Andy Naselli

Thoughts on Theology

Andy Naselli

Five Conclusions about Material Possessions

by

Here’s how D. A. Carson introduces Craig L. Blomberg‘s Neither Poverty Nor Riches: A Biblical Theology of Possessions (ed. D. A. Carson; New Studies in Biblical Theology 7; Downers Grove: IVP, 2001) in the series preface (p. 9):

Dr Blomberg’s volume is an extraordinary achievement. With remarkable compression, this book not only guides the reader through almost all the biblical passages that have a bearing on poverty and wealth, but weaves the exegesis into a biblical theology that is simultaneously faithful to the historic texts and pastorally sensitive to the immense issues facing today’s church. Dr Blomberg cannot simplistically condemn wealth: he has learned from Abraham, Job and Philemon. Nor can he exonerate acquisitiveness: he has learned from Amos, Jesus and James. The result is a book that is, quite frankly, the best one on the subject. It will not make its readers comfortable, but neither will it make them feel manipulated. Read it and pass it on.

[Read more…] about Five Conclusions about Material Possessions

Purity is always smart; impurity is always stupid

by

That’s the thesis of Randy Alcorn‘s The Purity Principle: God’s Safeguards for Life’s Dangerous Trails (Sisters, OR: Multnomah, 2003).

I read through this little 94-page volume in one sitting this evening. It’s outstanding. Alcorn’s approach to the issue of purity is biblically informed, sobering, wise, refreshing, and motivating.

Related: Alcorn lists the following resources on his website:

  1. The Purity Principle Study Guide
  2. articles on sexual purity: page 1 | page 2
  3. Alcorn’s MP3s, PDFs, and PowerPoint presentation on sexual purity
  4. Guidelines for sexual purity (Alcorn originally prepared this for his daughters.)
  5. Links to resources for sexual purity
  6. Selected Scriptures related to sexual purity

Meatatarian Prooftext

by

Proverbs 15:17

  • NET: Better a meal of vegetables where there is love
    than a fattened ox where there is hatred.
  • NASB: Better is a dish of vegetables where love is
    Than a fattened ox served with hatred.
  • ESV: Better is a dinner of herbs where love is
    than a fattened ox and hatred with it.
  • NIV: Better a meal of vegetables where there is love
    than a fattened calf with hatred.
  • TNIV: Better a small serving of vegetables with love
    than a fattened calf with hatred.
  • NLT: A bowl of vegetables with someone you love is better
    than steak with someone you hate.

Five Myths About Dispensationalism

by

It seems fashionable in at least some pockets of academia to marginalize and ridicule dispensationalists. Before one criticizes dispensationalism, however, one must accurately understand what it is. (Perhaps the best test of whether one has represented another view accurately is when a leading proponent of that view agrees that their view has been represented accurately.) The following 73-page paperback is a primer on dispensationalism that may serve non-dispensationalists in this regard:

Michael J. Vlach [personal website]. Dispensationalism: Essential Beliefs and Common Myths. Los Angeles: Theological Studies Press, 2008.

Vlach highlights five common myths about dispensationalism (pp. 32–49):

  • Myth 1: Dispensationalism teaches multiple ways of salvation.
  • Myth 2: Dispensationalism is inherently linked with Arminianism.
  • Myth 3: Dispensationalism is inherently antinomian.
  • Myth 4: Dispensationalism leads to non-Lordship salvation.
  • Myth 5: Dispensationalism is primarily about believing in seven dispensations.

Ergo, critiques of dispensationalism (particularly of leading contemporary dispensationalists, whether they are traditional, revised, or progressive) should not perpetuate these myths.

Just to be clear: I am not arguing here that dispensationalism is correct. I am arguing that evaluations of it should accurately represent it.

T4G Live

by

My soul has feasted on the Together for the Gospel Live CD many times in the last couple of months. It features the rich hymns that over 5,000 of us sang at T4G in April 2008.

This CD is on sale this month for only $6 with free shipping in the continental US. (Sovereign Grace Ministries is also selling other books and CDs at reduced prices this month.)

Related:

What’s Evangelical about This?

by

One of the latest wave-making academic books within evangelicalism is Kenton L. Sparks’s God’s Word in Human Words: An Evangelical Appropriation of Critical Biblical Scholarship (Grand Rapids: Baker, 2008).

Today the Old Testament Department at Trinity Evangelical Divinity School had a stimulating “brown bag seminar” for an hour during lunch to discuss this book. I left that meeting thanking God for Trinity’s gifted OT faculty.

  1. Dennis Magary moderated.
  2. Dick Averbeck summarized and evaluated.
  3. James Hoffmeier summarized and evaluated.
  4. Willem VanGemeren summarized and evaluated.
  5. Lawson Younger offered comments.
  6. John Monson (who was friends with Peter Enns while they both studied at Harvard) offered comments.

I don’t feel at liberty to publish my notes or their handouts online, but suffice it to say that the OT faculty agrees that Sparks’s book is deeply flawed and dangerous. (I’m paraphrasing, not directly quoting.)

Sparks uncritically accepts critical views and is overconfident in his conclusions while severely criticizing evangelicals like D. A. Carson, Robert Yarbrough, Kevin Vanhoozer, and James Hoffmeier. Sparks takes the debate beyond Peter Enns’s Inspiration and Incarnation. The book’s subtitle should not include the word “evangelical”: God’s Word in Human Words: An Evangelical Appropriation of Critical Biblical Scholarship.

More reviews of this book are forthcoming. (For example, look for one by Bob Yarbrough in the next issue of Themelios.) Here are a couple of others already published:

  1. The enthusiastic RBL review by Arthur Boulet, an M.A. student at Westminster Theological Seminary and an ardent supporter of Peter Enns, is sad. A sharp friend of mine who is working on a PhD elsewhere emailed me this after reading it: “This review makes me want to cry. May God grant grace.”
  2. The review by Kevin Bauder is a breath of fresh air in comparison.

Updates:

1. S. M. Baugh reviewed Sparks’s book for Reformation21 in August 2008.

2. Gary L. W. Johnson comments on Sparks’s book in the introduction to Reforming or Conforming: Post-Conservative Evangelicals and the Emerging Church (ed. Gary L. W. Johnson and Ronald L. Gleason; Wheaton: Crossway, 2008), 23n21:

Sparks in particular paints contemporary defenders of inerrancy in very unflattering colors. Old Testament scholars such as R. K. Harrison, Gleason Archer, and E. J. Young are accused of sticking their heads in the sand to avoid dealing with the real issues raised by critical Old Testament scholars (133ff ) while New Testament scholars such as D. A. Carson and Douglas Moo are said to be guilty of deliberately dodging the issues of New Testament critics (167). Even greater disdain is heaped on Carl Henry, who had the misfortune of simply being a theologian and not a biblical scholar (138). However, the most reprehensible aspect of Sparks’s work is the facile labeling of all defenders of inerrancy as Cartesian foundationalists. Sparks declares Cornelius Van Til, and his presuppositional apologetics, to be Cartesian because Van Til underscored the importance of certainty, which to Sparks’s way of thinking automatically makes one a Cartesian (45). If that is the case, then we must place not only the Reformers and the church fathers in that category, but Christ and the apostles as well! Van Til was no Cartesian. His apologetical approach was rooted in classic Reformed theology, especially in the Dutch tradition of Kuyper and Bavinck, stretching back to the noted Dutch Protestant scholastic Peter Van Mastricht (1630–1706), who was an outspoken critic of all things Cartesian. As Richard Muller notes, “Mastricht’s consequent stress on the necessity of revelation for Christian theology (theology defined as ‘living before God in and through Christ’ or as the wisdom leading to that end) led to an adamant resistance to Cartesian thought with its method of radical doubt and its insistence on the primacy of autonomy of the mind in all matters of judgment.” Richard Muller, “Giving Direction to Theology: The Scholastic Dimension,” Journal of the Evangelical Theological Society 28 (June 1985), 185.

3. Robert W. Yarbrough, “The Embattled Bible: Four More Books,” Themelios 24 (2009): 6–25.

4. A Book-Length Response to Kent Sparks

5. “Scripture: How the Bible Is a Book Like No Other,” in Don’t Call It a Comeback: The Old Faith for a New Day (ed. Kevin DeYoung; Wheaton: Crossway, 2011), 59–69.