Andy Naselli

Thoughts on Theology

Andy Naselli

John Piper: “Praise God for Fundamentalists”

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John Piper just posted an article on his blog entitled “Praise God for Fundamentalists.” He responds to the 2005 FBF resolution “On the Ministry of John Piper.” He concludes,

“What I want to say about Fundamentalism is that its great gift to the church is precisely the backbone to resist compromise and to make standing for truth and principle a means of love rather than an alternative to it. I am helped by the call for biblical separation, because almost no evangelicals even think about the doctrine.

“So I thank God for fundamentalism, and I think that some of the whining about its ill effects would have to also be directed against the black-and-white bluntness of Jesus.”

Update:

  1. Mike Riley, “On the Ministry of John Piper” (published on the FBF site). Riley wrote this for the FBF.
  2. Mike Riley, “Piper and the FBF Resolution” (published on Riley’s blog). Riley wrote this today in response to Piper’s blog post referenced above.
  3. Michael Bird, “Praise God for Fundamentalists?” Bird lists six reasons that he “cannot praise God for them.”
  4. Will Pareja, “John Piper on Fundamentalism.” Pareja begins, “Dr. Piper: You have no idea how far words like these go, my brother.”

Collin Hansen in CT: “The Crisis of Modern Fundamentalism”

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Collin Hansen writes a bi-weekly “theology in the news” column for Christianity Today, and his article published today highlights fundamentalism: “The Crisis of Modern Fundamentalism: Defections threaten a proud movement.” Hansen concludes:

“The difference between evangelicals and fundamentalists hasn’t been theology, though some fundamentalists would refuse to compromise on dispensationalism, for example. Fundamentalists have a strategy problem: Do they clamp down on these youngsters, risking a deeper generation gap? Or do they reconsider strict separation and cultural isolation? By choosing the latter, they may save their youth and lose their cause.”

Update: Cf. Michael Bird’s reaction to Hansen’s article, which begins, “All I can say is that if you think that John Piper is a dubious or dangerous character then your theology is about as messed up as can be imagined.”

Related:

  1. Review of McCune’s Promise Unfulfilled with a Response from McCune
  2. Review of Iain Murray’s Evangelicalism Divided

Review of Barnabas Lindars’s “New Testament Apologetic”

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[I prepared the following book review for D. A. Carson‘s Ph.D. seminar “The Old Testament in the New” in fall 2006 at Trinity Evangelical Divinity School. I chose to review this book last year partially because its author, Barnabas Lindars, was Carson’s “doctoral father” or mentor for his Ph.D. at Cambridge University. Willem VanGemeren, the director of the Ph.D. program for theological studies at TEDS, had encouraged Ph.D. students to get to know the professor whom they would like to be their mentor for the Ph.D. program. One important way to do that, he suggested, is to read and become very familiar with that professor’s works as well as the works of that professor’s mentor.]

Lindars, Barnabas. New Testament Apologetic: The Doctrinal Significance of the Old Testament Quotations. Philadelphia: Westminster, 1961. 303 pp. Out of print.

New Testament Apologetic (henceforth NTA) was the first major published work by Barnabas Lindars (1923–91). It was the published version of his B.D. thesis submitted to Cambridge University, where he would later serve as an assistant lecturer (1961–66). (F. F. Bruce adds that Lindars’s B.D. “is not as other B.D.s are; at Cambridge it takes precedence over Ph.D.!” [Review of Barnabas Lindars, New Testament Apologetic, Modern Churchman, n.s., 5 (1962): 170.])

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Bob McCabe on Ecclesiastes

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Robert V. McCabe presented “An Overview of Ecclesiastes” (a twelve-page article) last week at the 2007 Mid-America Conference on Preaching at Detroit Baptist Theological Seminary. In addition to providing an annotated outline of Ecclesiastes, he fills out the following outline of the book’s message:

A. Life in a sin-cursed world cannot be fully comprehended by man.

  1. The subject of the book is found in the recurring theme emphasizing the enigmatic nature of life in a sin-cursed world.
  2. The subject of the book is also found in its polarity of themes reflecting the enigmatic nature of life in a sin-cursed world.

B. Life in a sin-cursed world can be judiciously enjoyed by man.

  1. The significance of the exhortation to judiciously enjoy life is demonstrated by its repetition.
  2. The foundation of the exhortation to judiciously enjoy life is one’s relationship to God.
  3. The motivation for the exhortation to judiciously enjoy life is the judgment of God.

Related: Check out Dr. McCabe’s blog, “Fearing God in a Hebel World.”