Groothuis on Guinness

Doug Groothuis reviews Os Guinness's The Case for Civility in The Denver Post. Some comments about relativism didn't make the final but can be read at Dr. G.'s blog.

Technorati Tags: Douglas Groothuis Os Guinness relativism The Case for Civility

The High Price of Einstein's Unbelief

From the New York Times:

A letter the physicist wrote in 1954 to the philosopher Eric Gutkind, in which he described the Bible as “pretty childish” and scoffed at the notion that the Jews could be a “chosen people,” sold for $404,000 at an auction in London. That was 25 times the presale estimate.

The Associated Press quoted Rupert Powell, the managing director of Bloomsbury Auctions, as describing the unidentified buyer as having “a passion for theoretical physics and all that that entails.” Among the unsuccessful bidders, according to The Guardian newspaper, was Oxford evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins, an outspoken atheist.

Technorati Tags: Albert Einstein Richard Dawkins unbelief atheism agnosticism

Birthday Wisdom

I usually don't air a woman's age but since my friend, Rosemarie, has published hers, I feel free to make an exception. Today, her 51st birthday, she shares thoughts prompted by a woman. two decades her junior, who asked how her priorities and values have changed since she was her age. Her response holds instruction for us all, regardless of our years. Here's a snippet:

I would read, meditate on and memorize the Word more. I would call my sin what the Bible calls it. Jesus provides a remedy for sin, but He is silent about 'mistakes'. I would advise young people to learn the difference between who you are and the choices you make. I value learning that people are more than their sin, they are souls in peril. I'd drill it in my head as soon as possible that flattery is abuse and that genuine heartfelt compassion can accompany the absolute rejection of someone's world view or lifestyle.

Read the whole thing.

Happy Birthday, Ro, and thanks for passing on a portion of the wisdom you've acquired over the years the Lord has given you!

Technorati Tags:wisdom maturity

Thoughts on Willow Creek's U-Turn

I'm cautiously optimistic about Willow Creek's stated intention to make the training of believers rather than the attracting of seekers the focus of their gatherings. Why it took reading the results of a survey and not just New Testament to change their course of action, I'm not sure. Regardless of how they got there, at least they arrived at the right conclusion. One can only pray that the myriad of churches that have followed Willow Creek full throttle into seeker-focused ministry will have a similar epiphany and do a similar about face.

David Wells isn't as optimistic. In an interview with CT about his latest book, The Courage to Be Protestant, Wells was asked what theological significance Willow's shift has, to which he replied:

None. Bill Hybels has, I believe, the very best of motives, but he and his church are sailing rudderless in our cultural waters. Or, to change the image, he is like a CEO who shows up at the shareholders' meeting with very poor bottom-line results. So, what does he do? Instead of carrying out a serious diagnosis of what has gone wrong, he simply rolls out a new business plan that, unfortunately, has many of the same inherent weaknesses in it. The bottom line outcome will be no different five years, or ten years from now, from what it is today.

Also in CT, Matt Branaugh reflects on "Willow Creek's 'Huge Shift.'" He concludes with an observation from Greg Pritchard, author of Willow Creek Seeker Services, that seems to share Wells's skepticism:

But they're still using the same marketing methodology. Willow appears to be selecting a new target audience with new felt needs, but it is still a target audience. Can they change? Yes, but it will take more than just shifting their target audience.

Melinda Penner welcomes the news of Willow's change and recalls her initial ruminations in response to the Reveal study:

Church is for the community of believers. The pastor is the shepherd who guides and teaches the sheep=believers. But at Willow Creek, the sheep fend for themselves and the programs are for unbelievers. Willow Creek calls itself a church but is in reality a perpetual evangelism rally. Hybels isn't a pastor, he's an evangelist. The problem comes when people attend thinking they're getting church, when really the sole focus of the church is evangelism. Billy Graham never started a church or claimed to pastor people. He did his job as evangelist and then encouraged local churches and pastors to do their job of feeding and discipleship. I think Hybels and Willow Creek would serve the Body better if they didn't claim to be a church. Churches and pastors don't leave believers to "self-feed."

Willow Creek says they're "seeker-obsessed." Great. We need evangelists with that obsession for the lost. That's a specific gift of the Spirit in the New Testament. And pastor is a different one. A church can't have that obsession to the exclusion of discipling the believers in its care. Do the job of an evangelist and then send new believers to a church instead of leaving them to "self-feed."

Technorati Tags: Willow Creek Community Church seeker-sensitive churches Courage to be Protestant church Reveal study David Wells Bill Hybels

When Pop Culture and Education Collide

I was torn between the above title and "Our Future Attorneys." Guess who students at Northwestern University School of Law selected as their commencement speaker. Give up? After you pick your jaw up off the ground, you can read excerpts of the speech here.

I think it might be wise to get a list of all the students who were in favor of this personality. In the event that I ever need legal representation, I'd like to know whom to avoid.

Henry Center and "Young, Restless, Reformed" Around the Web

Trinity International University's Carl F. H. Henry Center for Theological Understanding now has a blog. Last month the Center's director, Douglas Sweeney spoke with Collin Hansen, author of Young, Restless, Reformed: A Journalist's Journey with the New Calvinists about the surge of interest in and passion about Reformed theology among people in their 20's and 30's. Among the encouraging topics discussed is the recovery of the model of the pastor as theologian and biblically/theologically-driven ministry. A Q & A session follows their interaction. I had the good fortune of attending the event and, thanks to the folks at the Henry Center, you can listen to or view it.

Another noteworthy interview of Collin worth listening to is that conducted by Tim Brister:

Interview with Collin Hansen, Part One
Interview with Collin Hansen, Part Two
Interview with Collin Hansen, Part Three

Christianity Today also recently published an irenic and informative exchange between Collin and Tony Jones, author of The New Christians: Dispatches from the Emergent Frontier, in which they discuss their books and respective movements: Part One, Part Two, Part Three, Part Four, Part Five

Technorati Tags: Henry Center for Theological Understanding Trinity International University Collin Hansen Tony Jones Young, Restless, Reformed The New Christians Reformed theology Emerging Church Emergent Church

ESV Study Bible Preview

The introduction to Luke's gospel from the forthcoming ESV Study Bible is available online. Time's running out to pre-order the volume at a 35% discount. Tomorrow's the last day!

Technorati Tags: ESV Study Bible

Brian McLaren on the Emerging Church

USA Today carries a condensed version of a recent interview with the Associated Press in which McLaren discusses his latest book and the emerging church's impact on America's religious landscape.[HT: SharperIron]. Perhaps the following non-answer is due to editing but I have my doubts:

Q: On the theology behind the emerging church, you reject the idea that there's an absolute truth. So what boundaries are there on theology that churches are teaching? Can any church just call itself an emerging church?

A: Obviously that's a challenge. The flip side of that question is look at the Catholic Church: For all of its orthodoxy, it could have bishops covering up for molesting priests. And evangelicals, for all their claims of orthodoxy, can be barbaric to gay people and can blindly support a rush to war in Iraq and can be, as we speak, fomenting for war with Iran. ... Obviously, I have a lot of critics and they often say, 'You're wanting to water down the Gospel to accommodate to post-modernity.' I say, 'No, I really don't want to do that. But what I do want to do is acknowledge first the ways we've already watered down the Gospel to accommodate modernity.' ... I think the naivete of some of those critics is that they're starting with a pure pristine understanding of the Gospel. It seems to me we're all in danger of screwing up.

Technorati Tags: Brian McLaren emerging church emergent church

You Are Not a Tomb: Words to a Grieving Mom

A friend's daughter recently experienced the heart-wrenching pain of losing her unborn child. In her sorrow, the grieving woman told her mother, "I'm sitting around feeling kind of like a tomb. It's disturbing." Desiring to comfort her daughter in the midst of her anguish, my friend wrote the following words. When she shared them with me, I asked permission to post them here in hope that they might offer consolation to other women for whom this Mother's Day may be a day of mourning for a child they didn't have the opportunity to watch grow up.

You are not a tomb. You are the warm and wonderful world of a tiny soul whom God formed in the deepest recesses of quiet harmony. You are a heartbeat which brought comfort to a little one whose days had already been numbered. And that heart, that sound he heard every second of his life, was his melody, his lighthouse, washing him with a Mother's glow.

You are his playground from which he grew to his fullest height...his sandbox of delight, and when playtime ended, when God called, you became his place of rest, his momentary heaven, his green pasture. Can you think of a better place to await the Shepherd to take him home?

You are not a tomb. You are all this little one knew and had and within you he lived out his entire life. And if a final breath was drawn, it was not done alone, rather to the soft voice of heaven, and the stirring of a Mother's hope. He lived knowing the gentle tug of you are wanted.

You are not a tomb, you are the mystery of a life fully lived...and what you hold onto now is your body's final grief before it says good-bye. You are not a tomb...you are and always will be this baby's Mom.

"For you formed my inward parts; you knitted me together in my mother's womb. I praise you, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made. Wonderful are your works; my soul knows it very well. My frame was not hidden from you, when I was being made in secret, intricately woven in the depths of the earth. Your eyes saw my unformed substance; in your book were written, every one of them, the days that were formed for me, when as yet there was none of them" (Psalm 139:13-16).

Technorati Tags: Mother's Day grief mourning miscarriage stillborn

Cornelius Van Til: The Man and His Influence

John Muether answers questions about his new biography, Cornelius Van Til: Reformed Apologist and Churchman at Westminster Bookstore's blog. You can read the book's introduction here.

Another interesting interview with a presuppositionalist is this one with Tim Keller and Monergism about Keller's The Reason for God. In it Keller recommends the writings of John Frame (one of Van Til's students) on apologetics and theology "for giving somebody the basic framework for what I do in my book."

Technorati Tags: apologetics Cornelius Van Til presuppositionalism John Muether Tim Keller John Frame

Not Your Father's L'Abri

Earlier this month I pointed to a letter Doug Groothuis wrote to Christianity Today in response to their article on how L'Abri's philosophy and methodology have changed to accommodate the postmodern ethos. The article is now available online.

Technorati Tags: L'Abri, postmodernism, Francis Schaeffer, Doug Groothuis, apologetics

Goldsworthy on a Whole Bible Theology

Graeme Goldsworthy recently delivered the following Gheens Lectures at Southern Seminary entitled "And Beginning with Moses and All the Prophets: Biblical Theology in the Church, the Academy, and the Home." (HT: The Road to Emmaus)

"The Necessity and Viability of Biblical Theology" (MP3) (PDF)

"Biblical Theology in the Seminary and Bible College" (MP3) (PDF)

"Biblical Theology and Its Pastoral Application" (MP3) (PDF)

A friend in Christian education recently used an illustration that highlights the necessity of helping people grasp the Bible's big picture. "Too often," he said, "we're dropping students in the middle of the desert and having them analyze grains of sand but they have no idea where they are."

Technorati Tags: Graeme Goldsworthy, biblical theology

Breakfast Links

Thabiti Anyabwile, author of The Decline of African American Theology, talks with Christianity Today's Collin Hansen about Jeremiah Wright, black theology, and the African American church.

Speaking of CT, they recently announced the winners of their 2008 Book Awards.

Good thoughts from John Mark Reynolds on the difficulty of married love.

Kyle Vaughn at Resurgence asks whether considers whether the digital age is in fact a new Dark Age and suggests how the church can minister to those burdened and heavy laden with information:

As Christians, we need to deeply understand how the gospel impacts and gives us a responsibility concerning knowledge as well as understand how a lost world around us is drowning in a storm of information that they don't know what to do with. We live in a unique time in terms of knowledge. Never before in the history of mankind have so many people had the ability to learn (literacy) and had the access to such a vast array of information and even other cultures. With a vast network of libraries and information systems, particularly the internet, one only needs to travel one block over or click a button to access just about everything mankind has ever known or experienced. But mankind is adrift in its thinking. This boom of knowledge it would seem has led to only more despair.

Daniel J. Solove, associate professor of law at the George Washington University Law School, examines another facet of information technology's societal impact in his book The Future of Reputation: Gossip, Rumor, and Privacy on the Internet (Yale University Press, 2007). Its full text is available online for free. (HT: Question Technology)

Technorati Tags: Thabiti Anyabwile The Decline of African American Theology Jeremiah Wright black theology liberation theology marriage Christianity Today Book Awards information technology Internet privacy The Future of Reputation Daniel J. Solove

The Decline of African American Theology

Boundless Webzine features an excerpt from Thabiti Anyawile's book by that title. Here's a sample:

There is a place in Christian theology — stemming from a deep reflection on the Person and work of Christ — for radical jeremiads against bigotry, injustice, and oppression of all kinds. The earliest African Americans understood this and, consequently, were able to hold both a conventional Christology and an active political praxis. The two are not mutually exclusive, and yet, the theological trajectory followed in the last seventy-five years seems to treat them as such.

To the extent that African American thinkers obfuscated the centrality of Jesus' spiritual mission to purchase a special people for Himself, then they participated in that grand lie of the serpent in the garden that promised knowledge beyond imagination but only ended in the destruction of souls.

This is no victimless crime. Materialism and black nationalism masquerading as Christology overthrow the faith of many — shrouding the cross of Jesus in the temporal affairs of this world, which in turn choke the seeds of the Gospel.

Thabiti's article is a poignant reminder of how our cultural-historical contexts can serve to both sensitize and blind us to biblical truths, thus making it imperative that we humbly listen to saints from ethnic groups and times beyond our own.

Technorati Tags: Thabiti Anyawile, black theology, liberation theology, Christology

Snow on What's So Great About Christianity

Tony Snow reviews Dinesh D'Souza's latest book and concludes:

D'Souza calls atheists cowards. Not quite: They're like the man who perishes in a fire because he refuses to believe the net below will hold. What's So Great About Christianity performs a wonderful and overdue service. It engages atheists exhaustively and carefully, exposing atheism more as a bundle of sentiments than a coherent doctrine.

You can see Dinesh in action debating Christopher Hitchens on "Is Christianity the Problem?" at his website.

Technorati Tags: Dinesh D'Souza, What's So Great About Christianity, Christianity, atheism, apologetics

Indifferent Theologians

In his introduction to Don Benedetto's On the Benefit of Jesus Christ Crucified, Leon Morris praises the Italian Reformer for stressing joy as a result of justification and sounds a necessary caution:

Joy runs through and through the New Testament but theologians for the most part have muted this happy note...Theologians as a race tend to be solemn folk, and it is good to see this emphasis on the sheer merriment of being a Christian. We are indifferent theologians if we have lost the song in the heart. (Because of Christ: Living Out the Gift of God Through Faith, pp. 28,29)

You can read Benedetto's work here thanks to Shane Rosenthal who offers this introduction:

The following treatise was arguably the most popular book of the short lived Italian Reformation. It is estimated that 40,000 - 80,000 copies were printed between 1541-1548, of which very few remain today due to the fact that most were burned once the title was placed on the list of prohibited books during the Inquisition. The treatise was originally published anonymously under the title Trattato Ultilissimo Del Beneficio Di Geisu Christo Crocifisso, and was for a few hundred years mistakenly attributed to Aonio Paleario (1503-1570), a martyr for the Reformation cause in Italy. But most scholars now agree, based on records from the Inquisition itself, that the "Trattato" was written by Don Benedetto, a student of the Spanish Reformer Juan de Valdes (1498?-1541) and friend of Peter Martyr Vermigli (1499-1562).

Technorati Tags: justification joy Leon Morris Don Benedetto Reformation theology theology

Clearer Vision Through Tear-Filled Eyes

Mark Lauterbach on how the recent loss of loved ones has aided him in gaining clarity on the meaning of the resurrection:

You see, many people, knowing that my Mom and my wife's Dad died, offered prayer and comfort and words of hope. Most often we heard, "they are in a better place." But as I listened I thought, "that is not the last word on this." Jesus did not die and rise again so when we die we go to a better place. He died and rose again so that death will be swallowed up, this mortal shall be clothed in immortality, and our parents (and all who fall asleep in Christ) will be re-embodied.

It is surprising how very little the New Testament talks about life after death -- and how much it talks about (to borrow a phrase) "life after life after death."

I have changed my words now -- when people ask me about Mom, I tell them that she has died and is waiting the resurrection of her body. I want to point to the real hope we have -- death swallowed up, being re-embodied and without sin, forever.

He is risen! He is risen indeed!

Technorati Tags: resurrection death Easter

Two Roads

Matthias Media has produced a new evangelistic booklet adapted from their popular Two ways to live gospel outline. "It explains the Christian gospel in simple, easy-to-read language." Read the full text of the new tract here.

Technorati Tags: evangelism, Matthias Media

Schaeffer - Guinness Exchange

Frank Schaeffer responds to Os Guinness's less than favorable review of his book Crazy for God, followed by a brief reply from Guinness that concludes as follows:

I replied to his book for one reason only: His portrait of his parents was wrong and destructive. It left me alternately grieved and outraged,and I wanted to witness to the truth as I see it before God. I hope one day we can sit down and talk it over amicably.

Technorati Tags: Francis Schaeffer, Frank Schaeffer, Os Guinness, L'Abri, Crazy for God

Unlimiting Calvin

My friend Flynn (aka David) has devoted many years to researching what John Calvin believed and taught concerning the extent of Christ's expiatory work. This has led him to conclude that much Calvin scholarship and many who identify their theology as Calvinistic, unknowingly diverge from the Swiss reformer's thought on this point. Of course, nothing is to be believed on the grounds that Calvin, or any other theologian for that matter, taught it. The Scriptures are the ultimate standard as Flynn would be the first to confess. However, he believes that Calvin, properly interpreted, echoes God's revelation concerning this matter.

Flynn has posted some of the fruit of his labor in what he believes "will be the most comprehensive list regarding Calvin’s view on the extent of the expiation and redemption that is available either online or in hard-print," at Calvin and Calvinism. Thanks to another friend, Tony Byrne for bringing this to my attention.

Technorati Tags: John Calvin atonement unlimited atonement limited atonement particular redemption redemption Calvinism Reformed theology

N. T. Wright Nightline Interview

N. T. Wright talks with Martin Bashir about the biblical portrait of believers' eternal destiny and how it compares with popular notions of heaven (HT: Steve Bishop).

Technorati Tags: N.T. Wright, heaven, Suprised by Hope, resurrection, eschatology