Gabriel Fluhrer on the Atonement

On Monday a good friend of mine, Gabriel Fluhrer, was on the radio program Iron Sharpens Iron to discuss a new book he edited titled Atonement. You can find out more about this show here and the audio to the program is here. Yes, if you click on the link and hear a women speaking Spanish, you are at the right place. Who know Gabriel could speak such good Spanish? We know he could do a great impression of Dr. Derek Thomas, but Spanish we did not know. All joking aside, the radio program, which is in English, is on a Spanish speaking station, so wait for the Spanish to be done and then the program will begin. Enjoy!

King and Servant Show 18

Jonathan teaches Covenant Theology from a credo-baptist perspective; affirming unity of the Covenant of Grace over redemptive history as the means of man's only way of salvation, but yet seeing a maturing of the covenant community over time through the various covenant administrations, culminating in the New Covenant.

King and Servant Show 17

Jonathan and Bryan are joined by Pastor Rob Boyd to discuss youth ministry and the challenges that face the church today in ministering to the youth in a culture that celebrates youth.

Are Miracles for Today?

Should we expect miracles today? If so, what exactly is a miracle, and how would we know it came from God? This audio clip from Dr. R.C. Sproul answers these and other similar questions.

Union with Christ and Justification

Last year, during the Gospel Coalition, Phil Ryken gave a wonderful talk on union with Christ and justification. The audio from this talk can be found here. He has, in this article, summarized union with Christ in these words.

To summarize, the great doctrinal realities of justification and union with Christ are closely inter-connected. Justification is one of the leading benefits of being united to Christ. The faith that justifies does so only and precisely because it also joins us to Christ. The very people who are united to Christ are the ones who are also declared righteous. This is part of what prevents justification by faith alone from being merely a legal fiction, as it is so frequently and so inaccurately alleged. Union with Christ is logically prior to justification by imputation. The declaration of our righteousness has a proper juridical basis in our true and covenantal connection to Jesus Christ. Indeed, union with Christ is the matrix in which imputation occurs. It is on the basis of our spiritual and covenantal union with Christ that our sins are imputed to him and his righteousness is imputed to us.

King and Servant Show 16

Interview with Dee Dee "the Legend" Warren, discussing the centrality of the cross in Orthodox Preterism and how it radically differs from the heretical view of Hyper-Preterism.

For more information about Dee Dee Warren and Preterism visit her website @ www.preteristsite.com

Calling All Record Collectors: Was This As Good a Find as I Think It Is?

Linus is right. The only thing funner than going record shopping is actually finding an awesome and unexpected record in the bargain bin! I found a soundtrack to a movie I had never heard of from 1978 called That Summer!. From what I can gather, the film is about young people growing up in the 70s in England. The thing that caught my eye, however, is who is on the Soundtrack. Look at this track listing:

Ian Dury And The Blockheads - "Sex & Drugs & Rock & Roll"
Mink DeVille - "Spanish Stroll"
Elvis Costello - "(I Don't Want To Go To) Chelsea"
The Boomtown Rats - "She's So Modern"
Zones - "New Life"
The Only Ones - "Another Girl, Another Planet"
Wreckless Eric - "Whole Wide World"
Patti Smith Group - "Because The Night"
The Boomtown Rats - "Kicks"
The Ramones - "Rockaway Beach"
The Undertones - "Teenage Kicks"
Eddie And The Hot Rods - "Do Anything You Wanna Do"
Ian Dury And The Blockheads - "What A Waste"
Nick Lowe - "I Love The Sound Of Breaking Glass"
Elvis Costello - "Watching The Detectives"
Richard Hell & The Voidoids - "Blank Generation"

There is nothing second rate about this entire album! From beginning to end, it's fabulous. But then, even better, I opened the gatefold and looked inside and found that it's imported from the UK and printed on transparent yellow vinyl! Not only that, but apparently, as far as my search has shown so far, this album was never printed on CD, and was never released in any format in the United States, which makes me glow with extra excitement. As somebody who's a big fan of new-wave/punk, this was a terrific find. And at only a dollar, I consider this a complete and total steal.

I just wanted to share a totally non-theological aspect of my life with you all. Thanks for listening; now back to business.

In Chirst Alone

Band of Bloggers

Entrusted with the Gospel

In this volume, Andreas Kostenberger, edits many essays that examines and explores historical scholarship on 1 & 2 Timothy and Titus. In their work, much clarification and insight is brought to Paul's controversial theology in these epistles, and several important hermeneutical and exegetical challenges are also highlighted and discussed, including authorship, genre, historical background, and issues surrounding church leadership. See Table of Content for a list of contributors.

This book will serve well any exegesis course on the Pastorals, familiarizing students with the major issues involved, without overwhelming them or while developing their thinking along evangelical lines. The book will also make an excellent supplementary volume for NT Theology courses, or a great read for small groups and/or church study.

Contributors include several scholars who have done previous advanced work on these letters: I. Howard Marshall , Andreas Köstenberger, Terry L. Wilder, F. Alan Tomlinson, Greg Couser, Daniel L. Akin, Ray van Neste, B. Paul Wolfe, Ben Merkle, George Wieland, Thor Madsen, and Chiao Ek Ho.

Calvinism is Back

The Christian Science Monitor has another in a long line of stories on the ascendancy of Calvinism. Christian Faith: Calvinism is Back by Josh Burek

Choice nuggets from the article:

What newcomers at Capitol Hill Baptist Church (CHBC) hear is hardly "Christianity for Dummies." Nor is it "Extreme Makeover: Born-Again Edition."
...
Much of modern Christianity preaches a comforting Home Depot theology: You can do it. We can help.
...
For all its controversy, predestination is something New Calvinists accept as part of their take-it-all-or-leave-it approach to the Bible.
...
Ultimately, Calvinism's contrast with chummier, Jesus-is-my-friend forms of evangelicalism may highlight a more fundamental change in the world of faith. Bestselling religion writer Phyllis Tickle sees the interest in Calvinism as the first phase of a backlash against the dominant religious trend of today: the rise of "Emergence Christianity."

Thanks for the nuggets, Josh. Though I'm almost certain you spelled Mark Dever's name wrong for pretty much the entire article.

The Historical Adam

Last week I had the privilege of, once again, joining the fellows from the Reformed Forum on Christ the Center. This week we discussed whether Adam was a real historical person and whether it matters for our understanding of Scripture and theology as a whole. In particular, we discussed a video clip recently posted by Tremper Longman (posted below). You can find the audio clip here. Pay particular attention to the comments on this one. They are very interesting.

Jesus and the Eyewitnesees

This new book argues that the four Gospels are closely based on eyewitness testimony of those who knew Jesus. Noted New Testament scholar Richard Bauckham challenges the prevailing assumption that the accounts of Jesus circulated as 'anonymous community traditions,' asserting instead that they were transmitted in the name of the original eyewitnesses. To drive home this controversial point, Bauckham draws on internal literary evidence, study of personal names in the first century, and recent developments in the understanding of oral traditions.

Jesus and the Eyewitnesses also taps into the rich resources of modern study of memory and cognitive psychology, refuting the conclusions of the form critics and calling New Testament scholarship to make a clean break with this long-dominant tradition. Finally, Bauckham challenges readers to end the classic division between the 'historical Jesus' and the 'Christ of faith,' proposing instead the 'Jesus of testimony.' Sure to ignite heated debate on the precise character of the testimony about Jesus, Jesus and the Eyewitnesses will be valued by scholars, students, and all who seek to understand the origins of the Gospels.

Now This is a Preface!

One of the advantages I have over my seminarian friends is that I get to read stuff that isn't distinctly theological (I just like to rub that in). For example, I've just started reading an historical novel by Erik Larson called The Devil in the White City. Rather than explain what the book is about, I want to include a portion of the preface so that our readers can see how a real preface is supposed to be written...

IN CHICAGO AT THE END of the nineteenth century amid the smoke of industry and the clatter of trains there lived two men, both handsome, both blue-eyed, and both unusually adept at their chosen skills. Each embodied an element of the great dynamic that characterized the rush of America toward the twentieth century. One was an architect, the builder of many of America’s most important structures, among them the Flatiron Building in New York and Union Station in Washington, D.C.; the other was a murderer, one of the most prolific in history and harbinger of an American archetype, the urban serial killer. Although the two never met, at least not formally, their fates were linked by a single, magical event, one largely fallen from modern recollection but that in its time was considered to possess a transformative power nearly equal to that of the Civil War.
In the following pages I tell the story of these men and this event, but I must insert here a notice: However strange or macabre some of the following incidents may seem, this is not a work of fiction. Anything between quotation marks comes from a letter, memoir, or other written document...
Beneath the gore and smoke and loam, this book is about the evanescence of life, and why some men choose to fill their brief allotment of time engaging the impossible, others in the manufacture of sorrow. In the end it is a story of the ineluctable conflict between good and evil, daylight and darkness, the White City and the Black.

All I want to know is...who would not want to read this book after such a preface!?

The Two Kingdoms Debate

The Two Kingdoms Debate: Should we work to build a Christian Nation

Format of the Debate:
1. Introductory remarks- 5 minutes
2. Opening Statements- 20 minutes each
3. Rebuttals- 8 minutes each
4. Cross Examinations- 15 minutes each
Break- 10 minutes total
5. Closing Statements- 10 minutes each
6. Audience Q & A- 30 minutes