Andy Naselli

Thoughts on Theology

Practical Theology

Administration : Faculty :: Shaft : Tip of the Spear

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abellIn a recent chapel message at Bethlehem College & Seminary, Jason Abell explains why administration is important.

Jason is BCS’s Vice President for Administration. I am so encouraged by this message and by the interaction I’ve had with Jason and others at BCS. (I’m eager to join the team in several months.)

I’ve witnessed some situations where the relationship between a school’s faculty and administration is unhealthy. Not good.

Jason closes with a provocative analogy that I hadn’t heard someone (let alone an administrator) apply to administration and faculty before:

administration : faculty :: shaft : tip of the spear

That is, [Read more…] about Administration : Faculty :: Shaft : Tip of the Spear

Don Whitney: How Can I Be Sure I’m a Christian?

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Perhaps this book has flown under your radar. I just read it for the first time last month shortly after learning about it, and I’m surprised that I don’t recall hearing others recommend it before.

Donald S. Whitney. How Can I Be Sure I’m a Christian? What the Bible Says about Assurance of Salvation. Colorado Springs, CO: NavPress, 1994. 153 pp.

Here’s an extended outline of the book (not including the application questions at the end of each chapter): [Read more…] about Don Whitney: How Can I Be Sure I’m a Christian?

Follow-up on That Encouraging Word for Mothers of Young Children

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Last week I posted “An Encouraging Word for Mothers of Young Children.”

It generated some friendly push-back in the comments as well as on some other blogs (e.g., Jim Hamilton’s wife, Jill, responds here).

I agree with Jill.

But I wonder if some who read those quotes by Martyn Lloyd-Jones and Don Carson may be missing the main (encouraging!) point: mothers with young children generally have less time for the type of Bible reading and study than they would have without young children. And that’s OK because God’s calling of wife and motherhood is high. That’s an encouraging thought, especially to mothers who are frustrated and/or bear a weight of unnecessary guilt. Those are the types of mothers of young children that this should encourage. [Read more…] about Follow-up on That Encouraging Word for Mothers of Young Children

An Encouraging Word for Mothers of Young Children

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Martyn Lloyd-Jones once spoke with a group of medical students who complained that in the midst of their training and the ferocious work hours they really didn’t even have time to read the Bible and have their devotions and so on. He bristled and said, “I am a doctor. I have been where you are. You have time for what you want to do.” After a long pause he said, “I make only one exception: the mother of preschool-aged children does not have time and emotional resources.” [Read more…] about An Encouraging Word for Mothers of Young Children

Don Carson on Assurance of Salvation

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Six resources by D. A. Carson on assurance of salvation (all available from TGC as PDFs or MP3s):

  1. D. A. Carson and John D. Woodbridge, Letters Along the Way: A Novel of the Christian Life (Wheaton: Crossway, 1993), 15–25 (letters 2 and 3).
  2. D. A. Carson, “Johannine Perspectives on the Doctrine of Assurance,” Explorations 10 (1996): 59–97.
  3. ———. “Reflections on Christian Assurance,” in Still Sovereign: Contemporary Perspectives on Election, Foreknowledge, and Grace (ed. Thomas R. Schreiner and Bruce A. Ware; Grand Rapids: Baker, 2000), 247–76.
  4. ———. “The Johannine Letters,” in New Dictionary of Biblical Theology (ed. T. Desmond Alexander and Brian S. Rosner; Downers Grove: IVP, 2000), 351–55.
  5. ———. “The SBJT Forum: Granted that there are spurious conversions in the Bible, what criteria help us to discern that a profession of faith is genuine?” The Southern Baptist Journal of Theology 5, no. 1 (2001): 78–81.
  6. ———. Five-part sermon series on 1 John.

Carson: The most painful things I’ve ever borne are betrayals by Christian friends

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Here’s how Don Carson recently replied to a question about suffering during a Q&A. (This is a lightly edited transcript from 13:37 to 14:40 in the audio file.)

  • We grew up in some of the suffering of French Canada.
  • I’ve had typhoid because I went to Africa and came within death’s door.
  • I’ve had two or three other diseases that have almost taken me out.
  • My wife’s had cancer that has almost taken her out. She didn’t expect to live to 50; she just turned 59.
  • But that’s part of the stuff of life, isn’t it? And if you’re a Christian leader, then sooner or later you go through situations in churches and relationships that are really tough. The most painful things I’ve ever borne are betrayals by Christian friends.

  • [Read more…] about Carson: The most painful things I’ve ever borne are betrayals by Christian friends

Are Theological Discussions a Waste of Time?

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ware_2Bruce A. Ware, The Man Christ Jesus: Theological Questions on the Humanity of Christ   (Wheaton: Crossway, 2013), 55–56:

Another application from this brief account of Jesus’s boyhood experience in Jerusalem is that Jesus understood the importance of engaging in biblical and theological discussion and learning. We don’t know the exact content of the discussion that took place, but [Read more…] about Are Theological Discussions a Waste of Time?

Carson: How Do We Know If God Is Disciplining Us?

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Don Carson answered that question recently for TGC’s blog.

He draws three inferences:

  1. We are likely to make exegetical and theological mistakes when we take any one of these passages and treat it as if it explains all suffering.
  2. In any suffering, or in any other event for that matter, God is doubtless doing many things, perhaps thousands of things, millions of things, even if we can only detect two or three or a handful. [Cf. Piper’s tweet.]
  3. It follows that when we face suffering of any kind, we should use the occasion for self-examination.

Conclusion: “We sometimes observe that hard cases make bad theology. But easy, formulaic answers to questions of suffering are invariably reductionistic — and they make bad theology, too.”

Read the whole thing.