The Briefing published a thoughtful three-part series by John Woodhouse (the Principal of Moore College since 2002) after his addresses at the Reform National Conference in Swanick, UK, in October 2001.
The introduction to the first article and his conclusions to all three give the sense of his argument:
A series of thoughtful essays are forthcoming via Christ on Campus Initiative. The essays are (1) by evangelical scholars, (2) geared for campus evangelism, and (3) edited by D. A. Carson.
Christ on Campus Initiative (CCI), a non-profit organization generously supported by the Carl F. H. Henry Center for Theological Understanding (a ministry of Trinity Evangelical Divinity School) and the MAC Foundation. CCI exists to prepare and circulate materials for college and university students, addressing an array of fundamental issues from a Christian perspective. Readers and organizations may circulate these essays without charge.
These articles will be made available as PDFs, and the first article in this series was just posted this afternoon: a 26-page PDF by Graham Cole entitled “Do Christians Have a Worldview?”
Here’s the article’s outline:
The answer to the title’s question is a qualified Yes and No. Christianity is not technically a worldview, but the Bible’s storyline establishes a worldview.
Read the whole thing, and spread the word!
Don Carson’s review of Chris VanLandingham’s Judgment and Justification in Early Judaism and the Apostle Paul includes sound advice about two ways to approach writing a dissertation (Carson’s advice also applies to writing a research paper):
I frequently tell my doctoral students as they embark on their research that dissertations in the broad field of the arts disciplines, including biblical and theological disciplines, can, at the risk of slight oversimplification, be divided into two camps.
[1. Deductive Approach] In the first camp, the student begins with an idea, a fresh insight, a thesis he or she would like to test against the evidence.
[2. Inductive Approach] In the second, the student has no thesis to begin with but would like to explore the evidence in a certain domain to see exactly what is going on in a group of texts and admits to uncertainty about what the outcome will be.
[1] The advantage of the first kind of thesis is that the work is exciting from the beginning and directed by the thesis that is being tested; the danger is that, unless the student takes extraordinary precautions and proves to be remarkably self-critical, the temptation to domesticate the evidence in order to defend the thesis becomes well-nigh irresistible.
[2] The advantage of the second kind of thesis is that it is likely to produce more even-handed results than the first, since the researcher has no axe to grind and is therefore more likely to follow the evidence wherever it leads; the danger is that there may not be much of a thesis at the end of the process, but merely a lot of well-organized data.
In reality, of course, dissertation projects regularly straddle both camps in various ways. But VanLandingham’s work neatly falls pretty exclusively into the first camp. That makes for interesting reading. Unfortunately, VanLandingham’s work also demonstrates in a superlative fashion the dangers of this sort of approach.
Daniel L. Migliore observes that humans are paradoxical:
“We human beings are a mystery to ourselves. We are rational and irrational, civilized and savage, capable of deep friendship and murderous hostility, free and in bondage, the pinnacle of creation and its greatest danger. We are Rembrandt and Hitler, Mozart and Stalin, Antigone and Lady Macbeth, Ruth and Jezebel” (Faith Seeking Understanding: An Introduction to Christian Theology [2d ed.; Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2004], p. 139).
How many worldviews can adequately account for that? Christians account for it with the Fall in Genesis 3 and by tracing harmatiological trajectories all the way through to the consummation in Revelation 21–22. The Fall is an essential component of the Bible’s storyline; without it we’d have a hard time making sense out of reality.
The Fall, however, is only part of the frame of reference necessary for making sense out of reality. That frame of reference is supplied by the Bible’s storyline. For a thoughtful presentation of that storyline, see chapters 5–6 in D. A. Carson, The Gagging of God: Christianity Confronts Pluralism (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1996), pp. 193–314.
See also chapters 2–3 in D. A. Carson, Christ and Culture Revisited (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, forthcoming [Spring 2008]).
David Mathis, John Piper’s “Executive Pastoral Assistant,” just posted “The Future of Justification for the Rest of Us” on the Desiring God blog.
My favorite part of Mathis’s post was learning that Piper’s book is available for free as a PDF!
This is a wise post. Mathis explains why “not everyone should read John Piper’s new book on justification,” but he also suggests how to profit from the book without reading it from cover to cover. He concludes,
“Don’t feel out of the loop or way behind if you haven’t heard of Wright and the NPP. You shouldn’t necessarily feel the need to familiarize yourself with them. But reading some of these key sections and chapters may help strengthen your theology of justification and ward off attacks on this precious doctrine when they come.”
Kevin Bauder recently preached a five-part series on the gospel at Bible Baptist Church (apparently downloadable in IE but not Firefox):
HT: Chuck Bumgardner
I benefited immensely in 2003 from these two four-page articles by my former pastor, Dr. Mark Minnick:
The two PDFs above occur in the middle of the Sept./Oct. and Nov./Dec. 2003 issues of Frontline. These two articles condense Minnick’s outstanding four-part sermon series:
After praising J. Christiaan Beker, Buz Meyers brashly asserts,
Nevertheless, the apostle Paul and other members of the first generation were wrong about the timing of the Parousia. Christ did not return, and the End did not arrive as was expected. This embarrassing miscalculation on the part of the early Church may help to explain in part why the apocalyptic dimension of the NT has not been fully appreciated until relatively recently. Doctrines of biblical inspiration and infallibility may have encouraged overlooking or ignoring NT passages that speak about the Parousia’s arrival in the near future. Errors with regard to the timing of the Parousia, however, have allowed later interpreters to question the certainty of the Parousia’s arrival as well and then dismiss the Parousia altogether. In other words, because the Parousia did not occur when it was supposed to, it probably will never happen, so why consider the Parousia at all? The apostle Paul’s thinking, however, demonstrates that a change in the timing of the Parousia need not undermine the certainty of its coming. . . . [A]lthough Paul may have changed his mind about whether or not he would be alive at the Parousia, Paul never gives up hope in Christ’s future return.
– Charles D. Myers Jr., “The Persistence of Apocalyptic Thought in New Testament Theology,” in Biblical Theology: Problems and Perspectives: In Honor of J. Christiaan Beker (ed. Steven J. Kraftchick, Charles D. Myers Jr., and Ben C. Ollenburger; Nashville: Abingdon, 1995), pp. 212–13 (bold emphasis added).
So Jesus’ coming really isn’t imminent, nor is the Bible inerrant. But even though Paul was way off on the timing bit, we can take comfort that he really was right that Jesus will actually return someday. What a blessing.
Is it possible to hold both the imminency of Jesus’ second coming and biblical inerrancy? I believe it is. Responding to a bold assertion similar to Buz Myers’ above, John MacArthur writes,
