Christians on a trajectory towards theology that is increasingly joyful, robust, God-centered, Christ-exalting, and gospel-treasuring.

“My testimony is not unusual. I read it as a freshman in college and again during my first year of seminary, and it had a revolutionary effect on my Christian life. It shaped my attitude towards Reformed soteriology and convinced me that God is most glorified in me when I am most satisfied in Him.”

In addition to selling the print book for just $9.50, Desiring God Ministries offers the following free resources:

• the entire book online
• Desiring God Study Guide
• Desiring God Study Guide for Groups
• Desiring God sermon series (text and audio)
• Desiring God seminar (audio)
• other free resources on Christian Hedonism
• other books about Christian Hedonism

I thank God for John Piper. He is a gift to the church.

On a related note, D. A. Carson pays Piper no small compliment in the preface to Memoirs of an Ordinary Pastor: The Life and Reflections of Tom Carson by mentioning him parallel to three other giants of the faith:

“But my aim is much more modest: to convey enough of his [i.e., Tom Carson's] ministry and his own thought that ordinary ministers are encouraged, not least by the thought that the God of Augustine, Calvin, Spurgeon, and Piper is no less the God of Tom Carson, and of you and me” (p. 11).

Mark Driscoll was on the TEDS campus on January 29-30 leading the 2008 Chicago Boot Camp for the Acts 29 network, and I attended and profited from the following (sometimes provocative!) sessions he led:

1. Preaching the Mission: MP3 | Notes
2. Gospel-Centered Families: This is particularly practical. It’s almost entirely Q & A geared for the wives of church planters.

• part 1
• part 2
• part 3
• part 4
• part 5

Also available from the same conference is Mark Dever’s thoughtful session: Church Planting Evangelism.

Last month I noted that Mark Dever was scheduled to speak on campus at Trinity Evangelical Divinity School on Wednesday, January 30, 2008, for the Scripture and Ministry Lecture sponsored by the Henry Center.

1. His lecture on church membership is now available (MP3 | video). Here’s a description:

• “Re-ordering Friendship, Love, and Enmity: A Biblical Reflection on Church Membership.” Membership should reflect a living commitment to a local church in attendance, giving, prayer and service; otherwise it is meaningless, worthless, and even dangerous. What does the lack of church membership say to the rest of the world about the church? To be a member is knowingly to be traveling together as aliens and strangers in this world as we head to our heavenly home. Dr. Dever will explore church membership from a biblical and historical approach, touching on the most difficult issues, which keep many Americans from committing to church membership.

2. Also available as is a follow-up interview with Mark Dever on church discipline conducted by Steve Farish on January 31, 2008 (MP3 | video).

Mark Dever is scheduled to speak twice on campus at Trinity Evangelical Divinity School on Wednesday, January 30, 2008:

1. 10:00–11:00 AM: Trinity College Chapel
2. 3:00–4:30 PM: Scripture and Ministry Lecture sponsored by the Henry Center, which provides this description:

• “Re-ordering Friendship, Love, and Enmity: A Biblical Reflection on Church Membership.” Membership should reflect a living commitment to a local church in attendance, giving, prayer and service; otherwise it is meaningless, worthless, and even dangerous. What does the lack of church membership say to the rest of the world about the church? To be a member is knowingly to be traveling together as aliens and strangers in this world as we head to our heavenly home. Dr. Dever will explore church membership from a biblical and historical approach, touching on the most difficult issues, which keep many Americans from committing to church membership.
• Schedule | 2:45 PM – Refreshments | 3:00 PM – Lecture | 4:00 PM – Discussion
• Location | Hinkson Hall, Rodine Building, Trinity Evangelical Divinity School

Mark Dever’s “The Five Points of Criticism” is insightful and wise.

The five points:

1. “Directly, not indirectly”
2. “Seriously, not humorously”
3. “As if it’s important, not casually”
4. “Privately, not publicly”
5. “Out of love for them, not to express your feeling or frustration”

Read the whole thing.

Update: Jonathan Leeman adds a sixth point: ending with a word of encouragement.

I just thoroughly enjoyed listening to this MP3 in which C. J. Mahaney and Matt Schmucker interview Mark Dever:

“Life and Ministry with Mark Dever: The tables turn as C. J. Mahaney puts Mark Dever in the hot seat and interviews him.”

Mark Dever

C. J. Mahaney

[Photos by Timmy Brister]

The interview took place on June 6, 2007. As usual with conversations involving Mahaney and Dever, this is hilarious (e.g., C. J.’s ribbing Dever about his intellectual childhood, lack of athletic abilities, and wearing a tie and carrying a briefcase to high school), fascinating (e.g., I didn’t know that D. A. Carson delivered a letter from Carl Henry to Dever in England that asked Dever to consider pastoring Capitol Hill Baptist Church), and edifying (e.g., Dever’s faithfulness to and love for God’s word and people).

Cf. two previous posts, T4G Video and T4G 2006 MP3s, as well as the following two entries on the MP3s page of my recommended resources:

• Mark Dever (bio): The 9 Marks interviews and Henry Forums are especially enjoyable and edifying.
• C. J. Mahaney (bio): hilarious, humble, practical, convicting

Mark Dever just finished an insightful ten-part series of blog posts entitled “Where’d All These Calvinists Come From?” He gives ten major reasons for the recent resurgence of Calvinism.

1. C. H. Spurgeon
2. D. Martyn Lloyd-Jones
3. The Banner of Truth Trust
4. D. James Kennedy’s Evangelism Explosion
   
5. Inerrancy controversy
6. Presbyterian Church in America
7. J. I. Packer’s Knowing God
8. R. C. Sproul and John MacArthur
9. John Piper
10. “the rise of secularism and decline of Christian nominalism“

Before Dever posted reason #10, Justin Taylor suggested that it would be “the role of the internet.”

Cf. Phil Gons’s summary post, “The Resurgence of Calvinism.”

I thoroughly enjoyed watching the latest “Together for the Gospel” video this morning. I found it both edifying and enjoyable to watch Mark Dever, Al Mohler, Lig Duncan, and C. J. Mahaney interact with each other for over fifty minutes!