Andy Naselli

Thoughts on Theology

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So What Do Profs Like Doug Moo and Grant Osborne Talk about When They Carpool?

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The opening of Doug Moo’s chapter in Grant Osborne’s Festschrift made me smile:

I consider it a great privilege to be able to contribute an essay to this volume honoring a good friend and, for many years, colleague, Grant Osborne. We served together at Trinity Evangelical Divinity School for over twenty years, years that cemented our relationship not only professionally but personally. We lived in the same neighborhood as the Osbornes for many years, and our families grew up together. Seared in my memory especially are times spent with Grant and other Trinity colleagues in an automobile, as we car-pooled together back and forth to Trinity. Students sometimes wondered at the deep theological discussions we profs must have been having during those rides; but I am afraid that our topics of conversation more often focused on the Chicago Bears or Bulls than on millennialism or supra-lapsarianism!

-Douglas J. Moo, “Translation in New Testament Commentaries,” On the Writing of New Testament Commentaries: Festschrift for Grant R. Osborne on the Occasion of His 70th Birthday (ed. Stanley E. Porter and Eckhard J. Schnabel; Texts and Editions for New Testament Study 8; Leiden: Brill, 2013), 57.

Don Carson’s Three Secrets of Productivity and Godly Efficiency

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The January 2013 issue of Tabletalk interviews Don Carson. One of the questions is this:

Given the large quantity of high quality of work you are able to produce, what does your average workday and workweek look like?

Don answers (pp. 68–70, numbering and formatting added),

My schedule varies so much from day to day and from week to week that it is difficult to give you a realistic picture. [Read more…] about Don Carson’s Three Secrets of Productivity and Godly Efficiency

Audiobook Sale for Les Misérables (2008 Translation by Julie Rose)

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roseWhen Julie Rose’s fresh translation of Les Misérables came out in 2008, I began checking and waiting for its audiobook. It finally came out last year, and it’s currently about 50% off from Audible.

Jenni and I have enjoyed listening to it. We’re about 12 hours in to this massive 60-hour book. (Warning: The opening part about the priest is s-l-o-w [and we used double-speed!], but it picks up after that.) Jenni read it several times in her teens, but this is my first time through the unabridged version.

The narrator is not bad. You can sample the audiobook here. [Read more…] about Audiobook Sale for Les Misérables (2008 Translation by Julie Rose)

Ten Resources for Enjoying Tolkien’s The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings

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After living in Narnia with our daughter for about the first half of the year, we moved to Middle-earth.

C. S. Lewis would approve. He wrote this in a letter to a girl named Lucy in 1957:

I am so glad you like the Narnian stories and it was nice of you to write and tell me. . . . Do you know Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings? I think you w[oul]d. like it. (C. S. Lewis Letters to Children [ed. Lyle W. Dorsett and Marjorie Lamp Mead; New York: Macmillan, 1985], 75.)

It’s been a delight to live in Middle-earth.

Middle-earth has been more challenging than Narnia since only one of J. R. R. Tolkien’s four books is for children (The Hobbit) and since The Lord of the Rings trilogy (The Fellowship of the Ring, The Two Towers, and The Return of the King) is so long and complicated. But we persevered, and it was worth it.

Here are ten resources we used to enjoy Tolkien’s world:

1. The Unabridged Books

unabridged_Hobbit unabridged_set

These are classy, sturdy hardbacks with a smattering of illustrations: [Read more…] about Ten Resources for Enjoying Tolkien’s The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings

Two New Books on the Liberal Arts

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  1. Jeffry C. Davis and Philip Graham Ryken, eds. Liberal Arts for the Christian Life.  Wheaton: Crossway, 2012. 318 pp. 13-page sample PDF.
  2. Gene C. Fant Jr. The Liberal Arts: A Student’s Guide.  Reclaiming the Christian Intellectual Tradition. Wheaton: Crossway, 2012. 121 pp. 23-page sample PDF.

My favorite essay in the Davis-Ryken volume is chapter 9: Alan Jacobs, “How to Read a Book” (pp. 123–31). Jacobs unpacks this famous sentence by Francis Bacon: [Read more…] about Two New Books on the Liberal Arts

Exegesis, Biblical Theology, Historical Theology, Systematic Theology, and Practical Theology: What the Categories on My Blog Mean

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This blog is now much better organized:

  • I used to label a blog post with one or more of some 200 categories (e.g., “D. A. Carson,” “Calvinism,” “preaching”).
  • But now I label a post with just one of six categories:
  1. Exegesis. What did authors intend their texts to mean? This includes hermeneutics. (Hermeneutics concerns principles of interpretation, and exegesis applies those principles.)
  2. Biblical Theology. How has God revealed his word historically and organically?
  3. Historical Theology. What have people thought about exegesis and theology?
  4. Systematic Theology. What does the whole Bible teach about certain topics? What is true about God and his universe?
  5. Practical Theology. How should humans respond to God’s revelation? This includes, for example, culture, ethics, evangelism, marriage and family, money, pastoral theology, politics, and worship.
  6. Other. This covers what doesn’t fit in the above categories.

My blog is called “Thoughts on Theology,” so those seem like the right categories. [Read more…] about Exegesis, Biblical Theology, Historical Theology, Systematic Theology, and Practical Theology: What the Categories on My Blog Mean