Andy Naselli

Thoughts on Theology

scholarship

Pastor-Scholars and Scholar-Pastors

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John Piper and D. A. Carson teamed up on April 23, 2009 to address “The Pastor as Scholar and the Scholar as Pastor.”

(I live-blogged the event, and audio, video, and manuscripts are available.)

Now it’s been updated as a 124-page book:

John Piper and D. A. Carson. The Pastor as Scholar and the Scholar as Pastor: Reflections on Life and Ministry. Edited by Owen Strachan and David Mathis. Wheaton: Crossway, 2011.

 

 

Popular Evangelical Scholarship in the Public Square

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Craig L. Blomberg, “New Testament Studies in North America,” in Understanding the Times: New Testament Studies in the 21st Century; Essays in Honor of D. A. Carson at the Occasion of His 65th Birthday (ed. Andreas J. Köstenberger and Robert W. Yarbrough; Wheaton: Crossway, 2011), 281–82 (bullet points added):

Fortunately North American evangelical scholarship on all of these issues is likewise flourishing; if only it could become as well known in the public square as some of the more avant-garde work just noted!

  • Craig Evans , Darrell Bock, and Ben Witherington, in particular, have published widely and also sought out the necessary media attention to spread their views to those who don’t read (or at least who don’t read their works).
  • Bock’s debunking of the Da Vinci Code fiction about Christian origins has sold more than all of his other books put together .
  • Dan Wallace and several coauthors have repeatedly set Ehrman’s textual criticism and other claims in their proper, larger contexts,
  • while Paul Eddy and Greg Boyd, Rob Bowman and Ed Komoszewski , Wayne House, Mark Roberts , and the immensely successful popularizer Lee Strobel have all offered important, accessible rebuttals to the misinformation widely circulating on the formation of the canon, the reliability of the Gospels, and the nature of Jesus.
  • I have continued to pursue my interests in several of these areas as well .

Why You Should Organize Your Personal Theological Library and a Way How

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That’s the title of a 2600-word article (8-page PDF) I recently wrote for Reformation 21. (Pardon the formatting of the version on Ref21’s site; some of it didn’t transfer very cleanly in HTML.)

Here’s the outline:

  • Why You Should Organize Your Personal Theological Library
  • A Way to Organize Your Personal Theological Library
    • Enter the bibliographic information for each resource in Zotero.
    • Organize your resources in Zotero.
    • Arrange your print books on your bookshelves in alphabetical order by author.

I created this three-minute video to supplement the article:

And here’s the article: [Read more…] about Why You Should Organize Your Personal Theological Library and a Way How

The Importance of Argument

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I’m listening to an audio-essay of J. Gresham Machen’s “The Important of Christian Scholarship” (HT: Phil Gons), and this sentence stood out to me: “But because argument is insufficient, it does not follow that it is unnecessary.” I’ve placed it in bold below so that you can read it in context.

The Importance of Argument

Certainly a Christianity that avoids argument is not the Christianity of the New Testament. The New Testament is full of argument in defense of the faith. The Epistles of Paul are full of argument—no one can doubt that. But even the words of Jesus are full of argument in defense of the truth of what Jesus was saying. “If ye then, being evil, know how to give good gifts unto your children, how much more shall your Father which is in heaven give good things to them that ask Him?” Is not that a well-known form of reasoning, which the logicians would put in its proper category? Many of the parables of Jesus are argumentative in character. Even our Lord, who spake in the plenitude of divine authority, did condescend to reason with men. Everywhere the New Testament meets objections fairly, and presents the gospel as a thoroughly reasonable thing. [Read more…] about The Importance of Argument

Kevin Bauder: “Fundamentalism and Scholarship”

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Kevin BauderBauder has finished another thoughtful series of short essays: “Fundamentalism and Scholarship.”

I’ve combined all 12 short essays into one PDF.

  1. Not Me (January 4, 2008)
  2. What Is a Scholar? (January 11, 2008)
  3. Hazards of Scholarship (January 18, 2008)
  4. Does Fundamentalism Need Scholars? (January 25, 2008)
  5. Does Fundamentalism Have Scholars? (February 1, 2008)
  6. How Do We Get Scholars? (February 8, 2008)
  7. To Make a Scholar (February 15, 2008)
  8. The Scholarly Life (February 22, 2008)
  9. Models of Scholarship (February 29, 2008)
  10. Scholarship and Separatism (March 14, 2008)
  11. The Dual Responsibility of a Christian Scholar (March 21, 2008)
  12. The Christian Scholar’s Christian Responsibility (March 28, 2008)

Note: Central Seminary emails these essays every Friday afternoon. You can access the archives here.