The 5-volume Essential Edwards Collection by Owen Strachan and Doug Sweeney is now available. (The images below are missing some text: each should say that John Piper writes the foreword.)
Check out endorsements by D. A. Carson, Mark Dever, C. J. Mahaney, Al Mohler, Carl Trueman, and Justin Taylor.
Grace to You is mailing free copies of this book:
It’s the book’s third edition. The first was in 1993.
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.
Martin Luther’s Large Catechism begins with a shrewd reflection on the first commandment:
“You are to have no other gods.”
That is, you are to regard me alone as your God. What does this mean, and how is it to be understood? What does “to have a god” mean, or what is God?
Answer: A “god” is the term for that to which we are to look for all good and in which we are to find refuge in all need. Therefore, to have a god is nothing else than to trust and believe in that one with your whole heart. As I have often said, it is the trust and faith of the heart alone that make both God and an idol. If your faith and trust are right, then your God is the true one. Conversely, where your trust is false and wrong, there you do not have the true God. For these two belong together, faith and God. Anything on which your heart relies and depends, I say, that is really your God.
—Martin Luther, Large Catechism, “[The First Part: The Ten Commandments],” The Book of Concord: The Confessions of the Evangelical Lutheran Church (ed. Robert Kolb and Timothy J. Wengert; trans. Charles Arand, et al.; Minneapolis: Fortress, 2000), 386.
Luther proceeds to elaborate further on the relationship between idolatry and trust (386–92). You can read it via Google Books.
Jenni and I just listened to Martin Luther’s Here I Stand this morning to begin our celebration of Reformation Day later this week. It’s a simple 24-minute recording by Max McLean, and it’s moving. After we heard Luther’s famous words again, we both remarked, “That was awesome!”
I highlighted the Charles Spurgeon Collection (86 vols.) by Logos Bible Software back in January when it appeared on pre-pub.
It’s now available.
Invaluable.
Jon Pratt answers this question in two parts:
These two MP3s from Sovereign Grace’s 2003 Leadership Conference include Al Mohler’s “testimony about his call to the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in order to highlight key points of his messages”:
It doesn’t get much better in your earbuds than Mohler’s comeback to the postmodernist faculty member who refused to interpret the Bible straightforwardly but insisted on a rigorously literal interpretation of his contract—followed by C. J. Mahaney’s uproarious laughter. I was edified (and, I admit, entertained). I highly recommend these two MP3s.
Updates:
1. See my review of Gregory A. Wills, Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, 1859–2009 in Themelios 34 (2009): 403–5.
2. Mohler before He Became President of Southern: “I Intend to Age”
3. Mohler contributed to this debate-book I co-edited: Four Views on the Spectrum of Evangelicalism.
4. Sean DeMars interviews Al Mohler for his “Room for Nuance” podcast: