I recently interviewed Clint Arnold re his notes on Colossians for the ESV Study Bible. Crossway has made his introduction and notes to Colossians 1 available here. The interview is published on Justin Taylor’s blog.
The Gospel Coalition’s first issue of Themelios was published In early July as a single PDF. It’s now available in HTML format as D. A. Carson announced in his opening editorial:
Readers will note that we are producing this digital Themelios in two formats, both PDF and HTML. The former preserves pagination for accurate referencing; the latter enables Internet users to search the material, cite snippets, copy convenient chunks, and so forth.
Bloggers will especially appreciate the ability to hyperlink directly to specific articles and book reviews. For example, I can link directly to my two book reviews in that issue:
Review of Collin Hansen, Young, Restless, Reformed: A Journalist’s Journey with the New Calvinists. Themelios 33:1 (2008): 91–93.
Review of Milton Vincent, A Gospel Primer for Christians: Learning to See the Glories of God’s Love. Themelios 33:1 (2008): 102–3.
Matt Capps interviews Bruce Little (CV) on the problem of evil.
Here are a few examples of where I’d raise questions:
- BAL: These are not things God planned or caused, they are, in light of Genesis 3, the result of man’s disobedience in the Garden.
ADN: Is this a false disjunction? Doesn’t Scripture affirm both?
- BAL: I am not saying that we may not learn valuable lessons in our suffering, but that does not mean that is why the suffering came to us. God may bless, but if He does, it is in spite of the suffering, not because of the suffering.
ADN: Does this square with Jesus’ suffering on the cross?
- BAL: We must ask the question: if God allows evil to bring about a good, is that good a necessary good? If it is a necessary good, then the evil that brings it is necessary and the only way it could be necessary is if God planned it. This makes God responsible for evil, something I think is clearly contrary to scripture because God is light and in Him is no darkness at all. If on the other hand the good is not necessary then we are back to asking the question why the evil?
ADN: Is this trying to relieve logical tension by over-qualifying or denying what Scripture says about God’s sovereignty? (See 3.6 here.)
The Gospel Coalition recently uploaded nine short videos.
About The Gospel Coalition
More info about the conference here. Register here.
cross-posted at JT’s blog
This summer my church (CrossWay Community Church in Kenosha, WI) has hosted a “Difficult Issues Series” on Wednesday nights, and last night I addressed this topic: “How Could a Good God Allow Suffering and Evil? A Biblical Approach to the Logical and Emotional Problems of Evil” (MP3 | Handout PDF).
The MP3 is about 75 minutes long (and it doesn’t include the Q&A that followed), and the handout is 10 pages. I am especially indebted to Drs. Carson, Feinberg, Frame, and Piper. Here’s the outline:
1. Introduction
- What is evil?
- What are some examples of evil that are (almost) universally outrageous?
- What is the problem of evil?
- Why must Christians address the logical and emotional problems of evil?
- What are some challenges to solving the logical and emotional problems of evil?
2. What are some unbiblical/inadequate solutions to the logical-intellectual-philosophical problem of evil?
- Evil is not real.
- God is not all-powerful.
- This is the best possible world, and evil is necessary for its perfection.
- Evil is a result of peoples’ free will, so God is not accountable for evil.
- Evil is necessary for people to mature (i.e., build character).
- God is the indirect (not direct) cause of evil, so He is not accountable for evil.
- God is above the law, so He can do what seems evil to other people.
- Non-Christians have no right to question whether God is both all-powerful and all-good.
3. What does a biblical approach to the logical-intellectual-philosophical problem of evil include?
- Bad things do not happen to good people; good and bad things happen to bad people.
- The problem of evil is an argument for God, not against Him.
- God is not obligated to explain the problem of evil to anyone.
- God (not our sense of justice) is the standard for what He does.
- God ordains and causes evil, but He cannot be blamed for it.
- The logical problem of evil (including providence) involves mystery, requiring that Christians maintain doctrinal tensions in biblical proportion.
- God uses evil for a greater good.
- There was no problem of evil before the fall, nor will there be one in the eternal state.
- God uses natural evil to illustrate how bad moral evil really is, and the right response is repentance.
- The most significant problem of evil is the cross.
4. What does a biblical approach to the emotional-religious-existential problem of evil include?
- People who are suffering typically are wrestling primarily with the emotional problem of evil (not the logical one).
- Understand how people initially react to suffering.
- You shouldn’t say certain things to people who are suffering.
- You should do certain things to people who are suffering.
5. Conclusion
6. Recommended Resources
- Books [23 resources]
- MP3s [8 resources]
The handout includes a more detailed outline, and the recommended resources section asterisks the most highly recommended resources, hyperlinks to every author and resource, and ranks the level of difficulty of each resource.
I’m not one of those post-something-everyday bloggers. Sometimes I go for many days without posting anything. This will probably be another light week because I’ll be contributing a bit to JT’s blog (again). Similar to last time, I’ve lined up several interviews that should be instructive and edifying.
Josh Harris recently started a series of blog posts entitled “Preaching Notes” in which he’ll post PDFs of the notes that some preachers use while preaching. The lineup currently includes Mark Dever, Mike Bullmore, C. J. Mahaney, Ray Ortlund Jr., and Tim Keller.
Earlier this week he posted Mark Dever’s manuscript, and today he posted Mike Bullmore’s. Thanks to Josh for giving me the privilege of introducing my pastor!
At the annual pastor’s colloquium for The Gospel Coalition last May, the pastors discussed future enhancements on TGC website. When discussing the new database of resources, John Piper strongly suggested that a note be added against sermon-stealing, something he “abominates.” Everyone seemed to agree. Here’s the note that is currently on the bottom of the resources page:
A NOTE ON THE USE AND ABUSE OF SERMONS
The instant availability of thousands of expository sermons and addresses prompts us to reflect a little on how they should not be used, and how they should be used.
To take the latter first: many of our Council members avidly read the sermons of others, or, increasingly commonly, listen to them while they are driving or walking or jogging. Good preaching not only opens up texts, but helps us learn how others tackle the challenge of structure, apply Scripture to their particular congregations, relate their texts to the central themes of God and the gospel, and much more. We soon sense their urgency and God-given unction. We are sent back to the study and to our knees to become better workers who do not need to be ashamed of the way we handle the word of truth.
The bad way to listen to the sermons of others is to select one such sermon on the topic or passage you have chosen and then simply steal it, passing it off as if it is your own work. This is, quite frankly, theft, and thieves, Paul tells us, will not inherit the kingdom of God (1 Cor 6:10). Yet in some ways that is not the most serious aspect of this form of plagiarism. Rather, it is the deep damage you are doing to yourself and others by not studying the Bible for yourself. Ministers of the gospel are supported by their congregations so they will give themselves to the ministry of the Word and prayer. That demands rigorous study. A faithful minister of the gospel is never merely a biological tape recorder or CD, thoughtlessly parroting what someone else learned, thought through, prayed over, and recorded. Indulge in this exercise and before long you will starve your own soul—and, no matter how good the sermons you steal, your ministry will sooner or later, and deservedly, become sterile, for the stamp of inauthenticity will be all over you.
One helpful suggestion: Listen to many sermons, not just one or two. You will be far less likely to steal, and far more likely to be stimulated and helped, if you listen to five or ten sermons than if you listen to one.
I recently reread a chunk of D. A. Carson’s The Gagging of God: Christianity Confronts Pluralism (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1996).
This section on cultural vs. theological conservatism is insightful:
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A couple weeks ago I noted this: “The latest batch of RBL reviews includes D. A. Carson’s review of Roland Boer’s Rescuing the Bible. The analysis and conclusion are refreshingly blunt.”
Roland Boer just responded to DAC’s review on his blog. His response is telling and sad. It is filled with incorrect assumptions about DAC and reveals his misunderstanding of what he lumps together as “the religious right,” which is “extreme.” This is a common tendency I’ve noticed in people (including ones at BJU and TEDS): people generally present themselves as the sensible mediating position between two self-constructed or self-perceived “extremes.”
For the next week, I’ll be blogging occasionally for a friend on vacation. He’s known online in several ways:
- Justin Taylor (Crossway | Reformation 21 | New Attitude)
- JT: Cf. what Josh Harris humorously wrote on Dec. 20, 2007:
- In case you didn’t notice, practically everything I put on this site originally appeared on Justin Taylor’s site, Between Two Worlds. I’m thinking of renaming my site “HT:JT” which means “Hat tip to Justin Taylor” (a Hat-tip is a term for recognizing that it was brought to your attention by someone else).
- Between Two Worlds
- theologica.blogspot.com
- the evangelical Drudge Report (which is actually pretty accurate!)
JT is a real blogger. I’m not. That’s why he asked three people to take the reins while he is away! Anyway, I mention this because the one or two posts that I might have published here over the next week will probably end up on JT’s blog.
In April I posted some pictures from T4G 2008. This morning I became aware of many more such pics (partly from watching this slideshow): see the first 25 pages here (the rest are from T4G 2006). Here are a few examples:
The latest batch of RBL reviews includes D. A. Carson’s review of Roland Boer’s Rescuing the Bible. The analysis and conclusion are refreshingly blunt:
This book, a fascinating mix of dogmatic left-wing self-righteousness combined with rich and scathing condescension toward all who are even a tad less left than the author, is rich in unintended irony. Boer cannot see how implausible his arguments become. While nominally allowing “religious” people to believe in the supernatural so long as they support his left-wing agenda and join forces with him in a “worldly” secularism, what he says about the Bible and about biblical scholarship is so blatantly committed to philosophical naturalism and historical minimalism that even the most mild supernaturalism is ridiculed: no allowance can be made for divine revelation, anyone who thinks Moses existed is not really a scholar, biblical studies can be called “scientific” only if the scholars themselves do not preach, and so forth. Boer consistently damns everyone on the right by ridiculing the obvious targets, but probably he would not appreciate it if a counterpart on the right ridiculed those on the left by skewering Joseph Stalin and Pol Pot. It turns out that Boer wants to “rescue” the Bible not only from what people on the right say that it means but from what the Bible itself says, for whenever the Bible, in all its multivalence, disagrees with Boer’s vision of the summum bonum, it is to be undermined, set aside, and mocked—not even wrestled with. Readers are repeatedly told that those nasty right-wingers have “stolen” the Bible. Boer never considers the possibility that quite a few left-wingers have simply abandoned the Bible, leaving the terrain open for those who at least take it seriously. What will satisfy Boer, it seems, is not the liberation of the Bible but the liberation of the Bible from any agenda he considers right-wing, so that it can be locked in servitude to a left-wing agenda. Boer’s dismissive arguments to prove the Bible is hopelessly multivalent—a commonplace among many modern and postmodern readers today—is spectacularly unconvincing because he does not interact with any serious literature (and there is two thousand years’ worth of such literature) that argues, with various degrees of success, how the Bible does hang together. But perhaps this is not too surprising from an author who cherishes chaos precisely because chaos undermines God’s authority—and all authority save Boer’s must be overthrown. I think that many biblical writers would call that choice idolatry. At the end of the day, Boer is trying to rescue the Bible from God.
Yesterday I switched my blog reader from Bloglines to Google Reader. (If you don’t use a blog reader or aren’t certain what one is, perhaps you’d find my short tutorial on blogs to be helpful.)
Four of my friends and former seminary classmates in Greenville just persuaded me. (They also happen to be bloggers: Brian Collins, Phil Gons, Matt Hoskinson, and Mark Ward.) After a day using Google Reader, I’m sold (though it took a little work to figure out how to set it up for maximum efficiency). The shortcuts are great, especially hitting the j-key to advance immediately from blog post to blog post.
Kudos to Google for another free first-class product.
Google : Internet :: kudzu : southeastern United States
It’s finally up and running: www.TheGospelCoalition.org.
Here are a few features to check out:
- Resources: This links to audio, visual, and written resources by TGC council members. For example, check out the resources for D. A. Carson and Mike Bullmore.
- Themelios: The first new issue is available as a 103-page PDF.
- 2009 Conference: This includes speakers, topics, and dates for The Gospel Coalition’s 2009 national conference.
- About: This includes descriptions of TGC council members.
More updates are forthcoming, including a series of video interviews.
I recently reviewed Carl R. Trueman’s Minority Report: Unpopular Thoughts on Everything from Ancient Christianity to Zen-Calvinism (Scotland: Mentor, 2008). (You may read the front front matter and introduction here.) This second volume of his collected essays follows in the train of his first: Wages of Spin: Critical Writings on Historic and Contemporary Evangelicalism (Scotland: Mentor, 2004). It’s typical Trueman: provocative, humorous, wry, clever, witty, engaging, thought-provoking, delightful, entertaining.
I didn’t have space in my review to share pithy quotes from Trueman’s twenty short essays in the volume, so I’ll share some here:
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