February 2012
17 posts
4 tags
Sermon Length from an Anglican
This response to my post on sermon length is from a former student, Mike Strachan, who has found a spiritual home in the Anglican Church (in its faithfully orthodox continuation). It is a perspective that we need to hear and embodies from his context some of the important suggestions that one of the earlier responders described from her “evangelical” perspective.
“A question...
3 tags
Oh, Lord! How Long?
In response to my last post on sermon lengths, a dear brother responded to argue for longer, not shorter sermons and for more of them, not less. He concluded with this sentence. “Your thoughts revisiting your conclusions regarding this, please, for the sake of not belittling the true purpose, power, unction and effectualness of preaching.”
Here is my response to him with some added...
1 tag
Sermons - How Long?
I asked the following questions on a Facebook update. “How much information and data should be included in a pulpit sermon before it reaches overload? Sometimes I do preach too long! And how long is too long?” I received aa number of thoughtful responses that make some good points.
“Such a great question and one that I’m convinced more pastors need to ask themselves...
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A "New" Christianity
I taught a course on the Church a couple of years ago, and we did a lot with the Emergent Church. It was good and bad. Here are some concerns, not just with the Emergents, but with traditional evangelical churches today. My desire to be more positive on my blog and to speak the truth in love does not cancel the task of still speaking the truth!
What are some characteristics of a departure from...
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Discovery of a 1st Century Manuscript of Mark
The academic blogosphere has been rife with rumors about a manuscript of Mark that dates from the 1st century. Here is an interview of Professor Dan Wallace that sheds some interesting light on the subject. HH is Hugh Hewitt.
HH: Daniel Wallace is a professor of New Testament Studies at Dallas Theological Seminary. Professor Wallace, welcome, thanks for making some time for us tonight. I’ve...
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Masculine Christianity
I have waited for three weeks to make any comment on John Piper’s proposals for a “masculine Christianity,” because what I write may not sit well with some. Just make sure that you read the next paragraph.
Let me affirm loudly that I believe that the elder/overseer role in Churches should be held by males, and this has good biblical warrant (1Tim. 2:11-15). I wrote my...
5 tags
Ladd's "Theology of the New Testament"
It was Mark Noll’s opinion that George Eldon Ladd’s contribution to theology equaled and maybe even surpassed that of John Calvin (Noll, Between Faith and Criticism, 1991). I cannot even begin to evaulate that statement, but I cite it only to point out the significant contribution of Ladd’s magnum opus, A Theology of the NT. My copy is dated 1974, but it was updated in 1993 by...
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Did Ladd Ever Find a Place at the Table?
A Place at the Table: George Eldon Ladd and the Rehabilitation of Evangelical Scholarship in America, by John A. D’Elia, Oxford University Press, 2008.
I reviewed this book a few years ago and introduced this scholar in the last post. Here are more comments about him from that review.
George Eldon Ladd (1911-1982) was one of the foremost evangelical NT scholars in twentieth century America. Yet...
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NT Theology and George Ladd
A few years ago I reviewed a book about George Eldon Ladd for a Christian magazine. Since I have been thinking about NT Theology lately, the review came to mind and I offer an edited form of it here.
George Eldon Ladd (1911-1982) was one of the foremost evangelical NT scholars in twentieth century America. He almost single-handedly pioneered the “now and not yet” eschatology which is the...
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Review of the NIV Study Bible App
I have been a reader and user of online and electronic Bibles in various formats since getting a computer in the 1980’s. I think that I have used them all and I own many, probably too many! Logos, BibleWorks, Accordance, Olive Tree, E-Sword, and on it goes. With getting an iPhone and then an iPad, you know I had to get the latest and greatest Bible programs for the iOS devices. And I have!...
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Lexham English Bible OT
Logos just released the OT portion of the Lexham English Bible. I have been using the LEB NT for awhile. This new translation tilts more toward the “formal” rather than “functional” translation philosophy (old terms are “literal” and “dynamic”). On a continuum I would place it somewhere close to the Holman Christian Standard, and it would, I think,...
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Greg Beale and His Magnum Opus
I have been meaning for some time to at least mention, if not review, Greg Beale’s A NT Biblical Theology, which was published last Fall. “Things” such as ETS and my other writing projects have delayed my ability to finish this 1000 page tome. I still am not finished, but I have read enough to make two comments: 1. Greg’s contribution is unique among NT theologies. 2. Greg...
3 tags
Temptation and Intertextuality
I am teaching Matthew this semester and today we looked at the Temptation narrative in Matt. 4:1-11. I am utilizing an edited and improved post from a year ago. which has to do with the subject of “The Temptation of Jesus and Intertextuality.”
Jesus’ temptation in the wilderness following his baptism in the Jordan is recorded in all three Synoptic Gospels, although Mark only describes it briefly...
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Kept From the Hour (2)
Could this promise in Rev. 3:10 to be kept from this great test just be a reference to some immediate testing that the Philadelphian believers in the first century would face? No, because the promise refers to a world-wide testing, not one of the local periods of severe persecutions encountered in the first and second centuries. There actually were not empire-wide persecutions until the 3rd-4th...
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Kept From the Hour (1)
I am a firm pre-millennialist, since I think that a future national conversion of Israel is the clear teaching of both the OT and the NT (Zech. 12:10-13:1; Rom 11:25-27; see also Rev. 20:1-6). I also favor a pre-tribulation rapture, although I admit that it is not as clear as the millennial issue. I recently was asked to write about the rapture but to limit my discussion to the Apocalypse, the...
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RIP Frederick W. Danker (1920-2012)
Last Thursday I heard about Frederick W. Danker’s passing. His memorial service will be Saturday Feb 18, in St Louis, and I wish I could be there to pay my deep respects.
Frederick Danker was a Lutheran scholar who was best known for his work on the second and third editions of the great Walter Bauer NT Greek Lexicon. Those three editions were known to generations of Greek students by...
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Lynda
Yesterday, January 31, would have been my daughter’s 33rd birthday. Lynda Joy died in a car accident July 4, 2005, at the age of 26. I have never shared publicly what one of her friends wrote after hearing me at her funeral mention Job’s statement: “The Lord has given and the Lord has taken away. Blessed be the name of the Lord.” David Gunderson wrote the following poem and...