Andy Naselli

Thoughts on Theology

Historical Theology

KJB

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This 90-minute film releases in the United States today: KJB: The Book That Changed the World.

Jenni and I enjoyed watching it last week.

  • The film focuses on the intriguing politics behind the making of the KJV.
  • It’s superbly narrated by John Rhys-Davies, who played Gimli the dwarf in The Lord of the Rings.
  • The acting is well done.
  • It includes two brief commentaries by Carl Trueman.

Here’s a three-minute preview:

Heroes of the First Centuries: Children’s Books by Sinclair Ferguson

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Sinclair Ferguson is writing a series of children’s books called “Heroes of the Faith.” The first three books highlight heroes of the first centuries:

Click the images above for more information, including

  • sample PDFs,
  • descriptions of each book, and
  • Ferguson’s “personal word to parents” about his new series.

I read these three books to my 2.75-year-old daughter last week, and she enjoyed them (and has kept asking me to read the story of Polycarp to her again). But she got restless while I read them because there are a lot of words on each page and the prose is more at the level of elementary-school children.

Each book ends with a timeline that lists heroes of the faith that Ferguson apparently plans to write books about: [Read more…] about Heroes of the First Centuries: Children’s Books by Sinclair Ferguson

Reading the Church Fathers

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Michael A. G. Haykin gives six reasons that we should read and study the church fathers (Rediscovering the Church Fathers: Who They Were and How They Shaped the Church [Wheaton: Crossway, 2011], 17–28):

  1. For freedom: “[S]tudy of the Fathers, like any historical study, liberates us from the present.”
  2. For wisdom: “[T]he Fathers can provide us with a map for the Christian life.”
  3. To understand the New Testament: “We have had too disparaging a view of Patristic exegesis and have come close to considering the exposition of the Fathers as a consistent failure to understand the New Testament.”
  4. Because of bad press about the Fathers: “[T]hey are sometimes subjected to simply bad history or bad press.”
  5. As an aid in defending the faith: “The early centuries of the church saw Christianity threatened by a number of theological heresies: Gnosticism, Arianism, and Pelagianism, to name but three. While history never repeats itself exactly, the essence of many of these heresies has reappeared from time to time in the long history of Christianity.”
  6. For spiritual nurture: “The study of the church fathers, like the study of church history in general, informs Christians about their predecessors in the faith, those who have helped shape their Christian communities and thus make them what they are. Such study builds humility and modesty into the warp and woof of the Christian life and as such can exercise a deeply sanctifying influence.”

So where should you start? Haykin suggests some books in Appendix 1 (157–58, bullet-points added):

Reading the Fathers: A Beginner’s Guide

[Introduction]

Where does one begin reading the Fathers? Well, first of all, I would start with two tremendous secondary sources:

  • Robert Louis Wilken, The Spirit of Early Christian Thought: Seeking the Face of God (Yale University Press, 2003) and
  • Henry Chadwick, The Early Church (Penguin, 1993).

Together these will provide an excellent orientation in terms of the history of the Patristic era (Chadwick) and the spirituality of the Fathers (Wilken). [Read more…] about Reading the Church Fathers

Cultural Differences

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Christopher Catherwood, Church History: A Crash Course for the Curious (2nd ed.; Wheaton: Crossway, 2007), 196:

I think it fair to say that the main difference between Fundamentalism and what we would now call historic Evangelicalism is as much cultural as anything else and is particularly an American phenomenon.

(It’s valuable to hear the perspectives of others—in this case a British evangelical historian who is the grandson of David Martyn Lloyd-Jones.)

Related: Cultural and Theological Conservatism

Reeves Recommends Reformation Reading

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The “Further reading” section of Michael Reeves’s The Unquenchable Flame: Introducing the Reformation (Nottingham, England: IVP, 2009) flags six resources as “must reads” (pp. 189–91, numbering added):

1. Every Christian should read Roland Bainton’s classic biography of Luther, Here I Stand: A Life of Martin Luther (Abingdon, 1950). A rip-roaring bedtime page-turner.

2. And why not try reading some of Luther himself? You can find his great The Freedom of a Christian online . . . .

3. Calvin’s Institutes of the Christian Religion is a must. The title makes it sound scary; inside, it is easy to read and warm in style. If you can, get F. L. Battles’ two-volume translation of the 1559 edition (Westminster Press, 1960). [Read more…] about Reeves Recommends Reformation Reading

The Natural Man

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John Bunyan. “A Book for Boys and Girls: or, Temporal Things Spiritualized.” Pages 746–62 in vol. 3 of The Works of John Bunyan. Edited by George Offor. London: Blackie and Son, 1853. Logos

Of Man by Nature [p. 761]

From God he’s a backslider,
Of ways he loves the wider;
With wickedness a sider,
More venom than a spider.
In sin he’s a considerer,
A make-bate and divider;
Blind reason is his guider,
The devil is his rider.

Dever, Doran, Bauder, and Others Dialogue

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Calvary Baptist Seminary hosted the Advancing the Church Conference a few weeks ago, and the conference audio is now available.

Mark Dever was the keynote speaker, and he interacted with Dave Doran, Kevin Bauder, and other fundamentalist leaders in two panels:

Kevin Bauder shares his perspective on the conference in “Reflections after the Encounter: Considering the Current Situation of Fundamentalism and Evangelicalism; or, Why I Am Still a Fundamentalist (And How I Am Not).”

Four Views on the Spectrum of Evangelicalism

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Coming in fall 2011:

More info.

Structure:

Introduction: Collin Hansen

  1. Fundamentalism: Kevin T. Bauder
  2. Confessional Evangelicalism: R. Albert Mohler Jr.
  3. Generic Evangelicalism: John G. Stackhouse Jr.
  4. Postconservative Evangelicalism: Roger E. Olson

(The authors respond to the other essays, following the format of the Counterpoints series, which breaks down into two categories: Bible and Theology [formerly called Exploring Theology] and Church Life.)

Conclusion: Andrew David Naselli

More on this later. We still have work to do.