Canon Fodder

Exploring the origins of the New Testament canon and other biblical and theological issues

What If I Can’t Answer Questions about My Faith?

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Last week I began a new blog series in anticipation of my forthcoming book, Surviving Religion 101: Letters to a Christian Student on Keeping the Faith in College (Crossway, 2021). This new series will include 7 videos that tackle key intellectual questions about the Christian faith.

This week’s video deals with one of those things we all fear as Christians: “What if get asked a question that I can’t answer?”

For college students, this may happen in the classroom or in conversations with fellow students.  For others it may happen in the workplace, at family gatherings, or even in conversations with your non-Christian neighbor.

And when it happens, you get that sick feeling in your stomach. You may feel silly or embarrassed. Or you might doubt what you believe, wondering whether there is an answer to the question you’ve been asked.

Well, we’ve all been there. In this video below, I lay out some thoughts about how to respond. Enjoy! [Read more…]

How I Almost Lost My Faith in College: A Preview of My Latest Book

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In the fall of 1989, I began my freshman year at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Like many freshmen, I was excited for the next chapter in my life, eager to explore the new opportunities and experiences that college had to offer.

Of course, I knew there would be challenges. College life would not be easy, especially for a Christian. But I had grown up in a solid Christian home, was taught the Bible from a young age, and was a faithful member of my church youth group. So I figured I was ready.

I wasn’t.

The problem stemmed not from what I was taught but from what I wasn’t taught. I wasn’t prepared in the one area that would matter most in a university environment. I wasn’t prepared intellectually. And I would soon learn (the hard way) that intellectual preparation was what I needed more than anything.

My lack of preparation reached a head in the spring of my freshman year when I took a religion course titled Introduction to the New Testament. The professor was a young scholar who was bright, engaging, funny, and persuasive. It didn’t take long to see that he lectured with an eye toward evangelicals, even sharing how he was once an evangelical himself not long ago.

And then during his graduate studies, after deep engagement with the text, he realized he could no longer maintain his evangelical beliefs. The New Testament wasn’t inspired after all but was full of mistakes. It wasn’t reliable but was filled with made-up stories and fabrications. And its original form wasn’t even accessible to us but had been badly corrupted by scribes over years of transmission.

That professor’s name was [Read more…]

5 Leadership Lessons I Learned from Ted Lasso

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Looking back on 2020, it seemed like all news was bad news. We moved from impeachment to the coronavirus to the killing of George Floyd to the presidential election to multiple church leadership scandals and back to the coronavirus again.

But sometimes it’s the little things that bring some hope and optimism when we’re feeling down. On that note, 2020 was the perfect year for the new show on AppleTV, Ted Lasso.

The comedy catalogs the journey of a warm-hearted American football coach, Ted Lasso (played by Jason Sudeikis) who is hired to coach a soccer team in the English Premier League—despite having never played (or apparently watched) the game. The show is filled with plenty of hilarious moments highlighting the differences between football and soccer, as well as British and American culture.

But the show is so much more than a comedy. Hidden beneath the hilarious moments (fair warning: there’s no shortage of bad language and sexual innuendo so viewer discretion is advised), you will find a show that celebrates optimism, hope, and (dare I say it) goodness.

As Brett McCracken recently observed over at TGC, “Ted Lasso is probably the most feel-good thing I saw on television this year.”

Perhaps it’s no surprise that I connected with Ted Lasso. I grew up playing competitive soccer, lived in the UK for a number of years (in both Scotland and England), and am a huge fan of the English Premier League (I’ve been cheering for Liverpool since the 1980’s).

But that’s not the whole story. The show connected with me for another, and more profound, reason. It reminded me of what good leadership looks like, something we desperately needed more of in 2020.

Despite being a non-Christian show, and despite the fact that Ted Lasso has his own slate of faults and shortcomings, there are fundamental leadership lessons here that we can learn from him.  While the church may not have a shortage of leaders, it’s increasingly apparent that we have a shortage of the right kind of leaders.

So here are five leadership lessons we can learn from Ted Lasso: [Read more…]

@RTSCharlotte 2020 Year in Review

Well, it’s New Year’s Eve.  And I would imagine that most of us are more than ready to get 2020 in the rear-view mirror.  After a year of political in-fighting, unexpected pandemics, and never-ending social distancing, we are all ready for a fresh start.

But before we look forward, I want to take one final moment to look back.  Last New Year’s Eve, I began a new tradition of the RTS Charlotte “year in review” where I recap how God has blessed our ministry over the last twelve months. While this year’s been harder than most, there are still plenty of things to be thankful for. Here are a few of them: [Read more…]

RTS Announces Spring 2021 Course Offerings

As we wrap up the lamentable year that was 2020, there are hopeful things to look forward to in 2021. One of those things is the wonderful slate of in-person, course offerings for the Spring 2021 term across all the campuses of Reformed Theological Seminary.

That’s right, we are pressing on with in-person, residential education. While our traditional slate of distance education offerings classes will continue to be available, and while we are offering some remote live courses, the bulk of our courses this Spring will be face-to-face.

Online registration was opened on Dec 1st and classes have filled up quickly (some classes are capped due to COVID). So if you are looking to take a course this Spring, you will want to go ahead and register as soon as possible.

Of course, there are some folks out there considering taking a class, but don’t feel up to doing a whole degree program. For that reason, know that we just unveiled a slate of new certificates in biblical studies, systematic theology, biblical counseling and beyond. Each certificate requires only 8-13 hours of course credit.

Here is the full schedule of course offerings across all of our campuses. For the Charlotte campus, here are some notables: [Read more…]

Think You Know the Christmas Story? Here are Five Common Misconceptions

Bah, humbug.

That’s probably one of the most well-known lines in literary (and now, cinematic) history. Everybody immediately recognizes the curmudgeonly voice of Ebeneezer Scrooge as he pours cold water all over our Christmas spirit.

And his point is still made today by some, albeit in different words.  It’s that the Christmas story just isn’t true. It’s rubbish. It’s made up. It’s all in our heads.

While now is not the time for a full-scale defense of the historicity of the Christmas story, Scrooge’s skepticism does prompt us to wonder whether we’ve gotten the story right. Are we telling the story that really was, or are we just telling the story that we want to tell?  Are we just telling the story in our heads?

It might be useful, then, to reflect on a few common misconceptions about the Christmas story. The best way to validate the Christmas story to the Ebeneezer Scrooge’s out there is to make sure we’ve got it right ourselves. Here are five of them. [Read more…]

Were Early Christian Scribes Untrained Amateurs?

In the ongoing debates about the reliability of early Christian manuscripts, and whether they have been transmitted with fidelity, it is often claimed that early Christian scribes were amateurs, unprofessional, and some probably couldn’t even read.

In Michael Satlow’s book, How the Bible Became Holy (Yale, 2014), this same sort of argument appears (for my full review, see here).  Satlow’s book argues that both the OT and NT canons were late bloomers, and that they bore no real authority until the third or fourth century CE.  And part of the evidence for this claim comes from Satlow’s assessment of the NT manuscripts.  He states:

The copies of early Christian manuscripts from around the second century CE were utilitarian. They were generally on papyrus rather than the more expensive and durable parchment. They lack the signs both of being written by a professional scribe and of being intended for public recitation (255).

There are a lot of claims in this brief couple of sentences.  Unfortunately, virtually every one of them is mistaken. Let’s take them one at a time: [Read more…]

How the 2020 Presidential Election Helps Us Understand the Formation of the New Testament Canon

OK, I know what you’re thinking. You’re thinking that there may not be two more unrelated topics than the 2020 presidential election and the formation of the NT canon. Of all the things that we can learn from the trials and tribulations of this election cycle (and there are many), surely how the New Testament was formed is not one of them!

So, how in the world do these two things connect?

In brief, I think the presidential election cycle is a remarkably helpful analogy for understanding the different definitions of canon, and how those definitions help us understand the date of the canon. Let me try to explain.

When Do We Have a Canon?

Let’s begin with one of the most hotly debated questions in the study of the New Testament canon: What is the date of the New Testament canon? Or, when do we first see it come into existence?

While that may seem like a fairly straightforward question, the massive disagreements among modern scholars shows that it is not. It all depends on the definition of canon that you are using. In order to clear this up, I have argued elsewhere (see here) that there are really three different definitions of canon: [Read more…]

What is Covenant Theology? Here are Two New Resources You Don’t Want to Miss

Few would doubt that the last twenty years has seen a remarkable surge of interest in Reformed Theology. So much so, that many younger evangelicals, as opposed to prior generations, would now be comfortable identifying themselves as reformed (in some way).

Indeed, this has been wonderfully documented in Collin Hansen’s fascinating book, Young, Restless, Reformed (Crossway, 2008).

But, there is still the question about what it exactly means to be “reformed.” Does it just mean one embraces some form of Calvinism?  Or it is bigger than that?

As you might imagine, here at Reformed Theological Seminary we get that question a lot. After all, “Reformed” is in our name!

While we are always happy to have more Calvinists around, we are also quick to emphasize that being reformed has historically meant more than that. It’s not just an issue of soteriology (as important as that is), it is also an issue of ecclesiology.  What is the church? And how does it relate to the nation of Israel?

In other words, part of being reformed is embracing an overarching view of the Bible known as covenant theology.

And if you are interested in diving deeper into covenant theology, let me point out two wonderful new resources that have just been released. [Read more…]

Surviving Doubt: Six Videos Providing Answers to Difficult Questions about the Christian Faith

Ever had a moment in your life where you doubted what you believe? I mean, really doubted?

I can still remember when that happened in my life. It was my freshman year at UNC-Chapel Hill as I was sitting in a religion class on the New Testament. The professor was bright, funny, and persuasive. And he was arguing that the New Testament was chocked full of mistakes and contradictions.

As I sat there, I had no answers. I began to wonder whether Christianity was just something people made up.

By God’s grace, I persevered through those doubts and now have the privilege to be a professor who argues that the Bible can be trusted. But there are many other college students each year who have the same experience as mine. They hear challenges to what they believe and they wonder if there are answers.

For this reason, RTS Charlotte is launching a new a weekly video series where I address some of the most potent attacks on the Christian faith. It is based on my forthcoming book, Surviving Religion 101: Letters to a Christian Student on Keeping the Faith in College (Crossway; releases April 6, 2021).

While this video series is certainly applicable to college students, it is really for any Christian who wants to be equipped to answer the most difficult questions about the Christian faith.

In the video below, I introduce the series and explain more about my own story. To learn more about how to receive the six-part video series, see here! [Read more…]

The World’s Easiest Theological Question

For those who love to talk about theology, a good head-scratching question can really be fun. It allows us to stay up late in deep conversations with our friends over the mysteries of God and his Word.

Indeed, Jesus was known for asking some pretty tough theological questions . Sometimes the answer seemed obvious when it was not. When Jesus asked the Pharisees, “Whose son is he [the Christ]?” they assumed the answer was simple: “The son of David,” they said (Matt 22:42).

Turns out, however, that it was not at all simple. Jesus proceeds to stump them: “If then David calls him Lord, how is he his son?” (Matt 22:45).  The text then tells us: “No one was able to answer him a word.”

Lesson: we’re not the great theologians we often think we are. At any moment, Jesus can take us into the deep theological waters where the currents are swift and we struggle to keep our head above water.

Even so, sometimes Jesus asks easy theological questions where the answer is obvious. Often he does this to make a point about the hardness of men’s hearts. As an example, he asks the Pharisees what may be the world’s easiest theological question: [Read more…]

Looking for a Lay-Level Class on the Origins of the NT Canon? Here’s my 6-Part Video Series with @Ligonier

One of the most common questions I am asked is whether I have introductory, lay-level material on the origins of the NT canon that people can use in their churches.  For small group Bible studies or Sunday School classes, most people simply won’t read Canon Revisited or any of my other books.

So, I point the reader to my recent video series with Ligonier where I give six introductory lectures on the origins and authority of the NT canon.  My hope is that this will meet a need for churches looking to do something on canon but not knowing where to turn.

You can order the videos here in either digital or DVD format. Here is a short video where I introduce the series and provide a quick summary of why we can trust the NT canon: [Read more…]

A New Class on the Worlds of C.S. Lewis and J.R.R. Tolkien

Starting on Oct 7th, I am excited to begin teaching a new Wednesday night series at my church entitled, “The Worlds of Lewis and Tolkien: Christian Imagery in Narnia and Middle Earth.”

For generations, the works of C.S. Lewis and J.R.R. Tolkien have inspired millions of people to use their imaginations in fresh and exciting ways. Each of these authors was committed to a Christian system of thought and sought to honor God with their writings. This class will explore the writings of these two authors—particularly The Chronicles of Narnia and The Lord of the Rings—and will examine the many ways that Christ and Christianity are represented and illumined.

For those in the Charlotte area, you can sign up for the in-person class here. For others, I will post a recording of each installment in the outline below.

Of course, it is fitting to study Lewis and Tolkien together, not simply because they are both Christian authors who wrote fictional works, but because they were close friends during their time at Oxford. Indeed, it was this friendship that not only led to Lewis’ conversion, but also was the context in which they developed many of their ideas that later appear in their fictional works. It was their friendship that made them who they were.

In short, their deep writings were the product of their deep friendship. They would gather together regularly with other members of the “Inklings” (sometimes at the Eagle and Child pub, sometimes at Lewis’s room in Magdalen college) to discuss literature, poetry, and their latest reflections on God and the world.

I appreciate how the Inklings modeled a vision for male friendships that’s so different than what we often see in the world today which is typically centered on career or recreation. It was less like hanging out with “the guys” watching football or shooting hoops, and more like being one of the twelve disciples as they shared their lives together.  While there is nothing wrong with the former kind of friendship, it will rarely change your life. But the latter kind of friendship will.

Lewis, in his book The Four Loves, describes this kind of male friendship: [Read more…]

Was the Divinity of Jesus a Late Invention of the Council of Nicea?

One of the most common objections to Christianity is that the divinity of Jesus was “created” by later Christians long after the first century.  No one in primitive Christianity believed Jesus was divine, we are told.  He was just a man and it was later believers, at the council of Nicea, that declared him to be a God.

A classic example of this in popular literature can be found in the book The Da Vinci Code:

“My dear,” Teabing declared, “until that moment in history [council of Nicea], Jesus was viewed by His followers as a mortal prophet… a great and powerful man, but a man nonetheless. A mortal.” “Not the Son of God?” “Right,” Teabing said. “Jesus’ establishment as ‘the Son of God” was officially proposed and voted on by the Council of Nicaea.” “Hold on. You’re saying Jesus’ divinity was the result of a vote?” “A relatively close vote at that,” Teabing added.

Of course, there have been more sophisticated objections to the Christian belief in the divinity of Jesus.  Bart Ehrman’s book, How Jesus Became God, argues that “It will become clear in the following chapters that Jesus was not originally considered to be God in any sense at all” (44).

Needless to say, there have been many responses to this claim by Ehrman (and The Da Vinci Code). A good place to start is the rebuttal volume to Ehrman, How God Became Jesus.  And you can see my review of Ehrman’s book here.

But, it would still be helpful to revisit the question about when Christians began to conceive of Jesus as God. Was this belief “originally” (Ehrman’s word) part of early Christianity? [Read more…]

How to Run a Good Meeting–And Why it Matters More than You Think

What’s the most important skill you need to be successful in ministry?  Knowing how to run a good meeting.

Ok, that’s not really true.  Many other things matter more (a lot more!). But, running a good meeting still matters.  And more than you think.

Even those who’ve only been in ministry a short time know that meetings dominate your weekly schedule.  Sometimes, it seems that half your week is spent in some sort of meeting.  During meals. Over coffee.  In a conference room.  With the elders.  With ministry leaders.  With support staff.

And here’s the other reality we all know.  Meetings vary widely in their effectiveness.  Some meetings produce real progress and fruit.  Those can be exhilarating, even fun.  And other are a tedious and frustrating waste of time.  Those can be exhausting and even debilitating.

So, how can we make our meetings better?  Here I offer just a few quick thoughts for meeting leaders.  It’s the leaders the control, guide, and dictate what the meetings are like (and how many there are). [Read more…]

Seeing What We Want to See: Reflections on the Saga of the Gospel of Jesus’ Wife

While Narnia is a land filled with magic—where animals can talk and even sing—not all people can hear them.  In C.S. Lewis’ The Magician’s Nephew we learn that Uncle Andrew is one of those people. When the animals speak to him, Uncle Andrew hears only animal sounds. Just noise, not words.

Why? He is closed to the idea of a magical world. He assumes (in his worldview) that animals are nothing but dumb creatures. Thus, when Aslan sings, Uncle Andrew is able to rationalize it away: “‘Of course, it can’t really have been singing,’ he thought, ‘I must have imagined it. I’ve been letting my nerves get out of order. Who ever heard of a lion singing?’”

Then Lewis (as the narrator) offers the most profound insight: “What you see and what you hear depends a great deal on where you are standing. It also depends on what sort of person you are.”

This inestimable lesson, one it seems every generation needs to learn anew, is perhaps the big take away from the book I have just finished: Ariel Sabar, Veritas: A Harvard Professor, a Con Man and the Gospel of Jesus’s Wife (Doubleday, 2020).

Sabar’s fascinating page-turner has garnered quite a bit of attention over the last few months and it is easy to see why. Utilizing his skills as an investigative journalist, he has taken a deep dive into the saga of the so-called Gospel of Jesus’ Wife, building upon his 2016 article in The Atlantic.

The saga began in 2012 when Karen King, professor of divinity at Harvard University, announced the discovery of a provocative new papyrus fragment where Jesus utters the phrase, “my wife…” Needless to say, the academic world was stunned by this new “gospel” and the implications it might have for the history of Christianity. [Read more…]

Seminary Wives: You Are Not Wasting Your Lives

Every year I see a new crop of seminary students, eager to jump into their studies and to prepare for ministry.  But, behind the scenes, there is another story that often goes untold.  The story of the seminary wives.

Of course, I recognize that there are also seminary husbands, but there is a unique challenge for seminary wives as they sometimes struggle to find their own calling in the midst of their husband’s pursuit of ministry.

Seminary can be a wonderful, exciting time, full of fresh spiritual growth.  But it can also be a struggle–financially, spiritually, and relationally.  In the mist of these struggles, it is easy for wives to wonder whether it is all worth it.

On this note, I point the reader to my wife’s article on The Gospel Coalition website: “Seminary Wives: 10 Encouragements for the Journey.”  Though written back in 2013, her insights are still as relevant as ever. She offers some wonderful biblical and practical wisdom about navigating seminary, and, ultimately, about surviving in ministry.

But, this article is not just beneficial for seminary wives.  Seminary students themselves should also take the time to read it.  It will give you a great perspective on life in the ministry, and your wife’s role in it.

What Exactly is Legalism? It’s More Complicated Than You Think

Legalism. Pretty much everyone agrees that it’s bad.  And in a world where Christians seem to disagree over basically everything, that’s saying something.

Even so, if you asked the average Christian to define legalism, the answers may not come so quickly. What exactly counts as legalism?  How do we know it when we see it?  The confusion is exacerbated by the fact that the term can be used in different ways.  People can use the same word but infuse it with very different meanings.

In hopes of dissipating a little of the fogginess, here’s a breakdown of different ways to understand legalism.

Legalism and Salvation

Let’s begin with the most obvious meaning of legalism. At its core, legalism is when we base our justification on our own law-keeping rather than on the finished work of Christ.  If we depend on our own merits, our own efforts, even our own rituals, to make us acceptable before a holy God, then we have become legalists.

In short, legalism is salvation by works.  We will call this salvation-legalism.

It is precisely this sort of legalism that Paul was fighting in the letter to the Galatians. Indeed, Paul was clear that the Galatians, having been deceived by the “Judaizers,” had embraced another gospel altogether: “I am astonished that you are so quickly deserting him who called you in the grace of Christ are are turning to a different gospel” (1:6).

Of course, this is why the real gospel—that we are saved by grace alone through faith alone in Christ alone—is such good news.  In this gospel, we are freed from the heavy yoke of works-righteousness. [Read more…]

An Amazing New Children’s Book

Ok, I’ve never reviewed a children’s book before on Canon Fodder. But, this one is special. And it’s not just because it was written by my wife, Melissa (though, I admit I’m biased!), but because it brings such a profound and mysterious joy to my heart as I read it.

As parents, we all have great hopes for our children. We dream of what they might learn and what they might become. And typically, for most parents, those dreams take the form of vocational aspirations. My child could be an airline pilot, a professional singer, a rocket scientist, a fashion designer, etc.  And all those dreams are wonderful.

But, what I love about this book is that it funnels all those wonderful possibilities into the ultimate dream, that our children would love Jesus with all of their hearts. No matter what particular calling our children might enjoy, this one is ultimate.

Amazon.com: Wherever You Go, I Want You to Know (9781784985356 ...Thus, the title: Wherever You Go, I Want You to Know.  Melissa takes the child on a fun roller coaster ride of possible callings—with outstanding illustrations that draw you in and make you smile—but the ultimate thing she wants them to know is that Jesus is the thing most worthy of their affections and aspirations.  The final line says it best:

I love you so much, I want you to know. . .
I’m cheering you on, wherever you go.
And, whatever you do, wherever you start,
I pray you love Jesus, with ALL of your heart.

Another things I love about this book is the way it fits with some of Melissa’s other books. It would be great to pair this book also with her 5 Things to Pray for Your Kids, as well as her Walking with God in the Season of Motherhood.

Here are some great endorsements for Wherever You Go: [Read more…]

Is It a Waste of Time for Seminary Students (and Pastors) to Learn the Biblical Languages?

It’s that time of year again.

Even in the middle of a COVID-19 world, a new crop of seminary students here at RTS-Charlotte has already begun the grueling month-long experience of Summer Greek. And, like all seminary students before them, they will begin to ask the question of why studying these ancient languages even matters. After all, a few years after graduation all will be forgotten. In the midst of a busy pastoral life, who could possibly maintain proficiency in the languages?

As a result of these questions, some students decide (very early on) that the biblical languages are just something to be endured. They are like a hazing ritual at a college fraternity. No one likes it, but you have to go through it to be in the club. And then it will be over.

Behind this “take your medicine” approach to the biblical languages are a couple of assumptions that need to be challenged. First, the characterization of pastoral ministry as somehow incompatible with the languages (due to busyness, or other causes), is an unfortunate misunderstanding of what a pastorate is all about.

No doubt, pastors should be busy shepherding their flock, meeting with ministry leaders, and running the church. But, the core of the calling is to be a “minister of the word.”

And if the pastoral call is to be a minister of the Word, then there is a significant component of pastoral life that should be devoted to serious study of the biblical text—beyond just the preparation for that week’s sermon.

Put differently, pastors should continue to be students. They need to be readers, thinkers, and theologians.

Unfortunately many modern pastors do not view themselves this way. This is evidenced by the language used to describe the place a pastor works at the church. In prior generations, it used to be called the pastor’s “study” (because that is what he did in there!). Now, it is called the pastor’s “office” (because pastors view themselves more as a CEO).

One of my biggest disappointments is when I go into a pastor’s office and see [Read more…]

How Early Christianity was Mocked for Welcoming Women

I recently received a question on Twitter about where in our patristic sources we see early Christianity mocked for being a religion filled with women.  The short answer: lots of places.

But before we get there, we should begin by noting that early Christianity received this criticism precisely because it was so popular with women during this time period. Sociologist Rodney Stark estimates that perhaps 2/3 of the Christianity community during the second-century was made up of women. This is the exact opposite of the ratio in the broader Greco-Roman world where women only made up about 1/3 of the population.

This means that women intentionally left the religious systems of the Greco-Roman world with which they were familiar and consciously decided to join the burgeoning Christian movement. No one forced them to do so. No one made them become Christians.

On the contrary, Christianity was a cultural pariah during this time period. It was an outsider movement in all sorts of ways–legal, social, religious, and political. Christians were widely despised, viewed with suspicion and scorn, and regarded as a threat to a stable society.

And yet, women, in great numbers, decided to join the early Christian movement anyway.

Women pop up all over the place in our earliest Christian sources. They are persecuted by the Roman government, they are hosting churches in their homes, they are caring for the poor and those in prison, they are traveling missionaries, they are wealthy patrons who support the church financially, and much much more.

And it is this reality that sets the stage for the critics of early Christianity. If they were looking for a way to undermine this new religious movement (and they were!) then the involvement of women is an easy target. Why? Because it was standard fare in the Greco-Roman world to attack religions with women (see the way Livy denigrates the cult of Dinoysus).  There was an ideal of masculinity for the Romans that such religions just did not meet. Thus, they were targets of their ridicule.

Here are a few examples of the way the critics attacked early Christianity for having so many women: [Read more…]

What are the Differences Between Covenantal and Dispensational Theologies?

To this day, I can still remember watching those “rapture” movies in my middle school youth group.  In particular, I remember A Thief in the Night (1972), which scared the pants off of me. It was a bit of a mix between a horror movie and cheesy spy thriller. For the next week I had trouble sleeping, worried that I would wake up and find myself left behind.

As a result, I grew up assuming that the dispensational framework was the only proper way to read the Bible.  But when I got to college, some upperclassmen introduced me to Reformed Theology and a covenantal framework for reading Scripture. It was a refreshingly different perspective than what I had grown up with (and not quite so scary!).

I am guessing my experience is probably pretty typical for many evangelicals in America.  We all struggle to understand the relationship between the Old and New Testaments, and the host of questions that come along with it: How do we know which OT laws carry over and which do not?  What is the relationship between the church and Israel? Should we interpret prophecy literally or symbolically, or a mix?

And there are two major frameworks for answering these questions: dispensationalism and covenant theology.

Or are there? Anyone who has explored this issue knows that people cannot be divided into just two camps. It’s not that simple.  Instead there are multiple versions of each system spread along a continuum. And trying to distinguish all these gradations can get really complicated. Fast.

Discontinuity to Continuity: A Survey of Dispensational and ...For these reasons, I am thankful for the new book by Ben Merkle, Discontinuity to Continuity: A Survey of Dispensational and Covenantal Theologies (Lexham Press, 2020). Merkle is professor of New Testament and Greek at Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary (and a former seminary classmate of mine!).

As the title suggests, Merkle frames the debate (and rightly so) as an issue of continuity vs. discontinuity. Generally speaking, dispensationalists push for a lot of discontinuity between old and new covenants (which explains their sharp distinction between the church and Israel), whereas covenant theologians argue for more continuity between old and new covenants (which explains why they see the church as the new/eschatological Israel). [Read more…]

The Great Race

“He who honors me, I will honor” (1 Samuel 2:30).

That was the verse that was handed to Scottish runner Eric Liddell moments before he ran the 400 meters in the 1924 Olympics.  It was not the event that he had trained for. He was a sprinter and was favored in the 100 meters. But the heats for the 100 were on a Sunday, and he would not run.

Although hailed as a hero now (and made famous by the movie Chariots of Fire), Liddell’s refusal to run on Sunday made him the object of severe ridicule and scorn by both the British people and the British press. The honor of Great Britain was at stake, after all.  You don’t throw that aside for mere religious conviction.  Country first, God second.

But not for Liddell.  Most people didn’t realize Liddell was running a very different race than they thought.  The most important race for him was not the 100 meters, but the race of the Christian life. And he was determined to finish well.

The Scriptures often compare the Christian life to running a race. Indeed, Hebrews 12:1-2 employs athletic imagery from the Greco-Roman world to describe this great race:

Therefore, since we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses, let us also lay aside every weight, and sin which clings so closely, and let us run with endurance the race that is set before us, 2 looking to Jesus, the founder and perfecter of our faith, who for the joy that was set before him endured the cross, despising the shame, and is seated at the right hand of the throne of God.

In the brief video below, I offer a devotional thought on this passage for my home church, Christ Covenant. Enjoy!

 

 

An Exciting New Book on Mentoring

The answer is almost always the same. Whenever I ask young believers—Christians who are godly and mature beyond their years—how they grew so rapidly in the faith, I know what they are going to say. An older, wiser believer invested in them.

In short, they were mentored.

As I look back on my own life, I can see this was true for me.  Key spurts of Christian growth often coincided with older, wiser Christians in my life who invested in my life—a soccer coach, an upperclassman in college, a young pastor.  The friendships with these men played a big role in who I am today.

Such a pattern should not be surprising. The Bible is full of stories of believers investing in relationships with other believers. Just think of Paul and Timothy.  Or even the way Jesus invested in his disciples, particularly Peter, James, and John.  God’s truth is best delivered in a relational context.

Of course, this doesn’t mean that growth cannot happen without a mentor.  Sitting faithfully under the weekly preaching of the Word, and reading good Christian books, can play a tremendous role in our spiritual development, even if a person never has a mentor.

But, this does not negate the reality that mentors can have a significant impact on our spiritual growth. They can help us apply those resources to our lives in ways that we may not be able to do on our own.

For these reasons, I particularly excited for a new book on mentoring by wife Melissa who is the director of women’s content for The Gospel Coalition. The book releases with Crossway this week (June 9th!) and is entitled, Growing Together: Taking Mentoring Beyond Small Talk and Prayer Requests.

The subtitle gets to the heart of what makes this book unique. While there are many books out there about mentoring, this is one of the few that actually provides a framework for what to do in the actual mentoring meetings.

Often times a mentoring relationship is started with good intentions. But once the two people actually meet together, key questions comes up: What do we do now? What do talk about? Most books on mentoring don’t answer those questions, so meetings often devolve into small talk and prayer requests. But, this new book provides a chapter-by-chapter guide for the key issues to cover in a mentoring relationship.  I know of nothing else quite like it.

This volume could be used in all sorts of different situations, but would be particularly useful for women’s ministries looking to launch a new mentoring initiative in their church. Each mentor would have a ready guide for how to proceed and what to do.

Here’s the description and endorsements: [Read more…]

A Lament

Remember my affliction and my wanderings,
    the wormwood and the gall!

My soul continually remembers it
    and is bowed down within me.
But this I call to mind,
    and therefore I have hope:

The steadfast love of the Lord never ceases;
    his mercies never come to an end;
they are new every morning;
    great is your faithfulness.

“The Lord is my portion,” says my soul,
    “therefore I will hope in him.”
The Lord is good to those who wait for him,
    to the soul who seeks him.
It is good that one should wait quietly
    for the salvation of the Lord.

For the Lord will not
    cast off forever,
 but, though he cause grief, he will have compassion
    according to the abundance of his steadfast love;
for he does not afflict from his heart
    or grieve the children of men.

 To crush underfoot
    all the prisoners of the earth,
to deny a man justice
    in the presence of the Most High,
to subvert a man in his lawsuit,
    the Lord does not approve.

Lamentations 3:20-26; 31-36 [Read more…]

Why Do (Modern) Christians Rarely Talk about Rewards in Heaven?

When is the last time you heard a sermon that suggested that a motive for our obedience should be the rewards we receive in heaven?  I imagine for most of us it has been a long time, maybe even never. Whenever a sermon (or book) provides a motive for obedience, it is almost always thankfulness for what Christ has done.  And certainly that is a wonderful and foundational motivation.  But is it the only motivation?

Recently I’ve been working on a commentary on the book of Hebrews and was struck by the role rewards have played in the lives of God’s people. We are reminded that Moses was motivated by rewards, “He regarded disgrace for the sake of Christ as of greater value than the treasures of Egypt, because he was looking ahead to his reward” (Heb 11:26). Why did Abraham obey?  We are told “He went to live in the land of promise…For he was looking forward to the city that has foundations” (Heb 11:9-10).

This same motivation is found throughout the New Testament writings. Jesus makes it clear, “Rejoice in that day, and leap for joy, for behold, your reward is great in heaven” (Luke 6:23). Paul states it plainly, “But each will receive his own reward according to his own labor” (1 Cor 3:8).

Even Jesus himself was motivated by his future reward: “Who for the joy that was set before him endured the cross, despising the shame” (Heb 12:2).

It seems that prior generations may have grasped this truth more clearly. Richard Baxter explains the various kinds of motivations for our obedience: [Read more…]

The De-conversion of Saruman: Five Lessons to Learn

There’s been a lot of chatter the last couple years over “de-conversion” stories. Most recently, of course, is the story of well-known pastor and author Joshua Harris, as well as the Youtube comedians Rhett and Link.

I’ve written on this phenomenon myself in a number of places, including my recent book, The 10 Commandments of Progressive Christianity, as well as my my article, “The Power of De-conversion Stories: How Jen Hatmaker is Trying to Change Minds about the Bible.”

So, what exactly is de-conversion? In short, it’s when a person who is deeply committed to the Christian faith ends up leaving the Christian faith and abandoning their prior beliefs. Sometimes this involves a wholesale rejection of Christianity (e.g., Bart Ehrman), but in other cases it involves embracing an altogether different version of the faith (e.g., Rob Bell). So, not all de-conversion scenarios are the same.

The key feature of de-conversion, however, is that the individual was once on the “inside” of the faith, and later ends up on the “outside.”

In theological parlance, this is called apostasy. And the Bible is filled with examples of apostasy, the most famous, of course, being Judas Iscariot. He was the consummate “insider” who abandoned Jesus and effectively left his old life behind.

We can also find examples of apostasy—symbolically and figuratively—in the world of literature and film. Most obvious is the story of Anakin Skywalker, once a Jedi but later wooed to the dark side of the force, becoming Darth Vader. But there are many others (think Cypher in The Matrix).

But, perhaps one of the most remarkable (and often overlooked) examples of apostasy is Saruman in Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings. I’ve been re-reading the books lately in my coronavirus quarantine, and I was struck anew by the role he plays in the overall story.

In many ways, Saruman has always been an odd part of the plot line. With a bad guy like Sauron to occupy the reader’s attention, why does the story even need a character like Saruman? Besides, as my kids always complain, his name actually sounds a lot like Sauron’s which makes everything very confusing.

My hunch, though, is that the name similarity is intentional. Tolkien’s world is more nuanced than just the good guys and the bad guys. Instead, there are actually good guys that become bad guys—which makes things very complicated. It’s a perfect picture of de-conversion.

As such, we can learn a lot about the way de-conversions work through stories like Saruman’s. So, here are a few quick observations: [Read more…]

@RTSCharlotte Hires New Professor of Biblical Counseling

A number of years ago, RTS Charlotte launched a two-year Master of Arts in Christian Counseling degree (MACC) and it has been wonderful to see how it has grown.  We believe that solid, Christ-centered, biblical counseling is critical to the health of the church.

Last week we announced the hire Dr. Nate Brooks as Assistant Professor of Christian Counseling at RTS Charlotte beginning June 1, 2020.  Dr. Brooks will join Dr. Jim Newheiser who is the associate professor of Christian Counseling and director of the program.

nate-brooks-headshot

Dr. Brooks earned a B.S. in Business Administration from The Master’s University in Santa Clarita, CA. After completing his undergraduate degree, he attended The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary for his M.Div. Most recently, he received his Ph.D. from Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary.

His research interests revolve around the intersection of counseling and systematic theology, with a special focus on anthropology. Brooks completed his doctoral studies under T. Dale Johnson, contrasting the historical Reformed understanding of the heart with that of second-wave cognitive behavioral therapy.

I am so pleased to have Dr. Brooks join the faculty at RTS Charlotte. He combines academic rigor and theological depth with a love for people that embodies the RTS motto, ‘A mind for truth and a heart for God.’ We know he will bless both our students and the larger church world for many years to come

In addition to having two fantastic core faculty, Charlotte’s biblical counseling degree has a number of other distinctives: [Read more…]

Is Everything Sad Going to Come Untrue? Why We Need Eschatology Now More than Ever

In my opinion, some of the most overlooked portions of the entire Lord of the Rings trilogy are the chapters right after the final battle in The Return of the King.  In these chapters, Tolkien expresses a vision for cosmic renewal that closely mimics the one laid down in the biblical accounts themselves.

In Rev 21:5 we read, “And I heard a loud voice from the throne saying, ‘Behold, I am making all things new.’”  God has declared that one day he will set all things right. Likewise, at the end of The Return of the King, Tolkien describes how evil has been vanquished and all things set right.

After all, in these final chapters there is a gathering of the “saints,” a great feast, new songs of praise, and even a final wedding. Frodo and Sam even receive crowns on their heads.

This sentiment is best captured by one of Sam’s statements, which is one of my favorite in the entire story.  After the ring is destroyed at Mount Doom, Sam wakes up from his sleep surprised he is alive and surprised to see Gandalf.   Then he says, “Is everything sad going to come untrue? What’s happened to the world?” [Read more…]

Want to Understand How Suffering Fits with the Sovereignty of God? Here’s a Great Place to Start

One of the perennial questions for all theologians (and all human beings) is “Why do we suffer?” And, “If God is good and sovereign, why does he allow suffering?”

While most of us have these questions, we don’t really have to deal with them until we experience suffering ourselves. This is when we discover whether we really have a “theology of suffering” that can deal with the hard parts of life.

And that’s the thing about the coronavirus. It forces all of us to answer the tough questions about suffering. We can no longer duck the issue.

To be clear, I am not talking about answers to the intellectual questions regarding the problem of evil and how to resolve it. Reformed folks have addressed that issue in spades.

What is needed instead is a robust accounting for the role suffering plays in the life of the Christian and how to endure it faithfully when it comes. So, let me point you to three helpful resources: [Read more…]

What is Covenant Theology? Here are Two New Resources You Don’t Want to Miss

Few would doubt that the last twenty years has seen a remarkable surge of interest in Reformed Theology. So much so, that many younger evangelicals, as opposed to prior generations, would now be comfortable identifying themselves as reformed (in some way).

Indeed, this has been wonderfully documented in Collin Hansen’s fascinating book, Young, Restless, Reformed (Crossway, 2008).

But, there is still the question about what it exactly means to be “reformed.” Does it just mean one embraces some form of Calvinism?  Or it is bigger than that?

As you might imagine, here at Reformed Theological Seminary we get that question a lot. After all, “Reformed” is in our name!

While we are always happy to have more Calvinists around, we are also quick to emphasize that being reformed has historically meant more than that. It’s not just an issue of soteriology (as important as that is), it is also an issue of ecclesiology.  What is the church? And how does it relate to the nation of Israel?

In other words, part of being reformed is embracing an overarching view of the Bible known as covenant theology.

And if you are interested in diving deeper into covenant theology, let me point out two wonderful new resources that will be coming out this year. [Read more…]

Stuck Indoors with Extra Time on Your Hands? Here’s a Great Way to Spend It

Given that many of us are self-quarantined and/or working from home these days, we may find that we have more free time than ever before. Indeed, the internet is filled with stories of “bored” folks stuck at home with nothing to do, searching for some way to entertain themselves.

Under the heading of Paul’s exhortation to make “the best use of the time, because the days are evil” (Eph 5:16), let me make a suggestion: take a seminary class.

I can’t tell you how many times people have approached me over the years and expressed a desire to dive deeper into God’s word, or to explore church history, or to understand Reformed theology, or to learn how to defend the faith.  And the reason they have not done so is almost always the same: they don’t have the time.

Well, now you might have the time—indeed, more than you ever expected or wanted. And you can do it all right in the comfort of your own living room.

There are a lot of good options out there for online seminary education, but here are some things to know about our online program at Reformed Theological Seminary: [Read more…]

How a “You do You” Culture Has Made Us Vulnerable to the Coronavirus

“You do you.”

Perhaps there’s no phrase that captures our current cultural moment better. Back in 2015, Colson Whitehead of the New York Times Magazine, lamented this phrase, arguing that it “perfectly captures our narcissistic culture.”

Indeed, it is hard to disagree. “You do you” embodies our culture’s commitment to personal fulfillment, self-actualization, and the dismissal of any truth claims outside of the self. It means we get to create our own realities, our own right and wrong, and, perhaps most importantly, our own meaning.

And if we are the creators of our own little worlds, then we are also our own little gods. And no one gets to tell a god what to do. We decide for ourselves.

Perhaps it’s no surprise, then, that the selfie is now our world’s favorite art form. The thing to be celebrated, after all, is us.

So—and now we come to it—how does a “You do you” culture handle something like the coronavirus?

Prior generations, no doubt, would’ve turned to science as the great solution. Armed with ever more impressive technological advancements, we were told our potential for solving the world’s problems was essentially limitless.

In the case of the coronavirus, however, the god of science does not seem so omnipotent after all. Maybe there will be a vaccine at some point in the future, but for now we are on our own.

So, what then can be done, at least on a human level, to stop the virus? [Read more…]

Should You Preach from a Full Manuscript?

Just last week, I was asked the question again by seminary students. It comes up multiple times every year. And since I keep getting asked this question, I thought it would be worth addressing.

And that question is, “Should I preach from a full manuscript?”

By “full manuscript” they mean they write out their sermon exactly how they would preach it. Word for word.

Now, I am not eager to jump into the fray over preaching methodology.  When it comes to the question of how to preach, there is no shortage of books, articles, and blog posts offering advice and guidance. And once you start sifting through these materials, it becomes apparent that there is no shortage of disagreement about the particulars of the preaching task.

But, I think progress can be made on this question if one important distinction is maintained, namely the difference between writing a manuscript and using a manuscript.  The former is a very helpful and worthwhile exercise (particularly for younger preachers).  The latter, in my opinion, can seriously hinder a preachers development as well as the effectiveness of their delivery.

The benefits of writing out a full manuscript are many.  It forces the preacher to think clearly about each of their points and how to develop them, it helps the preacher think through transitions between points (something often overlooked), it helps keep the sermon within the desired time limit, and the exact wording allows for more theological precision.

And, on top of all of this, a full manuscript allows a preacher to retrieve their sermon several years later and preach it again without wondering what he originally said.

But, when it comes to using a manuscript in the pulpit, there are serious drawbacks: [Read more…]

Were the Church Fathers Inspired in the Same Way as Scripture? A Preview of the Sizemore Lectures at Midwestern Seminary

A number of years ago, Everett Kalin wrote a well-known doctoral dissertation arguing that the early church fathers did not see inspiration as something that was uniquely true of canonical books.  Why?  Because, according to Kalin, the early Church Fathers saw their own writings as inspired.   Ever since, a number of scholars have repeated this claim (Sundberg, Allert, MacDonald, et al.), insisting that the early fathers saw nothing distinctive about the NT writings as compared to writings being produced in their own time period.

Well, despite the popularity of this position, I find it to be highly problematic. Indeed, my rebuttal will be the topic for the Sizemore Lectures this week (Feb 25-26) at Midwestern Seminary in Kansas City. Moreover, my research on this topic will be a chapter in a multi-author volume on the NT canon, forthcoming with E.J. Brill.

Of course, there is not space here to lay out my full argument. But, here is a preview of my lectures:

Lecture #1: “Were the Church Fathers Inspired in the Same Way as Scripture?”

Kalin’s research was right about one thing, namely that early Christians did use inspiration-like language for sources outside the scriptural writings. It was not unusual, for example, for church fathers to claim that they were speaking or writing through the Holy Spirit.

But is such a phenomenon enough to warrant Kalin’s claim that there was no difference between the kind of inspiration present in the fathers and the kind of inspiration attributed to scriptural writings?  I think not.  In fact, several lines of evidence suggest church fathers used inspiration language in different ways, some of which was applicable to scripture and some of which was applicable to lower/lesser authorities. Consider the following: [Read more…]

Interested in Getting a Biblical Counseling Degree without Moving? You Can Do it @RTSCharlotte

A number of years ago, RTS Charlotte launched a two-year Master of Arts in Christian Counseling degree (MACC) and it has been wonderful to see how it has grown.  We believe that solid, Christ-centered, biblical counseling is critical to the health of the church.

Two years ago we also announced that we are now offering the MACC degree in an exciting new Summer/Winter format.  This means that students can now get the MACC degree over the course of four years without having to relocate.

We are rolling out this new structure because we know there are many people who want to benefit from the MACC program, but are not able to move.  This new format can help address that problem.

The fact that this program is meeting a real need was evident during the counseling classes we just offered in our winter term last month. As I visited with the students, I realized they were from all over the country, including Oregon, Texas, Alabama, Virginia, and more.  Clearly there is a great desire for more biblically-based counseling courses.

And this simply highlights the thing that makes the Charlotte program unique: our counseling classes are not taken online.  They are all residential classes right here in Charlotte.  They are simply done in intensive formats during the winter and summer.

Given that counseling is inherently a relational exercise, we think it is a bit counter-intuitive to get a counseling degree by only plugging in the head phones and looking at a computer screen.  Instead, counseling is best taught and learned in a face-to-face environment where students can interact with each other and with the professors.

So, we are excited to see how this new Summer/Winter MACC program can allow people to get a degree without  moving, but at the same time preserving the important face-to-face, relational aspects of counseling.

In addition, Charlotte’s biblical counseling degree has a number of other distinctives: [Read more…]

Phil Ryken Lecturing @RTSCharlotte on “Messiah Comes to Middle Earth”

For our annual Harold O.J. Brown Lectures at RTS Charlotte, we are pleased to Welcome Dr. Phil Ryken, president of Wheaton College.

On Feb 11, 11AM-2PM, Dr. Ryken will be giving two lectures (with a provided lunch in between) on the theme of “Messiah Comes to Middle Earth: Images of Christ’s Threefold Office in the Lord of the Rings.”

Certainly this lecture will be of great interest to all J.R.R. Tolkien fans, but it will also be diving deeply into the three offices of Christ—Prophet, Priest, and King—and its relevance for our theology and ministry.

Image result for Phil Ryken, Wheaton President

Dr. Ryken earned a master of divinity degree from Westminster Theological Seminary and a doctorate in historical theology from the University of Oxford. He preached at Philadelphia’s historic Tenth Presbyterian Church from 1995 until his appointment at Wheaton in 2010. President Ryken has published more than 50 books, and serves as a board member for the Council of Christian Colleges and Universities, the Lausanne Movement, and the National Association of Evangelicals.

Dr. Harold O.J. Brown, after whom the lectures are named, served as John R. Richardson Professor of Theology and Philosophy at the Charlotte campus from 1998 to 2007. Dr. Brown was a leading evangelical voice in the pro-life movement immediately after Roe v. Wade, co-founding the Christian Action Council (now Care Net) with former Surgeon General C. Everett Koop in the 70s. Dr. Brown was a widely respected evangelical scholar during his professional life, writing books, essays and articles in the areas of culture, science, theology and politics.

Past lecturers include Carl Trueman, Rosaria Butterfield, Michael Horton, Russell Moore, Oliver Crisp, Mark Dever, Derek Thomas, Al Mohler, Mark Noll, and George Marsden. Next year, 2021, RTS Charlotte will host  Simon Gathercole for our lectures.

If you are interested in joining us for this special event, please register here. Hope to see you there!

So, What Did Jesus Think about the Old Testament?

The Old Testament has run into some hard times as of late.  It’s seen by many as a curmudgeonly, legalistic, violent, confusing, and, maybe most of all, boring sort of book. As the atheist Richard Dawkins famously opined, “The God of the Old Testament is arguably the most unpleasant character in all of fiction.”

On top of these sorts of complaints are questions about the historical veracity of the Old Testament. Are we really supposed to believe in a literal Adam and Eve?  A global flood?  Sodom and Gomorrah?  People struggle to believe these sorts of things really happened.

Sadly, however, the critiques don’t come from just non-Christians. Even believers, if we’re honest, sometimes have those squirm-in-your-seat reservations about what we are reading in the Old Testament. And that sentiment isn’t helped when popular evangelical leaders suggest the OT doesn’t matter much anyway.

So, in the midst of such bad press, it may be timely to ask what Jesus thought about the Old Testament.  If Jesus is who he claims to be, then surely his opinion should be very influential in shaping our own (see prior post on this subject here).  Would he agree with concerns above?  Should we bail on the Old Testament?

Not at all.  Here are three things that Jesus believed about the Old Testament: [Read more…]

One of the Most Overlooked Reasons Why We Should Trust the Bible

When deciding what to believe about the Bible, who should we listen to?

That’s a rather basic question, and I suppose there are many possible answers. We could listen to our friends—maybe a roommate or a co-worker.  Then there are family members, maybe our parents or siblings. Surely they would have an opinion. Or we could look to our leaders, a pastor or professor who seems to be an “expert.”  And there’s always Google if we really want to know what to think!

But in the midst of all the options there is one person that, ironically, Christians (and non-Christians) overlook. Jesus.

Now, of course, Christians don’t overlook Jesus generally.  He is central to about everything Christians think and do.  But, strangely, he is not often the ultimate court of appeal when they are deciding what to think about the Bible. But, just a few moments of reflection suggest he should be.

First, and most obviously, Jesus’ opinion about the Bible (which in his day was the Old Testament) matters most because he wrote it. Now, obviously, he didn’t literally write it—we have no evidence that Jesus himself left any written records. But, as the incarnate Lord, as the very God of Israel enfleshed, he is the divine author of Scripture. If he is who he claims to be, then he is the one who inspired the Old Testament authors. When you hear the voice of the Old Testament Scriptures, you are hearing the voice of the Lord—the voice of Christ.

Who better to tell us what to think about the Old Testament than its author?

By way of example, imagine if someone asked what we should think about the painting, The Mona Lisa.  There are a lot of opinions out there, from art historians to lay folks, about the identity of this mysterious woman.  Not only have numerous female names been suggested, but others have argued the painting may even be a disguised self-portrait of da Vinci himself!

But there would be one way (perhaps the only way) to settle the matter absolutely. And that is if we were able to ask da Vinci himself about The Mona Lisa.  Surely the author’s own testimony about the painting would be definitive.

Of course, at this point someone will object: How can base our opinions about the Bible on Jesus’s testimony, when that testimony comes from the Bible? Isn’t that circular reasoning? [Read more…]

My New Lay-Level Class on the Origins and Authority of the Bible

Note: This post is regularly updated with new handouts and MP3 recordings.

Have you ever had a time in your life when you really (I mean really) doubted the truth of the Bible? Maybe you wondered whether everything you ever believed was a lie. Anyone who’s gone through such an experience, and come out on the other side, knows how much their spiritual health is tied to their trust in Scripture.

In short, understanding the origins and authority of the Bible is a practical issue. It’s a spiritual issue. While I am convinced that most evangelicals believe the truth of the Bible, I think far fewer can articulate why they believe it, or know how to defend it against attacks.

For these reasons, I am excited to launch a new Sunday School class at my home church, Christ Covenant Church (PCA): “How Did We Get Our Bible? The Origins and Authority of Scripture.”  This is a lay-level introduction to the key doctrines of Scripture, as well as defense against the many and varied attacks on the Bible in our world today.

The class is part of a larger new initiative at Christ Covenant where we are transitioning to a topic-based Sunday School program rather than the standard age-and-stage model. We were thrilled to see the enthusiasm last week as we had record Sunday School attendance across our seven classes (many with standing room only!).

For those in my class who want to do further reading on the origins and authority of the Bible, you will want to check out my Top Ten List for Books on the Authority of Scripture. These are, in my opinion, some of the best works on the subject over the last few generations.

Below is a class description along with the schedule for the 13-weeks we will meet. Each week I will update the schedule below with the handout and MP3 recording (sorry, no recording for week one but we will record the others!). [Read more…]

A Preview of My New Book: The 10 Commandments of Progressive Christianity

I am pleased to announce my new book has just been released: The Ten Commandments of Progressive of Christianity (Cruciform Press, 2019).

As most readers will know, I did a blog series on this theme a couple of years ago. Tim Challies, who runs Cruciform Press, approached me about expanding the material into a small, introductory book, in hopes of getting the content into the hands of more people. Cruciform Press has done a good job publishing solid, accessible books by authors like John Piper, Tony Reinke, Joel Beeke, Jerry Bridges, and others.

Image result for the ten commandments of progressive Christianity

The fact that the book was essentially released over the Christmas season is fitting, I suppose, because it’s during that time of year that people get a heavy dose of progressive Christianity. This term (defined more in the book) captures a version of Christianity where we are told that people are inherently good, Christ is not a savior but a moral example, doctrine and theology are the problem not the solution, this life matters more than the next, and that our highest calling is to just be a good person.

Essentially, it’s the gospel according to Santa Claus. [Read more…]

@RTSCharlotte 2019 Year in Review

Well, it’s New Year’s Eve.  It’s the time of the year to be inundated with “Best of” stories and “Year in Review” segments, dutifully cataloging everything that happened in pop culture or politics.

But, what if a “Year in Review” was about more than Donald Trump or Kim Kardashian? What if we did a year in review about what God had done in the prior year? Or, more to the point, about how God has been at work in our ministries this year?

Of course, God has been at work in countless ways around the globe this year, most of which I could never know about. But, I can speak to how he has blessed RTS Charlotte. So, here’s a quick recap of what I am thankful for in 2019:

1. New Students.  It may sound strange, but every year I am genuinely surprised that anyone comes to seminary.  Let’s be honest, ministry is tough. Those in ministry are often underappreciated, unthanked, heavily criticized, underpaid, and unrespected by our modern culture. Don’t get me wrong, there are many wonderful things too. But, I stand amazed that men and women still show up every year to take on this calling.

And this fall, 2019, RTS Charlotte was blessed to have our largest enrollment in over a decade. So thankful the Lord has brought us these students. Our goal is to be good stewards of them until they are sent out from us. [Read more…]

Think You Know the Christmas Story? Here are Five Common Misconceptions

Bah, humbug.

That’s probably one of the most well-known lines in literary (and now, cinematic) history. Everybody immediately recognizes the curmudgeonly voice of Ebeneezer Scrooge as he pours cold water all over our Christmas spirit.

And his point is still made today by some, albeit in different words.  It’s that the Christmas story just isn’t true. It’s rubbish. It’s made up. It’s all in our heads.

While now is not the time for a full-scale defense of the historicity of the Christmas story, Scrooge’s skepticism does prompt us to wonder whether we’ve gotten the story right. Are we telling the story that really was, or are we just telling the story that we want to tell?  Are we just telling the story in our heads?

It might be useful, then, to reflect on a few common misconceptions about the Christmas story. The best way to validate the Christmas story to the Ebeneezer Scrooge’s out there is to make sure we’ve got it right ourselves. Here are five of them. [Read more…]

How on Earth Did Jesus Become God?

Two weeks ago, I posted my tribute to Larry Hurtado upon his death from a long bout with cancer. Since, others have offered tributes as well, including those by Chris Keith, Greg Lanier, Tommy Wasserman, John Stackhouse, Helen Bond, Michael Bird, as well as by Larry’s own Doktorvater, Eldon Epp.

In addition, I have received a number of inquiries about how to get a quick introduction to Larry’s work, especially his contributions on early Christology.  After all, his Lord Jesus Christ is a bit lengthy for a quick overview of his arguments. So, let me recommend his briefer volume, How on Earth Did Jesus Become God? (Eerdmans, 2005).

To give a little background, we need to rewind the tape and remember his groundbreaking work One God, One Lord: Early Christian Devotion and Ancient Jewish Monotheism (Fortress Press, 1988; third edition, T&T Clark, 2015), Hurtado laid forth the argument that worship of Jesus amongst early Christians was much earlier than previously thought—a monumental fact given that such devotion arose within circles of Second-Temple devout Jews.

How On Earth Did Jesus Become a God? is a more compact presentation of this prior research and pulls together a number of other previous publications on the subject (mainly journal articles) as well as material from the Deichmann Annual Lecture Series at Ben-Gurion University in Israel.

All the chapters in the volume are helpful, but the first two are the most foundational. In chapter one, Hurtado gives us the lay of the land by surveying the variety of other approaches to Jesus devotion within early Christianity, offering a brief critical review of each of them, so that his own approach can be seen in contrast to its scholarly competitors.

In particular, he sets his sites on the “evolutionary” approach most aptly represented by William Bousset’s Kyrios Christos (1913), which argued that worship of Jesus arose with Gentile Christian circles heavily influenced by the pagan Greco-Roman cult.

It is here that the key historical issue at hand is crystallized. The challenge, argues Hurtado, is not simply explaining how Jesus was seen as divine by early Christians, but rather the challenge is explaining the manner in which he was seen as divine. [Read more…]

A Tribute to Larry Hurtado: Scholar, Doktorvater, and Friend

I woke up today to the very sad news that my Doktorvater and friend, Larry Hurtado, had passed away after a long bout with cancer. So, I wanted to take a moment to reflect on the impact he had on my life.

In the fall of 1999, I moved to Edinburgh, Scotland, to begin my Ph.D. work in New Testament and Early Christianity. My move was motivated in part by the great history of the divinity faculty at New College, but primarily by the desire to study with one particular scholar, Larry Hurtado.

Although I was already aware of Larry’s excellent scholarship (that’s why I came, after all), I came to learn how deep and wide his learning really went. Moving effortlessly from textual criticism, to early Christian worship, to Christology, Larry was more than an able guide as my doctoral advisor for the next several years.

We would meet regularly together to discuss my research (often at the Jolly Judge pub around the corner), and Larry introduced me to a whole new world of early Christian literature, especially New Testament manuscripts, scribal habits, the use of the nomina sacra, and the early Christian preference for the codex.  He had a tremendous influence on my own thinking and scholarship.

On a personal level, Larry was incredibly generous and kind with his time. He was always happy to meet, eager to process complex academic issues, and was quite willing to push me to do better at every turn. He was all that a Ph.D. student could wish for in a Doktorvater.

But, we didn’t only discuss my work. We also discussed his. [Read more…]

Off to San Diego for the Annual Meeting of the Evangelical Theological Society

Next week, I head to beautiful San Diego for the 71st Annual Meeting of the Evangelical Theological Society, the largest gathering of evangelical scholars in the world. The theme this year is “Christ in All Scripture.”

This year I will be delivering the presidential address at the Thursday night banquet. The title of my lecture is “2 Peter 3:2, the Apostolate and a Bi-Covenantal Canon.”  Yes, I know. Not that exciting. But, that’s just what we scholars do…

For more exciting lectures, you may want to check out the three plenary speakers we have lined up:  Greg Beale (Westminster Seminary), Jeannine Brown (Bethel Seminary), and Stephen Wellum (Southern Baptist Seminary).  I thankful for my friend and program chair, Craig Keener, for lining up these three wonderful scholars.

I will also be moderating the invited sessions of the study group I co-chair, “NT Canon, Textual Criticism, and Apocryphal Literature.” It meets 3-6PM, Thursday, Nov 21, Third Floor, Mission Beach BC.  We have wonderful papers from Dirk Jongkind, Elijah Hixson, and Chuck Hill. (Stan Porter was set to give a paper but was unable to make it).

The open session of the NT canon group meets 8:30-11:40AM, on that same day and in the same location. Chuck Hill is moderating, and we have some great papers by Chris Stevens, Sylvie Raquel, Benjamin Laird, and John J.H. Lee.

It is also worth nothing that a number of RTS profs are giving papers, including Chuck Hill, Nick Reid, Dick Belcher, Blair Smith, Ben Gladd, Miles Van Pelt, John Fesko, and Michael Allen (I am sure I left some names out). There are also many RTS profs attending who are not giving papers (some are moderating sessions).

Aside from all the fine papers being given, I look forward most to catching up with colleagues and friends, especially those I only see once a year at conferences like this. If you are going, I hope to see you there!

Is the God of the Bible a Genocidal Maniac?

Armenia. Cambodia. Rawanda. Bosnia. Darfur. All well-known modern examples of genocide where entire people groups were wiped out (or almost wiped out).  These are awful tragedies, worthy of our sorrow and grief.

And yet, ask the critics, is the God of the Bible really any different? When the Israelites entered the land of Canaan, was it not God that commanded them to wipe out all the indigenous people (Deut 20:17)? Is God not guilty of genocide? It makes me think of the famous bumper-sticker quote, “The only difference between God and Adolf Hitler is that God is more proficient at genocide.”

Admittedly, this is a difficult, complex issue. We feel obligated, understandably, to find a way to get God “off the hook” for the deaths of so many people. Many possibilities come to mind for how that might be done. Maybe we’ve misread the passage. Maybe it’s just symbolic. Maybe the Israelites misunderstood God’s command. And so on.

But, in the end, I don’t think we need to get God off the hook. I don’t think he wants off the hook.  As painful as this issue is, it highlights what we, and our culture, need to hear more than ever: God is holy, people are sinful, the world is broken, and his judgment is just.

If we are going to rightly understand the destruction of the Canaanites, several principles must be remembered: [Read more…]

Walter Wagner Reviews Christianity at the Crossroads

Over the last year or so, I’ve been encouraged by the many different reviews of (and interactions with) my book, Christianity at the Crossroads: How the Second Century Shaped the Future of the Church.  For a list of some of those reviews, see prior post here.

One of the reasons I wrote this book is because of the enormous gap in scholarship on the study of second-century Christianity. There just hasn’t been much done on this “Cinderella Century” (to use the phrase of Larry Hurtado).

But, of course, there are exceptions to that pattern of neglect. One is the fine book by Walter Wagner, After the Apostles: Christianity in the Second Century (Fortress Press, 1994). Wagner covers a lot of the same ground as my volume, but I also cover additional topics such as the development of the canon and transmission of the NT text.

Given that Wagner has written on this subject before, I was pleased to see that he reviewed my book recently in the journal Interpretation (vol. 73, p.316). Since my volume covers a number of controversial issues, I was thankful to see he thought I was even-handed in my treatment of them.  His opening paragraph: [Read more…]

How Dangerous is Money? A Great New Resource for Avoiding the Pitfalls

Ok, so we all know the main Bible verse about money: “The love of money is a root of all sorts of evil” (1 Tim 6:10).  In fact, we know it so well that we rarely let it sink in.

If we ponder it for just a brief moment, we would realize that money, though it can be a blessing, can also be one of the most dangerous things in the world.  If a person is not careful, it can shipwreck your life.

For this reason, I am very thankful for Jim Newheiser’s recent volume, Money: Seeking God’s Wisdom (P&R, 2019).  Jim is director of the biblical counseling program here at RTS Charlotte and brings deep, pastoral, biblical wisdom on this important issue.

Needless to say, in the world of Christian ministry, money issues are often front-and-center in the lives of your congregation. Whether you’re a pastor or a counselor, this book will help you address those issues with compassion and grace.

Another thing I love about this book is that it is in the form of a 31-day devotional.  In fact, I plan to work through this volume with my kids in our morning devotionals.  It’s a great opportunity to get them thinking about the blessings and pitfalls of money.

Here’s the book description: [Read more…]

Looking at Miracles Again: A Great New Book on David Hume

In my most recent post, “Are Miracles Improbable? Rethinking What Makes Something ‘Likely’ to Happen,” I analyzed (and critiqued) the main arguments against miracles.  And, like any discussion of miracles, I felt required to mention the work of Scottish philosopher David Hume.

I can still remember walking by David Hume’s statue almost every day when I was studying at the University of Edinburgh years ago (see main photo).  He always seemed to stare at me as I passed by.  I could hear his hypothetical question in my head, “Why do you believe in miracles if you’ve never seen one?”

For those who want to dive deeper into Hume (and the issue of miracles), there’s a great forthcoming book on David Hume, by RTS Charlotte’s own James Anderson, the Carl W. McMurray Professor of Theology and Philosophy.

Aptly titled, David Hume, this new volume is part of P&R’s Great Thinkers series which includes other volumes on figures like Thomas Aquinas, Karl Marx, and Jacques Derrida.

Knowing Anderson’s other philosophical works, you will find a clear, compelling volume that is both accessible to the beginner, but deep enough for the seasoned philosopher. I regularly marvel at how James can pack so much depth into such concise volumes.

For other examples, see Anderson’s What’s Your Worldview? and also Why Believe Christianity?

Given Hume’s influence, this will make a wonderful introduction to the basics of how apologetics is done from a Reformed perspective.

Here’s the description: [Read more…]

Are Miracles Improbable? Rethinking What Makes Something “Likely” to Happen

Our world’s skepticism over miracles is nothing new.  Ever since David Hume, philosophers and scholars have been making the case against the possibility of miracles.

But, now things have shifted. Hume has been roundly (and decisively) rebutted and philosophers now realize that one cannot prove miracles are impossible.  But, not to worry, now there’s a new argument.  Now the argument is that miracles are simply improbable.

So improbable, in fact, that we should never prefer a miraculous explanation over a naturalistic one. Given how unlikely miracles are, it is always more likely that a miracle did not occur. Thus, it is argued, historians would have no reason to ever affirm that a miracle actually took place.

New Testament scholar Bart Ehrman, has made exactly this argument. Give the improbability of the resurrection, he insists that we must always choose another explanation: “Any other scenario [besides a miracle]—no matter how unlikely—is more likely than the one in which a great miracle occurred, since the miracle defies all probability (or else we wouldn’t call it a miracle)” (How Jesus Became God, 173).

Now, this sort of argument sounds persuasive at first glance. But, it runs into some serious problems. [Read more…]

A Quick Preview of The Gospel Coalition Women’s Conference 2020

I am very excited to see that The Gospel Coalition Women’s Conference 2020 has just opened registration.  It takes place June 11-13, 2020 in Indianapolis and the theme will be “Steadfast: A Study of the Book of James.”

The website design looks fantastic and they have a great lineup of speakers including the likes of Jen Wilkin, Tim Keller, Nancy Guthrie, Paige Brown, Karen Ellis, and Ligon Duncan.

My wife Melissa and I will be doing a breakout session with Tim and Kathy Keller on “Navigating the Realities of a Ministry Marriage,” hosted by Collin Hansen. That should be a lot of fun and Collin always does an incredible job at moderating discussions like this.

Melissa will also be doing a session with Jen Wilkin on “Mothering in the Little Years: Principles to Practice in the Home.” Those two women will be able to provide a lot of insight and wisdom for mothers with young children.

I will be speaking at the conference as well.  My breakout session will be, “Can I Lose My Faith? Understanding Apostasy.”  Although that topic was picked long ago, it has become very relevant in recent months with the slate of deconversion stories making the headlines.

Here at RTS Charlotte we are particularly excited about this conference.  In addition to Melissa and I speaking, our own Mallie Taylor, Community Life Coordinator at the Charlotte campus, is also speaking.  In addition, we have a rich community of female students on the Charlotte campus that will no doubt take some road trips to Indianapolis!

That growing community of women here in Charlotte is due to a number of recent initiatives: [Read more…]

Were the Earliest Christians Only Concerned about Oral Tradition?

Over the last number of years, I’ve had the opportunity to spend a lot of time in the writings of the Apostolic Fathers.  The Apostolic Fathers are an informal collection of early Christian writings, roughly 95-150 AD, which include books like the Didache, 1 & 2 Clement, the Epistle of Barnabas, and letters from Polycarp and Ignatius.

In recent years, scholars have expressed increased skepticism about whether these writings can inform our understanding of the development of the canon.  What appear to be citations of and allusions to New Testament books are not that at all, we are told, but instead are best explained by these authors drawing upon oral tradition.

This preference for oral tradition is based on the belief that Christians were not really concerned about written documents yet–that doesn’t come about until the end of the second century.

Now much of this approach is certainly correct.  Early Christians did use and value oral tradition well into the second century.  And certainly it can explain many of the citations/allusions in the Apostolic Fathers.  But, must we insist that it can explain all of them?  Should we assume an author used oral tradition unless we can prove (without a shadow of doubt) that he used written tradition?

These questions are too big to answer in a single blog post, but I think there are reasons to challenge the idea that oral tradition should always be the default explanation: [Read more…]

Looking for Lay-Level Videos on the Origins of the NT Canon? Here’s My New @Ligonier Series

One of the most common questions I am asked is whether I have introductory, lay-level material on the origins of the NT canon that people can use in their churches.  For small group Bible studies or Sunday School classes, most people simply won’t read Canon Revisited or any of my other books.

So, I point the reader to my recent video series with Ligonier where I give six introductory lectures on the origins and authority of the NT canon.  My hope is that this will meet a need for churches looking to do something on canon but not knowing where to turn.

You can order the videos here in either MP3 or DVD format (currently the DVD’s are sold out!). Here are the six topics along with description of the series: [Read more…]

Is It a Waste of Time for Seminary Students (and Pastors) to Learn the Biblical Languages?

It’s that time of year again.

A few weeks ago, a new crop of seminary students began the grueling month-long experience of Summer Greek.   And, like all seminary students before them, they will begin to ask the question of why studying these ancient languages even matters.  After all, a few years after graduation all will be forgotten.  In the midst of a busy pastoral life, who could possibly maintain proficiency in the languages?

As a result of these questions, some students decide (very early on) that the biblical languages are just something to be endured.  They are like a hazing ritual at a college fraternity.  No one likes it, but you have to go through it to be in the club.  And then it will be over.

Behind this “take your medicine” approach to the biblical languages are a couple of assumptions that need to be challenged.  First, the characterization of pastoral ministry as somehow incompatible with the languages (due to busyness, or other causes), is an unfortunate misunderstanding of what a pastorate is all about. [Read more…]

Was Early Christianity Hostile to Women?

Since we live in a culture that is obsessed with gender identity and gender issues, it is not surprising to find Christianity on the receiving end of serious criticisms regarding its view of women.

Christianity–particularly if it embraces a complementarian theology–is viewed by many in our culture as oppressive and harmful to women.  It does not provide, we are told, a friendly and welcoming environment where women can grow and thrive.

But, this is not just a problem for modern Christianity. The oppression of women, it is argued, was especially a problem in early Christianity.  After all, in the first few centuries of the church, critics insist that the Christian culture was still very much a patriarchal one still beholden to the misogynistic views of the apostle Paul.

Leaving aside the questions about modern day Christianity, I want to ask whether these claims about early Christianity–particularly in the second century–are, in fact, true. Is it really the case that second-century Christianity was a hostile environment for women? [Read more…]

US Women’s Soccer and Our Culture of “Tolerance”

I love soccer.  And this Summer has been a great time to enjoy the “beautiful game.”  With the US Women’s team winning the World Cup (and the men’s team placing second in the CONCACAF Gold Cup) there has been a lot to watch.

But, in the Western world, sports are no longer just sports.  Inevitably, cultural and religious issues get mixed in and soon take center stage.

Enter Megan Rapinoe. The openly gay US captain has been making the rounds on talk shows and news programs. She’s even been hailed as an “American hero.”

But, not just because of her soccer skills.  But because of how she promotes LGBTQ issues and calls for more “tolerance” and “acceptance.”

In particular, she complained to the present administration:  “I would say that your message is excluding people. You’re excluding me, you’re excluding people that look like me.”

Of course, the irony of such statements hasn’t been missed.  Especially if one considers the story of a different female soccer player, Jaelene Hinkle. Hinkle is widely regarded as one of the best defenders in the nation.

But, despite her widely-praised talent, she was cut from the US national team. Why?  Because the players were required (just think about that word!) to wear rainbow jerseys to support “gay pride.”  And Hinkle, a committed Christian, wouldn’t do it. [Read more…]

Should We Read the Bible Critically or Confessionally? Two New Resources

In the world of biblical scholarship, it has long been clear that there are two very different ways of approaching the biblical text.  And these different approaches determine whether scholars find historical (or theological) value in the words of Scripture.

On the one side is the higher-critical approach. Generally speaking, this approach is marked by skepticism towards the claims of the biblical text.  The stories contained in the Bible are not taken at face value. While they may contain a “historical core,” they have been embellished and expanded, and perhaps even fabricated.  The Bible is a disparate collection of texts that have been cobbled together for various reasons, and not authored by the people we think.

On the other side is what might be called a “confessional” approach.  This approach views the biblical text more sympathetically; more of an “innocent until proven guilty” posture.  Stories are taken more at face value (though the challenges and issues are not ignored). Most in this camp have a high view of Scripture and think the Bible reliably tells us about key doctrines about God, man, Christ, etc.

Of course, the descriptions above are a vast over-simplification.  Each scholar is different, and there are countless ways to nuance and define each camp.  But, generally speaking, these two approaches can be traced historically and in the present day.

This critical vs. confessional battle over Scripture has been highlighted in two recent resources. [Read more…]

Apocryphal Gospels, Conspiracy Theories, and the Mainstream Media

One thing that I have observed over the years is that major media outlets love apocryphal gospels.  Whenever the person of Jesus is discussed–usually at Easter and Christmas–there is always a discussion about how the real story of Jesus has been suppressed and can only now be found in these lost gospels.

Sweeping claims are then made about how there was no agreement on much of anything in the first four centuries of the faith and that other stories of Jesus circulated by the thousands. Only after Constantine came along does the church decide which books to accept (and then subsequently denies all other books admission to the club).

When you think about it, this sort of historical reconstruction makes for an attractive magazine article or newspaper story for our modern media.   The public loves a good conspiracy theory.  People want to believe that there are “secret,” “hidden,” “lost,” or “forgotten” (the four most common words used in such stories) accounts of Jesus that will finally reveal the truth once and for all.

And, of course, everyone likes to believe that the Church is just like all institutions–corrupt, authoritarian, and concerned only about preserving its own power.

In a 2012 blog article, Phillip Jenkins demonstrated the media’s tendency to highlight these sort of conspiracy theories. They follow the apocryphal gospel playbook step by step.  For example, the UK Daily Telegraph, when discussing the death of NT Professor Marvin Meyer, gives this assessment of gospels in early Christianity: [Read more…]

7 Tips on How to Survive an Ordination Exam

It’s that time of year.  Most seminaries, by now, have had their graduations. Celebrations and congratulations have been passed around, and rightly so. Graduating is a big accomplishment.

And although seminary itself is quite the challenge, something more formidable (at least in terms of stress) awaits most students. The dreaded ordination exam.

This is the time when a candidate stands up in front of the presbytery (perhaps with 50 -75 elders in attendance) and is publicly examined, probed, prodded, and picked at for several hours on a variety of topics ranging from church history to sacraments to eschatology to the famed Book of Church Order.

And from candidate’s perspective, it is easy to feel like you are looking into the eyes of a hungry cat.  And you are the mouse.

So, needless to say, I have often been asked about whether I have any pieces of advice for students entering into this process.  Although this is by no means exhaustive, here are a few thoughts that I hope are helpful: [Read more…]

Were Early Christian Scribes Untrained Amateurs?

In the ongoing debates about the reliability of early Christian manuscripts, and whether they have been transmitted with fidelity, it is often claimed that early Christian scribes were amateurs, unprofessional, and some probably couldn’t even read.

In Michael Satlow’s book, How the Bible Became Holy (Yale, 2014), this same sort of argument appears.  Satlow’s book argues that both the OT and NT canons were late bloomers, and that they bore no real authority until the third or fourth century CE.  And part of the evidence for this claim comes from Satlow’s assessment of the NT manuscripts.  He states:

The copies of early Christian manuscripts from around the second century CE were utilitarian. They were generally on papyrus rather than the more expensive and durable parchment. They lack the signs both of being written by a professional scribe and of being intended for public recitation (255).

There are a lot of claims in this brief couple of sentences.  Unfortunately, virtually every one of them is mistaken. Let’s take them one at a time: [Read more…]

Persistent Myths about the Origins of the New Testament

Are the NT manuscripts corrupted?  Have scribes irreparably changed the text?  Were Christian scribes competent to copy the text reliably?

How many “other” gospels were there in early Christianity? Were these gospel suppressed by “orthodox” groups? Were these lost gospels as popular as the canonical ones?

Don Carson and I answer these questions for a TGC video:

@RTSCharlotte Launches Women in Ministry Scholarship

One of the most exciting developments over the last few years at RTS Charlotte is the increasing number of female students in our various degree programs. There is a vibrant community of women on campus led by our Community Life Coordinator, Mallie Taylor.

And these women are some of our best and brightest. Every semester we give awards for the best student papers, and this past year a large percentage of the winners were female students.

And this is good news for the church. Women contribute to and enrich so many different ministries in the church. Examples include: missions, counseling, evangelism, discipleship, women’s ministry, mercy ministry, youth ministry, children’s ministry, administration, college ministry, and more.  For more, see my article, “Five Reasons to Include Women on Your Church Staff.”

But, here is the challenge. There tends to be fewer scholarship opportunities available for female seminary students. It’s hard to come to seminary if there are not the resources to pay for it.

For these reasons, I am pleased to announce that RTS Charlotte is launching a new scholarship just for female seminary students. Starting in Fall, 2019, the Charlotte campus will offer the Women in Ministry Scholarship, providing at least a 50% tuition discount to female students.

Nancy Guthrie, speaker and best-selling author of the Seeing Jesus in the Old Testament series, commented on the new scholarship: [Read more…]

Is the “New Perspective on Paul” a Product of Our Current Cultural Moment?

Ever since Krister Stendahl’s seminal essay, “The Apostle Paul and the Introspective Conscience of the West,” one of the foundational arguments for the New Perspective(s) on Paul (NPP) has been that the traditional protestant/reformed view of justification is largely due to the cultural influence of “the West” and its emphasis on individualism and subjectivism.

Paul is not really concerned with individual sin, guilt and forgiveness (we are told).  Reformed folks are simply reading that issue into the text due to their cultural situation. Indeed, according to Stendahl, the Reformed view of justification is largely due to Luther’s individual struggle with his own conscience.

In place of the reformed view of justification, NPP advocates have suggested that Paul is really working on a more corporate/community level.  Paul’s struggle is not over how a sinner stands before a holy God, but his struggle is how to unify Jew and Gentile into one community.

Thus justification, it is argued, is really about overcoming ethnocentrism and nationalism.

So convinced are the NPP advocates of their correction of reformed/protestant readings of Paul that they use the entire issue as a lesson of how hermeneutics can be affected by cultural contexts.  And apparently NPP folks are the ones that finally see Paul clearly without being clouded by their cultural situation:

Luther read Paul and the situation confronting Paul through the grid of his own experience…Now, however, in the light of Sanders’ contribution the scales have fallen from many eyes (James, Dunn, Partings of the Ways, 14).

But is this really the case?  Is it true that NPP folks have somehow been able to do what reformed folks have not, namely throw off the shackles of cultural influence and see the real Paul?  Are they able to rise above their cultural circumstances and engage only in objective exegesis (whatever that might be)?

[Read more…]

Hello, My Name is God

Did Jesus think he was God?

This may be one of the most common questions people ask about early Christology. And it reflects a long-standing scholarly debate about Jesus’s own divine consciousness. Even if other people thought Jesus was divine, did Jesus himself think so?

A number of years ago, Bart Ehrman jumped into the fray of these debates over early Christology in his book, How Jesus Became God (HarperOne, 2014).  And he addressed this question about Jesus’ divine self-awareness.

Not surprisingly, Ehrman argued that Jesus never thought of himself as God.  Leaning on his earlier book, Jesus: Apocalyptic Prophet of the New Millennium (Oxford, 2001), he says that Jesus just viewed himself as an apocalyptic prophet who was ushering in the Kingdom of God (basically Albert Schweitzer redivivus).

Ehrman adopts what he regards as the standard methodologies of modern critical scholarship, including the criteria of authenticity (and even the controversial and oft-debated criteria of dissimilarity). Of course, the upshot of Ehrman’s reconstruction of the historical Jesus is that any statements that might sound like a claim to divinity are conveniently dismissed as unhistorical.

So, not surprisingly, the claims of Jesus in the Gospel of John are considered “not part of the historical record of what Jesus actually said” (p.125). In addition, Ehrman refuses to allow any statement where Jesus identifies himself as the “Son of Man.”

Needless to say, this all works out a little too neatly. Ehrman portrays his critical methods not only as something that all scholars agree upon, but as something that leads to clear cut, unambiguous results. [Read more…]

Oliver Thomas @USATODAY Says the American Church Got it Wrong on Gay People—And He’s Right

By now, many readers will have seen (or even read) the rather brazen op-ed piece in USA Today by retired mainline pastor, Oliver Thomas. In short, the article argues that the American church has been wrong about gay people because they’ve been wrong about something else. The church has been wrong about the Bible.

Turns out the Bible is not true after all.

So, argues Thomas, once we get that pesky Bible out of the picture, we are free to approve homosexuality as right and good. And once we do that, then our churches—which have been bleeding members for years—will finally grow again.

Of course, Thomas is not the first one to try to make Christianity compatible with homosexuality. But, most others try to do it by arguing that we’ve merely misunderstood the Bible. Once we interpret it rightly, it turns out the Bible is actually for homosexuality.

But not Thomas. His argument is more simple: the Bible just got it wrong.

While Thomas’ argument is much more honest (I appreciate the fact that he just admits the Bible does not approve of homosexuality) it also much more brazen. Basically, he’s arguing everyone in the history of the Judeo-Christian movement is wrong: the Bible, all of the history of Judaism, all of the history of Christianity, Moses, Paul, and, yes, even Jesus.  All of them are wrong.

He states: “We have learned some things that the ancients — including Moses and Paul — simply did not know. Not even Jesus.”

But now, in the last generation, Thomas finally got it right.

Needless to say, that is a bold argument. And it will take a lot to back it up.  So, how does Thomas get there?  Basically he has three arguments against the Bible: [Read more…]

When Is the First Time We See a New Testament Book Used as Scripture?

Few issues in the study of the NT canon have generated more discussion (and disagreement) than that of the canon’s date.  When were Christian writings first regarded as “Scripture”?  When was the first time we can see that happening?

For many modern scholars, the key time is the end of the second century.  Only then, largely due to the influence of Irenaeus, were these books first regarded as Scripture.

But, I think there is evidence that NT books were regarded as Scripture much earlier.  And some of this evidence is routinely overlooked.  A good example is the widely neglected text tucked away in 1 Tim 5:18:

For the Scripture says, “You shall not muzzle an ox when it treads out the grain,” and “The laborer deserves his wages.”

The first part of this quote comes from Deut 25:4, but where does the second part come from?  There is one text, and one text only, that matches these words, namely the statement of Jesus in Luke 10:7.

Could 1 Timothy be citing Luke’s Gospel as Scripture?

For some, the mere suggestion that Paul used Luke is unthinkable. Here are the most common objections: [Read more…]

It’s Here! My New @Ligonier DVD Series on the Origins of the NT Canon

One of the most common questions I am asked is whether I have introductory, lay-level material on the origins of the NT canon that people can use in their churches.  For small group Bible studies or Sunday School classes, most people simply won’t read Canon Revisited or any of my other books.

So, I am pleased to say that Ligonier is about to release a new DVD series where I give six introductory lectures on the origins and authority of the NT canon.  My hope is that this will meet a need for churches looking to do something on canon but not knowing where to turn.

You can order the videos here. Here are the six topics along with description of the series: [Read more…]

Can We Believe God’s Word is True Because our Parents Told Us?

How do you know the Bible is the Word of God?

Virtually every Christian has heard that question at one time or another. And when we do, our hearts beat faster and we feel a flutter in our stomachs.  We want to offer an insightful, sophisticated, and compelling answer.  Just something that will keep us from looking foolish.

So, we search our brains for that apologetics talk we heard years ago and the numerous historical data points that were mentioned.  But, since we don’t remember the details, we mumble something about the Bible having good “historical evidence” for its truth (hoping no one asks for the details).

But, lurking in the background of such discussions is an assumption that needs to be challenged.  And that assumption is that external “historical evidences” are the only proper grounds for forming our beliefs about the Bible.  We are only justified in our beliefs, so we think, if we can recite a litany of scientific data points to back them up.

Now, to be clear, there’s nothing wrong with defending the Bible on historical grounds.  The Bible has impressive historical credentials and there’s a time and a place to discuss them. But, if we insist this is the only grounds for our beliefs, then we run into a few problems. [Read more…]

@RTSCharlotte Vision Banquet with @SandraMcCracken

Last night, RTS Charlotte put on its bi-annual vision banquet at the Carmel Country Club here in Charlotte.  It was a beautiful venue overlooking a fantastic golf course.

Our musical guest was Sandra McCracken, one of the most gifted Christian artists today.  Blending an amazing voice with acoustic guitar and piano, Sandra played a number of her well-known songs, including We Will Feast in the House of Zion. She was such a delight to listen to.

The opening prayer for the evening was offered by Will Huss, newly appointed national Coordinator for Reformed University Fellowship (RUF).  RTS Charlotte has had a long and fruitful relationship with RUF, sending out many campus ministers over the years.  So, it was great to have Will join us.

Kevin DeYoung, Assistant Professor of Systematic Theology here in Charlotte and Senior Pastor of Christ Covenant Church, gave an overview of why seminaries matter and why he loves teaching at RTS Charlotte in particular.

Then I spoke briefly on Matt 9:37: “The harvest is plentiful, but the laborers are few.”  It’s a perfect verse to capture the mission of RTS, which is to send out as many laborers as possible—pastors, counselors, missionaries, campus pastors—into a needy world that lacks good shepherds.

Here are a number of photos that capture the feel of the evening.  Enjoy! [Read more…]

What about the ‘Lost’ Books of the Bible?

In modern studies of the NT canon, there is a lot of discussion (maybe even obsession!) with so-called ‘lost’ books of the Bible. So, we have recent book titles like Lost Scriptures, Forgotten Scriptures, and The Lost Bible.

In fact, scholar Philip Jenkins even wrote a whole book documenting (and critiquing) the academic community’s fascination with this theme: Hidden Gospels: How the Search for Jesus Lost Its Way.

So what do we with these other books of the New Testament?  A few quick thoughts.

First, most of these books weren’t really ‘lost.’  The early church fathers were very much aware of these other books.  Indeed, they knew them well enough to recognize they were not authentic apostolic writings.

So, no one hid or suppressed these books. On the contrary, early Christians were quite open about the problems with these books and overtly stated why they should be rejected as part of the biblical canon.

Second, most of these ‘lost’ books weren’t really that popular.  Unfortunately, many modern studies of canon give the impression that early Christians read these lost books in droves.  It was only when later church authorities decided to clamp down, we are told, that the popularity of these books waned.

But the historical evidence says otherwise. [Read more…]

Did the Church Create the Bible?

The perennial question in the debate over sola Scriptura is whether the church is over the Bible or the Bible is over the church.

The latter position is (generally speaking) a Protestant one—the Scriptures, and the Scriptures alone, are the only infallible rule and therefore the supreme authority over the church.

The former position (generally speaking) is a Roman Catholic one—the church decided the canon and also, through the pope, decides how these books are to be interpreted.  In this way, the authority of the Bible rests on the (prior and more foundational) authority of the church.

Of course, Catholics would not word it quite this way.  The Roman church insists that the Scripture is always superior to the Magisterium.  Dei Verbum declares, “This teaching office is not above the Word of God, but serves it” (2.10). However, despite these qualifications, one still wonders how Scripture can be deemed the ultimate authority if the Magisterium is able to define, determine, and interpret the Scripture in the first place.

Regardless, this question of whether the church is over the Bible also comes up in the world of critical scholarship. [Read more…]

Yes, There are ‘Thorns’ in Vocational Ministry Too

Last week, The New York Times published an insightful and intriguing article by Charles Duhigg entitled, “Wealthy, Successful, and Miserable.”

Duhigg, himself a graduate of Harvard’s Business School, explores the level of job satisfaction attained by America’s highest achievers.  These individuals, on the surface, look like they have it all. Impressive degrees, high-power jobs, and lots of money.

Surely, if anyone would be happy, it would be these folks.  And yet, Duhigg discovers, most of these folks are profoundly miserable.

It turns out that our modern era’s unprecedented economic success is matched only by the unprecedented amount of job dissatisfaction that has come with it. Professional disappointment is at an all-time high.

Duhigg interviewed one individual who captured the sentiment of much of corporate America: “I feel like I’m wasting my life.”

While the results of this study will be shocking to many in the modern day, it is not all that surprising from a biblical perspective. Not only do worldly riches fail to satisfy, but we live in a fallen world where our labors are regularly frustrated.  Due to the fall of Adam, God said, “cursed is the ground because of you . . . thorns and thistles it shall bring forth for you” (Gen 3:17-18).

But here’s what is surprising. Many Christians, who feel just this sense of meaninglessness and frustration in the corporate world, will turn to vocational ministry as the cure.

Surely, if I am preaching the gospel and building the Kingdom of God, one might think, then I will finally find the job satisfaction I am longing for. Right?

Not so much. [Read more…]

5 Things Every Christian Should be Doing with God’s Word

Psalm 119 is an amazing Psalm.  Not only is it the longest Psalm (176 verses!), but it is also the Psalm that deals the most directly with the topic of Scripture.  Virtually every verse, in one way or another, refers to God’s Word.

David (who is most likely the author) uses a variety of terminology to describe God’s Word:  commandments, law, statutes, precepts, ordinances, rules, words, testimonies, etc.  These all refer to the Scriptures as they existed in David’s day (essentially the Pentateuch).

Thus, Psalm 119 is one of the best examples of Scripture speaking about Scripture.  It is the Word about the Word.

And in it, we find David interacting with the Word of God in five ways that should be paradigmatic for all believers: [Read more…]

Is Capitalism Based on Greed?

Ever since Gordon Gekko’s character in the movie Wall Street uttered the phrase, “Greed is good,” there has been a wide-spread and oft-repeated myth that capitalism is based on greed. And, so the argument goes, if capitalism is driven by a sinful desire (greed), then it must be rejected as an immoral system.

Such issues have come up again in recent months as a number of new members of congress (and old members) are pushing the country away from capitalism and towards socialism, mostly on moral grounds. Even some well-meaning evangelicals, who have a genuine care for the poor, find themselves drawn to this new movement and its disdain for capitalism.

In light of this current climate, I appreciate Jay W. Richards’ book, Money, Greed, and God:Why Capitalism is the Solution and Not the Problem (HarperOne, 2009).  Richards sets out to dispel many myths about capitalism, and is particularly intent on showing that it is not at all contrary to the teachings of Jesus and Christianity, as so many suppose.

Chapter five is devoted to the myth that capitalism is driven by greed, and Richards makes a number of useful points: [Read more…]

A Great New Book on Prayer

I am so pleased to see that my wife Melissa’s new book on prayer is nearing release: 5 Things to Pray for Your Kids: Prayers that Change Things for the Next Generation (The Good Book Company, 2019).

We have already received some copies, but the book will not be formally released until March 1st.

This will be Melissa’s fifth book. Her others are The Envy of Eve, Walking with God in the Season of Motherhood, Identity Theft, and In All Things.

Several things I like about it:

1. It actually helps make your prayers concrete.  Rather than saying to someone, “Just pray for your kids,” this books provides a clear and helpful guide.

2. It breaks out of the standard, worldly paradigm where our highest hopes for our kids are centered on sports and school.  Instead, Melissa focuses on the fruits of the spirit, Christian character, love for Christ, standing for truth, and more.

3. It covers a variety of situations your children might find themselves in (disappointment, failure, fear, loneliness), as well as different age/stages of your children’s life.

4. My own daughter, Emma (18), wrote the foreword!  She describes her own sense of prayer, having grown up in a Christian home.

Below is the description of the book and the many great endorsements.  Pre-order today! [Read more…]

Congratulations to Dr. Kevin DeYoung

I am pleased to announced that on Jan 10th, Kevin DeYoung successfully defended his Ph.D. thesis at the University of Leicester in the UK.

In 2017, Kevin joined our faculty as Assistant Professor of Systematic Theology. He also serves as the senior pastor of Christ Covenant Church here in Charlotte.

Of course, Kevin is well known through his speaking, teaching, and writing ministry. He has been a great addition to the faculty and the students have loved his classes.

For those interested in taking a class with Kevin, this Spring term he will be teaching Systematic Theology 3: Ecclesiology and Sacraments.  For more, see here.

We are blessed to have other outstanding faculty here at RTS Charlotte.  Also in the theology department are James Anderson (philosophical theology) and Blair Smith (systematics).

If you are interested in studying theology or apologetics, come learn from these three men here in Charlotte.

The title of Kevin’s dissertation is: John Witherspoon and “The Fundamental Doctrines of the Gospel”: The Scottish Career of an American Founding Father.

Congratulations to Dr. DeYoung! For those interested in a summary of his thesis, here is the abstract:

[Read more…]

Lady Gaga, Christian Theologian

By now, plenty has been written on the issue of Mike Pence’s wife teaching at a Christian school that supposedly “bans” (the preferred word of the major news outlets, but not really accurate) LGBTQ students.

For those on the cultural left, this is a monumental and stunning discovery.  Indeed, we are told (ironically, by the Huffington Post) that the Huffington Post “broke” the story—implying that a remarkable scandal had been uncovered.

Thankfully, many have pointed out that this whole “scandal” is much ado about nothing. There are thousands of Christian schools around the country just like the one that Karen Pence teaches at. And they are all doing something rather unremarkable: they are merely teaching the historical Christian position about sexuality.

But what is remarkable about such public discussions, is that everyone suddenly becomes a Christian theologian. Even people who typically have no association with Christianity are quick to don the theologian’s hat and give a lecture on what Christians really believe.

Enter Lady Gaga, Christian theologian. [Read more…]

Are We Allowed to Use OT Figures as Moral Examples?

For years, I have heard people say it.  In books, in articles, in podcasts. Again and again, we are told that preachers cannot use OT stories as moral examples.

Why?  Because it breaks the rules of Christ-centered preaching. If we talk about OT figures we can only discuss how they point forward to Christ.  If we use them as a moral example then we have simply become moralists.

Or so we are told.

Now, it should be acknowledged that the motivation here is commendable.  Yes, we want to preach Christ (though we need to define what that means more carefully).  And yes we don’t want to advocate some sort of moralism from the pulpit.

But does that mean we are forbidden from using OT stories as moral examples?  I think not.  And here’s why:  The NT authors used OT stories as moral examples.

There are numerous instances of this, but just consider one passage from Paul. After recounting the numerous stories of Israel in the desert—parting of the red sea, eating manna, water from the rock—Paul says: [Read more…]

RTS Charlotte Women’s Bible Study Has a New Look

As many of you know, from 2014 to 2016 I led a women’s Bible study on the RTS Charlotte campus on the book of Romans–42 installments in all.

Starting in 2017, the women’s Bible study resumed with the book of Hebrews.  This past fall, we just finished the 25th installment and plan to wrap up the book in the Spring.

We continue to be encouraged to hear that the videos are being watched by folks all over the country and the world.  I even heard a recent story of someone coming to Christ by watching the videos in California.

For those interested in getting the videos and handouts, RTS just launched a new website and the Hebrews study has a new look.  You can find the first 25 HD videos of Hebrews here, and we have also assembled all the study notes (thus far) into an e-book for you to download.

You can also download each handout individually. You will see the link to individual handouts as soon as you click on one of the videos to watch.

Due to the transition in the website, I have received a lot of emails lately asking where the videos went. Thanks for your patience as we work out the kinks.

If you are looking for the Romans videos/handouts, we are still working on that.  In the meantime, you can find the Romans videos here (handouts are not up yet).

Also, please know you can always find the Romans and Hebrews videos on Vimeo.

For those looking to get a feel for the study, here’s my welcome video for the Hebrews study as well as the first installment: [Read more…]

Want to Give a Book for Christmas? Here’s My Top Ten List for Books on the Authority of Scripture

‘Tis the season. . . to give books.

I think solid Christian books are a great gift, and books on the authority of Scripture are always relevant in our world today.

Thus, for your shopping pleasure, I have compiled an annotated list of the all-time 10 best books on this topic. It goes without saying that such a list is highly selective (and debatable). So many good books deserve to be included.

But my list is guided by these main criteria: (a) books that focus on the theological side of biblical authority and not as much on the historical evidences for the Bible’s history (though some overlap is inevitable); (b) books that are “modern,” meaning they have been written sometime between the Reformation and the present (otherwise, many patristic works would make the list); and (c) books that are rigorously orthodox (for this reason, Karl Barth’s Dogmatics is not on the list despite the fact that it has been influential on the modern church’s view of Scripture).

With these criteria in mind, let’s take a look at the top 10: [Read more…]

Is the Old Testament Still Relevant for Christians?

It goes without saying that there has been a lot of chatter lately about the applicability of the Old Testament for new covenant believers.  For instance, you can check out my TGC article, “Why We Can’t Unhitch from the Old Testament,” a review of Andy Stanley’s latest book on this topic, Irresistible.

But, some people don’t have time for a lengthy article, and certainly not a book.  If you (or someone you know) is looking for just a brief 3-minute summary of why the OT still matters, then here’s a video I did recently for Credo Magazine on this very question:

 

Seven Lessons for Evangelical Scholars in the Secular Academy

Over the last couple of weeks, many evangelical scholars (including myself) attended the annual conferences of the Evangelical Theological Society and the Society of Biblical Literature (not to mention, the Institute for Biblical Research).

Many good papers were delivered (and heard), old friendships were rekindled, and everyone was asked the same question over and over: “So, what are you working on right now?”

While such conferences remind me of the joys of scholarship, they also remind me of the challenges.  Sadly, there are many stories of well-intended evangelical scholars who set out to influence the academy, and the academy ends up influencing them. Some end up abandoning the very commitments that led them towards advanced study in the first place.

So, as these conferences come to a close, it seems fitting to reflect on the challenges of being an evangelical scholar in the secular academy. Or, more to the point, what lessons do we need to remember as we pursue our scholarly endeavors?

To answer that question, I turn to a story of a scholar who’s academic career took a highly unusual path.  Rather than being an evangelical scholar who became liberal, he did the opposite. He abandoned his commitment to liberal thinking and actually became an evangelical. And when that happened, his eyes were opened up to a number of truths that he had never noticed before (or at least refused to notice).

That scholar was [Read more…]

Off to Denver for the Annual Meeting of the Evangelical Theological Society

Today, I am heading to Denver for the 70th meeting of the Evangelical Theological Society. ETS is one of the world’s largest gatherings of evangelical scholars.  This year’s theme is “the Holy Spirit.”

As some of you may know, this year I am serving as the president-elect of the society (next year I am president) and thus I had the privilege of inviting all the plenary speakers. And we have a great lineup ahead.

Given the potential breadth of this year’s theme, the meeting has been designed to explore the Holy Spirit from multiple angles. Most naturally, of course, this theme will be studied from a theological perspective.  But, it will also be studied from a historical/ecclesiastical perspective, as well as from an exegetical/biblical one.

The plenary speakers have been chosen to reflect each of these perspectives on the theme. Addressing the Holy Spirit theologically is Michael Horton, J. Gresham Machen Professor of Systematic Theology and Apologetics at Westminster Seminary in California, and author of numerous theological works including Rediscovering the Holy Spirit (2017).

Addressing the Holy Spirit historically is Michael Haykin, Professor of Church History and Biblical Spirituality at the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, and author of numerous works in church history including Empire of the Holy Spirit (2010).

Addressing the Holy Spirit exegetically is Craig Keener, the F.M. and Ada Thompson Professor of Biblical Studies at Asbury Theological Seminary, and author of numerous commentaries including the massive four-volume series on Acts with Baker Academic (2012-2015).

In addition to the plenaries, I chair (along with Stan Porter) the ETS program unit entitled, NT Canon, Textual Criticism, and Apocryphal Literature. We have a great line up this year, both for our open session and invited session: [Read more…]

What Do Contentment, Identity, and Joy Have in Common? Three Great New Resources

So, pleased to see three great new resources released this year by my wife, Melissa.  And they cover the topics of contentment, identity, and joy.

Image result for Ligonier, Contentment, Melissa Kruger

First, Ligonier ministries just released a new 8-part video series with Melissa on contentment which would be fantastic for Bible studies, women’s groups, or Sunday School classes.

Here’s the summary from Ligonier

Many Christians struggle with comparison, covetousness, and complaining. But the Apostle Paul was content in plenty and in want. What was Paul’s secret, and how do we cultivate contentment in our lives? In Contentment, Melissa Kruger considers what it really means to be content: to place our trust in our good and sovereign God. God’s love for His people is unchanging, and He is using every detail of our lives to shape and fashion us into the image of Jesus Christ. As we look back to the cross of Christ and look forward to the hope of heaven, we will discover that ultimate contentment is found in Him.

She has treated this theme in a number of places including her book, The Envy of Eve: Finding Contentment in a Covetous World (Christian Focus, 2012).

Image result for In All Things Melissa KrugerSecond, Melissa edited and contributed to the volume Identity Theft: Reclaiming the Truth of Our Identity in Christ (TGC, 2018).  This volume includes essays from a number of fantastic women authors and tackles a really important subject in our modern culture. [Read more…]

How to Run a Good Meeting–And Why it Matters More than You Think

What’s the most important skill you need to be successful in ministry?  Knowing how to run a good meeting.

Ok, that’s not really true.  Many other things matter more (a lot more!). But, running a good meeting still matters.  And more than you think.

Even those who’ve only been in ministry a short time know that meetings dominate your weekly schedule.  Sometimes, it seems that half your week is spent in some sort of meeting.  During meals. Over coffee.  In a conference room.  With the elders.  With ministry leaders.  With support staff.

And here’s the other reality we all know.  Meetings vary widely in their effectiveness.  Some meetings produce real progress and fruit.  Those can be exhilarating, even fun.  And other are a tedious and frustrating waste of time.  Those can be exhausting and even debilitating.

So, how can we make our meetings better?  Here I offer just a few quick thoughts for meeting leaders.  It’s the leaders the control, guide, and dictate what the meetings are like (and how many there are). [Read more…]

Book Notice: Can We Trust the Gospels?

I recently received an advanced reader copy of the new book by Peter J. Williams, Can We Trust the Gospels? (Crossway, 2018). Peter is the Principal of Tyndale House, a study center (mainly focused on biblical studies) out of Cambridge, England.

Although similar books have been written in the past (curiously Mark Roberts wrote a 2007 volume for Crossway with the exact same title!), this new volume has some excellent features:

– It does not presuppose prior knowledge of the Gospels, even having a chapter entitled, “What are the Four Gospels?”  Thus, it would be great to give to a new Christian or a non-Christian.

– There’s an intriguing section on names we find in the Gospels and how those match the most common names we find in first-century Palestine. I’ve seen Pete deliver this material in lecture format, and I am pleased to see it made its way into the book.

– There’s a helpful chapter on the way Jesus’ teachings were recorded, including some discussion on memorization and the relationship between John and the Synoptics.

– And, of course, no book on the Gospels would be complete without a section on transmission and textual variations.  This is an area of specialty for Pete, and proves to be a very useful little chapter.

Here’s a further description along with endorsements: [Read more…]

Does a Bible-Centric Faith Make Christianity Anemic? Andy Stanley’s Latest Book

I recently received Andy Stanley’s latest book, Irresistible: Reclaiming the New that Jesus Unleashed for the World (Zondervan, 2018).  My review of the book will soon be available on The Gospel Coalition website.

For now, I thought it would be helpful to highlight the promotional statements on the cover.  By the looks of them, Stanley’s message in this book will be very similar to his controversial sermons over the last couple of years (see my prior interactions with Stanley, here and here).

Here are some of the statements:

Once upon a time there was a version of our faith that was practically . . . irresistible. But that was then. Today we preach, teach, write, and communicate as if nothing has changed. As if “The Bible says it,” still settles it. It’s time to hit pause on much of what we’re doing and consider the faith modeled by our first-century brothers and sisters who had no official Bible, no status, and humanly speaking, little chance of survival.

Here we see again one of Stanley’s consistent messages, namely that a Bible-centered faith is not the solution but the problem. They didn’t have a Bible in the early church (we are told) and they did just fine without it! [Read more…]

Will Ross Joins the Faculty of @RTSCharlotte as Assistant Professor of Old Testament

I am asked all the time about which faculty positions are hardest to fill.  Although the answer is debatable, I think that finding solid Old Testament professors is a significant challenge.

There are a variety of reasons for this.  One is that there are just fewer of them.  In the Reformed world especially, we have many more folks in systematics, historical theology, and church history.  But fewer in biblical studies (especially OT).

Beyond sheer numbers, there may be an even bigger reason that solid OT guys are rare.  Arguably, the OT is filled with proportionally more historical and theological challenges.  Such challenges include the days of Genesis, the question of evolution, the documentary hypothesis, Mosaic authorship of the Pentateuch, the authorship/unity of Isaiah, the Canaanite conquest, and much more.

In short, OT studies has a lot of potential pitfalls.

For this reason, I could not be more pleased that RTS Charlotte has recently announced that our newest OT professor is Will Ross. [Read more…]

“Let Them Not Share in the Affairs of Life”: How Ancient Christians Were Viewed as Dangerous to Society

Celsus “just can’t stand Christians.”

So, writes James O’Donnell (Pagans, 101) as he describes the vicious opposition to Christians in the earliest centuries, particularly from the second-century critic Celsus.

A few weeks ago, I began a short, three-part blog series about what people in the ancient world thought of Christians. In the prior post, we explored how Celsus viewed Christians as ignorant, uneducated simpletons.

In other words, one of the main problems with Christians was intellectual in nature.

But Celsus is by no means finished. In this post, we will see that he thinks that Christians also have a behavioral problem.  Their actions are rude, anti-social, and morally repugnant.

So, what did Christians do that caused such irritation in Celsus? [Read more…]

Is It a Waste of Time for Seminary Students (and Pastors) to Learn the Biblical Languages?

It’s that time of year again.

A few weeks ago, a new crop of seminary students began the grueling month-long experience of Summer Greek.   And, like all seminary students before them, they will begin to ask the question of why studying these ancient languages even matters.   After all, a few years after graduation all will be forgotten.   In the midst of a busy pastoral life, who could possibly maintain proficiency in the languages?

As a result of these questions, some students decide (very early on) that the biblical languages are just something to be endured.  They are like a hazing ritual at a college fraternity.  No one likes it, but you have to go through it to be in the club.  And then it will be over.

Behind this “take your medicine” approach to the biblical languages are a couple of assumptions that need to be challenged.  First, the characterization of pastoral ministry as somehow incompatible with the languages (due to busyness, or other causes), is an unfortunate misunderstanding of what a pastorate is all about.

No doubt, pastors should be busy shepherding their flock, meeting with ministry leaders, and running the church.   But, the core of the calling is to be a “minister of the word.”

And if the pastoral call is to be a minister of the Word, then there is a significant component of pastoral life that should be devoted to serious study of the biblical text—beyond just the preparation for that week’s sermon.

Put differently, pastors should continue to be students.   They need to be readers, thinkers, and theologians.

[Read more…]

Is the Truth of the Bible Essential to the Christian Message? Engaging (Again) with Andy Stanley

There’s been a good bit of buzz lately about Andy Stanley’s recent interview with Jonathan Merritt.  Stanley had already created a stir back in April when he said that Christians should “unhitch” themselves from the Old Testament, and this interview seems to be heading down the same tracks.

Needless to say, this recent interview has continued to fuel concerns about Stanley’s view of the Old Testament.  Over the weekend, Al Mohler offered a response where he points out that the early church did not cut off the Old Testament, as can be seen in the disputes with the second-century heretic, Marcion.

But, I think the problem may be deeper than just Stanley’s view of the Old Testament.  His comments about the role of the Old Testament simply stem from his overall view of Scripture and the role it plays in the life of the Christian.

And to understand Stanley’s overall view of Scripture, we ought to return to his controversial 2016 sermon “The Bible Told Me So”.  It is there that he lays out a deeper, more foundational view of the Bible. [Read more…]

Why I Don’t Prefer the Phrase “Criteria of Canonicity”

If a person asks how we know which books belong in the NT canon (and which do not), they will often hear that the answer lies with the “criteria of canonicity.”

All we have to do, we are told, is simply look for books that meet these “criteria” and then we can know which books are in or out. What are these criteria? Typically things like apostolicity, orthodoxy, usage, age, etc.

Now, let me say there are a number of helpful things here. In particular, I agree that apostolicity is a key aspect of canon. However, I don’t prefer the concept of “criteria of canonicity” for a number of reasons: [Read more…]

Moving Beyond One-Dimensional Sermon Applications

Let’s just get it out there. Preaching is hard.

In the midst of all the disputes over preaching, this fact remains undisputed.  Yes, preaching is wonderful and exhilarating.  But, it is also exhausting, frustrating, and difficult. Whether a person has preached one time, or a hundred times, they know this.

Why is that? What makes preaching so hard?

I would suggest that it has to do with the nature of preaching.  Preaching is not just delivering a message, passing along facts, or making a point (though it does include these things).  At its core, preaching is something that calls for a response in the listener.

Put differently, members of the congregation are not to be just detached observers of a sermon.  God always calls his people to respond, in some fashion, to what his Word declares.

But it is precisely this feature that makes preaching so difficult.  What are the most effective ways to call for a response?  Or, in more common parlance, how do we apply God’s word?

When it comes to application, I would suggest that preachers tend to fall into a bit of a rut.  We tend to use the same type of application, over and over again.

In order to remedy this, let me suggest three different categories for how to apply God’s word.  These three categories are not mutually exclusive (and often overlap), but they can provide much-needed balance and breadth to our preaching. [Read more…]

Some Recent Interactions with My Book on Second Century Christianity

I’ve been pleased this year to see so many encouraging responses to my new book, Christianity at the Crossroads: How the Second Century Shaped the Future of the Church (IVP Academic, 2018). Who would’ve thought people would be interested in the second century?

For those who haven’t picked up a copy yet, this book highlights what is really a forgotten century of sorts in the history of Christianity. Much attention is paid to the first century (for obvious reasons!), and by the time the third and fourth centuries roll around, the church is more established (which means more sources for scholars to study).

In between sits the “Cinderella Century” (as Larry Hurtado calls it), all too easily overlooked.  But, in this critical time period the church faced an enormous number of challenges and transitions–ones that would shape its identity for years to come.

These transitions includes issues of demographics (what kind of people became Christians?), politics (how’d Christians interact with the Roman government and how were they perceived?), ecclesiology (who ran the churches and how’d they relate to each other?), theology (were Christians unified in their beliefs and how did they handle “heresy”?), and Scripture (when did Christians collect their own books as canon?).

I’ve been doing a ton of podcast interviews, and I have also seen some of the reviews start to come in.  Here is a sampling: [Read more…]

Coming Home: @RTSCharlotte Alums Who are Now Professors at RTS

When it comes to being a seminary professor, I enjoy not just the teaching but also the watching.  That is, I enjoy watching to see how God will use each of our grads in ministry over the years. It is a reminder that our labor has not been in vain.

On that score, it is particularly satisfying to see former students turn out to be professors themselves.  And even more than that, it is encouraging when they actually return to RTS and become professors in the institution that taught them.

In recent years, this has become a bit of a trend here at RTS Charlotte.  While we have seen many students go onto Ph.D. work over the years, recently a number of them have returned as professors somewhere in the RTS system.  Though this list is not exhaustive, here are a few examples: [Read more…]

Are Christians Ignorant, Uneducated, Simpletons? Sort Of

Some things never change.  At least when it comes to what critics think of Christianity.

When we hear modern-day stereotypes of Christianity we might assume that they are, well, modern.  These are criticisms, we think, that pertain to the present cultural moment in which we find ourselves.

But, a quick survey of the earliest Christian critics shows that there really is nothing new under the sun.  Even when it comes to complaints about Christians.

Take, for example, the prolific anti-Christian philosopher Celsus. Around AD 177, Celsus published his True Doctrine, a scathing, witty, and biting critique of the early Christian movement.

Celsus’ critique is wide-ranging, but there are three fundamental criticisms he levels against Christianity.  And I will deal with each of them in a short three-part blog series.

And, here’s why Celsus’ critiques are so effective: each of them have an element of truth in them. They are partly right and partly (or perhaps mainly) wrong.

Ok, so here’s the first critique of Celsus we will consider: Christians are ignorant, uneducated, simpletons.

Holding nothing back, Celsus tells us what he really thinks about the Christian movement: [Read more…]

Interested in Getting a Biblical Counseling Degree without Moving? Now You Can Do It @RTSCharlotte

This past week, I spoke at the TGC Women’s conference in Indianapolis.  I did three sessions on a number of different topics, but the highlight was the RTS-sponsored lunch conversation where Melissa and I discussed why theology matters for women.

Afterwards, I was asked repeatedly about which degree program would be helpful for women wanting to go to seminary.  Although all our programs are great, I think the RTS Charlotte Master of Arts in Christian Counseling degree (MACC) is a wonderful option.

What makes the MACC degree distinctive is that half of the 66 credit hours are in Bible and theology.  Thus, MACC students not only know how to counsel, they know the crucial content of their counseling.

And here’s the big news:  we recently announced that we are now offering the MACC degree in an new Summer/Winter format.  This means that students can now get the MACC degree over the course of four years without having to relocate.

Let me say that again.  You can get the MACC without moving.

But, here’s the thing that makes the Charlotte program unique: our counseling classes are not taken online.  They are all residential classes right here in Charlotte.  They are simply done in intensive formats during the winter and summer.

Given that counseling is inherently a relational exercise, we think it is a bit counter-intuitive to get a counseling degree by only plugging in the head phones and looking at a computer screen.  Instead, counseling is best taught and learned in a face-to-face environment where students can interact with each other and with the professors.

So, we are excited to see how this new Summer/Winter MACC program can allow people to get a degree without  moving, but at the same time preserving the important face-to-face, relational aspects of counseling.

In addition, Charlotte’s biblical counseling degree has a number of other distinctives: [Read more…]

Coming to PCA General Assembly? Join Us for the @RTSCharlotte Alumni Gathering

It’s that time of year (at least for my denomination).  This week (June 12-15), PCA elders from all over the country are headed to Atlanta for our annual General Assembly.

This annual event serves a number of purposes.  It’s a time to do church business, to discuss theological issues, to strategize about the future of the denomination, and certainly to gather for corporate worship.

But, it is also a time of rich fellowship.  One of the sustaining factors in the long slog of ministry is that we get to walk alongside brothers who are laboring in the same field.  And General Assembly is a chance (in some cases, the only chance) to reconnect with some of those friends.

In particular, it is a joy for me to see former students who are now serving in ministry.  So, if you are an alum of RTS Charlotte, we are gathering Wednesday, June 13, 8:30-10:30PM at Max Lager’s.  For all the details, see here.

Also, don’t forget that we have a special RTS lunch for alums of all the campuses on Thursday, June 14, 12 noon, at the Hyatt Regency Ballroom. Register here.

Hope to see you at one of these events this week!

Why the Church Needs More Female Theologians: A Lunch Conversation at the TGC Women’s Conference

My wife Melissa and I will both be speaking at the upcoming TGC Women’s Conference in Indianapolis, June 14-16.

During that event, we have a special lunch-time event that I want to share with you.  If you are attending the conference, you are invited to come. Here are the details:

Why the Church Needs More Female Theologians: A Lunch Conversation with Mike & Melissa Kruger (FREE)

Friday, June 15 I 12:00pm I 209 Workshop Room

Reformed Theological Seminary invites you to join Mike and Melissa Kruger for lunch and a conversation about women in the church, seminary, and ministry. In addition to serving as the President of RTS-Charlotte, Mike is a pastor, author and professor. Melissa serves as the Women’s Ministry Coordinator for her church and also writes, teaches and blogs for TGC. Lunch will be provided for all who sign up by June 14. Register here: www.rtslunch.eventbrite.com

If you have ever been to one of these conferences, you know that finding a place to eat at lunch time is quite the challenge.  But here’s an opportunity to come hear from Melissa and myself about the importance of theology among women.  Also you will get to hear more about how Reformed Theological Seminary is working to train women for all sorts of ministries in God’s Kingdom.

But, make sure you RSVP as early as possible.  Space is very limited and we expect it to fill up quickly!  Again here is the link: www.rtslunch.eventbrite.com

Hope to see you there!

Is There a First-Century Fragment of Mark’s Gospel? Apparently Not

Over the last several years, there has been much discussion in the blogosphere (and beyond) about the possibility that a fragment of Mark’s Gospel had been discovered which could reliably be dated to the first century.

Most notably, the fragment was alluded to by Dan Wallace in his 2012 debate with Bart Ehrman (though no details were offered due to Wallace having signed a non-disclosure agreement). But it has also been mentioned by Scott Carroll, Craig Evans, and Josh McDowell.  There was an even article about the fragment in Forbes.

Needless to say, many scholars were skeptical about the possibility of a first-century Mark for a number of reasons.  For one, we have no other NT manuscripts from the first century.  Our oldest is still the infamous P52, a fragment of John’s Gospel dated c. 125. Though, I think a good case could be made that P104 (P.Oxy. 4404), a second-century fragment of Matthew, is as early.

Second, we have very few early copies of Mark.  [Read more…]

Where Are They Now? RTS Charlotte Alumnus Crawford Stevener

One of the most exciting programs over the  last few years at RTS Charlotte is the Center for Campus Ministry (CCM).  The CCM is designed to equip our students for the challenges that are unique to campus ministry–and there are many.  The college campus is one of the most critical battle grounds in our world today, and we are pleased to play a role in sending well-trained men and women to labor there.

The CCM involves a specialized degree emphasis in campus ministry, as well as the CCM Fellowship (a community of folks headed to campus ministry), CCM events and lunches, and more.  You can read more about it here.

While the CCM serves a number of different campus ministries, it is no surprise that Reformed University Fellowship has become one of our biggest constituencies. Many RTS Charlotte alumni have become RUF pastors or staff over the years, and we look forward to that trend continuing in the future.

For that reason, I am pleased that this installment of the Where Are They Now? alumni series is focused on Crawford Stevener, class of 2014 and RUF pastor at Duke University (and my former TA!).  But, he has just taken a call as the new RUF pastor at Stanford University and will be moving there this Summer.

Crawford’s wife, Rachel, also received her degree at RTS (MABS) and I hope to include her in a future installment in the series. [Read more…]

Was Gnosticism Tolerant and Inclusive? Debunking Some Myths about “Alternative” Christianities

In the world of biblical studies, at least among some critical scholars, Gnosticism has been the darling for sometime now.  Especially since the discovery of the so-called “Gnostic Gospels” at Nag Hammadi in 1945, scholars have sung the praises of this alternative version of Christianity.

Gnosticism  was a heretical version of Christianity that burst on the scene primarily in the second century and gave the orthodox Christians a run for their money.  And it seems that some scholars look back and wish that the Gnostics had prevailed.

After all, it is argued, traditional Christianity was narrow, dogmatic, intolerant, elitist, and mean-spirited, whereas Gnosticism was open-minded, all-welcoming, tolerant and loving.  Given this choice, which would you choose?

While this narrative about free-spirited Gnosticism being sorely oppressed by those mean and uptight orthodox Christians might sound rhetorically compelling, it simply isn’t borne out by the facts.  So, here are five claims often made about Gnosticism that prove to be more myth than reality: [Read more…]

Book Notice: The New Archaeology Study Bible Edited by @RTSCharlotte’s John Currid

Congratulation to John Currid, the Carl W. McMurray Professor of Old Testament here at RTS Charlotte, for the recently released ESV Archaeology Study Bible. John was the editor of the project which was a monumental piece of work.

The volume includes contributions from a number of archaeologists.  David Chapman was the NT editor for the project.

This new project fits with Dr. Currid’s other works in archaeology, including ESV Bible Atlas, Against the Gods, Doing Archaeology in the Land of the Bible, and Ancient Egypt and the Old Testament.

Dr. Currid has regularly led trips to Israel, is currently an adjunct faculty member at the Jerusalem Center for Biblical Studies in Jerusalem, and has served as Project Director of the Bethsaida Excavations Project for more than 20 years.

Here’s the description of the new volume along with endorsements and videos: [Read more…]

The Center for Church Planting @RTSCharlotte: Some Exciting Upcoming Events

Back in Fall of 2016, RTS Charlotte launched the Center for Church Planting (CCP) and it has been exciting to see how God has blessed and grown it since.  You can read original press release here.

The purpose of the CCP is to become a national and international resource for the planting of Reformed churches committed to the authority of Scripture, the centrality of preaching, and the great commission. It specializes in training future pastors for the unique challenges, complexities, and opportunities that church planters face.

The CCP offers a Master of Divinity emphasis in church planting, specialized internships, mentoring by seasoned church planters, and generous scholarship support. In addition, students participate in the church planters fellowship, annual conferences and lectures, and enjoy unique networking opportunities in the Carolinas and beyond.

The CCP has accomplished a lot in the past two years, but here are a number of upcoming events overs the next few weeks: [Read more…]

Did Jesus Promise to Return within the Lifetime of his Disciples?

For critics of early Christianity, one of the stock objections is that Jesus predicted he would return in the lifetime of his disciples.  And since he clearly didn’t return, then he cannot be believed.

Indeed, it is this belief that has spurred many other theories among scholars, most notably Hans Conzelmann’s thesis that Luke’s Gospel was written to explain the delay of the second coming.

But, is it really true that Jesus predicted that he would return in the lifetime of his disciples?  Here’s a recent video where I briefly address this question:

As for whether the imminent coming of Jesus affected the development of the NT canon, see my other article here.

Interested in Getting a Biblical Counseling Degree without Moving? Now You Can Do It @RTSCharlotte

A number of years ago, RTS Charlotte launched a two-year Master of Arts in Christian Counseling degree (MACC) and it has been wonderful to see how it has grown.  We believe that solid, Christ-centered, biblical counseling is critical to the health of the church.

This week we are announcing that we are now offering the MACC degree in an exciting new Summer/Winter format.  This means that students can now get the MACC degree over the course of four years without having to relocate.

We are rolling out this new structure because we know there are many people who want to benefit from the MACC program, but are not able to move.  This new format can help address that problem.

But, here’s the thing that makes the Charlotte program unique: our counseling classes are not taken online.  They are all residential classes right here in Charlotte.  They are simply done in intensive formats during the winter and summer.

Given that counseling is inherently a relational exercise, we think it is a bit counter-intuitive to get a counseling degree by only plugging in the head phones and looking at a computer screen.  Instead, counseling is best taught and learned in a face-to-face environment where students can interact with each other and with the professors.

So, we are excited to see how this new Summer/Winter MACC program can allow people to get a degree without  moving, but at the same time preserving the important face-to-face, relational aspects of counseling.

In addition, Charlotte’s biblical counseling degree has a number of other distinctives: [Read more…]

Five Reasons to Include Women on Your Church Staff

A couple of weeks ago, here at the RTS Charlotte campus, my wife Melissa (see her blog here) and I gave a lunchtime presentation on the topic of “Why Churches Should Hire More Women on Staff.”

The desire to talk about this issue was motivated by several things.  For one, Melissa has served in a paid staff position (part-time) in women’s ministry for about a decade.  And so, part of the discussion was her reflections on serving on a church staff and how that has shaped her thinking on this issue.

The second reason for discussing this topic is because of what is happening here at the Charlotte campus.  I have been so excited to see more and more female students coming to RTS to pursue theological education. There is a vibrant community of women on campus led by our Community Life Coordinator, Mallie Taylor.

And these women are some of our best and brightest students.  Every semester we give awards for the best student papers, and this past semester two out of the three winners were female students.

But, in the midst of this positive development, I know many of these women are wondering what comes next after graduation. There are a limited number of paid ministry opportunities for our female grads and this can raise questions about whether seminary for women is worth the time and cost.

And third, the topic of hiring women on church staffs was raised last year at the PCA General Assembly. The report of the ad-interim committee on women serving in the ministry of the church included this recommendation:

The committee encourages sessions in churches that have unordained staff positions to consider hiring qualified women, possibly even before qualified men. The church staff will of necessity have primarily ordained men, and women will never be ordained. Thus, the committee encourages preferring women for non-ordained staff positions.

Part of the committee’s rationale for this recommendation was because women “are increasingly turning to para-church ministries” instead of the church.  While para-church ministries have their place, the church needs these women and thus the committee was looking for ways to address this issue. [Read more…]

Spurgeon: Ministers, You are the Public Clock of Our World

Every couple of years, I try to re-read two books that have been very formative for my thinking on life in the ministry.  One is Richard Baxters’ The Reformed Pastor, perhaps the most convicting book ever written (other than the Bible).  Each year, after reading it, I am tempted to draw up my resignation, drop out of the ministry, and go sell carpet or something.

The other book, is Spurgeon’s Lectures to My Students, a veritable goldmine of advice and instruction for those of us in ministry (or heading there).   Spurgeon covers a wide range of issue from the call to the ministry all the way to pulpit posture and how to project your voice (something quite important in that time period).

But, what both of these books have in common is a foundational focus on the character and personal piety of the minister.  Indeed, both books begin with this critical subject. Ministers should take special care of their walk with God, they argue, precisely because they are public, visible representatives of Christ.  We preach not only by our words, but also by our actions.

Baxter, in his typical fashion, reminds us of this important theme: [Read more…]

It’s Here! My Book on Christianity in the Second Century is Now Available in the USA

Last year (2017) my book on second-century Christianity was released with SPCK in the UK:  Christianity at the Crossroads: How the Second Century Shaped the Future of the Church.

For my American colleagues and friends however, this book has not been easy to get.  Since it is a dual publication between SPCK and IVP Academic, and since it was released by SPCK first, it has thus far only been (technically) available if ordered from the UK.

I am pleased to say that it is now available in the USA.  No more need to get bootleg copies!

Although Amazon is showing the book is not available till February 25th, our own bookstore here at RTS already has copies.

And I have to say I love the new cover (see inset picture).  I also thought the SPCK cover was great, so I am blessed that I like both of them (which is not always true for authors).

In addition, the volume has a new description, and a new set of endorsements: [Read more…]

Rosaria Butterfield Speaking @RTSCharlotte

On Feb 20th, RTS Charlotte is excited to welcome Rosaria Butterfield as our guest speaker for our annual Harold O.J. Brown lecture series.

As most people know, Rosaria has an incredible testimony.  She was a tenured professor of English and women’s studies at Syracuse University and living as a homosexual when God saved her in 1999 in what she describes as a “train wreck conversion.”

Her memoir, The Secret Thoughts of an Unlikely Convert, chronicles that difficult journey, and her second book, Openness Unhindered, furthers the conversation about sexual identity and union with Christ. Rosaria is married to Kent, a Reformed Presbyterian pastor in North Carolina, and is a homeschool mother, author, and speaker.

Rosaria will be sharing her story at 10AM, Feb 20th, followed by extended Q&A.  Due to the size of the event, it is being hosted by Christ Covenant Church.  Tickets must be purchased in advance–no admission is allowed at the door.  For more details, see here. [Read more…]

What is a “Gospel” Anyway? A Few Thoughts on Gospel Genre and Why it Matters

When it comes to reading (and interpreting ) the Gospels, one of the fundamental questions pertains to the kind of document we are reading.  What exactly is a “Gospel”?  And did the earliest readers of these books know what they were reading?

Such questions may seem pedantic to the average reader, but they matter more than we think.  Right interpretation is built on (among other things) correctly assessing the literary genre.  We don’t read parables like historical narrative, nor do we read poetry (Psalms) like apocalyptic literature.

An example of confusion over “genre” in our modern world (though in a different medium) pertains to the growing practice of making internet ads look like internet content.  In other words, some companies are positioning their ads to look like a news story.

This is quite controversial for an obvious reason: people read and interpret ads differently than news. People expect one thing from ads, and expect something very different from news.  One is viewed as propaganda, the other is viewed as fact (though that distinction itself is subject to dispute today). [Read more…]

Book Notice: The Triumph of Christianity: How a Forbidden Religion Swept the World

Just a couple days ago I received the new book by Bart Ehrman entitled, The Triumph of Christianity: How a Forbidden Religion Swept the World (Simon and Schuster, 2018).  I had received a pre-published copy of the book several months ago and have been working through it.

The reason I have a keen interest in this volume is because it covers a lot of the same ground of my recent book which was released last year, Christianity at the Crossroads: How the Second Century Shaped the Future of the Church (SPCK/IVP Academic, 2017).

Currently, I am about 3/4 of the way through Ehrman’s volume and plan to review it formally in a few months.  In the meantime, I have to say I am very encouraged by what I’ve been reading.  I think Ehrman is spot-on in his analysis of much about Christianity in the early centuries.  Indeed, our conclusions are very similar in a number of places.

[Read more…]

The Power of De-Conversion Stories: How Jen Hatmaker is Trying to Change Minds About the Bible

When it comes to reaching the “lost,” one of the most tried-and-true methods is the personal conversion story.  Whether done privately or publicly, it’s compelling to hear a person’s testimony about how they came to believe in the truth of the Gospel, the truth of the Bible, and embraced the Christian faith. Such testimonies can personalize and soften the message so it is more easily understood and received.

But when it comes to reaching the “found,” there’s an equally effective method—and this is a method to which the evangelical church has paid very little attention. It’s what we might call the de-conversion story.

De-conversion stories are designed not to reach non-Christians but to reach Christians.  And their purpose is to convince them that their outdated, naïve beliefs are no longer worthy of their assent.  Whether done privately or publicly, this is when a person simply gives their testimony of how they once thought like you did and have now seen the light. [Read more…]

Did the Church Fathers View Their Own Writings as “Inspired” Like Scripture?

A number of years ago, Albert Sundberg wrote a well-known article arguing that the early church fathers did not see inspiration as something that was uniquely true of canonical books.[1]  Why?  Because, according to Sundberg, the early Church Fathers saw their own writings as inspired.   Ever since Sundberg, a number of scholars have repeated this claim, insisting that the early fathers saw nothing distinctive about the NT writings as compared to writings being produced in their own time period.

Just recently, Lee McDonald has repeated this claim numerous times in his latest volume, The Formation of the Biblical Canon, vol. 2 (T&T Clark, 2017), particularly as he responds to my own work.  To be sure, McDonald has done some great work on canon, and I appreciate much in this new volume.  But, I have to disagree with him on this point.

Of course, now is not the time for a full-scale response. But we can (briefly) observe several factors that speak against this idea that the church fathers saw their own writings as on par with the apostles. [Read more…]

Confused by All the Attacks on the Bible? Here Are Three Categories to Help You

When it comes to the truth of the Bible, our world has found plenty of reasons to reject it. We are bombarded with a dizzying variety of objections. So much so, that the average believer is quickly overwhelmed.

It’s a bit like being in a fight with multiple opponents at the same time.  You might have a chance in a one-on-one contest, but it is disorientating when punches are coming from all sides.  You can’t block them all.

One helpful way to address this problem is to learn how to separate these varied objections into distinct categories.  This simple step allows us to organize our thinking. This helps us get a clearer picture of what particular opponent we are dealing with.

So, here are the three categories of Bible objections.  Indeed, I might argue that just about any objection falls into one of these three categories.  Our purpose here is not to answer the objections but just to explain them. [Read more…]

The Peculiarity of Early Christian Worship (or How Early Christians Managed to Offend Just about Everybody)

“What in the world is this Christianity thing?”

A phrase like this would not have been unusual among Romans in the first couple of centuries.  In the eyes of the average citizen, Christians were an odd bunch. And what made them odd was not just what they believed.  It was how (and who) they worshiped.

To be sure, worship was a big deal in the ancient world.  The ancient Greco-Roman culture was very religious. Even more to the point, they were publicly religious. Worship rituals and activities were visible for all to see.

And it was precisely here that this “Christianity thing” was found to be strange and unusual.  Indeed, Christian worship seemed to hack off just about everybody.  Here’s why: [Read more…]

@RTSCharlotte Welcomes Kevin DeYoung: A Roundtable Discussion with Ligon Duncan, Kevin DeYoung and Myself

It is well known by now that one of RTS Charlotte’s newest faculty members is Kevin DeYoung.  He is the new Assistant Professor of Systematic Theology and will be teaching three classes a year for us here.

In addition, Kevin is the Senior Pastor of Christ Covenant Church here in Charlotte, chairman of the board for The Gospel Coalition, author of numerous books, a popular blogger, in-demand speaker, and more.

Since his appointment, people have been asking about the backstory to Kevin’s transition. How did it all happen? And what is Kevin’s vision for his new role?

Well, the videos below answer those questions. The first is a round table discussion between Kevin, Ligon Duncan, and myself. And the other videos are Kevin himself explaining what he hopes to see happen in his transition to Charlotte. Enjoy! [Read more…]

Would You Take the Red Pill or the Blue Pill? Steven Spielberg’s “Ready Player One” and the Triumph of Postmodernity

Over the recent holiday break I found myself in the movie theater to watch The Last Jedi. Given how profoundly disappointing and unimaginative the movie was (something I may explore in another post), I left the theater thinking about an entirely different movie.

In fact, I began to think of this other movie before The Last Jedi even started. One of the movie trailers at the beginning was from Steven Spielberg’s forthcoming Ready Player One. And it looked genuinely innovative and culturally fascinating.

During the many moments of boredom during the main attraction, I began to reflect upon what this new movie says about the world we live in (or, for some, the world we pretend to not live in).

Based upon the 2011 book of the same name by Ernest Cline, the film is a futuristic dystopian drama set in 2045. An energy crisis has destroyed the world, creating a miserable existence for millions.

In order to escape the world they live in, people have turned to a virtual reality world fittingly named OASIS. In this world they can take on new identities (AVATARS) and live a life of fulfillment, excitement, and pleasure.

The protagonist, Wade Watts, lives almost his entire life in the virtual world–even going to school in simulation. His relationships and his identity are all bound up with his online existence.  In the film, he is drawn into a life or death competition to find an “easter egg” hidden in the OASIS worth billions. [Read more…]

Join Us for a @RTSCharlotte Class This Winter Term

Every winter term (basically the month of January), the Charlotte campus offers a great line-up of one-week intensive classes.

These are classes where the lectures can be taken all in one week (with the assignments due later). This allow students to travel from a distance to take a course.

The graphic below lays out all the classes we are offering.  There’s still time to catch Bob Cara’s Acts-Romans class that starts on Monday!

Let me also draw attention to the fact that Ed Welch of CCEF will be joining us Jan 30-Feb 2 for Advanced Methods in Biblical Counseling.  As is well known, CCEF has been a core influence on the philosophy of the Charlotte biblical counseling program.

Dr. Welch is also doing an EQUIP seminar on Monday, Jan 30, 6-8PM, here on the Charlotte campus.  This is an evening designed for training lay leaders in the Charlotte area.  More details on the seminar can be found here. For past installments of the EQUIP series, see here.

Here are the course offerings: [Read more…]

IVP Academic Set to Release My Book on the Second Century

Last year (2017) my book on second-century Christianity was released with SPCK in the UK:  Christianity at the Crossroads: How the Second Century Shaped the Future of the Church.

For my American colleagues and friends however, this book has not been easy to get.  Since it is a dual publication between SPCK and IVP Academic, and since it was released by SPCK first, it has thus far only been (technically) available if ordered from the UK.

I am pleased to say that its US release is almost here. IVP Academic plans to release it March 6th (see here).

And I have to say I love the new cover (see inset picture).  I also thought the SPCK cover was great, so I am blessed that I like both of them (which is not always true for authors).

In addition, the volume has a new description, and a new set of endorsements: [Read more…]

The Heresy of Orthodoxy: Was the NT Text Reliably Transmitted?

This post is the final installment in a series of videos where Andreas Köstenberger and I discuss the theory of Walter Bauer on unity and diversity in early Christianity.

These discussions are based on our book, The Heresy of Orthodoxy: How Contemporary Culture’s Fascination with Diversity Has Reshaped Our Understanding of Early Christianity (Crossway, 2010).

You can find the prior four installments here, here, here, and here.

In this last video, we tackle the very important issue of textual transmission.  Skeptics have argued that the wild theological diversity in early Christianity would not only have led the church to have different canons, but it would also have led the church to have different texts.

Scribes, influenced by their theological climate, would have been quite ready and willing, we are told, to change the text for doctrinal reasons. This thesis is laid out fully in Bart Ehrman’s, The Orthodox Corruption of Scripture (OUP, 2011).

But, is the wording of the NT really lost?  Have the original words been changed and corrupted beyond recovery?  And were early Christian scribes really as amateurish as claimed?

Here’s the video where we answer these questions: [Read more…]

The Heresy of Orthodoxy: When Was the Earliest Complete List of New Testament Books?

For the last few weeks, I have been posting a series of videos where Andreas Köstenberger and I discuss our response to Walter Bauer’s thesis on heresy and orthodoxy in early Christianity.

These discussions are based on our book, The Heresy of Orthodoxy: How Contemporary Culture’s Fascination with Diversity Has Reshaped Our Understanding of Early Christianity (Crossway, 2010).

You can find the prior three installments here, here, and here.

In this next video below, Andreas and I discuss the earliest complete list of New Testament books.  For years, this was thought to be Athanasius’ Festal Letter of 367.

However, I have recently argued that a often-overlooked list exists nearly a century earlier (c.250) in Origen’s Homilies on Joshua (the painting above is Origen).

For more detail on this argument see my article: “Origen’s List of New Testament Books in Hom. Josh. 7.1: A Fresh Look,” in Chris Keith and Deiter T. Roth, eds., Mark, Manuscripts, and Monotheism: Essays in Honor of Larry W. Hurtado (T&T Clark, 2014), 99-117.

For a quick overview, here’s the video! [Read more…]

Here are Some Great Videos on the Five Solas from the Faculty of Reformed Theological Seminary

Last month RTS Charlotte and Christ Covenant Church came together to host a Reformation conference entitled, The Gospel of Grace and Glory: The Reformation at 500 and Counting.

The five plenary sessions of this conference were on the five solas of the Reformation: Kevin DeYoung (Sola Fide), James Anderson (Sola Gratia), Blair Smith (Solus Christus), Derek Thomas (Soli Deo Gloria), and myself (Sola Scriptura).

I might add that all these speakers (except myself!) are Systematic Theology profs at Reformed Theological Seminary.

And Keith and Kristyn Getty capped off the weekend with a concert that Sunday night.

Over the years (and even this year) I’ve heard a number of talks on the five solas.  And I have to say that the four talks given by my colleagues are some of the best I’ve ever heard.  They were insightful, profound, enlightening, convicting and encouraging.

The good news is that we have these talks on video.  Feel free to skip over mine and get onto the good ones! Here they are: [Read more…]

The Heresy of Orthodoxy: How and When was the New Testament Canon Put Together?

For the last few weeks, I have been posting a series of videos where Andreas Köstenberger and I discuss our response to Walter Bauer’s thesis on heresy and orthodoxy in early Christianity.

These discussions are based on our book, The Heresy of Orthodoxy: How Contemporary Culture’s Fascination with Diversity Has Reshaped Our Understanding of Early Christianity (Crossway, 2010).

The first week was an overview of Bauer and why we wrote the book (see here), and the second week was on the role of diversity in the NT books themselves (see here).

In this video below, we discuss an area very central to the Bauer thesis, namely the development of the NT canon.  Bauer argues that we have no reason to think the books in our NT are the “right” books because they are simply the books chosen by the theological winners.  And the winners get to determine the scope of the canon.

After all, argues Bauer, what if another early Christian group had prevailed?  What if the Gnostics had won?  Then we might have the Gospel of Thomas and the Gospel of Philip in our Bibles instead of, say, Matthew and John.

This sort of narrative about the origins of the canon has been repeated countless times over the years, in both popular and academic literature.  But it runs into a significant problem:  [Read more…]

The Heresy of Orthodoxy: What Do the NT Books Tell Us About Early Christian Diversity?

Last week I began a new blog series (see first post here) addressing the theme of unity and diversity in early Christianity, particularly as it pertains to the well-known work of Walter Bauer.

Essentially, Bauer argued there was no such thing “heresy” or “orthodoxy” during this time period.  These ideas, he argues, are simply artificial constructs of the later theological victors.

This series is exploring Bauer’s thesis through a number of video conversations between myself and Andreas Köstenberger.  These videos reflect on our book that critiques Bauer: The Heresy of Orthodoxy: How Contemporary Culture’s Fascination with Diversity Has Reshaped Our Understanding of Early Christianity (Crossway, 2010). [Read more…]

The Heresy of Orthodoxy: Who is Walter Bauer and Why Write a Book About Him?

In 1934, the German scholar Walter Bauer wrote a landmark work entitled Orthodoxy and Heresy in Earliest Christianity.  The problem was that no one yet knew it was a landmark work.  The Germans (and the world) had other things on their mind during this phase of European history.

But, in 1971 the book was translated into English.  And with all the new found (largely American) fascination with apocryphal Gospels like the Gospel of Thomas, the English translation proved to be well timed.

Bauer’s core thesis was that early Christianity was profoundly diverse in terms of its theological commitments.  Various Christian groups believed all sorts of contradictory things about Jesus, salvation, creation and a myriad of other Christian doctrines. [Read more…]

What is Sola Scriptura Protecting Us Against? More Than You Think

Well, Oct 31st, 2017 is finally here.  All year long, churches and organizations around the world have (rightly) been celebrating this amazing thing we call the Protestant Reformation.

One of the foundational convictions of the Reformers was, of course, this doctrine we call Sola Scriptura (Scripture alone).  Simply put, this is the belief that the Scriptures are the highest and most ultimate authority in the life of the Christian.

Contrary to popular misunderstandings, it is not the belief that the Scriptures are the only authority.  Christians have other legitimate authorities in their life (their elders, classical creeds, etc.), but only Scripture is an infallible authority. For more on this point, see here.

At the heart of Sola Scriptura, is the recognition that fallen humans have a problem with authority.  Indeed, fallen humans are always looking to replace God’s authority with some other human/creaturely authority.  After all, that was the essence of the very first sin in the garden.  The rebellion of Adam and Eve was fundamentally a rejection of God’s word that if they ate of the fruit they would surely die.

Ever since, humans have been remarkably inventive in the variety of authorities they erect in place of God.  Sola Scriptura is designed simply to prevent these other authorities from ruling the Christian and to keep God’s Word rightly as our ultimate guide.  Here are three examples of such authorities: [Read more…]

Here’s What Christians Should Be Busy Protesting

There’s a lot of protesting going on in our culture today.  Seems like everyone is upset about something.  And they are quite willing to let the world know about it.  Indeed, even in the evangelical Christian world, it seems like protesting has become the thing to do.

The key question, however, will always be, “Against what things should Christians offer a protest?”

I suppose there are many answers to that question. But, as we near the 500th anniversary of Luther’s nailing of the 95 theses to the Wittenberg door (Oct 31st), we should at least consider what the Reformers were busy protesting.

After all, that is what the Reformers were.  The term “Protestant,” of course, comes from the Latin protestari, which simply means to “declare publicly, testify, protest.”  And if you are a Protestant today, then you still are, effectively, a protestor. [Read more…]

Here’s My Answer to One of the Most Common Questions I Get about My Books

“What’s the difference between Canon Revisited and The Question of Canon?”

When it comes to my books, this is one of the most common questions I get.  I have answered it so many times over the last few years, that I thought it might make a useful blog post.

While both these volumes are about the origins of the NT Canon, they are primarily distinguished by the fact that they are answering different questions.  Canon Revisited is answering questions like, “How do we know if we have the right 27 books?”  or “Why these books and no others?” [Read more…]

Codex and Canon: A Response to John Meade (Part 2)

The conversation between myself and John Meade continues.  He offered an initial critique of chapter 7 of Canon Revisited, to which I responded.  And now he has responded to my response. (I know, the back-and-forth is hard to keep up with!).

I appreciate Meade’s interaction with my material. In some ways, our conversation is making progress.  But in other ways, unfortunately, it is not.  Let me offer some reflections on his latest post.

Understanding the Argument from the Codex

In my initial response to Meade, I argued that he has misunderstood the argument I (and others) are making about the codex.  The argument is not that the codex book format can provide exact boundaries of the canon.  Nor is the argument that any book that appears in a codex is automatically canon.

Thus, simply pointing out that non-canonical books appear in a codex format is not a valid counter-argument.  Meade keeps making this counter-argument and that is why I suggested he is taking an “all-or-nothing” approach to the codex.  He acts as if one exception makes the codex irrelevant for canon.

In his latest post, Meade defends himself against this “all-or-nothing” approach, but I confess I do not understand his defense. [Read more…]

What Do Manuscripts Tell Us About the Origins of the NT Canon? A Response to John Meade

Over at Evangelical Textual Criticism, John Meade has posted an article reviewing chapter seven of my book, Canon Revisited.  In particular, he challenges a number of the arguments I use to show how NT manuscripts may illumine our understanding of the development of the NT canon.

Meade focuses his comments on two issues, namely the number of manuscripts and the use of the codex.  Before offering a response to those issues below, let me begin by making a simple observation about the purpose of this chapter.  If one understands the flow of the argument in the book, and sets chapter seven in the larger context of the prior chapters, it will become clear that the exploration of these manuscripts is not intended to provide a definitive answer to which books are in the canon. Nowhere do I argue that we know which books are in the canon simply be looking at the features of early Christian manuscripts.

Indeed, the prior six chapters are making a very different argument about how we know which books are in and which books are out (an argument I will not rehearse here).  The discussion of manuscripts, then, is provided simply as something that further illumines the history of the canon.  It provides a general (but not absolute) confirmation of what we see from other kinds of evidence (patristic and otherwise). [Read more…]

One of the Best (and Most Overlooked) Passages that Demonstrates the Divinity of Jesus

Did the New Testament authors think Jesus was God?

Some critical scholars would say no.  Jesus, they would argue, is just presented as an ordinary man who has been given an exceptional role as God’s chief emissary and representative.  He is messiah perhaps.  But not God.

Of course, Christians (historically speaking) have disagreed.  Yes, Jesus is Messiah, but he also shares in the divine identity and is rightly accorded all the glory and honor due to God.

When it comes to demonstrating the divine status of Jesus from Scripture, the “go to” passages are not difficult to list:  John 1:1; John 8:58; 1 Cor 8:6; Phil 2:1-11.  These are the places we most commonly turn in debates and discussions.

But, there is a passage often overlooked in such discussions that lays out the divine status of Jesus as plainly as any of these (if not more so).  [Read more…]

What Do Manuscripts Tell Us about the Origins of the New Testament? A Preview of the Tarwater Lectures

One of my favorite things about books is not just reading them but holding them.  Especially old books.  I love the feel of a book in my hand that many people have read before me.  There’s that musty bookish smell when you flip through the pages.  There’s the worn out covers and notes in the margins.

When you read a book like this you feel like you are walking a well-worn path that many others have trod before.

And it is precisely this sort of experience that is absent with the arrival of modern e-book technology.  Whether we are reading on a Kindle reader or off our tablets (or smartphones), the book has ceased to be a physical object and has become a nebulous, bodiless text.

To be clear, I am not saying this new technology is wrong.  But I am saying there is something missing with it.  Especially when it comes to the Bible.  We forget that the Bible was a physical object.  It is an artifact with a physical/archaeological history.

And when we remember the physical history of the Bible–particularly through the manuscripts left behind–we can learn much about its origins and how it was put together.  These manuscripts can be a “window” into the development of the biblical canon.

It is theme that will be the focus of my upcoming lecture, [Read more…]

The @RTSCharlotte Women’s Bible Study Has Started Again!

As many of you know, from 2014 to 2016 I led a women’s Bible study on the RTS Charlotte campus on the book of Romans–42 installments in all. The HD videos of the study (with handouts) are available here.

We continue to be encouraged to hear that the videos are being watched by folks all over the country and the world.  Just a short time ago, I received an email from a group in Slovakia that is working their way through the Romans study.

The idea for this study was born out of a desire to connect with the people in the city of Charlotte outside the formal classroom setting. A lot of people are too intimidated to take one of the standard seminary classes, but I thought they may be willing to come on campus an participate in “normal” Bible Study.

After taking a year off from Romans, this past week we launched the women’s Bible study again.  We are so excited to have 165 women register.

This time we are in the book of Hebrews which is a magnificent book in its own right. As is well known, the theme of the book is the supremacy of Christ over all things.  The audience is likely a Jewish-Christian community thinking about turning back to the old ways of Judaism.

So the author spends his time showing that Jesus is superior to the prophets, the angels, to Moses, to Joshua, to Aaron and more.

Although modern American audiences may not be thinking about a return to animal sacrifices in the Temple, the book certainly applies to anything we substitute for Christ in our lives.  In short, it reminds us that “Jesus is Better.”

For details on the Bible study, see here.  For the introductory video, along with the video of the first session, see below: [Read more…]

Are Protestants Closer to Catholics than Martin Luther? A Response to the Recent Pew Study (Part 2)

Last week, I posted the first of a two-part response to a recent Pew study which claimed that modern Protestants sound more like Catholics when it comes to issues like sola scriptura and sola fide.

While modern Protestants certainly have some significant theological weak spots, I pushed back against the results of this study on the grounds that the questions being asked were fundamentally misleading.  Indeed, the theological descriptions of the Protestant (and Catholic!) positions were flat out wrong.

Having already dealt with the sola scriptura issue in the prior post, we now turn to the issue of sola fide.  Here is the summary of the Pew survey about the way Protestants view that issue: [Read more…]

Are Protestants Closer to Catholics than Martin Luther? A Response to the Recent Pew Study (Part 1)

Mark Twain once quipped, “There are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies, and statistics.”

Ah statistics.  They can be very helpful. Or very misleading.  And much of it depends on how the questions are asked.

Last week it was announced that a new Pew foundation study demonstrated that modern Protestants are a lot less like Martin Luther and a lot more like Roman Catholics than people might think.

When it comes to the two main issues of sola scriptura (Scripture alone) and sola fide (faith alone) apparently Protestants aren’t so Protestant after all.  The study conclusions state:

For example, nearly half of U.S. Protestants today (46%) say faith alone is needed to attain salvation (a belief held by Protestant reformers in the 16th century, known in Latin as sola fide). But about half (52%) say both good deeds and faith are needed to get into heaven, a historically Catholic belief.

U.S. Protestants also are split on another issue that played a key role in the Reformation: 46% say the Bible is the sole source of religious authority for Christians – a traditionally Protestant belief known as sola scriptura. Meanwhile, 52% say Christians should look both to the Bible and to the church’s official teachings and tradition for guidance, the position held by the Catholic Church during the time of the Reformation and today.

When these two questions are combined, the survey shows that just three-in-ten U.S. Protestants believe in both sola fide and sola scriptura.

These stats, if true, would certainly be stunning.  Indeed, even depressing.  And given the low-level of theological knowledge among most self-identified evangelicals, we might easily believe these stats are right on the mark.

But, I think there are reasons to doubt them. [Read more…]

Taking Back Christianese: The Complete Series

This past Summer, I completed the ten-part series, “Taking Back Christianese.”  Below is the complete and final list of articles.

The motivation for this series was that our Christian lingo–“Christianese” if you will–can sometimes be mistaken.  Or at least partially so. It can attempt to express a theological truth that (sometimes) bring more confusion than clarity.

So, this series addresses the way we talk as Christians.  It is designed to analyze a number of theological phrases or practical bits of Christians wisdom that may simply be wrong, or at least misunderstood. Or maybe both.

As a reminder, I am not be suggesting that the instances of Christianese below are necessarily wrong.  Taken properly, they may be right in many ways.  But, of course, that is precisely the issue.  Often they are not taken properly.  Instead they can be used to justify some questionable theological views.

So, the goal of the series–and this is important to get–was not to refute these phrases but to clarify, to nuance, and to balance out these phrases. In the world of theology, lack of nuance is one step (often a big step) towards doctrinal error.

Let me also say that the list below is by no means exhaustive.  Nor is the list below intended to represent the worst or most inaccurate ways we speak as Christians.  On the contrary, I (and all of us) have heard much worse!

Here they are: [Read more…]

Is It a Waste of Time for Seminary Students (and Pastors) to Learn the Biblical Languages?

Note:  I post the article below every year as seminary students arrive. I hope it will prove helpful for a new group of readers (or maybe even prior ones!)

A few weeks ago, a new crop of seminary students began the grueling month-long experience of Summer Greek.   And, like all seminary students before them, they will begin to ask the question of why studying these ancient languages even matters.   After all, a few years after graduation all will be forgotten.   In the midst of a busy pastoral life, who could possibly maintain proficiency in the languages?

As a result of these questions, some students decide (very early on) that the biblical languages are just something to be endured.  They are like a hazing ritual at a college fraternity.  No one likes it, but you have to go through it to be in the club.  And then it will be over.

Behind this “take your medicine” approach to the biblical languages are a couple of assumptions that need to be challenged.  First, the characterization of pastoral ministry as somehow incompatible with the languages (due to busyness, or other causes), is an unfortunate misunderstanding of what a pastorate is all about.  No doubt, pastors should be busy shepherding their flock, meeting with ministry leaders, and running the church.   But, the core of the calling is to be a “minister of the word.”

And if the pastoral call is to be a minister of the Word, then there is a significant component of pastoral life that should be devoted to serious study of the biblical text—beyond just the preparation for that week’s sermon.   Put differently, pastors should continue to be students.   They need to be readers, thinkers, and theologians.

[Read more…]

Are Christians Intolerant Haters? Lessons from the Church of the Second Century

As you now know, my book on the second century has just been released in the UK: Christianity at the Crossroads: How the Second Century Shaped the Future of the Church (SPCK, 2017).  It will be released in the US with IVP Academic in the Spring.

Since it has been released, folks have been asking how this book connects to the modern church.  In other words, can we learn anything from the Christians of the second century that may help us in our current cultural moment?  Absolutely.  Here are a few lessons to consider. [Read more…]

A Curious Example of Early Christian Devotion to Scripture

I have argued in numerous places–articles, blog posts, books–that Scripture played a central role in the life of early Christians.  They not only read and preached from these books, but they copied and distributed them in great numbers.

An additional (and rather curious) example of the role of Scripture in early Christianity was the phenomenon of the miniature codex.  From the time of the third century, and especially in the fourth and fifth centuries, Christians began to create these little “pocket Bibles” that contained portions of Scripture and sometimes even held multiple scriptural books (e.g., see my analysis of P.Ant. 12).

The early Christians probably used the miniature codex format for a number of reasons including private reading, portability for long journeys, and sometimes even in a “magical” sense (thinking it provided protection for the one who possessed it).

But, it seems they also used these books as a visible sign of their Christian identity.  Christians would carry these books on their bodies, often hung around their necks, as a sign that they were devoted to Scripture and thereby devoted to Christ.

Aside from the miniature codex in particular, we know Christians often treated scriptural books in just such a fashion. [Read more…]

Looking for More Than Blog Posts? Here are Some Recent Academic Articles on the Origins of the NT Canon

For those reading this blog, I trust you’ve benefited from the variety of posts that deal with issues related to the origins of the NT canon. I have written those posts with a wide audience in mind, hoping they are helpful for just about anybody who wants to learn more.

At the same time, I know some of you may be interested to know of some more academic articles I have written over the last few years that deal with the NT canon, or NT manuscripts, on a more technical level.  Those kinds of articles, because they are not “blog” articles, tend to get lost in the shuffle.  And even if a person knows about them, sometimes they are very hard to find!

But, here are a few examples over the last five years (starting with most recent) along with a few comments from me about what the article is about: [Read more…]

My New Book on the Second Century is Now Available!

As many of you know from prior posts (for example, see here), I have a forthcoming book on the second century entitled, Christianity at the Crossroads: How the Second Century Shaped the Future of the Church (SPCK, 2017).

I am excited to announce that it is now available! (technically July 20th).  Since the book is a joint publication between SPCK and IVP Academic, it releases in the UK now (under SPCK) and then will release in the USA in the Spring (under IVP Academic).

Not sure why there is such a big gap of time between the two releases, but there you have it.  Of course, you can still order from the USA Amazon here, and I am sure it will be available in the States through a variety of other channels.

I wrote this book for a number of reasons. [Read more…]

Five “Fake News” Stories That People Believe about Early Christianity

There’s been a lot of chatter about “fake news” in recent months.  Some stories, even though they have no basis in fact, are told so often, and with such conviction, that large numbers of people end up believing them anyway.

And some of these fake news stories even dupe legitimate political figures who repeat the story without realizing it is false.  And, of course, once a mainstream political figure repeats a story then it becomes even more entrenched in the national psyche.

While some of these fake news stories are rather harmless, others have become quite dangerous.  Most famous perhaps is the “Pizza Gate” incident in 2016 where a man shot up a pizza place thinking it was host to a child sex trafficking ring (thankfully, no one was hurt).

Given this rash of “fake news,” I thought it might be interesting to observe that an analogous phenomenon can be seen in the study of early Christianity.  There is quite a bit of “fake news” out there regarding the person of Jesus, the origins of the church, or the development of the Bible .  Even though such “news” has no factual basis, it is believed by an uncomfortably large number of people.

So, here is a sampling of some of the leading stories: [Read more…]

Want to Understand How Suffering Fits with the Sovereignty of God? Here’s a Great Place to Start

One of the perennial questions for all theologians (and all human beings) is “Why do we suffer?”  And, “If God is good and sovereign, why does he allow suffering?”

While most of us have these questions, we don’t really have to deal with them until we experience suffering ourselves.  This is when we discover whether we really have a “theology of suffering” that can deal with the hard parts of life.

This is an area of theology which needs more attention.  I am not talking about answers to the intellectual questions regarding the problem of evil and how to resolve it.  Reformed folks have addressed that issue in spades.

What is needed instead is a robust accounting for the role suffering plays in the life of the Christian and how to endure it faithfully when it comes.

A tremendously helpful step in that direction is [Read more…]

The Importance of Being a Pastor’s Wife

Since we live in a world that doesn’t view pastoral ministry as a high calling, it is probably no surprise that many do not view pastor’s wives as having a high calling either (including some pastor’s wives!).

I suppose there are many reasons why this is the case.  Some people have an image in their head of what a pastor’s wife looks like (or should look like) and they simply don’t want that for themselves.  Perhaps others think being a pastor’s wife means certain things it doesn’t necessarily mean.  And others are probably wary of a life where you are often scrutinized, watched, and maybe even critiqued.

For all these reasons, I was pleased to give a talk on “The Importance of Being a Pastor’s Wife” to the gathering of women at last week’s PCA General Assembly in Greensboro, NC.  It was a packed house so apparently there are many folks interested in that subject!

If you are interested in listening, here it is:

[download]

 

Where Are They Now? @RTSCharlotte Alumnus Michael Knight

One of the things that makes the RTS Charlotte campus distinctive is the number of missionaries we have sent out over the years.   For whatever providential reasons, God has allowed the Charlotte campus to be a fruitful training ground for folks headed to the mission field.

This missions “vibe” in Charlotte simply reflects the overall ethos we are shooting for here.  We not only want our seminary to be theologically solid, but also outwardly focused and passionate about fulfilling the Great Commission.

Right now, Charlotte alums serve in countries such as Peru, Mexico, Panama, Colombia, France, England, Ireland, Spain, Germany, Czech Republic, China, Japan, Korea, Indonesia, Morocco, Ghana, South Africa, Kenya, Egypt, and a number of places in the Middle East.

And we can also add Namibia to the mix.  The next installment in our Where Are They Now? series is Michael Knight (class of 2013) who is currently serving as a missionary in Namibia. Here is his interview: [Read more…]

Have Questions about Marriage and Divorce? Here is a Fantastic New Book That Answers the Key Questions

When it comes to shepherding God’s flock, there is little doubt that pastors spend a disproportionate amount of time addressing marriage problems in their congregations. Since marriage is a foundational institution created by God (Gen 2:23-25), it is perhaps no surprise that Satan attacks it relentlessly.

For this reason, I am excited about the new volume by RTS Charlotte counseling professor Jim Newheiser entitled, Marriage, Divorce and Remarriage: Critical Questions and Answers (P&R, 2017).

One of the unique features of the book is the structure.  It is arranged into 40 different questions about marriage and divorce which allows the reader to turn directly to the question that is most pertinent to the situation they are facing.

For anyone in pastoral ministry, or who regularly finds themselves in counseling situations, this volume is a treasure trove of biblical, theological, Christ-centered wisdom about marriage. And all of it is delivered with a gracious, warm pastoral touch that comes from Newheiser’s many years of pastoral and counseling experience. [Read more…]

Can a Person Choose Their Own Race? The Inevitable Hypocrisy of Relativism

Well, Rachel Dolezal is in the news again.

You might recall her story from a couple of years ago.  Dolezal was the civil rights activist and the former head of the NAACP in Spokane, WA.  But, there was one little problem.

She wasn’t black.

Although she presented herself as African American–a bit of a prerequisite for heading up a chapter of the NAACP–it turns out that she was not black after all.   Indeed she was a blonde, freckle-faced white girl born to two white parents.  She had merely changed her outward appearance.

Not surprisingly, objective facts regarding biology, genetics, and ethnicity were not a deterrent to Dolezal’s insistence that she was black.  “I identify as black,” she told Matt Lauer.  In other words, I get to decide what is true.  Reality is what I make it. [Read more…]

My New “Go To” Commentary on the Pastoral Epistles

When it comes to finding good commentaries, one of the challenges is that most commentaries are limited by the the niche they are designed to fill.

Some commentaries are devotional.  Some are exegetical.  Some are practical/pastoral.  And others are highly academic.

Rare is the commentary that can, at least at some level, address all of these important needs. While no commentary can do this perfectly (especially under 1000 pages!), some come closer than others.

One of those rare and exceptional volumes is the new commentary on the Pastoral Epistles–1 & 2 Timothy and Titus–by my friend Andreas Köstenberger. Andreas is the senior research professor of New Testament at Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary in Wake Forest, NC. [Read more…]

Here’s a Sneak Peak at the Line Up of @RTSCharlotte Summer Classes

Every summer and winter term, RTS Charlotte offers a slate of intensive week-long classes on a variety of subjects.  These are designed to allow the student to knock-out a complete class in just a few days (although papers and exams are due later).

These sorts of classes are particularly popular for students who don’t live in Charlotte because they can come on campus for just a week and complete the lectures.  It saves a ton of travel time.

This summer we have courses in Systematic Theology, Apologetics, Historical Theology, Campus Ministry, Preaching, New Testament and Biblical Counseling.

Here’s the line up: [Read more…]

What Is So Important about the Second Century? A Preview of My New Book

Due out this Summer (hopefully by July) is my latest book: Christianity at the Crossroads: How the Second Century Shaped the Future of the Church (London: SPCK/IVP Academic, 2017).

For some, the rationale for a book on the second century is quite obvious.  But others may wonder, “What is so important about the second century anyway?”

So, just a few quick thoughts on why I wrote this book: [Read more…]

My New Testament Canon Interview with @BillMounce Is Now Available

Back in March of this year, I sat down with Bill Mounce for about three hours to discuss the origins and authority of the New Testament canon.

Of course, Bill is the author of numerous books, but is known most for his excellent Greek grammar, Basics of Biblical Greek, which we use here at RTS Charlotte.

We covered all sorts of topics like the definition of canon, canonical models, the self-authenticating nature of canon, and the development of the canon in early Christianity.

These interviews are now available on the Bill’s Biblical Training website here (or click picture below).

As a side note, Bill has gathered a tremendous group of scholars together on his website who speak on a variety of other topics.  Examples include Greg Beale, John Piper, Tom Schreiner, Craig Blomberg, Darrell Bock, and many others.  Makes sure to check it out!

Taking Back Christianese #10: “Jesus is Neither Democrat nor Republican”

There is little doubt that the last year has been one of the most contentious political phases in our nation’s history.  Thus it is no surprise that all sorts of Christian stock phrases about politics have been used and reused.

One of my favorites is the phrase, “Jesus is neither a Democrat nor a Republican.”  This is one of those phrases that is used so frequently that no one really bothers to ask what it means; nor does anyone bother to ask whether it is really true.

So, I want to analyze this phrase in our 10th and final installment in the “Taking Back Christianese” series. Rather than following the standard structure for this series, I simply want to ask what people might mean by this phrase (and whether what they mean makes sense).  Here are some options: [Read more…]

The @RTSCharlotte Women’s Bible Study is Back

From 2014 to 2016, I taught a weekly Bible study on the RTS campus for women in the Charlotte community.  We studied the book of Romans over the course of two years.

It was so encouraging to see the enthusiastic response from these women who were eager to learn more about the message of Romans.  All 42 sessions are available on HD video (along with handouts) on the RTS Charlotte website here.

After taking a year off, we are kicking off the study again this coming fall.  This time we will be studying the book of Hebrews.  This is a fantastic book for many reasons, but most of all because it magnifies the supremacy of Christ in all things.

If you are in the area, we would love to have you join us.  Or feel free to pass this info along to anyone you know who might be interested.

The format of the study will be similar to the prior years, but please see the details below: [Read more…]

The Achilles Heel of the New Perspective on Paul

As most readers know, there has been a long scholarly debate over what is known as the New Perspective(s) on Paul (NPP). This approach argues that “justification” in Paul does not mean what many Christians (especially Reformed folks) have always believed.

In short, NPP advocates (e.g., N.T. Wright, James D.G. Dunn) argue that when Paul mentions “justification by faith” he is not referring to a doctrine about how one gets saved but to how membership in the covenant community can be obtained without the standard Jewish boundary markers laid out in the law of Moses (food laws, circumcision, Sabbath observance).

In other words, justification is less about soteriology and more about ecclesiology. It is not about how a person becomes a Christian but a declaration that they have become a Christian. [Read more…]

Remembering the Rural: Do Modern Church Plants Focus too Much on the City?

One of the wonderful developments in Reformed denominations in the last generation is a renewed emphasis on church planting.  It is a burgeoning movement in my denomination (PCA), and one of the reasons that RTS Charlotte launched the Center for Church Planting last Fall.

One of the notable features of this new church planting movement is the near exclusive focus on planting churches in cities.  Most church planters, it seems, want to go urban and not rural.

And let me say that there are many positives about this focus on cities. Certainly, and most obviously, cities are filled with lots of people and for that reason alone make a good target area for church plants.  There are also strategic considerations.  Targeting leaders and influencers–many of which are located in major cities–makes a lot of sense.

However, in recent years, this interest in the urban has sometimes turned into a superiority of the urban, and even a disdain of the rural. Those who are a part of urban churches can sometimes project an attitude, even unwittingly, that urban centers are where “real” ministry happens. [Read more…]

A Word of Encouragement to Weary Pastors: God Does Not View Your Labors as “Filthy Rags”

When it comes to our justification–our legal standing before God–our own good works are in no way the grounds of God’s declaration that we are “righteous.”  Indeed, that is the very thing that makes the gospel good news.  We are saved not by what we have done, but by what Christ has done.  We are accepted by God not because of our works, but in spite of them.

But what does God think of our good works after we are saved?  Here is where, unfortunately, Christians often receive mixed messages.  Somewhere along the way we have begun to believe that our pride is best held in check, and God’s grace is most magnified, when we denigrate all our efforts and all our labors as merely “filthy rags” in the sight of God (Is 64:6) .

But does God really view the Spirit-wrought works of his own children in such a fashion?  Is God pleased with only Christ’s work, and always displeased with our own? [Read more…]

Update on @RTSCharlotte Vision Banquet with Andrew Peterson and Michael Tarwater

Last night, RTS Charlotte put on its bi-annual vision banquet at the Quail Hollow Club here in Charlotte (the location of the 2017 PGA Championship).  It was a beautiful venue overlooking one of the country’s finest golf courses.

We were blessed to hear from Michael Tarwater, recently retired CEO of Carolinas Medical Center, one of the largest hospital systems in the Southeast. The Tarwaters have been long-time friends of the seminary.

And our musical guest was Andrew Peterson, one of the most gifted Christian artists today.  Andrew played a number of songs from his recent album The Burning Edge of Dawn and he was a delight to listen to.

The theme of the evening was “In the world but not of it.”  We explored how the seminary is equipping today’s leaders to withstand the barrage of challenges from our culture and to help Christians live out a faithful life in an ever more hostile world.

Here are a number of photos that capture the feel of evening.  Enjoy! [Read more…]

Kevin DeYoung Appointed as Assistant Professor of Systematic Theology at RTS Charlotte

RTS Charlotte has a big announcement as it pertains to our faculty.  Here is the press release that went out today:

Reformed Theological Seminary is pleased to announce the appointment of Kevin DeYoung as Assistant Professor of Systematic Theology at RTS Charlotte, beginning June 1, 2017.  Kevin was formerly a Chancellor’s Professor for RTS, but will now be a residential, voting member of the Charlotte faculty, teaching several courses each academic year. [Read more…]

Can We Trust the New Testament? My Interview with Ratio Christi

Last week I did a live “TV” interview with Ratio Christi on the topic, “Can We Trust the New Testament?” The interview covered a wide range of topics from textual criticism to bible contradictions to the development of the NT Canon. Here it is:

Did the Gospel Authors Think They Were Writing Scripture?

One of the most common misconceptions about the New Testament canon is that the authors of these writings had no idea that they were writing Scripture-like books.  I dealt with this misconception on a general level here, showing that there was a clear apostolic self-awareness amongst the New Testament authors.

While this apostolic self-awareness may be easy to show for authors like Paul, what about the gospels which, technically speaking, are formally anonymous?  Do their authors exhibit awareness that they were writing something like Scripture?  To explore this further, let us just consider just one of our gospels, namely the Gospel of Matthew.

The first step is to get our expectations clear.  We should not expect that Matthew would say something like, “I, Matthew, am writing Scripture as I write this book.” Gospels are a very different genre than epistles, and we would not expect the authors to provide the same type of direct and explicit statements about their own authority as Paul does in his letters. Indeed, the gospel authors are decidedly behind the scenes and only rarely make appearances within the flow of the story. [Read more…]

Veggie Tales, Moralism, and Modern Preaching

A number of years ago, my kids were into Veggie Tales.  And, truthfully, so was I.  It was actually quite enjoyable to watch these charming videos, cataloging the journeys of Bob the Tomato and Larry the Cucumber, et al.  Indeed, I could probably recite the opening song word for word.

The other day, my daughter Emma (who is now 16) told that she had heard some folks critiquing Veggie Tales as just “moralism” and not something Christians should let their kids be watching.  So, she asked me what I thought about that.

This sort of critique reminded of an interview several years ago with World Magazine in which the creator of Veggie Tales, Phil Vischer, expressed regret over the “moralism” of Veggie Tales:

I looked back at the previous 10 years and realized I had spent 10 years trying to convince kids to behave Christianly without actually teaching them Christianity. And that was a pretty serious conviction. You can say, “Hey kids, be more forgiving because the Bible says so,” or “Hey kids, be more kind because the Bible says so!” But that isn’t Christianity, it’s morality.

Now, there is much to be commended in Vischer’s realization. Certainly Christianity is more than simply behaving in a certain way.  Christianity, at its core, is about God’s redemptive work in Christ to save sinners by grace.

Moreover, when it comes to proclaiming the Christian message, we always need to present the imperative (here’s what you should do) within the context of the indicative (here’s what Christ has done).  The latter is always the foundation for the former.

However, that said, I wonder if Veggie Tales can be so quickly swept aside as non-Christian. [Read more…]

Taking Back Christianese #8: “It’s Not My Place to Judge Someone Else”

We live in a culture where the thing that is most offensive is not doing something wrong, but telling someone else that they are doing something wrong.

Bad behavior gets a pass.  Calling it bad behavior does not.

Of course, this cultural trend should not be surprising. We are told in Scripture that depraved cultures “call evil good and good evil” (Is 5:20).

But, living in a culture like this has had its effect on Christians. We have been conditioned to never condemn certain kinds of behavior lest we are chastened by an avalanche of social media accusing us of being legalistic and judgmental.

Thus, even in Christian circles we often hear the claim, “It’s not my place to judge someone else.”

This popular phrase is the next installment in the “Taking Back Christianese” series. Our purpose in this post (as in all the posts in this series) is simply to analyze the strengths and weaknesses of this phrase.  We will do this by asking three questions:  (1) Why do people use this phrase?  (2) What is correct or helpful about this phrase?  and (3) What is problematic about this phrase? [Read more…]

Did Jesus Claim To Be God?

One of the fundamental question for Christians is whether Jesus claimed to be God.  Did he really present himself as divine?  Did the NT authors think Jesus was divine?

This issue has become especially important in recent years as some scholars continue to dispute whether Jesus ever claimed such a thing. Bart Ehrman’s, How Jesus Became God (HarperOne, 2014), is a key example.

For a response to Ehrman, see my review of his book here, and the full length work edited by Michael Bird, How God Became Jesus (Zondervan, 2014) which includes contributions from a number of scholars.

I provide a brief answer to these questions in the video below which was released today for the RTS series “Wisdom Wednesday“: [Read more…]

A Curious Clue About the Origins of the New Testament Canon

Although most discussions about the development of the canon focus on the patristic period (second century and later), there is much canonical gold yet to mine from the pages of the New Testament itself.  Unfortunately, this step is often skipped.

There are a number of possible reasons for why it is skipped.  But perhaps most people just assume that the whole idea of a “canon” is a late development anyway, and thus we wouldn’t expect to find anything about it in the New Testament books themselves.

Aside from the fact that such a position already presupposes an entire canonical “worldview” known as the extrinsic model (for my critique of this model see my book The Question of Canon), it keeps us from noticing some fascinating clues.

One passage that I think contains a number of intriguing clues is [Read more…]

Where Are They Now? @RTSCharlotte Alumnus Blair Smith

As many of you know, last year our beloved Dr. Doug Kelly retired from RTS Charlotte after 33 years as a professor.  He is now Professor of Theology Emeritus.

Upon his retirement many of us wondered who would replace Doug (and how that would even be possible!).  In  particular, we wondered whether this person could share Doug’s expertise in Trinitarian thought during the patristic period.

Our prayers were answered when we hired one of our own alumni (class of 2003), and former student of Dr. Kelly’s, Blair Smith.

Blair is now our new Assistant Professor of Systematic Theology.  He is currently wrapping up his Ph.D. in Historical Theology (Patristics) at Durham University in England under Professor Lewis Ayres, one of the world’s leading patristic scholars.  The working title of his dissertation is “The Fatherhood of God in Fourth-Century Pro-Nicene Trinitarian Theology.”

As an alum, Blair is the next installment of our Where Are They Now? series. Blair is married to Lisa, and they have 4 children: Eleanor, Douglas, Lucile, and Graham. [Read more…]

How Do You Obey God When He Asks You To Do the Impossible?

In all of the many Star Wars films (and there are too many now), one of my favorite segments is where Yoda is training the young Luke Skywalker in The Empire Strikes Back.

After Luke fails to lift his X-wing fighter out of the swamp by using the Force, he complains to Yoda, “You want the impossible.”  Then he walks off into the woods to pout.

Of course, Yoda then proceeds to lift the X-wing fighter out of the swamp himself and sets it on dry land.  Luke stares in amazement, “I don’t believe it.”

Yoda’s reply is classic, “That is why you fail.”

While the quasi-Gnostic, New Age worldview of the Star Wars saga makes me hesitant to use it as an example, I have to say that a good lesson can be learned in this instance.

In short, the “impossible” can only be accomplished by faith. [Read more…]

Did Early Christians Believe That Jesus Would Return in Their Own Lifetime? Implications for Canon

One of the most-oft repeated ideas about the earliest Christians is that they believed that the Kingdom of God would come (apocalyptically) within their own lifetime.  In fact Schweitzer famously argued that Jesus himself thought the world would end in his own lifetime; of course the world didn’t end and Jesus died disillusioned on the cross saying, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” (Mark 15:34).

In recent years, some have suggested that this belief in early Christianity would even have affected the development of the canon.   If Christians thought the world would end in their own lifetime, then, it is argued, they would not have been interested in composing new scriptural books.  Thus, the idea of a canon must be a later ecclesiastical development.

But, this argument simply doesn’t hold. [Read more…]

Here’s a List of Some Important Publications by @RTSCharlotte Faculty in 2016

Since the Spring 2017 academic term just began, I thought it would be helpful to highlight what our faculty have been up to (at least as it pertains to publications) over the last year.

One of the blessings of being at the Charlotte campus is that I get to serve with some of the finest faculty in the country in their respective fields. If you are planning to go to seminary, and you are making a decision this Spring, then hopefully this list will help!

Here is a quick sampling of some recent activity (alphabetized by author): [Read more…]

Scripture in the Early Church: The 2017 Ligonier Winter Conference

A couple of weeks ago, I had the opportunity to join R.C. Sproul, Michael Haykin, and Stephen Nichols for the Ligonier 2017 Winter Conference.  The theme was “Scripture in the Early Church.”

There were a number of great sessions on a variety of topics related to early Christianity, such as “Preaching God’s Word in the Early Church,”  “Living God’s Word in the Early Church,” and “Heresy in the Early Church.”

My session was on “God’s Word in the Early Church,” where I explored the unique qualities of our four gospels over against apocryphal texts like the Gospel of  Thomas.  You can watch here: [Read more…]

Are Christians Arrogant? Rethinking the Definition of Humility

One of the most common objections made to the absolute claims of Christianity is that Christians are arrogant.  Christians are arrogant to claim that they are right; arrogant to claim others are wrong; arrogant to claim that truth can be known.

Unfortunately, in the midst of such accusations, no one bothers to ask which definition of humility is being used.

Over the years, the definition of humility has undergone a gradual but nonetheless profound change.  Especially in the intellectual community.  In the modern day, humility has basically become synonymous with another word: uncertainty.

To be uncertain is to be humble.  To be certain is to be arrogant.   Thus, the cardinal sin in the intellectual world is to claim to know anything for sure.

Of course, this shift presents a real problem for Christianity.  Christians believe that God has revealed himself clearly in his Word.   Thus, when it comes to key historical questions (Who was Jesus? What did he say? What did he do?) or key theological questions (Who is God? What is Heaven? How does one get there?), Christians believe they have a basis on which they can claim certainty: God’s revelation. [Read more…]

@RTSCharlotte Welcomes @HeathLambert To Teach on Transgender Confusion

How do modern psychological theories fit with the Christian worldview?  That is an enormously important question.

If you want to explore the answers to that question, then you will want to know that this week (Jan 16-20) RTS Charlotte hosts Dr. Heath Lambert who will teach our Theology and Secular Psychology course. This course is part of Charlotte’s biblical counseling degree program.

To sign up for the class, see here. [Read more…]

Where Are They Now? RTS Charlotte Alumnus Dave Latham

One of the joys of training seminary students is sending them out and watching how they bless the lives of so many other people.  While there is always a sadness with the departure of each graduating class, that sadness is lessened by the joy that comes from seeing the impact of their ministries.

But every once in a while, one of those grads returns.

That is what happened with Dave Latham (class of 2010), who is the next installment in the Where Are They Now? alumni series. After five years in RUF, Dave returned in 2015 to join the RTS Charlotte team as our Director of Admissions.  And it has been a delight having him back.

As one of our own grads, Dave understands as well as anyone the vision, ethos, and distinctives of RTS.  If you are thinking about seminary, I encourage you to reach out to him (you can begin here).

Here is his interview: [Read more…]

Taking Back Christianese #7: “America is a Christian Nation”

In any election year (especially one as tumultuous and exhausting as 2016), there will be claims and counter-claims about what values and principles should guide the United States of America.

And such debates inevitably lead to appeals to the history and heritage of our country.  What principles guided the founding fathers?  Were the founding fathers Christians?  Were the founding documents Christian in nature?

Thus we come to the next phrase in our “Taking Back Christianese” series: “America is a Christian nation.”

Our purpose in this post (as in all the posts in this series) is simply to analyze the strengths and weaknesses of this phrase.  We will do this by asking three questions:  (1) Why do people use this phrase?  (2) What is correct or helpful about this phrase?  and (3) What is problematic about this phrase?

Why Do People Use This Phrase?

There are a number of reasons this phrase is used by believers.  Some may simply use it historically. It is a phrase that attempts to capture some historical truths about our country and how it was conceived.  As for whether this phrase accurately captures such truths, that is something we will address below.

But other believers may use it as more of an argument.  Given the rapid moral and cultural decline of our country, the idea that “America is a Christian nation” is designed to stem the tide.  It is a way of pushing back against the secularization all around us by reminding people that things were not always this way.  It reminds people that Christians were, at one time, not viewed as cultural pariahs.

What is Correct or Helpful about This Phrase?

One of the challenges of this phrase is that people can mean dramatically different things when they use it.  So it might be helpful to get some of the options on the table.  The following list (not exhaustive) moves from the most stringent interpretation of the phrase to the most lax: [Read more…]

Check out @RTSCharlotte’s Winter 2017 Classes

In order to make seminary as accessible and flexible as possible, RTS offers week-long intensive classes in both Winter (January) and Summer terms.  The students receive all the lectures in a single 5-day block (Mon-Fri), and then complete the assignments and exams over the following months.

This is particularly useful for students who don’t live in Charlotte but are willing to travel here for one week to knock out a class.  Our world class hub airport makes that  particularly easy!

If you are interested to see what is coming this Winter, here is the lineup below: [Read more…]

What’s the Very First Time We See a NT Book Used as Scripture? My Article in the Festschrift for Stanley Porter

Few issues in the study of the NT canon have generated more discussion (and disagreement) than that of the canon’s date.  When were Christian writings first regarded as “Scripture”?  When was the first time we can see that happening?

For many modern scholars, the key time is the end of the second century.  Only then, largely due to the influence of Irenaeus, were these books first regarded as Scripture.

But, I think there is evidence that NT books were regarded as Scripture much earlier.  And some of this evidence is routinely overlooked.  A good example is the widely neglected text tucked away in 1 Tim 5:18:

For the Scripture says, “You shall not muzzle an ox when it treads out the grain,” and “The laborer deserves his wages.”

The first part of this quote comes from Deut 25:4, but where does the second part come from?  There is one text, and one text only, that matches these words, namely the statement of Jesus in Luke 10:7.

Could 1 Timothy be citing Luke’s Gospel as Scripture?

I explore this issue extensively in my recent article, “First Timothy 5:18 and Early Canon Consciousness: Reconsidering a Problematic Text,” which appears in the new festschrift for my friend Stan Porter: The Language and Literature of the New Testament: Essays in Honor of Stanley E. Porter’s 60th Birthday, eds. Lois K. Fuller Dow, Craig A. Evans, Andrew W. Pitts (Leiden, E.J. Brill: 2017): 680-700. [Read more…]

Here is My @TGC Conversation with Nancy Guthrie about How to Teach the Book of Romans

When it comes to understanding the gospel of salvation by grace alone, there are few books more foundational than Romans.

It was Romans that Martin Luther was reading when the light clicked on regarding justification: “The righteous shall live by faith” (1:17).  And it was Romans that Augustine read when he heard the child’s voice say tolle lege: “So then let us cast off the works of darkness and put on the armor of light” (13:12).

That very verse led to Augustine’s conversion.

The impact of Romans has been felt in every generation of the church.  And, of course, we can’t forget Martin Lloyd-Jones’ legendary series preaching through Romans on Friday nights at Westminster Chapel in London.  Before it was all done, his series spanned 11 years and 372 sermons.

And I have personally been immersed in Romans over the last few years as I have taught a weekly RTS Charlotte women’s Bible study on the book.  You can watch all 42 HD videos of the series here.

For all these reasons, I was excited to talk in October with my friend Nancy Guthrie about how to teach the book of Romans. Nancy has been doing a fantastic audio series entitled “Help Me Teach the Bible” where she interviews pastors and scholars on various books.  I was privileged to be a part of it.

You can read about my interview on the TGC website here.  To listen, here is part 1 of my conversation with Nancy, on Romans 1-7: [Read more…]

Five Myths About the Ancient Heresy of Gnosticism

In the world of biblical studies, at least among some critical scholars, Gnosticism has been the darling for sometime now.  Especially since the discovery of the so-called “Gnostic Gospels” at Nag Hammadi in 1945, scholars have sung the praises of this alternative version of Christianity.

Gnosticism  was a heretical version of Christianity that burst on the scene primarily in the second century and gave the orthodox Christians a run for their money.  And it seems that some scholars look back and wish that the Gnostics had prevailed.

After all, it is argued, traditional Christianity was narrow, dogmatic, intolerant, elitist, and mean-spirited, whereas Gnosticism was open-minded, all-welcoming, tolerant and loving.  Given this choice, which would you choose?

While this narrative about free-spirited Gnosticism being sorely oppressed by those mean and uptight orthodox Christians might sound rhetorically compelling, it simply isn’t borne out by the facts.  So, here are five claims often made about Gnosticism that prove to be more myth than reality: [Read more…]

In Honor of Thomas Oden: Seven Essential Lessons Learned from an Evangelical Scholar in the Secular Academy

I just learned here that the well-known evangelical scholar Thomas Oden has passed away.  Oden was known for starting out as a classic liberal scholar and later becoming orthodox–a rare feat in today’s world.

A number of years ago, I had the joy of meeting Tom when he came to RTS Charlotte to speak at our Harold O.J. Brown Lecture series.  He was a delight.  In honor of his passing, I republish below an article I did in 2015 on his book, A Change of Heart.

I think that book (and the summary below) captures the essence of his life’s story.  And it has a number of things to teach evangelical scholars in the academy today.  If you have a scholar in your life, and are looking for a good Christmas gift, buy them Oden’s book.

When I originally published the article (see here), I received a kind email from Tom saying how much he appreciated it.  That was encouraging to me. So, I publish the article again here and hope it is encouraging to you: [Read more…]

Further Reflections on the Belief That “All Sins Are Equal”: It’s More Widespread Than You Think

Two days ago I posted an article on the phrase, “All Sins are Equal in God’s Eyes.”  This was the latest installment in the “Taking Back Christianese” series.

In that post, I argued that this phrase is frequently misunderstood and misused.  Paradoxically, some use the phrase to bolster the seriousness of sin (by arguing every sin is equally a big deal), while other use the phrase to downplay the seriousness of sin (by arguing that no sins are any worse than others).

In short, I argued that while no sin is small, some sins are smaller (or larger).  Put differently, sin is serious enough that one is sufficient to separate you from God, but that does not mean all sins are equally heinous.

After writing that article, and seeing the response that it received, I decided to poke around Twitter to see how common this belief “all sins are equal” really is.  I was surprised by what I found.

Of course, what people say on Twitter is not a scientific test of what people generally believe.  But, it is illuminating nonetheless.  Below are a few examples to give you a feel for how the phrase “all sins are equal” is being used in our world today.

I encourage you to read each one. It is a stunning picture of what our world believes about sin. And here is the thing to realize: what a person believes about sin really does affect their behavior. [Read more…]

Taking Back Christianese #6: “All Sins Are Equal in God’s Sight”

For advocates of Reformed theology, we are keen to emphasize the seriousness of sin.  Sin is a big deal.  Each and every one of them. Indeed, this is precisely why we all desperately need a Savior.

As true as this is, however, our enthusiasm for maintaining the seriousness of sin (which is good) can lead us to make additional statements which may not be so true (depending on how they are understood).  One of these statements, and the next installment in our “Taking Back Christianese” series,  is, “All sins are equal in God’s sight.”

On the surface, this phrase seems like a great way to uphold our commitment to sin’s seriousness.  It is the equivalent of the phrase “there are no little sins” (a line you probably first heard from your parents after you locked your little sister in her room).

Our purpose in this post (as in all the posts in this series) is simply to analyze the strengths and weaknesses of this phrase.  We will do this by asking three questions:  (1) Why do people use this phrase?  (2) What is correct or helpful about this phrase?  and (3) What is problematic about this phrase? [Read more…]

Was Jesus Married to Mary Magdalene? Revisiting a Stubborn Conspiracy Theory

When I was a kid, I always used to enjoy the “whack a mole” game at the local arcade (yes, we had to go to an “arcade” to play games).  You had be quick to win that game.  Each time you hit a mole, another would pop up, taking its place.

Of course, that is what made the game both fun and frustrating at the same time.  No matter how hard you worked, it always seemed that the moles just wouldn’t go away.

Sometimes it’s like that in the world of biblical scholarship.  Theories pop up, are quickly refuted by the academy, and then, just when you think they have gone away, they pop again.  Some theories just keep coming back.

In 2003, Dan Brown’s best-selling fictional book The Da Vinci Code raised (again) the idea that Jesus was married to Mary Magdalene and that this fact had been cleverly suppressed by the church for thousands of years. Apparently it took a fictional author to uncover the “real” truth.

Brown was not the first to make such a claim, of course, but his book gave it new life.  At least for a while.  But, after a chorus of scholars showed the claim to be (again) without merit, the chatter about Mary Magdalene died down a bit.

But this particular mole will not go away.  Filmmaker Simcha Jacobovici wrote an article for the Huffington Post on this very topic entitled, “Jesus’ Marriage to Mary the Magdalene is Fact, not Fiction.” [Read more…]

8 Theses That Helps Us Think Biblically about Transgenderism

The debate in our culture over sexuality has been raging for a while now.  And sometimes it is difficult to find calm and clear voices who can cut through the rhetoric and the posturing and just provide solid biblical teaching on these complex issues.

For this reason, I am thankful for RTS Charlotte’s Dr. James Anderson, associate professor of theology and philosophy.  In the video below, Dr. Anderson addresses our students at a lunch-time conversation on the issue of transgenderism. It is a wonderfully clear and concise treatment of this important subject.

James is one of the brightest minds in philosophical theology today.  Check out his website here, and his latest book Why Should I Believe Christianity?  If you are looking to study apologetics, philosophy, or theology, you need to come to Charlotte to study with him.

In this video, James lays out eight helpful theses about transgenderism, followed by some interesting Q&A.  Here are the theses: [Read more…]

My @RTSCharlotte Class “The Origins and Authority of the NT Canon” Is Now Online @RTSGlobalEd

Over the last decade, I have taught an elective here at the RTS Charlotte campus entitled “The Origin and Authority of the NT Canon.” We cover a variety of subjects related to the origins of the NT, including definition of canon, theology of canon, epistemology of canon, the historical reception of the canon, and so on.

It was this class that gave birth to my book, Canon Revisited (Crossway, 2012). I was unable to find a book on canon that answered the questions my students were asking. So, I decided to write one that did!

On of my favorite parts of the class has been a section where we explore early New Testament manuscripts and the way those manuscripts inform us about the history of the NT. We also read from high resolution photographs of P66–a late second-century copy of the Gospel of John (see inset photo). [Read more…]

How to Struggle with Grief: A Conversation with David and Nancy Guthrie (@saysNancyGuth3)

Over the years, I have noticed that the Reformed folks have a robust doctrine of sin, but (in my opinion) a fairly thin doctrine of suffering.  And this is true in the broader evangelical world as well.

We tend to think of sin as simply impacting behavior or ethical choices.  And we sometimes forget that sin also impacts every aspect of creation.  We live in a fallen, broken world.  So, we should not be surprised when our lives are affected by that fallen, broken world.

As a result of this blind spot, most people simply don’t know how to suffer or grieve biblically.  Even more, most people don’t know how to minister to a person who is suffering.

For these reasons, I was thankful to host David and Nancy Guthrie on the RTS Charlotte campus a couple of weeks ago.  They came to speak on the topic of “What Grieving People Wish You Knew.” [Read more…]

@RTSCharlotte Launches New Center for Church Planting

Last night, RTS Charlotte hosted a special event that formally launched our new Center for Church Planting (CCP).

The new center will include a MDiv emphasis in church planting along with a host of other types of specialized training for church planters. The church planting students will benefit from church planting conferences and lectures, mentoring from experienced church planters, internship opportunities in local church plants, and a church planters fellowship were students can grow and learn in a tight-knit community.

To my knowledge, this is the only program of its kind at a Reformed seminary in the United States. [Read more…]

The Reception of the Book of Revelation in the Early Church

There is little doubt that most people are confused by the book of Revelation. Perhaps is not surprising, then, that people are equally confused by its journey into the New Testament canon.

Revelation is one of those “debated” books in the early church, along with books like 2 Peter, 2-3 John, and Jude.

If you are looking for more on the canonical history of Revelation, I point you to my recent article entitled, “The Reception of the Book of Revelation in the Early Church” which has just come out in the new volume Book of Seven Seals: The Peculiarity of Revelation, its Manuscripts, Attestation and Transmission, eds. Thomas J. Kraus and Michael Sommer (Mohr Siebeck, 2016), 159-174. [Read more…]

Does the Bible Have Mistakes?

One of the most common questions I get from people when I travel and speak is “Does the Bible have mistakes?”  People are concerned about contradictions, problems, and inconsistencies.

I can’t address that issue fully in one blog post, but here is a brief video I did for the RTS “Wisdom Wednesdays” series that at least offers an overview of the issue:

For the many other excellent “Wisdom Wednesday” videos from RTS faculty, see here.

How My Books are Being Banned at the Society of Biblical Literature

I thought book banning was supposed to be a thing of the past–particularly among the self-proclaimed liberal elites.  We live in a more sophisticated time where all views are accepted. Tolerance should be our highest priority.

Or so we are told.

But, apparently book banning is back in vogue.  Dr. John Kutsko, executive director of the Society of Biblical Literature, has just proposed that InterVarsity Press–one of the largest evangelical presses in the country– be suspended from having a book stall at the annual SBL meeting (starting in 2017).

The reason for this ban is the recent decision by InterVarsity to uphold the biblical view of marriage and to ask their employees to do the same (see IVP clarification on their policy here).

Since I have a current book with IVP Academic, The Question of Canon, and a forthcoming book with them on Christianity in the second century, SBL would effectively be banning my books from the annual meeting.  And that would be true for hundreds and hundreds of other IVP authors.

Of course, the overt hypocrisy of this is stunning. An organization that professes to be for tolerance and for accepting all opinions, has now decided to be, in effect, a “confessional” institution where the ideologies of the ruling committee decide what people should and shouldn’t believe. [Read more…]

Taking Back Christianese #5: “Just Ask Jesus into Your Heart”

Some of us grew up in churches where it seemed every Sunday included an atlar call. Congregants were invited to walk the aisle and to make a “decision” for Christ.

During these occasions, very specific language would be used to explain how a person becomes a Christian.  “Just ask Jesus into your heart,” was the common refrain, usually followed by an appeal to Rev 3:20, “Behold, I stand at the door and knock; if any one hears My voice and opens the door, I will come in to him.”

Thus, we come to the next installment in the “Taking Back Christianese” series.  Our purpose here is to evaluate the phrase, “Just ask Jesus into your heart.”  Like most of the phrases in this series, it can have both positive and negative aspects, depending on how it is used. [Read more…]

7 Tips on How to Survive Your Ordination Exam

Although seminary is a challenging experience in and of itself, something more formidable (at least in terms of stress) awaits most students.  The dreaded ordination exam.

This is the time when a candidate stands up in front of the presbytery (perhaps with 50 -75 elders in attendance) and is publicly examined, probed, prodded, and picked at for several hours on a variety of topics ranging from church history to sacraments to eschatology to the famed Book of Church Order.

And from candidate’s perspective, it is easy to feel like you are looking into the eyes of a hungry cat.  And you are the mouse.

So, needless to say, I have often been asked about whether I have any pieces of advice for students entering into this process.  Although this is by no means exhaustive, here are a few thoughts that I hope are helpful: [Read more…]

Why Should I Believe Christianity? One of the Best Books on Apologetics This Year

When we think about what might help the church engage with an ever-more-hostile world, the issue isn’t that we don’t have enough apologetic books (we have tons of them).  The issue is that we don’t have the right kind of apologetic books.

There is a trend in apologetics today towards what I might call a “minimalistic” approach to defending the faith. Basically this is where someone tries to prove the least amount possible about Christianity in order to get the non-Christian to take one step in our direction.  And this is typically done with an evidentialist methodology using the so-called consensus of modern scholars as the main authority.

There are a number of challenges to this sort of approach which I cannot take up here.  But, what is needed is an apologetic approach that is more full-orbed, holistic, and worldview-oriented.  Such an approach doesn’t simply try to placate the non-Christian by meeting his requirements, but it challenges the non-Christian’s worldview from the inside out.

Such an approach is embodied in James Anderson’s new book, Why Should I Believe Christianity? (Christian Focus, 2016).  Anderson, Associate Professor of Theology and Philosophy at RTS Charlotte, has written one of the most compelling cases for the truth of Christianity that I’ve ever read.

There are several features about Anderson’s new volume that are worth noting:

[Read more…]

Where Are They Now? RTS Charlotte Alumnus Chad Grindstaff

One of the things we love here at RTS Charlotte is church planting. In fact, we have just launched this fall the new Center for Church Planting on the Charlotte campus.  It’s still in its infancy, but you can read the initial announcement here.

On this note, I am pleased that this installment of our Where Are They Now? alumni series features Chad Grindstaff (class of 2005 ).  Chad is a church-planter in Cincinnati and is a great example of how our grads are planting new churches all over the country (and the world) .

Here is his interview:

1. What are you currently doing?  

We are in the fourth year of a church plant in a suburb northwest of Cincinnati, Ohio.

[Read more…]

Is the Bible Foundational to Christianity? Engaging with Andy Stanley

One of the most profound challenges for Christians as we live in an ever-more-hostile world is how to properly defend the faith against the incessant attacks against it.  And these attacks have taken their toll. We have seen far too many casualties over the years as people leave the church because they had doubts or questions that were never answered.

It is precisely this issue that is behind Andy Stanley’s recent sermon, “The Bible Told Me So” (preached Aug 28, 2016). Stanley, son of well-known Atlanta pastor, Charles Stanley, is the senior pastor of Northpoint Community Church in Alpharetta, GA.

Stanley’s concern in this sermon is for those who have experienced what he calls “deconversions”—people who went to church as a child but have drifted away from the faith as they have reached adulthood. They drifted away because they went to a church that refused to answer their difficult questions and insisted that they were “just supposed to have faith.”

There is little doubt that Stanley has put his finger on a critical issue for the church today, and he should be commended for it. We need to find a compelling way to address the questions and doubts people have about their faith without ducking the hard questions.

But while Stanley has correctly diagnosed the disease, serious questions remain about whether he has offered an adequate cure. Indeed, in many ways, his suggested cure becomes problematic enough that one begins to wonder whether it just might be more troubling than the disease itself.

So what is the cure that Stanley has offered?  In brief, Christians need to stop basing their faith on the Bible. [Read more…]

What is the Relationship Between Biblical Counseling and Preaching in the Local Church?

Here at RTS Charlotte, we are very excited about the recent arrival of Dr. Jim Newheiser, our new Associate Professor of Christian Counseling and Practical Theology, and the Director of the Counseling Program.

As many of you know, just a short time ago we launched a new Masters degree program in biblical counseling. This has been met with a great deal of enthusiasm and we believe it will meet a real need in the body of Christ.

Our program has assembled some of the finest faculty in biblical counseling today, as we have drawn upon leading figures all over the country.  Visiting professors have included David Powlison, Ed Welch, Rod Mays, Heath Lambert, Deepak Reju, Todd Stryd, Tim Lane, Jeff Forrey, and others.

But, every program needs a director, and we are thrilled Dr. Newheiser has joined our faculty.

Recently (Aug, 30, 2016), Dr. Newheiser offered the opening lecture of the year at our kick-off convocation event entitled, “The Relationship Between Biblical Counseling and Preaching in the Local Church.” Here is the video (starts with my welcome and then moves to Dr. Newheiser’s lecture): [Read more…]

This Book Really Needed to Be Written and Finally Someone Has Done It

Every once in a while a book comes along that meets such an important need that it makes you wonder, “Why hasn’t someone done this before?” Richard (Dick) Belcher, OT Professor and Academic Dean at RTS Charlotte, has written just such a book: Prophet, Priest and King: The Roles of Christ in the Bible and Our Roles Today (P&R, 2016).

Of course, in the Reformed world, the idea that the work of Christ can be divided into his three “offices” (prophet, priest, and king) has a long lineage. Although it appears in a number of places in the early fathers, the Reformers were the ones who expounded on it more fully.  Examples include John Calvin, John Owen, John Flavel, Thomas Boston, and Thomas Goodwin. It is also discussed in the Heidelberg Catechism (31-32).

So, it is a wonder that more hasn’t been written on it (at least in a full-length work) until now.

[Read more…]

Taking Back Christianese #4: “We Have Freedom in Christ”

The wildly popular song “Let it Go,” from the movie Frozen, has the following lyrics:

It’s time to see what I can do
To test the limits and break through
No right, no wrong, no rules for me I’m free!

No doubt this captures the sentiment of much of our culture. People are looking to break through any last vestige of rules in our modern world.  And they define the lack of rules–no right or wrong–as freedom.

Christians sometimes use a phrase that captures (or at least can capture) a similar sentiment, “We have freedom in Christ.”  And Christians use this phrase in drastically different ways.  Indeed, it is hard to imagine of phrase that has so much potential for being both biblical and unbiblical depending on how it is used.

And thus we come to the next phrase in the series, “Taking Back Christianese.”  [Read more…]

What Resource Can You Give Your Lay Leaders to Help Them Teach the Bible?

A couple weeks ago I was interviewed on the Reformed Forum with my friends Camden Bucey and Jared Oliphint about my latest volume, A Biblical-Theological Introduction to the New Testament: The Gospel Realized (Crossway, 2016).

This is a new New Testament introduction composed of contributions from professors at Reformed Theological Seminary, both past and present.  The multi-author nature of the volume allows each prof to focus in upon their area of expertise–something not many intros are able to do.

But, there is another thing that is special about this new volume. It puts the focus on the message and theology of the biblical books.  Most introductions tend to be heavily weighted towards technical, higher-critical background issues that most lay folks struggle to understand. But this volume is designed to help pastors and lay-leaders effectively communicate the message of these books to their audience.

Simply put, this volume was designed to help people teach the Word of God.

Thus, one of the key  points that emerged during the interview was that I hope this volume can meet a real need among not only pastors, but lay leaders in the church.

[Read more…]

Is It a Waste of Time for Seminary Students (and Pastors) to Learn the Biblical Languages?

Note:  I post the article below every year as seminary students arrive. I hope it will prove helpful for a new group of readers (or maybe even prior ones!)

A few weeks ago, a new crop of seminary students began the grueling month-long experience of Summer Greek.   And, like all seminary students before them, they will begin to ask the question of why studying these ancient languages even matters.   After all, a few years after graduation all will be forgotten.   In the midst of a busy pastoral life, who could possibly maintain proficiency in the languages?

As a result of these questions, some students decide (very early on) that the biblical languages are just something to be endured.  They are like a hazing ritual at a college fraternity.  No one likes it, but you have to go through it to be in the club.  And then it will be over.

Behind this “take your medicine” approach to the biblical languages are a couple of assumptions that need to be challenged.  First, the characterization of pastoral ministry as somehow incompatible with the languages (due to busyness, or other causes), is an unfortunate misunderstanding of what a pastorate is all about.  No doubt, pastors should be busy shepherding their flock, meeting with ministry leaders, and running the church.   But, the core of the calling is to be a “minister of the word.”

And if the pastoral call is to be a minister of the Word, then there is a significant component of pastoral life that should be devoted to serious study of the biblical text—beyond just the preparation for that week’s sermon.   Put differently, pastors should continue to be students.   They need to be readers, thinkers, and theologians.

[Read more…]

How Should Christians Respond to Transgenderism?

It is now clear that our culture’s quest for sexual freedom is leading to some problematic and disturbing places.  A few years ago it was homosexual marriage and now it is the transgender movement.  It is frightening to think of what is next (here is one possibility).

There are a number of helpful resources that Christians have offered to respond to these trends.  But, I appreciate this recent and brief (only 3+ minutes) video by RTS Charlotte professor of theology and philosophy, James Anderson.

James is one of the brightest minds in philosophical theology today.  Check out his website here, and his latest book What’s Your Worldview?  If you are looking to study apologetics, philosophy, or theology, you need to come to Charlotte to study with him.

Here is James’ answer to the question: “What is the Christian Response to Transgenderism?”:

[Read more…]

All 42 Episodes of My Romans Bible Study (in HD) Are Now Available On Youtube

As many of you know, this past Spring I finished two years of teaching through the book of Romans in a community Bible study held here on the RTS Charlotte campus.

The Romans study was held every Wednesday morning for women in the Charlotte community.  I had the idea for this study a few years ago as I was looking for an opportunity to connect with the people in the city of Charlotte outside the formal classroom setting.  A lot of people are too intimidated to take one of the standard seminary classes, but I thought they may be willing to come on campus an participate in “normal” Bible Study.

As for why a women’s study, I simply thought that might work better in terms of building community among the participants.  And it seemed to be a hit, because we had 100-120 women attending regularly for two years.  It shows there is a real need in our world for the simple, basic teaching of God’s Word.

The 42 installments of this study are now available on a Youtube channel that you can find here.  They are all filmed in HD quality and really turned out great.  Our director of visual media, Matt McQuade, did a fantastic job.

[Read more…]

An Essential Key to Understanding the Development of the NT Canon

How and when the early church recognized the 27 books in our New Testament has always been a fascinating topic for people.  There is innate curiosity within us about why these books were regarded as Scripture and not others.

Unfortunately, the high level of interest in the New Testament canon is often combined with a high number of misconceptions about the canon.  For anyone willing to search for it, the internet is packed with myths, mistakes, and misunderstandings about how the whole process really worked.

While there is no quick cure for such misconceptions, there is one essential key that really helps clear away the cobwebs.  And that key is understanding the different categories of books in early Christianity.

We tend to think there are only two categories, those books that are “in” and those books that are “out.”  But, early Christians were more nuanced than than this.  In fact, they divided up books into four categories.  And understanding these categories will clear up a good number of the misunderstandings of the way the canon developed.

We will take our cue from the four categories laid out by the well-known fourth century historian Eusebius in Hist. eccl. 3.25.1-7:

[Read more…]

Destroyer of the Gods: New Book on Early Christianity by Larry Hurtado

This coming September, Larry Hurtado, Emeritus Professor of New Testament at the University of Edinburgh (and my Doktorvater), releases his latest volume, Destroyer of the Gods: Early Christian Distinctiveness in the Roman World (Baylor, 2016).

Larry allowed me to see a pre-published version of the book and I can tell you that it is (not surprisingly) an excellent piece of work and a fascinating look at the way early Christians fit (and didn’t fit) into their Greco-Roman context.

Although most modern Western individuals see Christianity as typical of all religions around the world (usually with the “all religions are the same” line added in for good measure), this volume works to shatter that misconception.  Historically speaking, argues Hurtado, Christianity was radically different than the surrounding religious world into which it was born.  Here are a few of the features he points out:

1. Christianity allowed “religion” to be separated from the standard ethnic/national identity it was typically associated with.  For most Roman citizens, your religion was not easily distinguished from your citzenship–the two were bound together.  But, Christianity came along and people from all walks of life, all ethnicities and nationalities, began to identify themselves as followers of Jesus.  The Roman government did not know how to handle this unusual new approach.  Christianity was neither Jewish nor Greek (in the typical way it was conceived).  Christians were a “third race.”

[Read more…]

Next Week I am Teaching an Elective on the NT Canon @RTSCharlotte

Next week, Aug 1-5, I will teach an elective at RTS Charlotte entitled, “The Origin and Authority of the New Testament Canon.”

In this class, we will be covering not just the history and development of the canon, but also its theological meaning, and its epistemological foundation.  In other words, we will not only discuss when these books were recognized, but we will explore how we know which books belong and which do not.

So, the class will cover the various canonical models present in theological circles today, as well as responding to modern historical-critical scholars who attack its integrity.

One other interesting part of the course is that we will do in-class reading from high resolution photos of the Greek manuscript P66, an almost complete copy of John’s gospel dated c.200.  This is one of the earliest manuscripts of the New Testament that we possess and provides a wonderful introduction to the world of ancient manuscripts.  We will discuss not only the Greek text, but scribal habits, inscriptional features, nomina sacra, and more.

As one might guess, the base textbook for this class will my Canon Revisited (Crossway, 2012).  But, I will also be using other texts and articles along the way.

Probably too late for many of you to consider taking this course, but if you are in the area, and have some free time, come and join us.  You can read more about it here.

And, as an additional note, the class is being recorded by our Global Campus and should be available online in the year to come.

Taking Back Christianese #3: “God is Always Pleased with You”

Imagine this scenario. Your friend at church (who is a believer) comes to you and confesses an ugly sin they committed.  And they feel terrible about it.  What do you say?

No doubt this scenario is played out countless times a week in evangelical churches all over the country–particularly given the church’s fascination with authenticity and vulnerability (see my post on that issue here).  And it is not always easy to know how to respond.

But here’s one response that gets used a lot:  “Don’t feel bad about this sin.  If you are a believer, then God is always pleased with you.  He can never be more pleased with you than he is right now.”

Is this response helpful?  Yes and no. It depends on what a person means and how they frame it.

Our purpose in this post (as in all the posts in this series) is simply to analyze the strengths and weaknesses of this phrase.  We will do this by asking three questions:  (1) Why do people use this phrase?  (2) What is correct or helpful about this phrase?  and (3) What is problematic about this phrase?

[Read more…]

Who’s Really Influenced by Their Cultural Situation? A Deep Irony in the New Perspective on Paul

Ever since Krister Stendahl’s seminal essay, “The Apostle Paul and the Introspective Conscience of the West,” one of the foundational arguments for the New Perspective(s) on Paul (NPP) has been that the traditional protestant/reformed view of justification is largely due to the cultural influence of “the West” and its emphasis on individualism and subjectivism.

Paul is not really concerned with individual sin, guilt and forgiveness (we are told).  Reformed folks are simply reading that issue into the text due to their cultural situation.

Indeed, this is precisely what Stendahl says about Luther himself.  The Reformed view of justification is largely due, argues Stendahl, to Luther’s individual struggle with is own conscience:

In Protestant Christianity–which, however, at this point has its roots in Augustine and the piety of the Middle Ages–the Pauline awareness of sin has been interpreted in the light of Luther’s struggle with his conscience (Stendahl, 79).

In place of the reformed view of justification, NPP advocates have suggested that Paul is really working on a more corporate/community level.  Paul’s struggle is not over how a sinner stands before a holy God, but his struggle is how to unify Jew and Gentile into one community.  Thus justification, it is argued, is really about overcoming ethnocentrism and nationalism.

So convinced are the NPP advocates of their correction of reformed/protestant readings of Paul that they use the entire issue as a lesson of how hermeneutics can be affected by cultural contexts.  And apparently NPP folks are the ones that finally see Paul clearly without being clouded by their cultural situation:

Luther read Paul and the situation confronting Paul through the grid of his own experience…Now, however, in the light of Sanders’ contribution the scales have fallen from many eyes (James, Dunn, Partings of the Ways, 14).

But is this really the case?  Is it true that NPP folks have somehow been able to do what reformed folks have not, namely throw off the shackles of cultural influence and see the real Paul?  Are they able to rise above their cultural circumstances and engage only in objective exegesis (whatever that might be)?

[Read more…]

Another Look at the Earliest Complete List of the Canon of the New Testament

Last year I posted an article entitled “What Is The Earliest Complete List of the Canon of the New Testament?”  In that post I argued, contrary to common opinion, that the earliest (nearly complete) list is not Athanasius’ Festal Letter in 367.  Instead, the earliest complete list occurs more than a century earlier in the writings of Origen (see picture).

My blog post was based off a fuller academic piece I wrote for the recent festschrift for Larry Hurtado, Mark Manuscripts and Monotheism (edited by Chris Keith and Dieter Roth; T&T Clark, 2015), entitled, “Origen’s List of New Testament Books in Homiliae on Josuam 7.1: A Fresh Look.”

Around 250 A.D., in his typical allegorical fashion, Origen used the story of Joshua to describe what seems to be the complete New Testament canon:

[Read more…]

A Serious Challenge to the New Perspective on Paul

As most readers know, there has been a long scholarly debate over what is known as the New Perspective(s) on Paul (NPP). This approach argues that “justification” in Paul does not mean what many Christians (especially Reformed folks) have always believed.

In short, NPP advocates (e.g., N.T. Wright, James D.G. Dunn) argue that (a) first-century Judaism was not a works-oriented religion, and (b) “justification by faith” is not referring to the acquisition of a righteous status before God, but instead refers to the fact that membership in the covenant community can be obtained without the standard Jewish boundary markers laid out in the law of Moses (inset is a picture of Mt. Sinai).

One of the major flash points in this debate is the term “righteousness of God.” Paul uses this phrase in a number of places, but it takes center stage particularly in Romans. Indeed, one might suggest that the “righteousness of God” is the theme of the entire book:

For in it [the gospel] the righteousness of God is revealed from faith for faith” (Rom 1:17).

So, what does this phrase mean? NPP advocates say it refers simply to God’s covenantal faithfulness. Reformed theologians have argued that it refers to a righteous status received from God.

It is on this very question that NPP advocates are facing a new and robust challenge from Lee Irons’ recent volume, The Righteousness of God: A Lexical Examination of the Covenant-Faithfulness Interpretation (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2015). The volume is part of the prestigious Wissenschaftliche Untersuchungen zum Neuen Testament (WUNT) series.

[Read more…]

Taking Back Christianese #2: “Preach the Gospel; If Necessary, Use Words”

In American evangelicalism over the last decade, there has been a resurgence of interest in what might be called “deed” ministry.  Christians should not be concerned only about evangelism, it is argued, but also about caring for the practical, day-to-day needs of our unbelieving neighbors.

This sentiment is captured in a phrase that is being used more and more these days: “Preach the Gospel; if necessary, use words.” This is the next installment in the “Taking Back Christianese” series originally announced here.

Our purpose in this post (as in all the posts in this series) is simply to analyze the strengths and weaknesses of this phrase.  We will do this by asking three questions:  (1) Why do people use this phrase?  (2) What is correct or helpful about this phrase?  and (3) What is problematic about this phrase?

Why Do People Use This Phrase?

A version of this phrase is said to go back to St. Francis of Assisi, a Catholic Friar and preacher in the middle ages, though this attribution is uncertain.  Regardless, most people in the modern day simply use the phrase to emphasize the importance of Christian social action.

Thus, most people use this phrase as another way to express the sentiment, “actions speak louder than words.”  If Christians are going to be effective in their witnessing, we are told, then they must accompany it with actions that help the poor, downtrodden and outcast.

This renewed emphasis on social action is due, in large part, to frustration with prior generations of Christians that seemed concerned only with proclamation and not with good deeds.  Younger generations of Christians use this phrase to push back against what they perceive as an isolationist/separationist mentality in prior generations.

[Read more…]

Join Us for the @RTSCharlotte Alumni Gathering at 2016 PCA General Assembly

This week I am off to the PCA General Assembly in Mobile, AL.  There are a number of interesting (and some controversial) overtures on the docket this year, so it should be a busy week. But aside from the formal business, one of the most profitable aspects of GA is connecting with old friends, classmates, and colleagues.

If you are a RTS Charlotte alum, let me call your attention to our annual gathering.  This year it will be Wed, June 22, 8:30-10:30 PM, at the Battle House Renaissance Hotel, which is right around the corner from the convention center.  We will have drinks and appetizers and a great time of catching up.

Also, you will not want to miss the larger RTS alumni lunch, which is Thursday June 23 at noon, in the East Ballroom of the convention center.  You will get a chance to hear from our Chancellor Ligon Duncan and will get updates on all our campuses and latest news.

I will be there to give an update on the new RTS collaborative book project, A Biblical-Theological Introduction to the New Testament, which was just released with Crossway last month.

Let me also call your attention to the annual Gospel Reformation Network (GRN) luncheon on Wed, June 22, at noon in the Convention Center (you do have to register ahead of time).  I will be participating in a panel discussion about the doctrine of sanctification in Reformed circles.

Look forward to seeing you at GA this week.  If you see me, please stop and say hello!

The Likely Forger Behind the Gospel of Jesus’ Wife

It has been a while since the so-called Gospel of Jesus’ Wife has been in the headlines.  It was originally unveiled by Karen King at Harvard (here), but quickly exposed as a likely forgery. I have also written on the fragment (here and here).

While this document’s status as a forgery is relatively certain, what has been uncertain (until now) is the identity of the forger.  Who was the person who created this document and convinced King and others to promote it?

The forger must have had some Coptic abilities.  But, the abilities would have had limits–as demonstrated by the mistakes in the Coptic text.

What is remarkable is that King herself has not undertaken a rigorous investigation of the document’s origins and provenance. Who discovered this document? Who owned it? And how was it passed along?  If the authenticity of a document is in doubt, this is an important avenue to pursue.  But no one has wanted to pursue it.

But, now someone finally has.  A journalist named Ariel Sabar has just published a splendid piece in The Atlantic documenting the history of this forgery and tracing it back to the current owner, and likely forger, a rather shady German business man, and washed-out Coptic student, named Walter Fritz.

[Read more…]

Where Are They Now? RTS Charlotte Alumnus Alex Shipman

Over the last several years, I have been running a RTS Charlotte alumni series called “Where Are They Now?” (see the complete series here).  Since this is the time of year for alumni reunions at the various denominational gatherings, I thought I would add the latest installment.

This post highlights one of our best and brightest, alumnus Alex Shipman (class of 2008).  In addition to his pastoral duties, Alex leads the African American Presbyterian Fellowship (AAPF) for the PCA.  As described in one of their newsletters, the mission of the AAPF is “to work within the denomination to expand African Americans’ presence, involvement and leadership.”

  1. What are you currently doing?

I’m senior pastor of The Village Church in Huntsville, AL and I also lead the African American Presbyterian Fellowship (AAPF).

  1. Why did you originally come to RTS?

I came because it’s the Right Theological Seminary. Ok, I’m being serious! I visited RTS during summer of 2003 at the urging of my wife whom I was dating at the time. I decided to attend RTS for two reasons. First, Dr. Rod Culbertson made me feel welcome during my campus visit. Second, I was able to get ministry experience in a local church while attending RTS.

[Read more…]

Taking Back Christianese #1: “The Christian Life is All about Being Transparent and Vulnerable”

Over the last ten years, especially in Reformed circles, there has emerged a vision of the Christian life where one of  the defining characteristics of a believer has now become transparency.  A Christian is someone who is authentic, real, and open.

While prior generations might have suggested the essential mark of a Christian was obedience, those days seem long gone.  In fact, for many (post)modern Christians the central issue is not whether someone obeys God’s law but whether they are honest about whether they have obeyed God’s law.

Authenticity has become (for some) the number one virtue.

Thus, we come to our very first instance of Christianese: “The Christian life is all about being transparent and vulnerable.”   This is the first installment in the “Taking Back Christianese” series originally announced here.

Our purpose in this post (as in all the posts in this series) is simply to analyze the strengths and weaknesses of this phrase.  We will do this by asking three questions:  (1) Why do people use this phrase?  (2) What is correct or helpful about this phrase?  and (3) What is problematic about this phrase?

As we answer these questions, it is important to be reminded again that these phrases are not included in this series because they are (necessarily) mistaken. This is not a series about wrong Christian phrases.  On the contrary, these phrases (at least understood correctly) can capture helpful biblical truths.  But–and this is the main issue–these phrases are often misunderstood.  And thus they are subject to abuse and misuse.

[Read more…]

RTS Launches a New Journal: Reformed Faith and Practice

Last week it was announced that Reformed Theological Seminary has released the first installment of its new online journal.  It is entitled Reformed Faith and Practice (RF&P) and can be accessed here.

The launch of the new journal coincides with the 50th anniversary of RTS (the seminary opened its doors in 1966).  Other 50th anniversary-related initiatives include the release of the two volumes written by RTS faculty:  A Biblical-Theological Introduction to the New Testament and A Biblical-Theological Introduction to the Old Testament.

RF&P will be publishing three times a year with contributions mainly from RTS faculty across our numerous campuses:  Charlotte, Jackson, Orlando, Washington D.C., Atlanta, New York, and Houston.  But there will also be contributions from scholars outside the RTS orbit.

In the introduction of the inaugural volume, editor John Muether provides an explanation of what RF&P is trying to accomplish:

We write from convictions that comport with the mission of RTS, which is “to serve the church by preparing its leaders, through a program of graduate theological education, based upon the authority of the inerrant Word of God, and committed to the Reformed faith.” An ecclesial focus will, we hope, be especially prominent in these pages as we seek (in the language of the RTS vision statement) to serve Christ’s church “in all branches of evangelical Christianity, especially Presbyterian and Reformed churches.” Thus our pledge is that we will commend the Reformed faith with a particular view toward the well-being of Reformed churches. While we aim to maintain high levels of scholarship, we write as servants of the church. Even more specifically, we seek to serve alumni of Reformed Theological Seminary with hope that RF&P will be an ongoing source of wisdom and continuing education in the work of pastoral ministry. As our title suggests, we plan to give particular attention to the relationship between doctrine and life. Our faith should inform the practice of the Christian life, and that practice must, in turn, reinforce our doctrinal commitments.

The first volume has a great line up articles.  Here is the table of contents:

[Read more…]

New Series: Taking Back Christianese

“Christians talk funny.”

This is a sentiment I’ve heard from many a non-Christian over the years.  The truth is that Christians have their own lingo and their own vocabulary.  Sometimes it can be alienating to folks. Sometimes it is quite hilarious–if we are honest enough to admit it (as in this video here).

But our lingo–our “Christianese” if you will–can sometimes be mistaken.  Or at least partially so. It can attempt to express a theological truth that (sometimes) bring more confusion than clarity.

So, I am beginning a new blog series about the way we talk as Christians.  This series is designed to analyze a number of theological phrases or practical bits of Christians wisdom that may simply be wrong, or at least misunderstood. Or maybe both.

Now to be clear, I will not be suggesting that the instances of Christianese we will be exploring in this series are necessarily wrong.  Taken properly, they may be right in many ways.  But, of course, that is precisely the issue.  Often they are not taken properly.  Instead they can be used to justify some questionable theological views.

So, the goal of the series–and this is important to get–is not to refute these phrases but to clarify, to nuance, and to balance out these phrases. In the world of theology, lack of nuance is one step (often a big step) towards doctrinal error.

Let me also say that the list below is by no means exhaustive.  Nor is the list below intended to represent the worst or most inaccurate ways we speak as Christians.  On the contrary, I (and all of us) have heard much worse!

But, these are phrases I hear quite a bit and think would be useful to address.

That said, I welcome suggestions from readers about other phrases I may have missed or that you think may make worthy additions to the series.  Please just offer your suggestions in the comments below.  If I get some good ideas, I will extend the series to address them.

So, here’s the forthcoming series as it currently stands (click on the links below to read more):

[Read more…]

Note to Aspiring Preachers: Here are Seven Key Pitfalls to Avoid

Preaching is hard work.

To those sitting in the pews, preaching can look relatively effortless–especially when it is done well.  But do not be fooled.  Preaching exhausts the body and the soul in ways that are incommensurate with its duration.  I could work in the yard all day in 90 degrees of heat and (somehow) feel less exhausted than preaching two services.

But, it is not just the physical/spiritual toll that preaching takes. What makes it hard is the complexity of the task.  Just standing up and talking for 30 minutes (and making any sense at all) is tough enough for most folks.  But, on top of this, preachers have to navigate a complicated passage, balance sensitive doctrines, weave together a coherent message, apply the message to people’s lives, and do all of this in a manner that is compelling, engaging, winsome and never boring or dull.

No wonder James said, “Not many of you should become teachers” (Jas 3:1)!

Indeed, because of the complexities of preaching there are a number of pitfalls that all preachers (especially aspiring ones) risk falling into. I thought it might be helpful to highlight some of these possible pitfalls that I have noticed over the years:

[Read more…]

It’s Here! “A Biblical-Theological Introduction to the New Testament” Has Arrived

I just received a Fed-Ex package that contained the latest volume I’ve been working on: A Biblical Theological Introduction to the New Testament (Crossway, 2016).

This volume collects together contributions from NT professors at Reformed Theological Seminary, both past and present. I edited the volume and contributed chapters on John and the NT canon.

Other contributors include: William B. Barcley, Robert J. Cara, Benjamin Gladd, Charles E. Hill, Reggie M. Kidd, Simon J. Kistemaker, Bruce A. Lowe, and Guy Prentiss Waters.

I have to say the cover looks and feels great. Crossway did a fantastic job with the physical appearance of the book. And, I might add, they also did a great job editing the internal content of the book.

Of course, the first question everyone ask is, “Do we really need another New Testament introduction? What’s unique about this one?”  On one level, there is nothing new about this one.  After all, it seeks to do the same thing as all introductions, namely to help the reader to understand the background, historical setting, and theological themes of each New Testament book.

But on another level, there are some distinctive features about this new volume.  I cover this question at length in the introduction, but here is a quick summary:

[Read more…]

Canon Fodder Has a New Look!

I am excited to announce that Canon Fodder has been revamped with a new look.  When I started this site four years ago, I simply wanted a basic home page that would get the job done. And I think it has served its purpose.

But, like most things in life–whether our wardrobes, hairstyles, or color of our curtains–eventually an upgrade is needed.

The same basic features are available, but with a cleaner and more streamlined and updated appearance.  The color scheme makes it easier to read, and the navigation is simplified.

The newest feature I will highlight is the new “Article Index” tab at the top right.  This breaks down all my blog articles over the last four years into a couple dozen categories, ranging from biblical authority to culture/politics to Reformed theology.

Hopefully this new index will help people find exactly the content they are looking for.

Also, keep in mind that I continue to update all the content regularly.  As new lectures or sermons are delivered, as new articles or books are written, or as new videos or interviews are recorded, I try to upload them here.

If you are interested in tracking my speaking engagements and activities, both past and present, you can get a little sample in the “News and Updates” column in the upper left corner.

And if you want to follow my blog more regularly, you can do so through a variety of channels in the upper right corner, from email list, feedburner, and of course Twitter and Facebook.

Enjoy the new site!

The One Area of Diversity That Doesn’t Count

Evangelical Christians have been making the same point for so long, we are running out of ways to say it.

We’ve tried the following phrases/statements:

  • The intolerance of tolerance.
  • There is a lack of diversity in the push for diversity.
  • Those complaining the loudest about discrimination, are often the most discriminatory.
  • Liberals are not really liberals, but simply want one view.
  • Those pushing for all view to be treated fairly, are not treating all views fairly.
  • The supposed quest for equality, is really a quest to privilege a certain viewpoint.

And on and on we could go.

The basic point is this. In the modern liberal push for diversity there is one enormous category missing: intellectual/religious/ideological diversity.

All the while our liberal culture pats itself on the back for being so diverse–whether that diversity be racial, ethnic, or cultural–it continues to ignore the biggest area of potential diversity. Diversity of thinking.

After all, isn’t this what the public education should be doing?  Shouldn’t it be exposing students to a variety of intellectual/ideological viewpoints?  But that is precisely the thing modern universities do not do (or refuse to do).

It is well known that conservative thinkers make up a shockingly small percentage of major university faculties–and many of these faculties are funded by public tax dollars. A recent study, for example, showed less than 2% of English professors are Republicans.

This point has been eloquently made by Nicholas Kristoff in a recent New York Times Op-Ed piece aptly entitled, “A Confession of Liberal Intolerance.”  He writes:

WE progressives believe in diversity, and we want women, blacks, Latinos, gays and Muslims at the table — er, so long as they aren’t conservatives.

Universities are the bedrock of progressive values, but the one kind of diversity that universities disregard is ideological and religious. We’re fine with people who don’t look like us, as long as they think like us.

This lack of diversity is particularly evident in the field of biblical studies at major American universities. Go on a search for genuinely evangelical professors who hold a teaching post in biblical studies at a major public university and see what you find. They are an endangered species.

And the intellectual discrimination doesn’t just happen at the hiring level. It also happens at the Ph.D. level.  Evangelicals have trouble getting hired at major universities because they first have difficulty being accepted into the Ph.D. programs of these major universities.

I have seen this up close and personal here at RTS.  We had an extremely bright student a number of years ago apply to PhD programs in biblical studies at some of the major universities and divinity schools in America.  He had exceptional academic credentials including prestigious undergraduate scholarships, academic awards, fantastic grades, and also a near perfect score on the GRE.

And how many of these major universities and divinity schools accepted him?  Zero.

Of course, critics could always write off this single example as an irrelevant anomaly.  It doesn’t prove anything, they might say. Maybe he was rejected for other reasons.

Even so, the state of our institutions of higher learning today are not in doubt.  They are vastly, enormously, and seriously slanted towards a single ideological and intellectual viewpoint.  That is undeniable.

The question isn’t whether it is true.  The question is whether anyone cares, or whether anyone will do anything about it.

And if nothing is done about it, our universities (and our culture) will not be the better.  Indeed, we will become what the liberals have always said they want to avoid.  A totalitarian state that simply indoctrinates rather than educates.

Were the Stories of Jesus Radically Changed Before They Were Written Down? My Review of Bart Ehrman’s Latest

If one accepts the dating of some modern scholars, the earliest canonical gospel–the Gospel of Mark–was not written until 70 AD or later.

This means there was a gap of time of about 40 years between the life of Jesus and our earliest Gospel that records his words and deeds.

What happened to the stories of Jesus during this period of time? Since such stories were largely passed down orally, can this process be trusted? Did Christians change the stories along the way? Is it reasonable to think that Christians could have even remembered the details accurately?

These are the questions raised in Jesus Before the Gospels, Bart Ehrman’s latest Easter-timed book attacking the reliability and historical integrity of the New Testament.

Prior installments in Ehrman’s “you can’t trust the Bible” series include Forged in 2011, Jesus, Interrupted in 2009, God’s Problem in 2007, and Misquoting Jesus in 2005.

Each of these books, though different in the specific topic, tells the same overall story: Ehrman, once an evangelical who attended Moody Bible Institute and Wheaton College, has now discovered, along with the consensus of modern scholarship, that the New Testament, and the Gospels in particular, do not provide a trustworthy account of the historical Jesus.

Instead, what we have (according to Ehrman) are books that are forgeries, contain contradictions, have morally-questionable teachings, and have been edited and changed throughout the centuries.

My full-length review of Ehrman’s new volume has just been published over at the Gospel Coalition website. See here.

In addition, you can listen to my hour-long interview about Ehrman’s book on the nationally-syndicated radio program, Stand to Reason with Greg Koukl.  Download here.

A Note to Ph.D. Students: Here’s What We Are Really Looking for in a Job Interview

One of the scariest aspects of pursuing a Ph.D. (aside from thesis defense) is the poor job prospects on the other side.  After slogging through many years of intense research, late nights writing, spouse working, and no money, it is a bit discouraging to realize the job opportunities are few and far between.

Of course, I always warn my own students of this reality if they express interest in getting a Ph.D.  It is a noble pursuit, but one that does not always translate into to steady, financially-viable employment.

So, whenever a Ph.D. student does get that rare job interview (and they are rare!) they will need to make the best of it.

Given that I have sat on both sides of the interview table–as both candidate looking for a post, and as President or Academic Dean looking to fill a post–I thought I might offer a few reflections on the interview process.  In particular, I want to help candidates know what we are really looking for in a potential professor.

I say “really” because I think candidates often misunderstand what we are looking for. And, due to that misunderstanding, sometimes candidates are simply heading down an unhelpful path in the interview process.

And when I say “we” I am thinking particularly of those leaders in the world of evangelical seminaries.  Those in university settings, or those who are not evangelical, are unlikely to offer the same advice.

So here are seven pieces of advice:

1. Don’t talk about only your dissertation. This is (by far!) the number one mistake in an interview.  To be sure, we want to know about your dissertation, your field, and your research interests.  But, don’t offer a 20 minute recap of an obscure point in chapter three of your thesis (yes, people do this).

I know that when a student has been working on one thing for 5 years it is difficult to talk about something else. But, that is precisely what we want to see. Can this person talk about, think about, and engage with, topics outside the micro-world of his dissertation research?

2. Don’t try to prove how smart you are.  Having done many, many interviews, I get the impression that candidates are very worried about whether we think they are smart enough for the job.  And this is understandable. The academic environment is an intimidating one, and candidates feel the need to prove themselves.

However, you should know that you wouldn’t have been given an interview if we didn’t already think you had the academic chops to pull it off.  We can assess academic ability pretty quickly on a CV because we know about your program, your advisor, your publications, your undergraduate work, your masters work, your references, etc.

So, in many ways, we have already crossed that bridge.

This doesn’t mean that we aren’t continuing to evaluate academic ability (we are), but in the interview we are more often looking for other things (see below).

On top of this, too much self-promotion can come off negatively. Yes, interviews are about putting forth your abilities and credentials.  But, this needs to be done carefully lest you become this guy.

3. Brush up on your systematic theology.  This is the big one.  You may be surprised to know that when we (at least here at RTS) look to a hire a professor we are very concerned about his understanding of systematic theology and his ability to articulate theological positions.

Unfortunately, many Ph.D. students have become a little rusty in systematics (their MDiv was a long time ago), or perhaps think it doesn’t matter (most Ph.D. programs don’t emphasize it).

But, it matters to us.

Additional note: the importance of systematics shows that the Ph.D. is not necessarily the most important degree you get.  In many ways, your M.Div. is more important because of the foundational way it shapes your view of theology and ministry (which is what seminaries are concerned about).

4. Understand the institution that’s interviewing you. Whenever you interview with an institution, it is important to do a little homework in advance, lest you find yourself articulating (or emphasizing) positions contrary to the very institution you are hoping to get hired by.

This does not mean you should change your views to match the institution (you need to be honest about your views), but it does mean you should be wise about the way you speak.

I cannot tell you how many times I have been in an interview where the candidate decides to share his views on his favorite hobby horse topic, not at all aware that his views contradict the positions of our own institution!

Simply put, if you interview at a Reformed seminary (like RTS) you will not want to lead with how much you enjoyed this book.

5. Be ready to answer, not evade, hot button issues. If you are interviewing at a confessional seminary–i.e., a seminary that has a well-established doctrinal statement–then you can expect to be asked a variety of questions about how your views line up with that statement, and what your positions are about related hot-button topics (e.g., historical Adam, authority of Scripture).

Since Ph.D. students have been immersed in academic circles for a number of years, they tend to answer these questions in the same manner they would deal with scholarly debates.  In the scholarly world it is very normal to express agnosticism over certain topics, or to straddle the fence between opposing positions, or to withhold judgment until more research can be done, etc.

Unfortunately, this sort of methodology doesn’t work the same when applied to a confessional situation where core doctrinal views are being discussed. It’s one thing to be agnostic over whether you date Mark’s Gospel to 50 A.D. or 70 A.D. (a scholarly debate) but its another thing to be agnostic about whether you believe in substitutionary atonement (a key confessional issue).

6. Show an interest in the church, not just the academy.  This is a biggie. Seminaries are different than universities in precisely this way–there’s an ecclesiological/ministry dimension to what we do. So, we are not interested in hiring only scholars, but also people who have a love for the church.  We are looking for pastor-scholars.  We want to know about church involvement, denominational activity, engagement in preaching, etc.

This doesn’t mean all seminary professors have to be ordained pastors (though that is ideal).  But it does mean that all seminary professors should have a love for, and interest in, the church.

7. Get to know those interviewing you.  There are a lot of factors that go into a decision to hire someone.  But, a major factor is just whether this individual is someone we would like to spend time with and get to know.  In other words, there is a relational dimension to any interview process.  So, make your interview more than about downloading data.  Find a way to interact on a more personal level.

Now, I know this is complicated.  Professors are not the most relational folks (on either side of the table).  Nor do you want to come across as overly “chummy” in a formal interview situation.  But, do your best to get to know those interviewing you on a personal level.  Show that you could be an enjoyable and interesting part of the professorial team.

Needless to say, these seven things are only part of the equation.  There are many more things that could be said.  But, hopefully they can prove advantageous for those Ph.D. students who are in the job hunt for a seminary post.

And perhaps the final word is simply this.  Ph.D. students, we are for you.  We have a special place in our hearts for folks in this tricky stage of life.  Whether our answer is yes or no in regard to the job, it is definitely yes in regard to your calling.

Was Early Christianity Hostile to Women?

Since we live in a culture that is obsessed with gender identity and gender issues, it is not surprising to find Christianity on the receiving end of serious criticisms regarding its view of women.

Christianity–particularly if it embraces a complementarian theology–is viewed by many in our culture as oppressive and harmful to women.  It does not provide, we are told, a friendly and welcoming environment where women can grow and thrive.

But, this is not just a problem for modern Christianity. The oppression of women, it is argued, was especially a problem in early Christianity.  After all, in the first few centuries of the church, critics insist that the Christian culture was still very much a patriarchal one still beholden to the misogynistic views of the apostle Paul.

Leaving aside the questions about modern day Christianity, I want to ask whether these claims about early Christianity–particularly in the second century–are, in fact, true. Is it really the case that second-century Christianity was a hostile environment for women?

Well, if it was, apparently no one bothered to tell the women in the second century because they flocked to Christianity in droves.

It is well established that Christianity was extremely popular with women during this time period. Sociologist Rodney Stark estimates that perhaps 2/3 of the Christianity community during this time period were made up of women. This is the exact opposite of the ratio in the broader Greco-Roman world where women only made up about 1/3 of the population.

This means that women intentionally left the religious systems of the Greco-Roman world with which they were familiar and consciously decided to join the burgeoning Christian movement. No one forced them to do so.  No one made them become Christians.

On the contrary, Christianity was a cultural pariah during this time period.  It was an outsider movement in all sorts of ways–legal, social, religious, and political.  Christians were widely despised, viewed with suspicion and scorn, and regarded as a threat to a stable society.

And yet, women, in great numbers, decided to join the early Christian movement anyway.

Women pop up all over the place in our earliest Christian sources. They are persecuted by the Roman government, they are hosting churches in their homes, they are caring for the poor and those in prison, they are traveling missionaries, they are wealthy patrons who support the church financially, and much much more.

Indeed, so popular was Christianity with women, that pagan critics of Christianity (Celsus, Lucian) mocked Christianity for being a religion of women.

Let that sink in for a moment. In the ancient world, Christianity was mocked for being too pro-women! That is a far cry from what one hears in cultural conversations today.

The reasons that Christianity provided such a favorable environment for women are not hard to discover. Early Christianity would have included opportunities for real ministry involvement (with honor and dignity), it condemned female infanticide (a practice which had greatly reduced female numbers in the pagan population), it spoke out against child brides (which was harmful to young girls),  and it advocated for healthier marriages where divorce was condemned and use of prostitutes/concubines forbidden (which resulted in greater fertility in Christian couples).

All of this presents serious problems for those who claim early Christianity was oppressive to women. I suppose those who hold such a view could argue that all these women in the Greco-Roman world were so gullible and easily duped that they thought Christianity was great when (as all sophisticated people now know) it really wasn’t.

But, such an approach is, ironically, grossly patronizing and demeaning to women. It basically says that second-century women were too ignorant to have known what was good for them.

And even more than that, such an approach is guilty of the “arrogance of the modern.”  It basically says only we in the modern day knows what is best and all prior generations were just too primitive to know any better.

A much better response–a response that honors the historical evidence–is to acknowledge that ancient Christianity provided a profoundly welcoming and healthy environment for women.

And if that was true back then, perhaps one might be willing to consider the possibility that it is true today.

Here Is The Inevitable Next Step in Our Culture’s Quest to Redefine Marriage

There’s even a term for it.  “Genetic Sexual Attraction.” GSA.

GSA is when a mother and her biological son, or a father and his biological daughter, are in a sexual relationship.

I had never heard this term before, but I suppose it sounds better than the word that really describes such relationships: incest.

And now GSA people want to get married.

I saw an example of this in a recent article about a 51 year-old mother and her 32 year-old son who are in a sexual relationship.  Here is the mother’s defense of her behavior:

She said: “This is not incest, it is GSA. We are like peas in a pod and meant to be together.

“I know people will say we’re disgusting, that we should be able to control our feelings, but when you’re hit by a love so consuming you are willing to give up everything for it, you have to fight for it.

What is incredible about all of this, is that this is precisely the same situation that same-sex marriage was in just a few years ago.  It was deemed to be unnatural and unhealthy and now our culture has fully endorsed it.

Notice also that the woman above even used the same argument that is used to justify same-sex marriage, namely that they are in “love,” and are not “able to control our feelings.”

In other words, this behavior is not a choice, but is genetic.  And who can deny us the opportunity to express our love?

Get ready for round two of the marriage wars. The move to justify incest will be next.

Of course, sadly this should come as no surprise. In many of my prior posts on our culture’s gender confusion (e.g., see here), I have pointed out what many others have also pointed out, namely that the culture’s quest to redefine marriage will not (and cannot) stop with same-sex marriage.

If a man and a man are allowed to marry, then what keeps us from denying most anyone (any combination of people) the right to marry?

Why not a mother and her biological son? Why not a father and his biological daughter?  Why not a man and two men? Or a man and two women?  Or a woman and two men?

There’s no logical reason–given the rationale used for same-sex marriage–why we should deny marriage to these other groups.  To do so would simply be discriminatory (on modern definitions of the term).  Why should they not be allowed to enjoy the blessings of marriage? Why should they not be allowed to marry those they love?

This simply highlights one of the most often missed points in the whole same-sex marriage debate.  Advocates of same-sex marriage often claim, “Everyone else gets to marry the person they love, so why can’t we? That’s discrimination.”

But this sort of claim is monumentally misleading. The marriage laws of this country have never said people can marry whomever they love.

Same-sex marriage advocates make it seem as if they are singled out unjustly. But, that is not the case. There have always been restrictions on marriage such as age, gender, biological relationships, number of spouses, etc.

What same-sex marriage advocates want is for our country to remove just one of these restrictions, the one pertaining to gender.  The problem is that the rationale for removing that restriction–people should be allowed to marry whom they love–can be equally used to remove all the restrictions.

No doubt there will be some who would be pleased with such a development.  “Yes,” they might say, “let’s remove all restrictions on marriage.”

But, if marriage can simply be whatever a person wants to make it, then it is swallowed up in an ocean of subjectivity.  If marriage is entirely self-constructed there can be no such thing as “marriage.”

Marriage becomes a chimera. An illusion.

And this is why Christians have been opposed to same-sex marriage from the start. We are opposed to it simply because it isn’t marriage.  Indeed, we’ve been opposed to it because, in the end, it will not enhance marriage in our country but lead to its disappearance.

Did Papias Know the Apostle John?

I just received in the mail the latest issue of the Journal of the Evangelical Theological Society.  And I noticed that it contained my review of Monte Shanks’ recent volume, Papias and the New Testament (Pickwick, 2013). (I can’t keep track of when my book reviews appear!).

Seeing this review reminded me of one of the key debates in discussions of the emerging New Testament canon, namely whether Papias, the bishop of Hierapolis in the early second century, knew the apostle John.  This is a key question simply because Papias provides one of the earliest explicit references to the gospels of Mark and Matthew.

So, where did Papias get this information from? And can this information be trusted?

Bart Ehrman, in his latest volume Jesus Before the Gospels, says no.  This information cannot be trusted.  Why?  Because, “Papias is not himself an eyewitness to Jesus’s life and does not know eyewitnesses” (112, emphasis mine).

But is Ehrman correct? Shanks makes the case in his book, a case that has been made by a number of other scholars before him (e.g., Robert Gundry) that in fact Papias got his information from the most reliable of sources, namely the apostle John himself.

And personally I find that case compelling.  We cannot repeat all the details in a blog post, but here are some highlights:

(a) Irenaeus and the majority of other fragments about Papias affirm that Papias knew John the apostle (Shanks, 288-291). Irenaeus’ testimony is particularly weighty given that he is even earlier than Eusebius and plainly states that Papias was a “hearer of John” (Haer. 5.33.4).

(b) Despite Eusebius’ confident declaration that Papias didn’t know John the apostle (Hist. eccl. 3.39), in his earlier work the Chronicle he actually affirms that Papias knew John (Shanks, 111-113). Obviously, Eusebius’ view had changed between his publication of the Chronicle and his publication of Ecclesiastical History (something that was not unusual for Eusebius).

(c) Papias states plainly that he “learned from the elders” (Hist eccl. 3.39.3).  A few sentences later, Papias describes the “words of the elders” as “What Andrew or Peter said, or Philip, or Thomas or James, or John or Matthew or any of the Lord’s disciples, and whatever Aristion and the elder John, the disciples of the Lord, were saying” (Hist. eccl. 3.39.4). In other words, it seems that Papias uses the word “elders” to refer to the apostles.

(d) Eusebius admits that Papias learned directly from “the elder John” mentioned in the above quote. Although Eusebius thinks this is a John other than the apostle, it seems likely that he has misunderstood the words of Papias here. When Papias mentions the name John a second time in the statement above, it is best understood as a reference back to the apostle John due to the fact that both are called “elder” and the anophoric use of the article which points back to the prior John (Shanks, 19-21).

(e) Moreover, Eusebius’ idea of second “John” in Ephesus, one different from the apostle, is based on the faulty conclusions drawn by Dionysius of Alexandria, and fueled by his prejudice against Papias’ chiliastic eschatology.

(f) Papias was a colleague and contemporary of Polycarp. Since Polycarp knew John, it is quite likely that Papias would have as well.

Although not each of the above points are equally certain (or persuasive), they form a collectively weighty argument. An argument that suggests Papias got his information from John the apostle.

If so, then this is yet another reason to think that our canonical gospels were known by their traditional names by the end of the first century. And that is incredibly early testimony for the traditional authorship of the Gospels.

Where Are They Now? @RTSCharlotte Alumnus Tyler Dirks

Over the last number of years, God has really used RTS Charlotte to help train folks headed into two strategic areas: campus ministry and church planting.

In fact, we have an entire institute designed for the former, the Institute for Reformed Campus Ministry (IRCM), and we just announced the Center for Church Planting to help prepare folks for the latter.

The next installment in our Where Are They Now? alumni series highlights a person who has done both of these.  Tyler Dirks (class of 2007) was the RUF pastor at Johnson and Wales University and now is the church planting pastor for East Charlotte Presbyterian Church.

Here is his interview:

1. What are you currently doing?

I am the Senior Pastor at East Charlotte Presbyterian Church, and was formerly the RUF Pastor at Johnson and Wales University here in Charlotte.

2. Why did you originally come to RTS Charlotte?

I had heard good things about RTS from my campus minister at Kansas State University (the campus ministry is called Ichthus, and the minister’s name is John Schwartz), and my father’n law (Dr. Glenn Zaepfel who had taught for a time at the RTS Orlando campus). I married into the East Coast and I wanted to train for full-time Gospel ministry somewhere in, or near, the Carolinas. So… we scheduled a visit to RTS CLT. As I recall, we sat-in on Dr. Cara’s class (Acts-Romans if I’m not mistaken). Honestly, I don’t remember my impression of the content/material being taught, I simply didn’t want Dr. Cara to ask me a question to which I most likely would not have an answer to (Dr. Cara had cordially & candidly greeted us when our tour guide [Chad Grindstaff] dropped us off, and this uninhibited gesture of welcome made me rather nervous because Dr. Cara struck me as the kind of professor who wouldn’t be bashful about classroom interaction with an intimidated visitor 🙂

I think the most positive impression we had that day we first visited was being introduced to Dr. Kelly and Dr. Kruger. Chad marched us into both professor’s offices, and they immediately paused in the middle of whatever they were working on in order to greet us and chat for a bit. I thought, “These guys are probably in the middle of writing books, or saving the church from heresy …and here they are shooting the breeze with a lowly potential seminarian like me!?”

3. Is there one thing that you learned at RTS that has come back to you as you have ministered to others?  A phrase, encouragement or advice?

Presuppositions (neutrality is a myth).  What is the chief end of man?  …to glorify God and to enjoy Him forever.  Robust friendships were forged in seminary with my classmates.  Reading is something every human being should be doing A LOT.

4. What do you enjoy most about your current ministry? 

Bible Study with fellow disciples …feeding on the Word of God together as a family of those who strive and fight to live by faith in the unseen riches that are ours in Christ.

5. What has been a struggle in your ministry?

Sincerely loving selves besides myself.  Selfishness is HARD to destroy.  Conquering insecurities is a task that only the Holy Spirit is able to accomplish.  John 3:30.

6. If you could give any encouragement to a current student in seminary, what would it be?

Risks are not bad.  Don’t be afraid to fail.  Fix your eyes on Jesus, get out of the boat, keep your eyes on Jesus, don’t allow the worries of the world, or your reputation steal your attention – keep your eyes on Jesus.  Be deliberate about moving toward people who you don’t naturally like.  Get their story.

@RTSCharlotte Appoints Blair Smith as New Assistant Professor of Systematic Theology

As many of you now know, our beloved Dr. Doug Kelly, Richard Jordan Professor of Theology, will be retiring May 31, 2016.

Although someone like Dr. Kelly can never really be “replaced,”  a press release will be going out today announcing our excitement that D. Blair Smith, a RTS Charlotte grad, will be taking up that position in systematic theology.

Since Blair was a student of Dr. Kelly’s, and has specialized in the same field as Dr. Kelly (patristic theology), we cannot imagine a more fitting successor.

Blair earned a B.S. in Marketing Management and Social Studies from Bob Jones University, and a M.Div. from RTS Charlotte. He earned his Th.M. in Theology from Harvard Divinity School, where he wrote his thesis on “Athanasius’s Trinitarian Theology of Redemption, with Special Reference to the Holy Spirit.”

He is currently a Ph.D. candidate in Historical Theology (Patristics) at Durham University in England under Professor Lewis Ayres, one of the world’s leading patristic scholars. During a portion of his doctoral studies, Blair has served as a Research Visitor at The University of Notre Dame. The working title of his dissertation is “The Fatherhood of God in Fourth-Century Pro-Nicene Trinitarian Theology.””

The retiring Dr. Doug Kelly commented on Blair’s appointment, “I am thrilled that my successor in the chair of Systematic Theology is Blair Smith! He is thoroughly committed to the inerrancy of Scripture, and to the principles of the Reformed Faith, especially as expressed in the Westminster Standards. Blair will combine in his teaching and preaching a high view of Scripture with illumination from the Church Fathers, Reformers and Puritans. It is a great joy for me, as I retire, to leave this solemn task in Blair’s hands.”

Blair is an ordained minister in the Presbyterian Church in America and served for more than seven years as the Pastor of Adult Education at Fourth Presbyterian Church in Bethesda, MD. Currently he is the Associate Pastor at Michiana Covenant Presbyterian Church near South Bend, IN, where he regularly teaches and preaches.  Blair is married to his wife, Lisa, and they have 4 children: Eleanor, Douglas, Lucile, and Graham.

We are very excited that Blair will be joining our faculty starting June 1st.

Check Out This Video of Russell Moore @drmoore speaking on Pro-Life and Adoption Ministry @RTSCharlotte

As I mentioned in an earlier post, Dr. Russell Moore of the Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission of the Southern Baptist Convention recently spoke at RTS Charlotte for the annual Harold O.J. Brown Lectures.

He gave two lectures, the first on pro-life ministry and the second on adoption ministry.  This was followed by an extended (and very interesting) Q&A time.

Enjoy the video:

Dr. Russell Moore at RTS Charlotte (HOJB Lecture Series 2016) from Reformed Theological Seminary on Vimeo.

@RTSCharlotte Calls Dr. Jim Newheiser as New Director of Biblical Counseling Program

As many of you know, just a short time ago RTS Charlotte launched a new Masters degree program in biblical counseling. This has been a very exciting venture for us and we believe it will meet a real need in the body of Christ.

We have already seen a tremendous outpouring of support and interest in the new program, and a number of our alumni are even coming back to take advantage of the new MACC degree.

Our program has assembled some of the finest faculty in biblical counseling today, as we have drawn upon leading figures all over the country.  Visiting professors have included David Powlison, Ed Welch, Rod Mays, Heath Lambert, Deepak Reju, Todd Stryd, Tim Lane, Jeff Forrey, and others.

But, even in the midst of this fine collection of professors, we had not been able to find the full-time person to lead the program.

Until now.

Today a press release will go out announcing that Dr. Jim Newheiser will be the new Director of the Christian Counseling Program at RTS Charlotte, as well as Associate Professor of Christian Counseling and Practical Theology (starting June 1st).

Jim is a board member of both the Biblical Counseling Coalition (BCC) and the Association of Certified Biblical Counselors (ACBC).

He is the author of a number of books and articles, including Parenting is More than a Formula (P&R, 2015); When Good Kids Make Bad Choices, with Elyse Fitzpatrick (Harvest House, 2005); You Never Stop Being a Parent, with Elyse Fitzpatrick (P&R, 2010); and a chapter contributor (with Rod Mays) in Biblical Counseling and the Church, ed. Bob Kellemen (Zondervan, 2015).

David Powlison, executive director of CCEF, commented on Dr. Newheiser’s appointment, “I was very glad to hear that Jim Newheiser has accepted the call to come to RTS Charlotte in biblical counseling. He brings wide experience, abiding fidelity to Scripture, and a humble heart.”

For the past 25 years, Jim has served as the Preaching Pastor at Grace Bible Church in Escondido, California.  He is also the Director of the Institute for Biblical Counseling and Discipleship (formerly CCEF West) and an Adjunct Professor of Biblical Counseling at The Master’s College.

Jim will oversee all the counseling degree options, including the 66 credit-hour MA in Christian Counseling (MACC).  A distinctive feature of this degree is that it requires, in addition to counseling courses, a significant number of courses in biblical studies, systematic theology and apologetics. This well-rounded curriculum allows students to engage the counseling task on the solid foundation of a Scriptural worldview.

The counseling program also includes an MDiv and MACC dual degree, an MATS/BS and MACC dual degree, and an MDiv with a counseling emphasis.

On a personal note, I am particularly excited about Jim because he is a personal friend whom I have known for more than 20 years. I look forward to how God will bless his new ministry here at RTS Charlotte.

To learn more about RTS Charlotte’s counseling program, see here.

Apathetic about Your Apathy? Here is Why a Lukewarm Church is a Bigger Problem Than We Think

Laodicea.

Just the name of that church conjures up all sorts of images in our mind.  It was a church that was tepid, bored, and apathetic–overconfident in their own spiritual condition.  In short, they were lukewarm.

And, as we all know, Jesus told them plainly, “Because you are lukewarm, and neither hot nor cold, I will spit you out of my mouth” (Rev 3:16).

Spiritually speaking, the Laodicean church could be summarized in a single word that (unfortunately) captures the ethos of our modern culture: “Whatever.”

The problem, of course, with being apathetic is that you can actually be apathetic about your apathy!  Put simply an apathetic church does not think it is that big of deal. But, here are some reasons apathy is a bigger deal than we think:

1. Apathy towards Christ can be more dangerous than enmity towards Him.  The fundamental reason people miss the problem of apathy is because they assume its better than being an enemy of God.  It’s halfway to being committed, they think, and thus better than being against God. It’s a step in the right direction.

But, Jesus disagrees. For him, apathy (at least in some ways) is worse than enmity towards God. “Would that you were either cold or hot!” (3:15).

It is actually the “whatever” type of person sitting in the pew that is hardest to reach.  Why?  Because they say to themselves, “I need nothing” (3:17).

As the author George MacDonald once said: “Complaint against God is far nearer to God than indifference about Him.”

2. Apathy towards Christ is the religion of our age.  Another factor that makes an apathetic church a problem is that it feeds our culture’s perception that religion is best in moderation.  Ironically, while Jesus says apathy is the worst spiritual condition, our culture contends that it is the best!

For the most part, mainline churches in modern America are actually aiming for the middle ground.  They want enough religion to be respectable, but to not so much that they are viewed as zealots.

Parents tell their children that they shouldn’t be atheists, but, at the same time, they tell them not to take this religious thing too far. Lukewarm religion is actually the goal.

In a culture like this, the last thing the evangelical church needs to do is to feed this misunderstanding.  This is why John Stott thinks that the letter to Laodicea may be one of the most important for the modern church:

Perhaps none of the seven letters is more appropriate to the twentieth century church than this. It describes vividly the respectable, sentimental, nominal, skin-deep religiosity which is so widespread among us today. Our Christianity is flabby and anemic, we appear to have taken a lukewarm bath.

3. Apathy towards Christ is out of sync with his worthiness.  The core problem with Christian apathy, the thing that makes it so serious, is the thing we are apathetic about, namely the person of Christ.

There is an enormous disparity between the glory, wonder, and beauty of Christ and our bored, tepid, “whatever” sort of response to him. And it is this sizable gap between what Christ is worth and our lackluster reaction to him that makes apathy such a problem.

And that sort of gap raises serious questions about a person’s spiritual health and vitality.

For example, if someone found themselves at a middle school art fair, it would be fairly understandable if they found themselves bored and unimpressed with the quality of the art.

But, if that same individual stood in the Sistine Chapel and looked up at the wondrous work of Michelangelo and was still bored, then there would be something seriously wrong with them.

Simply put, apathy is a problem because it misses the whole point of Christianity: the greatness of Christ.

In the end, these three factors remind us that apathy is a bigger problem than we think. So what can be done about it?

Christ himself gives the answer in his letter to Laodicea: “I counsel you to buy from me” (3:18).  A renewed vision of the beauty and greatness of Christ is always the ultimate cure for apathy.

And Christ invites his people to experience him afresh: “Behold I stand at the door and knock.  If anyone hears my voice and opens the door, I will come in to him and eat with him, and he with me” (3:20).

In this verse Christ is drawing on the Song of Solomon, presenting himself as the groom and his church as the bride.  And he is asking his church to fall in love with him all over again.

 

Russell Moore @drmoore Speaking March 8th at @RTSCharlotte on Pro-Life and Adoption Ministries

Tomorrow March 8th, 11AM-2PM, the RTS Charlotte campus is pleased to welcome Dr. Russell Moore to our campus. Dr. Moore will be delivering our annual Harold O.J. Brown Lectures.

Lecture one (11AM) will be on the topic of “Pro-Life Ministry in the Local Church.” Lecture two (1PM), will be on the topic of “Adoption Ministry in the Local Church.” There will be a catered lunch in between the two lectures.

Russell Moore serves as the eighth president of the Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission of the southern Baptist Convention, the moral and public policy agency of the nation’s largest Protestant denomination. A widely-sought cultural commentator, Dr. Moore has been recognized by a number of influential organizations. The Wall Street Journal has called him “vigorous, cheerful and fiercely articulate” while The Gospel Coalition has referred to him as “one of the most astute ethicists in contemporary evangelicalism.”

An ethicist and theologian by background, Dr. Moore is also an ordained Southern Baptist minister and the author of several books including Onward: Engaging the Culture without Losing the Gospel. He blogs frequently at his website, russellmoore.com, and hosts a program called Questions & Ethics—a wide-ranging podcast addressing listener-generated questions on the difficult moral and ethical issues of the day. A native Mississippian, he and his wife Maria are the parents of five sons.

As for the background to the lecture series, Dr. Harold O.J. Brown served as John R. Richardson Professor of Theology and Philosophy at the Charlotte campus of Reformed Theological Seminary from 1998 to 2007. Dr. Brown was a leading evangelical voice in the pro-life movement immediately after Roe v. Wade, co-founding the Christian Action Council (now Care Net) with former Surgeon General C. Everett Koop.

Dr. Brown was a distinguished evangelical scholar during his professional life, writing books, essays and articles in the areas of culture, science, theology and politics. His books include: The Protest of a Troubled Protestant (1969), Christianity and the Class Struggle (1970), Death Before Birth (1977), The Reconstruction of the Republic (1977), Heresies: The Image of Christ in the Mirror of Heresy and Orthodoxy from the Apostles to the Present (1984), and Sensate Culture (1996).

Dr. Brown was much beloved by his colleagues and students at RTS who honor the memory of their dear friend with an annual lecture series at RTS-Charlotte.

If you are in the area, I hope you can come out for the lectures! You can register here.

 

Two Very Different Books on the Reliability of the Gospels

I have just finished reading Bart Ehrman’s Jesus Before the Gospels: How the Earliest Christians Remembered, Changed, and Invented Their Stories of the Savior (HarperOne, 2016), and Brant Pitre’s The Case for Jesus: The Biblical and Historical Evidence for Christ (Image, 2016).

And I can’t imagine two books about Jesus more different from one another.

Not surprisingly, in his new volume (released again right before Easter!) Ehrman continues his life-long campaign to attack the reliability of the canonical gospels and to raise doubts about their authorship and origins.  Time and time again he asserts that the gospels were late, anonymous productions, written by authors with no connections to the historical Jesus.  I will be offer a full review of Ehrman’s book at a later point.

In contrast to Ehrman, Pitre’s book is a breath of fresh air. The goal of his book is to defend the notion that Jesus claimed to be God. And he accomplishes this goal by laying a strong foundation for the reliability and trustworthiness of the Gospels as eyewitness sources for the life of Jesus.

Pitre tackles the authorship of the canonical gospels by making two simple observations: (a) The Gospel titles support the traditional authorship of the canonical gospels, and (b) the testimony of the church fathers supports the traditional authorship of the canonical gospels.

These are not new observations, but Pitre presents them in a manner that reminds the reader how important (and compelling) they are.

As for the titles, Pitre points out the obvious (but for Ehrman, problematic) fact that “there is a striking absence of any anonymous Gospel manuscripts. That is because they don’t exist. Not even one” (17). On the contrary, our earliest gospel manuscripts contain the titles that attribute these books to Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John.

Moreover, if the Gospels had circulated anonymously for more than a century (as Ehrman argues), then we would expect them to have a variety of different titles. Surely, we couldn’t expect them to circulate anonymously for this length of time and then suddenly all early Christians use precisely the same title.

Pitre comments on Erhman’s suggestion the titles were added later:

This scenario is completely incredible. Even if one anonymous Gospel could have been written and circulated and then somehow miraculously attributed to the same person by Christians living in Rome, Africa, Italy, and Syria, am I really supposed to believe that the same thing happened not once, not twice, but with four different books, over and over again, throughout the world? (19)

And, when it comes to the testimony of the early church fathers, the same type of consistent testimony emerges.  Pitre writes:

When the earliest Christian writings outside the New Testament are taken into account, there is not the slightest trace of external evidence to support the now popular claim that the four Gospels were originally anonymous. As far as we know, for almost four hundred years after the lifetime of Jesus, no one–orthodox or heretic, pagan or Christian–seems to have raised any serious doubts about who wrote the Gospels of Matthew, Mark, Luke and John (53).

In sum, Pitre provides a wonderful contrast to Ehrman and highlights the reasons that Christians for thousands of years have always understood these gospels to have been written by the names attached to them.

I have a few minor quibbles with Pitre here and there (at one point, p.18, he seems to confuse P52 and P66), but he has written a very helpful book that is accessible to a lay audience interested in these critical questions.

I encourage you to read the book and then give it to your skeptical friend.

Was Jesus Neither a Democrat Nor a Republican?

Well, the political season is upon us again.  And it’s time for all sorts of Christian stock phrases about politics to be used and reused.  One of my favorite is the phrase, “Jesus is neither a Democrat nor a Republican.”  This is one of those phrases that is used so frequently that no one really bothers to ask what it means; nor does anyone bother to ask whether it is really true. But, I want to take a moment to analyze this phrase as we head into this political season.  What does it really mean?  Here are some possibilities:

1. The phrase could simply mean that the Bible doesn’t speak to politics.

I suppose one possible interpretation of this phrase is that it means that the Bible doesn’t address political issues; it is simply silent on this matter.  The Bible is only interested in redemptive issues and theological issues and should not be made to determine which political views are right.  But, is that an accurate portrayal of the Bible?  Sure, we can agree that the Bible doesn’t use the terms “Democrat” or “Republican,” nor does it make statements like “you should vote for the political party that….”   But, that doesn’t mean the Bible provides no principles or guidance on how to evaluate a political party.  Indeed, as Van Til once said, “The Bible is thought of as authoritative on everything of which it speaks.  Moreover, it speaks of everything.  We do not mean that it speaks of football games, of atoms, etc., directly, but we do mean that it speaks of everything either directly or by implication.”[1]

Thus, there is no reason to think the Bible cannot address political issues. To suggest otherwise is tantamount to suggesting the Bible cannot address the question of evolution because “it is not a science book” (to use another cliché).  The problem with such an argument is that it only allows the Bible to speak to so-called “religious” issues and not “secular” ones.  However, the Bible itself does not honor this religious-secular distinction—all the world is God’s and he has a say over everything in it.  Moreover, almost every political issue has an ethical dimension to it.  And surely the Bible speaks to ethics.  Thus, we cannot say that political issues are “off the table” when it comes to what the Bible teaches.

2. The phrase could simply mean that neither political party lines up entirely with what the Bible teaches.

Another interpretation of this phrase is that it is simply another way of saying that neither party is perfect; both have their problems.  Ok.  But surely no one would dispute this.  No human institution is perfect this side of the Fall (including the church!).  To state such a thing doesn’t really advance the discussion—it is simply stating a truism.

Even if both parties are flawed to some degree, the real question still remains, namely which political party is the closest to the principles and ethics laid out in Scripture?  After all, at the end of the day, the Christian still has to go to the polls and vote for someone. And surely he wants to vote for the party that is closest to the teachings of Scripture.

My suspicion therefore, is that this phrase is not being used just to say that both parties are flawed; rather it is really being used to say that both parties are equally flawed.  And if both parties are equally flawed then someone can claim that it doesn’t really matter how we vote.  Everyone is off the hook and political debating (at least on a biblical basis) should just stop.  But, if someone is going to make such a claim then they have to do the heavy exegetical lifting to prove their case.  A cliché is not enough to demonstrate that both political parties are equally flawed.

Moreover, I think the claim that both parties are equally flawed is highly problematic when one considers that Democrats and Republicans have near opposite political platforms on almost every major issue.  Is it really likely that there would be two parties with nearly opposite values and ethical positions and, at the same time, neither would be closer to the teachings of Scripture?  I suppose it is possible.  But, is also very unlikely.

3. The phrase could simply mean that there are good Christians who are both Democrats and Republicans.

I suppose one could interpret the phrase “Jesus is neither a Democrat nor a Republican” as just another way of saying that there are Christians, good Christians, who are Democrats and Republicans.  Therefore, the argument goes, there is no right or wrong way to vote.   But, once again, I am not sure how this particular understanding constitutes a coherent position.  The fact that there are Christians who have differing positions on an issue does not mean the Scripture supports both positions equally (which would be contradictory if you think about it), nor does it mean the Scriptures are necessarily unclear about the issue.  After all, there are “good Christians” who are Arminians, and there are “good Christians” who are Calvinists.  But, this does not constitute grounds for saying they are both right, or that it doesn’t matter, or that one cannot know such things.  That type of attitude is more due to the influence of postmodernity—where there is no one right view—than it is due to historic and biblical Christianity.

The fact that there are Christians in a political party different from our own certainly means we should show them charity, love, and respect—after all they are brothers and sisters in Christ!  But, it does not therefore mean we throw our hands up in the air and say that politics doesn’t matter or that the Bible has nothing to say about such things.

4. This phrase could simply mean that Jesus would never join a political party or that he would never have allegiance to a political party.

This particular understanding of the phrase is designed to do away with the notion that God is “for” one political party and “against” another. No political party can be regarded as God’s party.  Thus, we can vote for whomever we want as Christians because God does not wear a lapel pin of a donkey or an elephant.

Now, some of this is certainly true.  God does not align himself with man-made political parties in the sense that he endorses everything about them.  And the reason he cannot endorse everything about a particular party is because no party is perfect.  They are all flawed to one degree or another.  But, this just brings us back to the issues we raised in #2 above.  Just because both parties are flawed does not mean that both parties are equally flawed.  Still remaining is the important task of determining which party is closest to the ethics, principles and values of Scripture.

So, just because God does not (and cannot) unequivocally endorse either party is not the same thing as saying that it doesn’t matter which party we vote for.  Some parties are more pleasing to God than others.

So, where does this whole discussion leave us?  We have been discussing what is possibly meant by the phrase “Jesus is neither Democrat nor Republican.”  The four options above are not exhaustive—I suppose there are other options about what this phrase might mean.  But, at least as it pertains to the options discussed here, I would argue that this phrase is highly problematic.  Each of the possible meanings above suffers from the same fatal flaw: all of them are trying to find a way to make politics a neutral affair for Christians.  Whether it’s the argument that the Bible doesn’t address politics (option #1), or that political parties are equally flawed (option #2), or that good Christians disagree (option #3), or that God cannot fully endorse a particular party (#4), all these arguments are trying to say it doesn’t matter what political views Christians support.

But, as I have argued above, this is a shockingly unchristian approach.  It is almost suggesting there is a place in the world (even an ethical place!) where God has no concern about the direction we take. This stands in sharp contrast to the historical (and Reformed) Christian position outlined by Abraham Kuyper: “There is not a square inch in the whole domain of our human existence over which Christ, who is Sovereign over all, does not cry: ‘Mine!'”

One wonders how the “Jesus is neither a Democrat nor Republican” approach would have worked for Dietrich Bonhoeffer as he navigated the frightening political landscape of Germany in the 1930’s or 1940’s.   Would he have been compelled by the idea that the Scripture was neutral about whether Christians should vote for Hitler’s socialist party?   The sad truth is that many Christians and many churches in that day went along with Hitler’s politics and offered no protest.  Bonhoeffer disagreed and argued that it was the Christian’s duty to oppose the National Socialist party.  I doubt Bonhoeffer would have been persuaded by the argument that “good Christians are on both sides of this issue.”

So, if the “Jesus is neither a Democrat nor a Republican” approach is flawed, where do we go from here?  I would suggest a different course of action.  Rather than spending our energies trying to keep the Bible out of politics, we should work to let it back in.  What I mean by this is that we need to stop telling Christians that whatever voting choice they make is as equally valid as another, and instead we should encourage them to apply Scripture to these political questions just like we apply it to every other area of life (whether it be economics, art, or medicine).

No doubt this will create debate and disagreement about whether Democrats are closer to biblical principles or whether Republicans are closer to biblical principles (or whether another party is closer!).  But that’s Ok.  Christians debate Calvinism vs. Arminianism, Credo-Baptism vs. paedo-Baptism, home school vs. public school education, and beyond.  A vigorous, deep, and thorough debate about what the Bible teaches about politics would be a refreshing change from the postmodern “no political position is better than any other” approach currently en vogue in the modern church.  At least then the focus is in the right place: what the Bible teaches.

For more, see my recent video on this question for RTS’s “Wisdom Wednesdays“:

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Where Are All the Heretical Bishops in the Second Century?

A number of my recent posts (e.g., see here) have been dealing with Walter Bauer’s 1934 book Orthodoxy and Heresy in Earliest Christianity which insists that Christianity was wildly diverse in the earliest centuries and that the heretics outnumbered the orthodox. It was not until the 3rd and 4th centuries, it is argued, that the orthodox began to turn the tide.

But let’s test this theory by asking a simple question: who were the bishops in second-century Christianity?  If heresy was as widespread as orthodoxy, we should expect to find a number of bishops that are openly Marcionite, Ebionite, Gnostic, and beyond.

The problem for Bauer’s thesis is that this is precisely what we don’t find.

When we examine bishops from the second century we find a litany that fit nicely within the orthodox camp: Ignatius, Polycarp, Clement of Rome, Papias, Hegesippus, Irenaeus, Theophilus of Antioch, Anecitus of Rome, Polycrates of Ephesus, Victor of Rome, Demetrius of Alexandria, Melito of Sardis, Theophilus of Caesarea, and Dionysius of Corinth.

While these leaders certainly did not agree on everything, it is evident from their writings, or from historical reports about them, that there are no reasons to identify them with heterodox groups like the Marcionites, Gnostics, or Ebionites.

What is particularly noteworthy about the above list is that they represent a wide geographical range: Lyons (Gaul), Smyrna, Antioch, Hierapolis, Rome, Sardis, Ephesus, and Corinth. In other words, these orthodox leaders were not cordoned off into some small outpost of early Christianity.

It might be objected that orthodox bishops were forced into these geographical locales by higher ecclesiastical powers bent on imposing their agenda on others. The problem with this suggestion is that there were no “higher ecclesiastical powers” during this time period. There was not an ecclesiastical structure that allowed churches in one city to dictate the leadership of churches in another city.

It should also not be forgotten that, in this earliest phase, it was common for leaders to be elected by their local congregations (e.g., Did. 15.1; 1 Clem. 44.3). Thus, we have every reason to think that these many bishops, and the beliefs that they held, are a reasonably accurate representation of the Christian constituencies they served.

When we turn to heterodox groups in the second century, there are certainly many examples of their leaders (e.g., Menander, Saturninus, Cerdo, Basilides, Cerinthus). But, what is lacking is evidence that they held the office of bishop in the various locales in which they were active.

There is no explicit mention, at least in the second century, of any identifiable Gnostic, Marcionite, or Ebionite holding the office of bishop. Or, at least, I haven’t found one (please let me know if I have missed an example).

We do have indications that Valentinus may have been considered for the office of bishop of Rome, but the legitimacy of this report is seriously questioned. Irenaeus rebukes the presbyter (not bishop) Florinus for embracing the “Valentinian error” (Hist. eccl. 5.20.1), but it is evident that this was a new development—Florinus actually started out as an orthodox disciple of Polycarp.

Or, perhaps we might think of Zephyrinus, bishop of Rome who barely crosses over into the second century (c.199-217), whom Hippolytus accused of modalism (Ref. 9.2). But, the modalism issue was much more narrow. Zephyrinus was certainly no Ebionite, Gnostic, or Marcionite. Regardless, even if we grant the instance of Zephyrinus, it is the exception that proves the rule.

When the dust settles on these sorts of discussions, the bare and (for Bauer) problematic reality remains: heretics didn’t seem very successful in winning over most congregations in the second century.  Put differently, there is little evidence that they were in the majority.

Once again, despite all the buzz about diversity in early Christianity, we have no reason to doubt that the mainstream church during this time period was still one that could be generally identified as “orthodox.”

Where Are They Now? RTS Charlotte Alumnus Chris Horne

One of the most exciting programs over the  last few years at RTS Charlotte is the Institute for Reformed Campus Ministry (IRCM).  The IRCM is designed to equip our students for the challenges that are unique to campus ministry–and there are many.  The college campus is one of the most critical battle grounds in our world today, and we are please to play a role in sending well-trained men and women to labor there.

The IRCM involves a specialized degree emphasis in campus ministry, as well as the IRCM Fellowship (a community of folks headed to campus ministry), IRCM events and lunches, and more.  You can read more about it here.

While the IRCM serves a number of different campus ministries, it is no surprise that Reformed University Fellowship has become one of our biggest constituencies. Many RTS Charlotte alumni have become RUF pastors or staff over the years, and we look forward to that trend continuing in the future.

For that reason, I am pleased that this installment of the Where Are They Now? alumni series is focused on Chris Horne, class of 2012 and RUF pastor at ASU in Boone, NC. For other installments in the series, see here.

1. What are you currently doing?

I am the Reformed University Fellowship (RUF) campus minister at Appalachian State University in Boone, NC.

2. Why did you originally come to RTS Charlotte?

I struggled with whether ministry and seminary were for me after interning with RUF after college. My wife was the one who really encouraged me that God was calling us to it. We chose RTS because it had a solid reputation, we knew several alums who recommended it and there was a generous scholarship for those who had worked with RUF. It really wasn’t a difficult decision for us.

3. Is there one thing that you learned at RTS that has come back to you as you have ministered to others? A phrase, encouragement or advice?

Most of the phrases that come to mind are from Dr. Bob Cara. “We want to be as balanced as the Bible is balanced” is one that has really stuck with me. RTS really stressed that everything we do in ministry is based on God’s revelation in scripture and in the person & work of Jesus. Those two realities undergird all of life. Also, Dr Kelly smiling as he told us how beautiful Jesus is.

4. What do you enjoy most about your current ministry?

Watching God work in the hearts of students. The four years of college are some of the most formative in a person’s life and I get a front row seat for what God is doing. Bringing the spiritually dead to life. Healing wounds from family, abuse and personal sin. Strengthening students to love God and His church. Sending them out into the world to serve. I get to see the Holy Spirit do miracles every day.

5. What has been a struggle in your ministry?

Losing perspective. Day in and day out can feel like sitting under a fluorescent light in a library basement (probably because that’s what I’m doing right now) as you wade through peoples’ lives and struggle to balance devotion to Jesus, family and students. The good news is that God is at work regardless of how I feel at the moment.

6. If you could give any encouragement to a current student in seminary, what would it be?

God cares deeply about the ministry of preparation you are currently in. He will bring fruit from it.
Enjoy what you are studying. The living God is the subject! Love your local church and fight for opportunities to serve there. Don’t take yourself so seriously.

One of the Most Original Books on Homosexuality in Years

The issue of homosexuality and same-sex marriage just won’t go away these days.  Thus, Christians need to make sure they are well-equipped to meet the challenges of the post-Christian world we find ourselves in.

There have been many good books written to address this subject, but one of the most original I have seen is the recent volume by Don Fortson and Rollin Grams, Unchanging Witness: The Consistent Christian Teaching on Homosexuality in Scripture and Tradition (B&H Academic, 2016).

Don Fortson is the Professor of Church History here at RTS Charlotte, and Rollin Grams is professor of New Testament at Gordon Conwell.

What makes this book unique is simple.  This book responds to those who claim homosexuality is compatible with Christianity by considering both the evidence from church history and the evidence from the Bible.

In other words, it considers not only what the Bible says, but what Christians have said the Bible says throughout the ages. I know of no other recent volume that does this.

And I can tell you, the result is absolutely devastating for the claim that Christianity and homosexuality go together.  A person might be able to convince themselves that the Bible allows it (by reinterpreting even the plainest of passages), but it is a bit hard to explain away 2000 years of absolutely consistent church history.

And that is exactly what we find in the historical record.  From the very beginning of the church, all the way to the modern day, Christians have uniformly declared homosexuality to be incompatible with the Christian faith.

This consistency is particularly noteworthy in the earliest centuries because the church was quite diverse and represented a variety of cultures, ethnicities, and pagan backgrounds.  Yet, with one voice, the church was unified it its opposition to homosexual behavior.

In essence, this forces the pro-homosexuality camp to argue that only in the modern day, really only in the last few years, have Christians, for the first time, finally understood what the Bible really teaches about homosexuality.  And, every other Christian generation, for two-thousand years, has been bigoted, discriminatory, and oppressive.

The arrogance and audacity of a claim is stunning.  But, that is precisely what the pro-homosexual camp is forced to believe.

Of course, some who are committed to the superiority of the modern will no doubt respond by saying, “Just because the church believes something doesn’t make it right.”  True. But, the key issue in this case is that the church believes something that is also clearly the plain teaching of Scripture.  Thus, we have both the testimony of Scripture and the church on the same side.

And if the Bible and the history of the church both seem to be saying the same thing, then that is a compelling reason to think it is true.

For those who are intellectually honest, this just becomes too much to bear. After reading Fortson’s and Rollin’s book, they may not agree with what Christians have always believed.  But, they would have to admit that Christians have always believed it.

 

Was the Divinity of Jesus a Late Invention of the Council of Nicea? Probing Into What the Earliest Christians Really Believed

One of the most common objections to Christianity is that the divinity of Jesus was “created” by later Christians long after the first century.  No one in primitive Christianity believed Jesus was divine, we are told.  He was just a man and it was later believers, at the council of Nicea, that declared him to be a God.

A classic example of this in popular literature can be found in the book The Da Vinci Code:

“My dear,” Teabing declared, “until that moment in history [council of Nicea], Jesus was viewed by His followers as a mortal prophet… a great and powerful man, but a man nonetheless. A mortal.” “Not the Son of God?” “Right,” Teabing said. “Jesus’ establishment as ‘the Son of God” was officially proposed and voted on by the Council of Nicaea.” “Hold on. You’re saying Jesus’ divinity was the result of a vote?” “A relatively close vote at that,” Teabing added.

Of course, there have been more sophisticated objections to the Christian belief in the divinity of Jesus.  Bart Ehrman’s book, How Jesus Became God, argues that “It will become clear in the following chapters that Jesus was not originally considered to be God in any sense at all” (44).

Needless to say, there have been many responses to this claim by Ehrman (and The Da Vinci Code). A good place to start is the rebuttal volume to Ehrman, How God Became Jesus.  And you can see my review of Ehrman’s book here.

But, it would still be helpful to revisit the question about when Christians began to conceive of Jesus as God. Was this belief “originally” (Ehrman’s word) part of early Christianity?

There are many ways to approach this question, but for the purposes of this short post, we will simply consider the teachings of the apostle Paul on this question.  Why start with Paul? Larry Hurtado explains it best: “Pauline Christianity is the earliest form of the Christian movement to which we have direct access from undisputed firsthand sources” (Lord Jesus Christ, 85).

As we shall see, Paul didn’t simply believe Jesus was God in some marginal, semi-divine sort of way. Rather he viewed him as the one God of Israel, the pre-existent creator of the universe.

Let us consider just two examples that show that the highest of Christologies was present in our earliest sources. First, consider Paul’s language in 1 Cor 8:5-6:

For although there may be so-called gods in heaven or on earth—as indeed there are many “gods” and many “lords”—yet for us there is one God, the Father, from whom are all things and for whom we exist, and one Lord Jesus Christ, through whom are all things and through whom we exist.

At heart of this statement—given in the context of food offered to idols—is Paul’s concern to uphold monotheism. There is only one God who is worthy to receive cultic worship, as opposed to the many false gods present in pagan worship.

Indeed, it is widely recognized that Paul is clearly drawing upon the core monotheistic confession of ancient Israel, the “shema” of Deut 6:4: “Hear, O Israel: the Lord our God, the Lord is One.”

What is noteworthy, however, is that Paul has now included the Lord Jesus Christ within the shema, even using the same word (“Lord”) to describe him. Paul is not adding Jesus to the godhead, as if there were now two gods, but rather he is including Jesus in the divine identity of Yahweh.

This is confirmed by the fact that Paul attributes to Jesus the very same act of creation that he attributes to God: “through whom are all things and through whom we exist.” Jesus is not the recipient of a creative act, but the one who performs the creative act.

Thus, Bauckham concludes, “A higher Christology than Paul already expresses in 1 Corinthians 8:6 is scarcely possible, and…[is] the common character of all New Testament Christology” (2008:30).

The other passage, not surprisingly, is Phil 2:6-11, one of the clearest and most profound declarations that Jesus is Lord over all. Not only does Paul affirm the pre-existence and incarnation of Jesus—“though in the form of God…made himself nothing, taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men”—but he describes the highest possible exaltation of Jesus: “So that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.”

This latter phrase draws explicitly on Is 45:23, where, in the original context, Yahweh declares, “To me every knee shall bow, every tongue shall swear allegiance.” Paul takes the glory due to Yahweh alone and applies it to Jesus—showing that he considers the latter as fully part of the divine identity.

Thus, Hurtado has observed that when Phil 2:6-11 is viewed as a whole it describes the work of Christ in a “narrative sequence,” starting with his pre-existence, moving to his incarnation, then to his humiliation, and finally to his exaltation (Hurtado, 2003:123).

What is particularly noteworthy about both of these passages is that scholars have argued that each of them reflect even earlier Christian tradition that significantly predates Paul’s own letters. In the case of Phil 2:6-11, it is widely regarded as an earlier Christological “hymn” that Paul adapted for use within this particular letter. Likewise, 1 Cor 8:6 is considered to be one of the earliest creedal statements within the Pauline corpus.

Thus, not only do these passages show that the apostle Paul himself had a high Christology, but that this high Christology pre-dates Paul and appears in the very earliest layers of the Christian faith.

In the end, there are two choices for skeptics intent on rejecting the divinity of Jesus.  On the one hand, they could argue that Christians were simply wrong about Jesus being God.  And, on the other hand, they could argue that Christians never really believed that Jesus was God.

Based on the evidence above, it seems the former is a much better option than the latter.  People are free to disagree with early Christians about what they believed about Jesus.  But, there is little doubt that early Christians believed it.

Where Are They Now? RTS Charlotte Alumnus Cole McLaughlin

Over the last number of years, God has really used RTS Charlotte to help train folks headed into campus ministry (or coming from campus ministry).  In fact, we have an entire institute designed to do just that: the Institute for Reformed Campus Ministry (IRCM).

The IRCM has allowed us to connect with campus ministries like RUF, CRU, Campus Outreach (and others).  Many of those folks head to college ministry, and others to the pastoral ministry.

Cole McLaughlin (class of 2007) is a great example of both.  After working with CRU for 15 years, Cole is now Senior Pastor at Peace PCA in Cary, NC.

Cole is the next installment in our Where Are They Now? alumni series.  He has some great wisdom to offer below–especially the last paragraph! Here is his interview:

1. What are you currently doing?

I am the Senior Pastor of Peace Church (PCA) in Cary, North Carolina, just outside of Raleigh. Prior to coming to Peace, I was on staff with Cru for 15 years, most recently at Duke University.

2. Why did you originally come to RTS Charlotte?

I came to RTS in my mid-twenties, after about 4 years of campus ministry. Students were asking questions that I didn’t have answers for, and that pushed me to seek more training. I took a course on Christianity and Culture that RTS was offering remotely in the Raleigh area, and I was hooked–from that first class on, I encountered at RTS a theological richness and depth that I had never experienced before.

3. Is there one thing that you learned at RTS that has come back to you as you have ministered to others? A phrase, encouragement or advice?

The late Dr. Frank Kik loved to exhort us to remember that we were called to preach to ‘people, not pews.’ Early on, we usually failed to follow his advice, and Dr. Kik would cry out, right as we preached: ‘I’m bored!’ I still imagine him out there sometimes, pushing me to be clearer and more passionate as I speak. Another thing he’d say is, ‘Don’t be impressed when people take notes on your sermon. That doesn’t mean anything. You should seek to preach so well that they can’t take notes.’ If you ever tried to take notes on one of Dr. Kik’s sermons, you knew what he meant. It was hard to write anything with your heart that engaged–and you couldn’t see through the tears. Another great quote that often comes to mind is Richard Pratt’s: ‘The first step toward heresy is you alone with your Bible!’ That quote alone shows the value of an RTS education.

4. What do you enjoy most about your current ministry?

This is a small one, but significant, over time: I enjoy the privilege of pronouncing the benediction each Sunday–it’s a moment when you see the hunger for grace become visible on people’s faces. Seeing that look reminds me not to give up, that the work of the pastor really does have meaning.

5. What has been a struggle in your ministry?

Eugene Peterson talks about the ‘relentless return of the Sabbath.’ Preaching week after week is grueling work. Most of us can come up with a great ‘stump speech’ or two, but ministering God’s Word to the same people, time after time, is a whole different thing. Most any pastor will tell you that to be able to take a Sunday to just sit and listen to someone else preach is a great gift. I try to give myself that gift as much as possible, to keep from burning out. I know a few guys who preach around 50 times a year. I will never be one of those guys!

6. If you could give any encouragement to a current student in seminary, what would it be?

Be humble. If you aren’t thirty years old yet, you probably haven’t earned the right to be too certain about anything! So listen to your pastors, your professors and your wife. Nothing is worse than an arrogant 27-year-old. Believe me, I know–I used to be one. And everyone will like you more if you are humble, because you look a lot more like Jesus that way.

How Diverse Was Early Christianity? Clearing Up a Few Misconceptions

For some critical scholars, the most important fact about early Christianity was its radical theological diversity. Christians couldn’t agree on much of anything, we are told. All we have in the early centuries were a variety of Christian factions all claiming to be original and all claiming to be apostolic.

Sure, one particular group–the group we now know as “orthodox” Christianity–won those theological wars.  But why (the argument goes) should we think this group is any more valid than the groups that lost? What if another group (say the Gnostic Christians) had won?  If they had, then what we call “Christianity” would look radically different.

Thus, according to these critics, in the second and third centuries there really was no such thing as “Christianity.”  Rather there were “Christiantities” (plural), all of which were locked in a battle for theological supremacy.

This entire line of thinking, of course, goes back to Walter Bauer’s 1934 book Orthodoxy and Heresy in Earliest Christianity. But, its most ardent supporter today is Bart Ehrman.  Ehrman describes precisely this view of early Christianity:

The wide diversity of early Christianity may be seen above all by the theological beliefs embraced by people who understood themselves to be followers of Jesus. In the second and third centuries there were, of course, Christians who believed in one God. But there were others that insisted there were two. Some said there were thirty. Others claimed there were 365 (Lost Christianities, 2).

Ehrman then proceeds to provide a laundry list of many of the conflicting beliefs held by early Christians–a list that no doubt would (and was certainly designed to) overwhelm and shock the average reader.

So, what can be said in response to such claims?  Was early Christianity really as diverse as Ehrman claims?  Was there no credible standard by which Christians in the second century could tell the difference between true and false beliefs?

There is much to be said in answer to these questions. I have already addressed some of them in a prior blog post (here) and, of course, in my book The Heresy of Orthodoxy.

But, in this short post, I simply want to observe (and respond to) something noteworthy about Ehrman’s methodology. Notice that as he described groups that believed in 2 or 30 or 365 gods, that he refers to these groups as “Christians.”

And why does he do this?  Because, as he said, these people “understood themselves to be followers of Jesus.”

But, the use of this terminology by Ehrman is a bit misleading. Sure, these people claimed the name of Jesus.  That is not in doubt. But, it strains credibility to think that this is a title that accurately and fairly describes their theology.

The fact of the matter is that Christians did not believe in 2 or 30 or 365 gods.  Christians were committed not only to the Old Testament but to a monotheistic system. The historical evidence for this is overwhelming.

The groups that believed in, say, 365 gods were in fact, Gnostics. In particular, Ehrman is referring to Basilides here (and they weren’t really “gods” in the way we think of it, but more like creator-angels).

And the theology of the Gnostics was so out of bounds that it could not be recognizably given the label “Christianity” with any historical or theological credibility.

But, it is not difficult to see why scholars insist on using labels like “Christianity” to describe such groups.  The answer is because it creates the impression that there was greater diversity than there really was.

The more the label “Christianity” can be tossed around indiscriminately, then the more it appears that Christians could believe just about anything (and did). In strips the word of all its meaning.

What you have in Ehrman’s statement above, then, is a bit of semantic slight of hand.  Yes, it is defensible under the heading that “these people thought they were Christians and who am I to say otherwise?”  But, at the same time, it remains substantially misleading and, in the end, unhelpful.

To take a modern example, consider the UFO religious group “Heaven’s Gate” led by Marshall Applewhite. This group believed that they would, upon death, be transported to an alien ship following the Hale-Bopp comet—a belief that led 39 of them to commit mass suicide in 1997. They also claimed to follow Jesus and to be fulfilling the prophecies of Revelation.

What if a newspaper reporter tracking these events went on the evening news and declared, “Christians believe in UFO’s and also believe that they should commit suicide in order to join an alien spacecraft trailing the Hale-Bopp comet.”

When challenged about such a statement, the reporter could say, “Well, this group claims to be Christian!” But, I think we all know that defense is inadequate.  No one with journalist integrity would speak in such a misleading way when they know that, historically speaking, this does not represent the Christian faith.

In the end, not everyone who claims to be a follower of Christianity ought to be considered a follower of Christianity. If that basic principle were applied to our study of the second century in a balanced and fair way, I think much (though not all) of the rhetoric about radical diversity would have to be modified.

Believe it or Not, I am Now on Facebook

One of my favorite cartoons is a picture of man sitting in his library in an isolated chair, reading a book and sipping his brandy. He is an intellectual looking fellow with a sweater vest and glasses.

The caption reads: “Eccentric internet holdout Delbert T. Quimby passes another day non-digitally.”

I laugh at the cartoon because I see myself in it.  Or at least I see what I wish was myself.

Over the years, I have tried to be the “internet holdout” but it has become somewhat of a hilarious failure. Each reluctant step into the digital world has led to another.  First, I started my own website/blog.  Then, I joined the world of Twitter (@michaeljkruger).

Quimby

And now, having utterly abandoned any pretense to live a non-digital life, I am on Facebook.

The last shred of dignity I can cling to is the fact that this just an “author page” and not the full-fledged version of Facebook.  But, looking back on the trend of the last few years, I am sure I will cave into the whole deal eventually!

On a more serious note, it is my hope that being on Facebook will provide an additional avenue to connect with folks. All my blog and twitter posts will be put on Facebook and hopefully this will allow people to find them more easily.

Anyway, if you are on Facebook I would love to have you stop by and say hello by “liking” the page.  That will at least make me feel better as I mourn the loss of my non-digital self!

@DavidPowlison from @CCEF Will Be Speaking @RTSCharlotte on Depression and Suffering

From a pastoral perspective, one of the most common problems I come across in my church–a problem that is often hidden and concealed–is the problem of depression.  A substantial amount of people (more than we think) have a serious struggle with this issue.

For this reason, the RTS Charlotte campus is pleased to have Dr. David Powlison from CCEF come speak on this complex topic. David is the executive director of CCEF and one of the leading thinkers, authors, and speakers in the world of biblical counseling.

David will speak from 6:30-8:30PM on Monday, Jan 18th on the Charlotte campus. This session is part of our EQUIP series at RTS Charlotte which has included prior speakers such as Ed Welch, Tim Lane, and Deepak Reju (for more on that series see here).

I hope that you will join us on Jan 18th and bring some friends along or even staff from your church. To register, see here.

Also that same week (Jan 18-22), David and Todd Stryd (also from CCEF) will co-teach a week-long counseling class, Theology and Psychology.  For those of you interested in exploring the complex relationship between the Bible and modern psychology, this is the class for you.

To register or audit the class, see here.  Or email Kim Macurda: [email protected]

Hope to see you on the Charlotte campus!

Is the Existence of the NT Canon Incompatible with Claims of New Revelation?

“God has spoken to me.”

There are few statements that will shut down debate more quickly than this one.  If Christians disagree over a doctrine, a practice, or an idea, then the trump card is always “God has spoken to me” about that.  End of discussion.

But, the history of the church (not to mention the Scriptures themselves) demonstrates that such claims of private, direct revelation are highly problematic. Of course, this doesn’t mean that God doesn’t speak to people. The Scripture is packed with examples of this.  But, these were typically individuals with a unique calling (e.g., prophet or apostle), or who functioned at unique times in redemptive history (e.g., the early church in Acts).

After the first century was over, and the apostles had died, the church largely rejected the idea that any ol’ person could step forward and claim to have direct revelation from God.  This reality is probably best exemplified in the early Christian debate over Montanism.

Montanism was a second-century movement whose leader Montanus claimed to receive direct revelation from God. In addition, two of his “prophetesses,”  Priscilla and Maximilla also claimed to receive such revelation. Such revelations were often accompanied by strange behavior. When Montanus had these revelations, “[He] became obsessed, and suddenly fell into frenzy and convulsions. He began to be ecstatic and to speak and to talk strangely” (Hist. eccl. 5.16.7).

Needless to say, this sort of activity caused great concern for the orthodox leaders of the second century. Part of their concern was the manner in which this prophetic activity was taking place.  They condemned it on the grounds that it was “contrary to the custom which belongs to the tradition and succession of the church from the beginning” (Hist. eccl. 5.16.7).

But, the other concern (and perhaps the larger one) was that this new revelation was inconsistent with the church’s beliefs about the apostles. The second-century leaders understood the apostles to be a unique mouthpiece for God; so much so that they would accept no revelation that wasn’t understood to be apostolic.

As an example of this commitment, the early church rejected the Shepherd of Hermas–a book supposedly containing revelations from heaven–on the grounds that it was written “very recently, in our own times” (Muratorian fragment). In other words, it was rejected because it wasn’t apostolic.

This issue reached a head when the Montanists began to write down their new prophecies, forming their own collection of sacred books. The orthodox leaders viewed such an activity as illegitimate because, on their understanding, God had already spoken in his apostles, and the words of the apostles were recorded in the New Testament writings.

A few examples of how the orthodox leaders rejected these books of “new revelation”:

1. Gaius of Rome, in his dialogue with the Montanist Proclus, rebuked “the recklessness and audacity of his opponents in composing new Scriptures” (Hist. eccl. 6.20.3).

2. Apollonius objected on the grounds that Montanist prophets were putting their “empty sounding words” on the same level as Christ and the apostles (Hist. eccl. 5.18.5).

3. Hippolytus complained that the Montanists “allege that they have learned something more through these [Montanist writings], than from law, and prophets, and the Gospels” (Haer. 8.12).

4. The anonymous critic of Montanism recorded by Eusebius registers his hesitancy to write a response to the Montantists lest he be seen as making the same mistake as them and “seem to some to be adding to the writings or injunctions of the word of the new covenant of the Gospel” (Hist. eccl. 5.16.3)

When you look at these responses, a couple of key facts become clear.  First, and this is critical, it is clear that these authors already knew and had received a number of New Testament writings as authoritative Scripture. Thus, they already had a NT canon of sorts (even if some books were still under discussion).  Indeed, it is the existence of these books that forms the basis for their major complaint against the Montanists.

Second, and equally critical, the response of these writers shows that they did not accept new revelation in their time period.  For them, the kind of revelation that could be considered “God’s word,” and thus written down in books, had ceased with the apostolic time period.

In terms of the modern church, there are great lessons to be learned here. For one, we ought to be equally cautious about extravagant claims that people have received new revelation from heaven. And, even more than this, the Montanist debate is a great reminder to always go back to Scripture as the ultimate standard and guide for truth.  It is on the written word of God that the church should stand.

Special Seminar on Homosexuality at @RTSCharlotte with James White @DrOakley1689

It goes without saying that this country has experienced a monumental cultural and ethical shift in the last 5-8 years. What was once seen as wrong is now seen as right.  And what was seen as right is now seen as wrong.

One is reminded of the woe in Isaiah 5:20: “Woe to those who call evil good and good evil, who put darkness for light and light for darkness, who put bitter for sweet and sweet for bitter!”

At the forefront of this issue is the topic of homosexuality.  And Christians face two distinctive questions in regard to this issue: (1) What does the Bible teach about homosexuality? and (2) What should we think about same-sex marriage in our culture?

On Monday, January 11th, 6:30-8:30PM, RTS Charlotte will host Dr. James White who will give two sessions on precisely these two questions. You can get all the details about these upcoming seminars here.

James is the director of Alpha and Omega Ministries, a Christian apologetics organization based in Phoenix, Arizona. He is the author of more than twenty books, a professor, an accomplished debater, and an elder of the Phoenix Reformed Baptist Church.

As a side note, I was pleased to endorse James’ recent book What Every Christian Needs to Know about the Qur’an.  You will want to check it out.

Dr. White will also be teaching our course on Apologetics here at RTS Charlotte that same week, Jan 11-15.  If you are interested in taking that course, or just auditing that course, see here for more info.

Dr. White’s lectures are actually part of a larger series we do here at RTS called EQUIP workshops.  These workshops are not seminary classes, but are evening events designed to train Christians in the Charlotte community. Prior EQUIP speakers have included Ed Welch, Tim Lane, and Deepak Reju.

On Jan 18th,  David Powlison will do a forthcoming EQUIP workshop on the topic of depression and suffering (I will highlight this event in a later post).

If you are in the Charlotte area on Jan 11th, I hope to see you there. In the meantime, here is a video of James White debating liberal scholar John Shelby Spong on the topic of homosexuality:

 

Here is a Great Series by @melissabkruger on Reading the Bible in a Year

Now that 2015 is coming to a close, everyone is starting to talk about cranking up the yearly Bible reading for 2016.

But, if you are looking for more than just a link to a good Bible reading program, you will want to check out the great 4-part series my wife Melissa did over at TGC on her blog Wit’s End.  She provides the bigger picture reasons and motivations for why Bible reading in a year makes sense.

One of her key reasons is that yearly Bible reading allows us to see the big sweep of redemptive history, something piece-meal reading can never do.  Put differently, Bible reading in one year allows us to see (more clearly) that the Bible is really one story, not just a bunch of little ones.

She writes:

Standing up close to an impressionist painting gives you one view of the master’s work – the intricacies of design, the vibrant colors, and the individual brush marks. However, backing away from the painting allows you to see the picture in its entirety. Just as we need both perspectives to be able to appreciate a painting to its fullest, we need both types of views as we read our Bibles.

Taking a year to read the Bible in its entirety allows us the opportunity to back up and observe the full picture. We see the larger story of Creation, Fall, Redemption, and Restoration in the midst of all the individual stories. All scripture contains the same DNA – Jesus is on every page, present in every story. The Gospel is repeated in shadows-like accounts, preparing us for the ultimate rescue. Reading the Bible through in a shorter amount of time also allows us a better opportunity to connect what we learned in Deuteronomy with the message of Galatians. You will glean insights that you might have missed (or forgotten) if you read it over a longer time span.

Here is her 4-part series:

1. Daily Bread: 8 Reasons You Need it More Than You Think

2. Fruitful Vines: 7 Reasons to Read the Bible in a Year

3. Stopping Before You Start: 6 Possible Objections to Reading the Bible in a Year

4. My Favorite Bible in a Year Reading Plan

 

Did Jesus Even Exist? Responding to 5 Objections Raised by @rawstory

Well, it’s that time of year.  Christmas is almost a week away and we are already seeing various media channels releasing stories, articles, and documentaries on Jesus.  And when the dust settles, they all make the same point: the real Jesus is a lot different than you think.

As some might recall, this same sort of thing happened last Christmas with Kurt Eichenwald’s Newsweek article, “The Bible: So Misunderstood It’s a Sin.”  You can read my two part response here and here.

This Christmas it is happening again with an article by Valerie Tarico, “Here are Five Reasons to Suspect Jesus Never Existed.”  But she takes things even further than most other Christmas articles on Jesus.  Rather than suggesting Jesus is different than we think, she is arguing that Jesus never existed at all.

I suppose that might put a damper on some people’s Christmas.

Before I respond to her five reasons below, it may be helpful to understand how unusual articles like this really are. The reason most Christmas articles simply want to rewrite the story of Jesus is because virtually all scholars agree–liberal and conservative alike–that there is little reason to doubt his existence.

Indeed, so convinced are scholars that Jesus certainly existed, that it is difficult to even find scholars who might argue otherwise.  The most notable modern example is no doubt Richard Carrier and his book, The Historicity of Jesus.

And incredibly, even the consummate biblical critic, Bart Ehrman, has responded to Carrier in his book, Did Jesus Exist?  I must say, it is an unusual experience reading Erhman when he is actually defending (to some degree) the historicity of the Gospel accounts!

So, can Tarico (a psychologist by training) overcome the vast scholarly consensus in favor of Jesus’ existence?  Here are her five arguments:

1. No first century secular evidence whatsoever exists to support the actuality of Yeshua ben Yosef.

Not surprisingly, Tarico begins with the fact that secular sources don’t talk about Jesus in the first century. But there are a number of problems with this line of reasoning:

(a) It is functionally an argument from silence.  Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence. Secular historians would have little interest in a stir created by a backwater preacher from Galilee. This simply would not have been on their radar screen. Arguments from silence are widely regarded as fallacious precisely because we don’t always know why historians talk about some things and not others.

(b) Tarico conveniently rules out the numerous Christian sources that do tell us about Jesus (Gospels, epistles, Acts, etc.).  She will claim, no doubt, that these sources cannot be trusted.  But, ironically, these are precisely the sources that would have actually taken notice of a person like Jesus. Many of the New Testament authors would have actually been in Galilee and Judea and would have been able to record such things (more about this below).

(c) Tarico fails to mention the comments about Jesus in the writings of the first-century historian Josephus. Perhaps this is because Josephus is Jewish and therefore not “secular.” But this is hardly a convincing reason to omit his testimony.  As a Jew, he would have had little sympathy to the burgeoning Christian movement.

2. The earliest New Testament writers seem ignorant of the details of Jesus’ life, which become more crystalized in later texts.

Next Tarico appeals to the well-worn argument that since Paul, our earliest Christian writer, provides little biographical details of Jesus’ life, then Jesus must not have existed. This argument is problematic on a number of levels.

(a) First this argument misunderstands entirely what Paul’s letters were designed to do.  They were epistles, not Gospels, and therefore not intended to recount the words and deeds of Jesus. Tarico is confused about the genre of early Christian writings and assumes they would all cover the same territory.

(b) Paul actually knows quite a bit of historical details about Jesus and these come out in various places in his letters. One key example is how he recounts (in detail) what Jesus did and said at the Last Supper (1 Corr 11:23-26).

(c) Paul would have known the immediate disciples of Jesus, such as Peter and John, and would have had access to many other people who lived during the time of Jesus.  If Jesus never existed, are we to think that Peter and John just lied to Paul?  Or are we to think that Paul just made up characters of Peter and James and the witnesses of the resurrection (1 Cor 15:3-8)?  And if Jesus never existed, would not Paul have heard this from other people who were alive in the purported time of Jesus’ life?  In the end, Paul’s life is nonsensical if Jesus didn’t really exist.

3. Even the New Testament stories don’t claim to be first-hand accounts.

At this point, Tarico’s misunderstanding of the New Testament documents becomes even more apparent.  She claims that “we know” that the Gospels were not written by Matthew, Mark, Luke and John.  That is patently false.

John’s gospel, for instance, claims to be written by someone who is actually at the last Supper and an immediate disciple of Jesus (John 21:24). And the historical evidence for John as this person is very strong (the link between Irenaeus and Polycarp bears this out).

Another example that the Gospels contain “eyewitness” testimony comes from the Gospel of Mark.  We have early, widespread, and uniform patristic testimony that this Gospel was written by Mark the disciple of Peter, and that the Gospel therefore contains Peter’s eyewitness accounts.

Tarico would have done well to familiarize herself with Richard Bauckham’s book Jesus and the Eyewitnesses which paints nearly the opposite picture she has presented in her article. If she had, she would realize that there is tremendous evidence that the Gospels are first-hand accounts of the person of Jesus of Nazareth.

4. The gospels, our only accounts of a historical Jesus, contradict each other.

I suppose it was inevitable that the issue of supposed contradictions between the gospels would be raised.  But, this argument simply doesn’t work:

(a) Declaring it doesn’t make it so. Notice that Tarico has just assumed there are contradictions without showing that there are contradictions. Yes, the Gospels offer different perspectives on the life of Jesus, but there is no reason to regard these as contradictory. A lot of these so-called contradictions evaporate upon closer inspection, especially when methods of ancient historiography are taken into account (which are quite different than modern ones).

(b) Even if the Gospels contradict each other, this doesn’t prove Jesus didn’t exist.  There is a non sequitur in Tarico’s argument here. Even if some historical sources disagree at points, this doesn’t require a wholesale abandonment of the historical realities that stand behind them.  Indeed, if we adopted Tarico’s standards here we would not be able to affirm hardly any historical events!

5. Modern scholars who claim to have uncovered the real historical Jesus depict wildly different persons.

Again, this is a non sequitur in Tarico’s reasoning.  Since scholars disagree about the details of Jesus’ life therefore he never existed?  How does that follow?  Jesus could really exist and scholars could also disagree about the specifics–the two are not mutually exclusive.

Also, what Tarico fail’s to understand is that the disagreement amongst scholars is not necessarily due to problematic sources.  It may be due (and often is) to the fact that scholar refuse to accept the content of the sources we do have and instead insist on reconstructing Jesus for themselves.

Thus, the failure of scholars to agree about Jesus says more about modern historical methods (and the refusal of modern people to accept the Gospels as they are) than it does about whether Jesus actually existed.

In the end, Tarico has provided few reasons to think we should doubt the existence of Jesus.  On the contrary, each of her suggested reasons, when explored more fully, reveal that we actually have very solid reasons to believe in the existence of Jesus.

In short, the scholarly consensus on this matter exists for a reason.  Scholars may disagree about a great many things regarding Jesus.  But his existence is not one of them.

My Review of “How the Bible Became Holy”

This past week, my review of Michael Satlow, How the Bible Became Holy (Yale, 2014) appeared in the latest volume of Themelios.

As the title suggests, this is yet another book (in a long list of predecessors) that insists that the idea of an authoritative Scripture is a late invention of Christians.

According to Satlow, the Bible was not originally holy. It became holy. And that didn’t even happen until well into the third century or later.

Although Satlow’s volume covers both OT and NT issues, my review addressed some weaknesses on the NT side of things:

As for the development of the New Testament canon, Satlow provides a brief overview of some of the major players in the second century, including Justin Martyr, Tatian, and Irenaeus (pp. 241–56). Although there is substantial evidence that these individuals held a high view of New Testament writings, one gets the impression that Satlow is trying to minimize this evidence at every turn. For example, when it comes to Justin Martyr, he argues that the Gospels “play a relatively minor role for him” and “didn’t play much of a role in the lives of most ordinary Christians” (p. 250). But, then Satlow just glosses over the major text that shows otherwise, namely Justin’s description of how the Gospels are read in early Christian worship services as Scripture on par with the Old Testament writings (1 Apol. 67.3). Surely this suggests that the Gospels not only possessed a high authority, but that they did play an important role in the life of ordinary Christians.

In order to downplay further the authority of New Testament writings during this time period, Satlow then argues that early Christian scribal cultural was problematic. He makes three claims: (a) Christian manuscripts were “utilitarian” and lack evidence of being written by professional scribes; (b) manuscripts were not written for public recitation; and (c) physical features of manuscripts had no (or very little) importance (pp. 255–256). However, each of these claims is in serious doubt. Graham Stanton has observed, along with many others, that the scribal hand of many early NT manuscripts is quite professional, suggesting the scribes were more well-trained than many suppose. Stanton reaches the opposite conclusion of Satlow when he states, “The oft-repeated claim that the gospels were considered at first to be utilitarian handbooks needs to be modified” (Jesus and Gospel [Cambridge: Cambridge University Press], 206). The argument that the Gospels were not written for public recitation has been taken up by a number of scholars, including Scott Charlesworth who (again) reaches the opposite conclusion of Satlow, arguing that the line spacing and reader’s aids in many gospel manuscripts suggest they were intended for public reading (“Public and Private: Second-and Third-Century Gospel Manuscripts,” in Jewish and Christian Scripture as Artifact and Canon, ed. C. A. Evans and H. D. Zacharias [London: T&T Clark, 2009], 148–175). And as for the physical features of New Testament manuscripts, Satlow is correct that they did not exhibit the elite, high-culture artistic features of some literary texts in the Greco-Roman world. But, that doesn’t mean their visual/physical characteristics played no role. Larry Hurtado has shown that early Christians valued more than the text, but also the visual and material appearance of their manuscripts, particularly as exemplified by the use of the codex, nomina sacra, and the staurogram (The Earliest Christian Artifacts: Manuscripts and Origins [Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2006]).

And here is my conclusion:

In conclusion, Satlow has written an interesting, provocative and wide-ranging volume on the origins of the Old and New Testaments that provides much helpful information on the history of biblical texts. However, Satlow’s aggressive (and sometime speculative) reconstruction often presses the evidence beyond what it can bear. In addition, one gets the impression that Satlow is intent on minimizing the role of Scripture in both Israel and the early church, even when the evidence could be naturally read in the other direction. The broad, narrative style of the book allows him to lay out the standard higher-critical view of biblical origins, but does not provide the sort of documentation of his claims that might persuade those who don’t already share his starting point. Regardless, those in the field of biblical studies, especially those interested in the origins of the canon, will want to read and interact with this volume.

You can read the whole review here.

How Can Seminary Students Keep Their Devotional Life Strong?

RTS has started a new video series called Wisdom Wednesday where our faculty share their advice on a number of important practical and theological issues. Keep an eye out for it on Twitter in weeks to come (@ReformTheoSem #WisdomWednesday).

Below is my video from yesterday’s installment on how seminary students can keep their devotional life strong in the midst of their studies.  Although it is directed to a seminary context, I hope it would be helpful for any Christian who wants to go deeper in their devotional life.  Enjoy!

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One of the Most Unique Books on the Authority of Scripture in Generations

We certainly have no shortage of books defending and upholding the authority of Scripture. In fact, I recently posted my list of top ten books on this subject.

And the reason we have so many of these books is not hard to find.  The world continues to attack the Bible. And many Christians continue to doubt the Bible.

But one thing we do have a shortage of is certain kinds of books on the authority of Scripture.  Most books on the authority of Scripture are either providing a theological explanation of our doctrine of Scripture, or are providing historical evidence for how the Bible was put together. Or maybe both.

But, what tends to be lacking in most discussions is how the Bible witnesses to its own divine authority. Or, put another way, how the internal characteristics of Scripture point toward its divine origins.  I’ve tried to address this important issue myself in various ways (for instance, see my book Canon Revisited, and my recent post: What Do We Mean When We Say the Bible is ‘Self-Authenticating’?), but more on the subject is needed.

For this reason, I was thankful to see John Piper’s new book, A Peculiar Glory: How the Christian Scriptures Reveal Their Complete Truthfulness on the cover of Crossway’s 2016 catalog. Piper argues for what is essentially a self-authenticating view of the Bible.

Building on the work of Jonathan Edwards (no surprise there), Piper makes the case that we know the Scriptures are true because in them we behold the wonder and the glory of Christ himself. He states in the introduction: “Thus, at the end of all human means, the simplest pre-literate person and the most educated scholar come to a saving knowledge of the truth of Scripture in the same way: by a sight of its glory.”

With such a thesis at the core of his book, Piper stands in a long line of Reformed thinkers who’ve made essentially the same argument. I think particularly of John Owen, The Divine Original: Authority, Self-Evidencing Light, and Power of the Scriptures, in vol. 16 of Owen’s Collected Works (Banner of Truth, 1988).

Here is my endorsement below, along with Tom Schreiner’s:

“There are few questions more important than ‘How Do I know the Bible is God’s Word?’ And there are few people who could address it as well as John Piper. Drawing from the deep theological well of Jonathan Edwards, and with a practical eye for the average believer in the pew, Piper has helped us recover the foundational importance of a self-authenticating Bible. This book will revolutionize the way you think about God’s Word.”
–Michael J. Kruger, President and Samuel C. Patterson Professor of New Testament at Reformed Theological Seminary, Charlotte, NC

“Here we find compelling arguments for the truthfulness of the Scriptures and profound meditations on the stunning glory of God.”
–Tom R. Schreiner, James Buchanan Harrison Professor of New Testament Interpretation, The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary

Should You Preach from a Full Manuscript?

When it comes to the question of how to preach, there is no shortage of books, articles, and blog posts offering advice and guidance. And once you start sifting through these materials, it becomes apparent that there is no shortage of disagreement about the particulars of the preaching task.

With that broader context in mind, I am hesitant to jump into the fray over preaching methodology.  But, there is one question that my students keep asking me, so I thought it would be worth addressing.  And that question is, “Should I preach from a full manuscript?”

By “full manuscript” they mean they write out their sermon exactly how they would preach it, word for word.

This is a particularly common question amongst seminary students because (a) they are getting conflicting advice on the matter, and (b) they are often a bit fearful about that first preaching experience.

But, I think progress can be made on this question if one important distinction is maintained, namely the difference between writing a manuscript and using a manuscript.  The former is a very helpful and worthwhile exercise (particularly for younger preachers).  The latter, in my opinion, can seriously hinder a preachers development as well as the effectiveness of their delivery.

The benefits of writing out a full manuscript are many.  It forces the preacher to think clearly about each of their points and how to develop them, it helps the preacher think through transitions between points (something often overlooked), it helps keep the sermon within the desired time limit, and the exact wording allows for more theological precision.

And, on top of all of this, a full manuscript allows a preacher to retrieve their sermon several years later and preach it again without wondering what he originally said.

But, when it comes to using a manuscript in the pulpit, there are serious drawbacks:

1. It (almost) inevitably leads to “bubble preaching.”

Having seen countless seminary students use full manuscripts over the years, they almost always (there are a few exceptions) end up reading it. If you have the full text in front of you word for word, and you are already worried about what you are going to say, then reading it is a foregone conclusion.

And when a preacher reads a manuscript, it almost always leads to what I call “bubble preaching.”  This is when the preacher is in his own little bubble, going through his message line by line, with virtually no connection to the outside audience. Sure he gives the token eye contact, on cue every seven seconds or so, but no one really feels a vibrant link to the person as he is preaching.

Bubble preaching is when a preacher could be in the sanctuary completely by himself and you wouldn’t be able to tell the difference–the delivery would be exactly the same.

Of course, there are always exceptions to this concern.  Some are so exceptionally gifted that they are able to read a manuscript without sounding like they are reading a manuscript.  Others are able to have a manuscript in the pulpit but (in superhuman fashion) resist the urge to read it.

If these exceptions apply to you, then feel free to keep using a manuscript. But, for the rest of us mere mortals, we will need an alternative.

2. It overly prioritizes content.

Let me clear, when it comes to preaching content is king.  As preachers we have a message to deliver and we need to get that message right.  But, concern for content can so dominate a sermon, that there is little consideration given to how (or why) people receive the content.  We are not doing our jobs if we get the content right but it is never heard due to poor delivery.  Good content doesn’t matter if no one is listening.

Preachers who are able to break out of their bubble, make real eye contact, and engage with the congregation, can be, paradoxically, more effective in delivering their content than those who use a manuscript.

Given a choice between perfect word-for-word delivery in a bubble, and an imperfect delivery outside the bubble, I will take the latter.

3. It slows a preachers development.

Standing up and reading a manuscript every Sunday prevents most preachers from learning to speak extemporaneously.  It gives a preacher less opportunity to learn to speak on his feet.  Why are such skills necessary?  For one, as noted above, I think such skills make him a more effective communicator that is more directly engaged with his congregation.

But, such skills are also necessary because a pastor does not always have a manuscript in front of him when he is required to speak outside the puplit.  In a counseling situation, for example, where a pastor is applying the Word of God to a particular issue, he cannot prepare a manuscript in advance.  He must learn to communicate clearly, cogently, and persuasively, with no manuscript at all.

Or perhaps someone asking him questions in a Sunday School class that require on-the-spot answers.  Or perhaps he is witnessing to his neighbor and has to explain important doctrines on the fly. None of these situations allow him the luxury of a manuscript, and yet he must speak.

Someone might object that they don’t have the skill set to speak more contemporaneously. Fair enough.  But, the question isn’t whether you have the skills now, but how you will develop those skills in the future. And those skills won’t develop by sticking with a full manuscript.

4. It misunderstands the difference between written and oral communication.

One of the major drawbacks of writing a sermon is that very few people can write a sermon in the kind of language that can effectively be preached. What makes for effective written communication is not always what makes for effective oral communication. Indeed, they are often like two different languages–the pace, the style, the cadence, and even the vocabulary can be notably different.

This is why reading a sermon manuscript rarely works.  Reading simply doesn’t sound the way preaching sounds.  It sounds, well, like reading. They are two different genres.

In light of these four concerns, I might suggest an alternative to a full manuscript.  Instead, I encourage my students to use a detailed outline.  This is more than the single (small) page of notes that Spurgeon would take into the pulpit. (When asked whether he wrote out his sermons, Spurgeon famously quipped “I’d rather be hung”!).

No, unlike Spurgeon, I am talking about multiple pages of detailed notes. And such a detailed outline, I would argue, demonstrates concern for both content and delivery.

On the content side, the outline provides the necessary prompts to carefully explain the theological and textual issues at hand.  Moreover, the fact that the outline is detailed (and not just broad bullet points) still allows a pastor to go back to the manuscript later and know what he preached the first time around.

On the delivery side, an outline does not allow for easy reading like a manuscript. Indeed, one cannot just read an outline (least they become non-sensical). Thus, the preacher is forced to articulate the point more fully in his own words. And this helps develop a preachers public speaking ability, not to mention his connection to the congregation.

Of course, merely having an outline does not prevent a preacher from keeping his head down, stuck in his notes.  But, at least he is not required to stick his head in his notes (which is largely the case with reading).  An outline at least creates more natural opportunities for eye contact and congregational connectivity.

In the end, the decision about using a manuscript is not an easy one. There are great preachers who use full manuscripts.  And there are great preachers who do not. And so people will reach different conclusions about this issue.

But, I still have to give an answer to my students.  They want to know what method is the most effective in developing preachers.  Not writers, but preachers.  And the answer to that question, I am convinced, is not to be found in full sermon manuscripts.

Does God “Want” All to Be Saved? Probing into the Will of God

As many know, the last two years I have been teaching a weekly women’s Bible study at RTS Charlotte designed to reach the community outside the formal seminary classroom. Every Wednesday, 120 plus women gather together to study the book of Romans, and it has been a delight.

We made it to the beginning of Romans 11 before stopping for the winter break, and we will resume in the Spring.  If you are interested in seeing the videos and getting the handouts, you can go here.

Of course, as everyone knows, one of the major themes in Romans 9-11 is the doctrine of election.  In fact, in Rom 11:7-8 Paul says again:

What then? Israel failed to obtain what it was seeking.  The elect obtained it, but the rest were hardened. As it written, ‘God gave them a spirit of stupor, eyes that would not see.

In light of a passage like this, it is natural for folks to wonder whether God really wants people to be saved.  Why would he “harden” someone and send them a “spirit of stupor” if he wants to save them?

But, our answer to these questions depends on what we mean when we say that God “wants” something.  And when we talk about what God wants we inevitably must talk about the “will” of God.  And this is a subject that requires some careful nuance.

Historically speaking, theologians have distinguished between three different sorts of “wills” for God:

1. Decretive will. This refers simply to what God decrees or ordains by his sovereign will.  And we know from Eph 1:11 that God ordains whatsoever comes to pass.  So, in this sense, we can say that a hurricane, for example, is God’s “will.”

2. Preceptive will.  This refers simply to what God has commanded, his precepts.  So, God’s “will” is that we honor our parents, keep the sabbath holy, not commit adultery, etc.

3. Dispositional will.  This refers to that which pleases or delights God. E.g., “Have I any pleasure in the death of the wicked? declares the Lord God” (Ezekiel 18:23)

When these three “wills” of God are considered, we can see that God, from one perspective, does not “want” (dispositional will) the wicked to perish.  But, from another perspective, God has decreed that some will be saved and some will not (decretive will).

This is not that different than what we do even on a human level.  A human judge in a court of law may not “want” to send a criminal to prison for life, but he will still do so because he is a just judge. So, in one sense he doesn’t “want” to do it; but then in another sense he does “want” to do it.

In the end, therefore, there is no contradiction between the doctrine of election and the fact that God does not delight in the death of the wicked.  For this reason the second half of Ezekiel 18:23 is true: “Have I any pleasure in the death of the wicked, declare the Lord God, and not rather that he should turn from his way and live?“

Off to the Annual Meeting of the Evangelical Theological Society

Tomorrow I head to Atlanta for the annual meeting of the Evangelical Theological Society.  This is always a great occasion to catch up with old colleagues, meet new ones, and network with scholars from around the country.

In addition to a full slate of meetings, I will be involved in the following three sessions:

1. On 11/18 at 10:40AM I will be giving a paper in the Synoptic Gospels section (Hilton Grand Salon C) where I will review the recent book by Monte Shanks, Papias and the New Testament (Pickwick, 2013).  Afterwards there will be a panel discussion on Papias with me, Monte Shanks and Darrell Bock.

2. Also on 11/18 at 4:40PM I will be giving a paper in the NT Canon, Textual Criticism, and Apocryphal Literature section (Hilton 201) on a miniature codex of 2 John (Gregory Aland 0232).  The theme for this year’s session is the physical and textual features of early Christian manuscripts, so this seemed to be an appropriate topic.

3. On 11/19 from 1:00-4:10PM (Hilton 304), I will be moderating the open session of NT Canon, Textual Criticism and Apocryphal literature.  There is a great line up of papers by Zachary Cole, Peter Gurry, Nick Perrin, and David Yoon.

But, in the midst of all of this, the most important part of ETS should not be missed: books!  This is the main time each year to see all the new publications in one place, and often they are being sold at a major discount. And I will be sticking around for a few days at SBL and enjoying the book tables there as well.

If you are coming to either of these conferences, hope to see you there.

Want to Understand the Transmission of the NT Text? Here is a Great New Resource

Whenever I teach textual criticism to my seminary students, I usually get two very different responses.  For some students, their eyes glaze over and they tune out as soon as they hear the word “paleography” for the first time.

For others, they find themselves fascinated by how texts were transmitted and copied in the ancient world.  And they are excited by the  fact that we can go to museums and see actual NT manuscripts–the earliest artifacts of Christianity. This archaeological component to textual criticism makes it a very tangible enterprise.

One thing that really helps teach students about this complex subject is finding the right text book.  But, admittedly, this has been a challenge over the years.  While I have great respect for Metzger’s original edition of The Text of the New Testament, it is written at a scholarly level that creates a challenge for most first-year seminary students. And the new Metzger-Ehrman edition has additional sections that I am not convinced are an improvement over the original.

On the other end of the spectrum is probably Greenlee’s Introduction to New Testament Textual Criticism.  This volume is much more introductory and certainly accessible to first-year seminary students.  However, its brevity creates the opposite problem–many issues are not covered at all, or at the level of detail needed.

This conundrum has, in my opinion, been largely solved by the new book by Stan Porter and Andrew Pitts, Fundamentals of New Testament Textual Criticism (Eerdmans, 2015).  I received an advance review copy many months ago, but today I received the final version in the mail.

Porter and Pitts aim for (and, I think, hit) the proverbial middle ground between Metzger and Greenlee, thus providing an excellent introduction to seminary students with the appropriate level of detail.  It is the essential third bowl of porridge in Goldilocks and the Three Bears!

I also enjoyed this volume because it includes a section on the canon of the New Testament–something most textual criticism volumes do not address.  This provides students with a helpful introduction to how the New Testament was formed in the first place.

Here are the endorsements on the back cover, including my own:

Craig S. Keener
— Asbury Theological Seminary
“This very readable textbook provides a helpful and balanced introduction to text criticism aimed at just the right level for beginning students. It is clear, introduces multiple views, gives good reasons for the approaches it favors, and — an unexpected bonus — offers in two relevant chapters useful, concise introductions to canon formation and translation theory.”

Michael J. Kruger
— Reformed Theological Seminary, Charlotte
“Because of the complexity of the field of textual criticism, most introductions are either too detailed or too basic. This exceptional volume by Stanley Porter and Andrew Pitts provides a welcome balance between these two extremes, introducing students to all the critical issues without overloading them with unnecessary detail. It also covers topics that most introductions overlook, such as the development of the New Testament canon and modern English translations. For anyone looking for a balanced, thorough, and yet readable introduction to textual criticism, this is it.”

J. K. Elliott
— University of Leeds
“Newcomers to the Greek New Testament will find this guide a useful introduction explaining how the establishing of the text is undertaken. It also gives insight into the treasures awaiting a perceptive user concerning textual variants found in the manuscript tradition.”

Craig A. Evans
— Acadia Divinity College
“This is no ordinary introduction to textual criticism. In addition to offering explanations of the criteria and the critical apparatus, Porter and Pitts explain in very practical ways what the discipline tries to do and the thinking that lies behind it. As a bonus readers are treated to up-to-date discussion of the formation of the canon of Scripture, the nature of the materials used in the production of ancient books, and a history of the English Bible and the theories of translation on which translations are based. The book is rich with examples and insights.”

David Alan Black
— Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary
“Fundamentals of New Testament Textual Criticism is an excellent treatise on a vitally important subject. Stanley Porter and Andrew Pitts were seeking to produce a textbook that falls midway between Bruce Metzger’s Text of the New Testament and my own New Testament Textual Criticism: A Concise Guide, and they have succeeded brilliantly. . . . Their careful research deepens our understanding of the role of textual criticism in exegesis, and I am confident that this book of theirs will be widely used both inside and outside of the classroom.”

Eckhard Schnabel
— Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary
“Porter and Pitts have admirably achieved what they set out to do — provide a succinct introduction to the manuscript tradition of the Greek New Testament for first- and second-year students of Koine Greek. . . . This book is ideal both for students in classrooms and for general readers who seek reliable information about the origins and the text of the New Testament.”

Thomas J. Kraus
— University of Zurich
“In this book Stanley E. Porter and Andrew W. Pitts take interested students by the hand and introduce them to the essentials of New Testament textual criticism. . . . They provide welcome, concise assessments of external and internal evidence for judging textual variants. . . . A very useful tool for instructing students in New Testament textual criticism.”

 

Are All Religions Just Equally Valid (but Partial) Glimpses of the Truth?

In popular religious discourse, one of the most common claims is that all religions are pretty much the same.  They all tap into the same general truth and offer a (partial) glimpse into the reality of the divine.  Thus, it is argued, no religion can claim to be the only right one.

I was reminded afresh of this claim the other day when my wife visited the Biltmore House, an historic home here in North Carolina. On display in the house was a carving of an elephant with several blind men examining different parts of it (see inset photo).

This display is patterned after the well-worn analogy that all religions are like blind men feeling different parts of an elephant. As the blind men try to determine what an elephant is like, one feels the trunk and says, “An elephant is like a snake!” Another feels the tail and says, “An elephant is like a rope!” Another feels a leg and says, “An elephant is like a tree trunk!”

And so, the argument goes, they are all right because they are only seeing part of the truth. Likewise, each religious system is only seeing part of the truth.

At first glance, this analogy seems quite convincing and utterly reasonable. After all, for a person to claim their religion is right and all others are wrong seems to exhibit a shocking degree of hubris. Who could possibly be that arrogant?  Isn’t it more humble to simply claim that all religions are basically tapping into the same truth?

But, sometimes first glances are mistaken.  This analogy is deeply problematic on a number of levels.  The core problem is that while the analogy argues that all religions only see part of the elephant, the person giving the analogy claims to see the whole elephant!  In other words, while all religions are blindly groping around, the person using the analogy is basically saying, “Let me tell you how all religions really work.”  But, why is this individual exempt from his own analogy?

Moreover, we might want to ask how the giver of the analogy knows that all religions works this way? Has he personally examined all possible religious systems to know they are “blind”? To make such a claim with any credibility, this individual would have to have near-omniscient knowledge of the world and all the religious systems in it.

On top of all of this, the elephant analogy contains a serious misunderstanding of what counts as arrogant. A given claim is not arrogant simply because it is a “big” claim, or significant in its scope or impact. The arrogance or non-arrogance of a claim depends on whether one has adequate grounds for that claim.

If Christians claimed that Christianity was the only true religion on the basis of their own personal investigations and personal knowledge, then such a claim might indeed count as arrogant.  But, that is not the grounds for Christianity’s claim to exclusivity.  Rather, it is grounded in the teachings of Jesus himself, the incarnate son of God (John 14:6). And there is nothing arrogant about depending on divine revelation.

In the end, therefore, there is a rich irony in this analogy.  It is used to chide Christians for being arrogant, but it is the user of the analogy that is exhibiting the real arrogance.  In essence, they are saying, “I know all religions are really blind, and I can see the whole ‘elephant.’  And therefore I can tell you that Christianity is not the only way.”

Or, put another way, the user of the elephant analogy is basically claiming, “I am absolutely sure there are no absolutes.”

And the incoherence of such a statement is its own refutation.

 

Here is Why @RTSCharlotte Is Such a Special Place to Study

Having been at a professor at RTS Charlotte for nearly 14 years, and the president for 3 of those years, I can tell you that this is a special place to be.

We are blessed with an incredible faculty, an exceptional student body, and a fantastic city in which to serve and minister.

And all these factors are highlighted in our new video about the RTS Charlotte experience. If you are looking to go to seminary, you will want to watch this video:

My Top Ten Favorite Books on the Authority of Scripture

One of the most enjoyable aspects of speaking to different groups on the reliability of the Bible is the Q&A time. It is an exciting (and risky) affair because you never know what you are going to get.

Then again, sometimes you do know what you are going to get. Over the years, one question has been asked more than all others combined: “What are the best books to read on the authority of the Bible?”

Due to the popularity of that question, I have compiled an annotated list of the 10 best books on this topic. It goes without saying that such a list is highly selective (and debatable). So many good books deserve to be included.

But my list is guided by these main criteria: (a) books that focus on the theological side of biblical authority and not as much on the historical evidences for the Bible’s history (though some overlap is inevitable); (b) books that are “modern,” meaning they have been written sometime between the Reformation and the present (otherwise, many patristic works would make the list); and (c) books that are rigorously orthodox (for this reason, Karl Barth’s Dogmatics is not on the list despite the fact that it has been influential on the modern church’s view of Scripture).

With these criteria in mind, let’s take a look at the top 10:

10. D. A. Carson and John Woodbridge, eds., Scripture and Truth (Baker, 1983); idem, Hermeneutics, Authority, and Canon (Zondervan, 1986).

Even though this first entry technically includes two books, I am regarding them together since the same authors edited both of them. I appreciate that these books gather together some of the best evangelical scholars who cover a wide variety of contemporary issues related to biblical authority. There are essays from theological, philosophical, historical, hermeneutical, and exegetical perspectives. Although some of the essays need to be updated (some are 30 years old), they constitute an indispensable treasure trove of material on the authority of the Bible.

9. Herman Bavinck, Reformed Dogmatics: Prolegomena (vol. 1): Part IV: Revelation (Baker Academic, 2003).

I don’t prefer to use systematic theologies in this list, but Bavinck’s work is too important to pass up. Bavinck originally published his Gereformeerde Dogmatiek from 1895 to 1901, and we are blessed to have it translated into English. It provides the quintessential introduction to a Reformed view of Revelation and Scripture, and one can hear echoes of Bavinck