Brad Baugham served our church well on November 14 with a two-part series on gospel-centered parenting. Now it’s available online:
I’ve not heard anyone think as deeply about applying the gospel to the everyday life of little children.
Three Books on Politics
I grew up following politics more than the average kid because my Dad loved following politics. For example, he’s read just about every issue of National Review since the 1970s. He’s also one of the most brilliant people I know.
So it was a pleasure to coauthor this article with him for TGC: “Three Books on Politics: A Review Article” (14-page PDF). It summarizes and evaluates three recent evangelical books on politics:
- Wayne Grudem. Politics—According to the Bible: A Comprehensive Resource for Understanding Modern Political Issues in Light of Scripture. Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2010. 619 pp.
- Carl R. Trueman. Republocrat: Confessions of a Liberal Conservative. Phillipsburg, NJ: P&R Publishing, 2010. xxvii + 110 pp.
- Michael Gerson and Peter Wehner. City of Man: Religion and Politics in a New Era. Edited by Timothy Keller and Collin Hansen. Cultural Renewal. Chicago: Moody, 2010. 140 pp.
The format of our review is similar to these review articles:
- D. A. Carson. “Three Books on the Bible: A Critical Review.” Journal of the Evangelical Theological Society 26 (1983): 337–67. [Reprinted in Collected Writings on Scripture.]
- D. A. Carson. “Three More Books on the Bible: A Critical Review.” Trinity Journal 27 (2006): 1–62. [Reprinted in Collected Writings on Scripture.]
- Robert Yarbrough. “The Embattled Bible: Four More Books.” Themelios 34 (2009): 6–25.
We review each book separately—tracing the argument and suggesting strengths and weaknesses—and conclude by briefly comparing the three books.
Carson’s Commentary on Matthew
The second edition of Carson’s commentary on Matthew just became available this week:
D. A. Carson. “Matthew.” Pages 23–670 in Matthew–Mark. 2nd ed. Expositor’s Bible Commentary 9. Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2010.
It’s bound with the commentary on Mark by Walter W. Wessel and Mark L. Strauss (pp. 671–989).
It’s not drastically different from the first edition (1984), but the entire commentary is updated to some degree in both content and wording. It’s about fifty pages longer than the first edition because it adds new discussions that interact with secondary literature over the past quarter-century.
Related: Zondervan also just released a superb commentary on Matthew by Grant Osborne in the Zondervan Exegetical Commentary series, which uses a format that serves preachers extremely well.
Two New NT Books from Baker
Two worthy additions to your library:
1. Frank Thielman. Ephesians. Baker Exegetical Commentary on the New Testament. Grand Rapids: Baker, 2010. 520 pp.
Doug Moo: “This commentary will join Hoehner and O’Brien as the first references on Ephesians to which I turn.”
2. Craig L. Blomberg with Jennifer Foutz Markley. A Handbook of New Testament Exegesis. Grand Rapids: Baker, 2010. 298 pp.
Grant Osborne: “Among the many discussions of the interpretation of Scripture that have appeared lately, this is one of the best and most helpful.” That’s high praise coming from the prof who wrote this.
Why You Should Organize Your Personal Theological Library and a Way How
That’s the title of a 2600-word article (8-page PDF) I recently wrote for Reformation 21. (Pardon the formatting of the version on Ref21’s site; some of it didn’t transfer very cleanly in HTML.)
Here’s the outline:
- Why You Should Organize Your Personal Theological Library
- A Way to Organize Your Personal Theological Library
- Enter the bibliographic information for each resource in Zotero.
- Organize your resources in Zotero.
- Arrange your print books on your bookshelves in alphabetical order by author.
I created this three-minute video to supplement the article:
And here’s the article: [Read more…] about Why You Should Organize Your Personal Theological Library and a Way How
A Former Slave-Trader’s Sanctified Self-Assessment
John Newton (cf. Google books):
I am not what I ought to be. …
Not what I might be …
Not what I wish to be. …
I am not what I hope to be. …
[But] I am not what I once was, a child of sin, and slave of the devil. …
I think I can truly say with the apostle, ‘By the grace of God I am what I am.’
D. A. Carson: “That encapsulates Christian sanctification in pithy statements better than anything I know.”
Update (8/17/2015): Tony Reinke explains Newton’s statement in his book Newton on the Christian Life: To Live Is Christ, Theologians on the Christian Life (Wheaton, IL: Crossway, 2015), 267–69:
To explain the riddle of the Christian life in all its shortcomings and its hopes, John Newton penned what has possibly become the most famous sermon outline in church history. He had been asked to preach a little homily in the home of a friend, which he happily obliged. He chose for his text 1 Corinthians 15:10: “But by the grace of God I am what I am.” All that remains of Newton’s living-room message is an outline, written down by a nameless note taker in attendance. Over time, the sermon outline morphed and merged into this remarkably concise summary of the Christian life on earth:
I am not what I ought to be. Ah! how imperfect and deficient. Not what I might be, considering my privileges and opportunities. Not what I wish to be. God, who knows my heart, knows I wish to be like him. I am not what I hope to be; ere long to drop this clay tabernacle, to be like him and see him as he is. Not what I once was, a child of sin, and slave of the devil. Though not all these, not what I ought to be, not what I might be, not what I wish or hope to be, and not what I once was, I think I can truly say with the apostle, “By the grace of God I am what I am” (1 Cor. 15:10).
[Note 5: My paragraph blends the two published versions of what Newton reportedly said. …]
The parallels and contrasts within Newton’s statement become clearer when decorated with visual cues to highlight corresponding clauses:
I am not what I ought to be.
Ah! how imperfect and deficient.
Not what I might be,
considering my privileges and opportunities.
Not what I wish to be.
God, who knows my heart, knows I wish to be like him.
I am not what I hope to be;
ere long to drop this clay tabernacle, to be like him and see him as he is.
Not what I once was,
a child of sin, and slave of the devil.
Though not all these,
not what I ought to be,
not what I might be,
not what I wish or hope to be, and
not what I once was,
I think I can truly say with the apostle,
“By the grace of God I am what I am.”
Related:
- John Piper wrote the foreword to Reinke’s book.
- Tim Challies interviews Reinke about his book.
Coming in Early November
My book Let Go and Let God?, which has been on Logos pre-pub since June, is scheduled to release in about three weeks (around November 3). After that, the pre-pub discount will no longer be available.
More info here.
Bob Bell’s Magnum Opus
I’ve eagerly anticipated this 500-page book for several years:
Robert D. Bell. The Theological Messages of the Old Testament Books. Greenville, SC: Bob Jones University Press, 2010. Amazon | BJU Press
It revises Bob Bell’s biblical theologies of each book of the OT that he has been working on for forty years. The table of contents is simple: an introduction to biblical theology and book theologies followed by thirty-three chapters on each book of the OT (Bell combines Judges-Ruth, treats 1–2 Samuel, 1–2 Kings, and 1–2 Chronicles as single chapters, and combines Obadiah-Joel-Zephaniah.) The book is
Dedicated to the scores of Advanced OT Theology students, who since 1970 have been writing outlines and papers on the book theologies of the Old Testament; especially to those OT PhD students who wrote book theologies as their dissertations [Read more…] about Bob Bell’s Magnum Opus