Andy Naselli

Thoughts on Theology

Andy Naselli

Interview with Rolland McCune on Systematic Theology

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cross-posted on SharperIron.org

Relatively few people agree with every single position taken in any comprehensive systematic theology, but it is valuable to consult a large number and wide variety of systematic theologies in order to understand how others correlate God’s revealed truth. For this (secondary) reason alone, a new multi-volume systematic theology by veteran seminary professor Rolland McCune is definitely worth adding to one’s ST collection.

About Rolland McCune

Rolland McCune (b. 1934) is former president and current professor of systematic theology at Detroit Baptist Theological Seminary, where he has taught since 1981. He is the author of Promise Unfulfilled: The Failed Strategy of Modern Evangelicalism.

Dr. McCune had a massive influence on me in college and beyond. In my review of Promise Unfulfilled (to which McCune kindly responded), I noted this:

In the summers of 2000 and 2001 (following my sophomore and junior years of college), I was privileged to take two seminary classes at DBTS from McCune. I stocked up on his lengthy course syllabi and devoured them (about 900 pages on systematic theology as well as lectures on hermeneutics, apologetics, and the like). I have listened to dozens of his audio lectures and sermons, read his journal articles, interacted with former students (including one of my former pastors) who esteem him as their mentor, and interacted directly with him a bit (e.g., I interviewed him for my dissertation on Keswick theology). His thinking is rigidly logical, his conclusions firm, his commitment to God and His word immovable, and his character unquestionably above reproach.

I slowly and thoroughly read through McCune’s 900 pages of systematic theology notes at least three times in college and early seminary. I knew his positions so well that my friend Matt Hoskinson used to call me “McCune,” and when we were taking theology classes together, he’d ask me during class discussions, “So what does McCune say?” <grin>

About Rolland McCune’s Systematic Theology

Now McCune’s systematic theology syllabi are being published in a more polished form, and the first of three or four volumes is hot off the press.

Rolland McCune. A Systematic Theology of Biblical Christianity. Vol. 1. Allen Park, MI: Detroit Baptist Theological Seminary, 2009. xiii + 443 pp. [desk copies available]

The book is much better documented than his syllabi (though the footnotes are unusually small and I miss the syllabi’s numbered headings). Two endorsements appear on the back cover:

This is the systematic theology set for which many of us—especially those of us who had the privilege of studying under Dr. Rolland McCune—have been waiting. Rolland McCune is one of the clearest thinkers in the theological world today, and in this set he systematically combines the interpretations of Scripture that many of us have wished to find in a single theology set. Highlights include a presuppositional apologetic, a single source (Scripture) as the only rule for theology, cessationism [sic] of the miraculous gifts, pretribulational premillennialism in eschatology, a dispensational structure of God’s progressive revelation, recent creationism, and a Calvinist soteriology. In addition, McCune has gained a comprehensive knowledge of evangelical theological works in his lifetime, and hundreds of footnotes saturate the pages of this work. It is highly recommended.

Larry Pettegrew, Th.D.
Vice President of Professor of Theology
Shepherds Theological Seminary, Cary, North Carolina

Rolland McCune’s Systematic Theology of Biblical Christianity is written for pastors and preachers by a theologian with a heart for pastors. Concise yet thorough, academic yet pastoral, simple yet profound, Dr. McCune has managed to provide a much needed theological resource that will be of immense value to both pastors and academicians. His balanced, biblical approach is refreshing. Careful scholarship and thorough research are evident on every page. This will be a tool that serious students of the Bible will find themselves turning to again and again.

Sam Horn, Ph.D.
Senior Pastor, Brookside Baptist Church
Vice-President for Ministerial Training and Graduate Studies,
Northland Baptist Bible College

An Interview with Rolland McCune on Systematic Theology

1. How many years have you taught systematic theology on the seminary level? About how many semester-long or block systematic theology (ST) classes (not courses) have you taught?

I have taught for 42 years in the general field of ST: 14 years at the Central Baptist Seminary of Minneapolis (1967–1981) and 28 years at DBTS (1981–2009). I taught elective theologies (e.g., dispensationalism, Kingdom of God, and OT theology) while a prof of OT for 11 or 12 years, and ST and Apologetics almost exclusively for the remainder.

I would confess that my theological class hours in seminary studies and in teaching are beyond my present abilities to calculate, or even estimate. [Read more…] about Interview with Rolland McCune on Systematic Theology

Doug Moo on Theological Humility

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This is convicting. Maintaining the kind of theological humility that Moo describes below is no easy task. It’s like walking on an extremely narrow path with steep drop-offs on both sides.

  1. On the one hand, theologians can be overly confident about their positions. They can even become pugnacious and arrogantly close-minded.
  2. On the other hand, they can be insufficiently confident about their positions (e.g., epistemological pseudo-humility). They can be noncommittal and even become compromisingly ecumenical.

What follows is from the “contemporary significance” section of Doug Moo’s comments on Romans 11:33–36 in Romans (NIVAC; Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2000), pp. 391–92:

Theological humility. To my mortification and my family’s delight, I received in the mail just this week an invitation to join the American Association of Retired Persons (AARP). [Moo was born in 1950.] I have reached a point of life in which I find myself prefacing many things I say with “at my age.” Undoubtedly, as my children insist, some of the sentences that follow reflect hardening of the arteries or irrational fear of anything new. But a few of these statements, I trust, reflect some wisdom that the perspective of age has inculcated. [Read more…] about Doug Moo on Theological Humility

More Carson MP3s

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I just uploaded twelve new MP3s to the D. A. Carson archive (listed here in reverse chronological order):

  1. A Holy Nation: The Church’s High Calling (1 Peter 2:9-10) | MP3 | March 20, 2009 sermon at the 2009 Ligonier Ministries National Conference on the Holiness of God
  2. How to Wait for Jesus (Matt 24:36-25:46) – part 2 of 2 | MP3 | March 1, 2009 sermon at Bethlehem Baptist Church in Minneapolis
  3. How to Wait for Jesus (Matt 24:36-25:46) – part 1 of 2 | MP3 | February 22, 2009 sermon at Bethlehem Baptist Church in Minneapolis
  4. Is the Culture Shaping Us or are We Shaping the Culture? | MP3 | Video | February 2, 2009
  5. The Flow of Thought in 1 Timothy 2 | MP3 | Video | February 2, 2009 | more info here
  6. On Books with D. A. Carson (Part 2 of 2) | MP3 | June 13, 2008 interview with Mark Dever
  7. Evangelicals and the Church: An Authentic Unity (Part 2 of 2) | MP3 | 2000 lecture for Evangelical Ministry Assembly
  8. Evangelicals and the Church: An Authentic Unity (Part 1 of 2) | MP3 | 2000 lecture for Evangelical Ministry Assembly
  9. Workshop on Isaiah 6 | MP3 | 1996 lecture
  10. Workshop on 2 Samuel 7 | MP3 | 1996 lecture
  11. Workshop on Genesis 39 | MP3 | 1996 lecture
  12. The Temptation of Joseph (Genesis 39) | MP3 | 1996 sermon

Six Personalities That Deflect God’s Word

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Here’s how D. A. Carson introduces Peter Adam‘s Hearing God’s Words: Exploring Biblical Spirituality (ed. D. A. Carson; New Studies in Biblical Theology 16; Downers Grove: IVP, 2004) in the series preface (pp. 9–10):

In recent decades the notion of ‘spirituality’ has become astonishingly plastic. People judge themselves to be ‘spiritual’ if they have some aesthetic sense, or if they are not philosophical materialists, or if they have adopted a pantheistic view of reality, or if they feel helped or reinvigorated by the ‘vibrations’ of crystals. Even within a broadly Christian heritage, many writers appeal to ‘spiritual disciplines’ that are utterly divorced from the gospel and detached from the teaching of Scripture. Against the backdrop of these cultural developments, Dr Peter Adam encourages clear thinking: he traces the notion of spirituality through some of the turning points of Scripture, and finally grounds it in the gospel of Jesus Christ and its full-blown application to our lives. By appealing both to the Bible and to influential voices in the history of the church (notably John Calvin), Dr Adam manages to combine biblical theology and historical theology in an admirable synthesis. His academic training, years of pastoral ministry, and now principalship of a theological college, ensure that this book simultaneously informs the mind, warms the heart, and strengthens the will. And from the vantage of three decades of personal friendship, I gratefully attest that what Dr Adam writes, he also lives.

Adam asks, “What devices do we use to hear God’s Word today and yet avoid its intended impact?” He answers, “We can best answer this in terms of different types of personality” (p. 171). (In the following quotation, I’ve replaced bullet points with numbers [pp. 171–72]). [Read more…] about Six Personalities That Deflect God’s Word

Seven Synthesizing Conclusions about Ethnicity

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Here’s how D. A. Carson introduces J. Daniel Hays’s From Every People and Nation: A Biblical Theology of Race (ed. D. A. Carson; New Studies in Biblical Theology 14; Downers Grove: IVP, 2003) in the series preface (pp. 9–10):

This volume combines fine technical scholarship on complex matters of history and race with a prophetic call to Christians to abjure racism. On the one hand, it traces out much of what the Bible says about the diversity of races and cultures, against the background of Ancient Near Eastern social history (its treatment of the ‘curse of Ham’ is particularly penetrating and convincing); on the other, it exposes some of the glib, unbiblical, and frankly immoral stances that not only characterize a fair bit of Western scholarship, but continue to surface in our attitudes and relationships. Dr J. Daniel Hays is able simultaneously to make us long for the new heaven and the new earth, when men and women from every tongue and tribe and people and nation will gather around the One who sits on the throne and around the Lamb, and to cause us to blush with shame when we recognize afresh that the church of Jesus Christ is to be already an outpost of that consummated kingdom in this fallen world. This book deserves the widest circulation and the most thoughtful reading, for it corrects erroneous scholarship while calling Christians to reform sinful attitudes. If the book is sometimes intense, it is because the problems it addresses are not trivial.

Hays concludes with seven “main synthesizing conclusions” that summarize the book (pp. 201–5): [Read more…] about Seven Synthesizing Conclusions about Ethnicity