Justin Taylor's Blog, page 229

Dialoging about Covenantal Apologetics

One of my pet peeves is people of various persuasions perpetually complaining, or seeking to demonstrate, that all of their critics have misunderstood them. I have been in various controversies or discussions where this seems to be a default position, with the charge that even the best critics have missed the boat.

But, sometimes there is genuine and sustained misunderstanding, which is a good opportunity for clarification and dialogue.

Here is a good discussion underway regarding covenantal apologetics (the Approach Formerly Known as Presuppositionalism).

Fides Quaerens Intellectum: What Is Presuppositionalism? by William Edgar

Questioning Presuppositionalism by Paul Copan
Answering Objections to Presuppositionalism by K. Scott Oliphint

See also James Anderson's response to Copan's claim that presuppositionalists are involved with begging the question (and consequently would get an F in an intro to logic class!).

If I can add a personal note, as one who has switched from a more classical approach to a covenantal one, I can say that the Lord has used this to give me much greater confidence in him and in the veracity of his comprehensive word.

The Gospel Project: Livestream Today

Today, from 2:00-3:15 PM (CDT) you can watch a livestream from The Gospel Project, a new gospel-centered Bible study resource from Lifeway.

Trevin Wax (managing editor of The Gospel Project) and Ed Stetzer (general editor) will talk with Advisory Council members Matt Chandler and J.D. Greear. Chandler will talk about making the gospel explicit in our small groups; Greear will talk about applying the gospel in all of life; Stetzer will talk about the gospel motivation for being on mission for God's kingdom.

After their teaching, there will be a time of Q&A with each speaker, and they'll conclude with a panel discussion.

The Jesus Discovery and Sensational Archaeology

Steven Ortiz (associate professor of archaeology and biblical backgrounds and director of the Tandy Institute for Archaeology at Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary) has an excellent chapter in the book, Buried Hope or Risen Savior? The Search for the Jesus Tomb, ed. Charles L. Quarles (B&H Academic, 2008), entitled, "The Use and Abuse of Archaeological Interpretation." It's worth keeping on hand for the next time you hear of some blockbuster archaeological discovery being touted in the media that overturns biblical truth or the majority opinion.

"The scripts for all of these amateur portrayals," he writes, "are similar and follow the same basic 10 points":

The prevailing hypothesis affirmed by the consensus of the scholarly community is wrong.
The "discoverer" is not a trained archaeologist but is self-taught, and he knows the "true story" that all others have overlooked.
An expedition is planned for one season, and (lo and behold) at the first attempt they find exactly what they are looking for.
This is all documented while a camera crew happens to be filming the discovery.
The process is "detective work" that has been missed by the academic community, and they (amateur archaeologists) are the ones who are able to unravel the mystery or solve the problem that has perplexed the experts.
No new date is presented, only a reworking of previously published data. A corollary is that not all the data is consulted.
Upon the presentation of the discovery, the scholarly community scoffs at the find, and it is claimed that there is a secret monopoly by those in power to suppress the information.
The amateurs sensationalize the "discovery" by claiming that it is so revolutionary that it will change our way or thinking and our lifestyle.
The old "discovery" is presented to the media as a "brand-new" discovery.
Usually a book or movie comes out within a week of the "new" discovery. (pp. 29-30)

Professor Ortiz was writing several years ago when James Tabor and Simcha Jacobovici were making the rounds with their discovery of The Jesus Family Tomb. Fast-forward to 2012, and they're back with a new discovery and a new book: The Jesus Discovery: The New Archaeological Find that Reveals the Birth of Christianity.

James Hoffmeier, a noted Egyptologist and archaeologist (and the co-editor of Do Historical Matters Matter to Faith?), recently explained how serious (as opposed to sensationalist) archaeologists do their work:

As a field archaeologist I spent the past decade surveying and excavating in north Sinai (Egypt). I made some pretty significant discoveries, but never did I speak to a western reporter, nor did any attention-grabbing headline appear like "Egyptian Fort from Exodus Period Discovered!" It is normal practice for archaeologists who make significant discoveries to first present their finds at professional conferences where other experts can evaluate their discovery and their interpretation of it. Then a preliminary report is written which is submitted to a peer review journal in the relevant field where it is fully vetted by two or three authorities (I have been a referee for several academic journals).

At this stage, provisional interpretations are cautiously offered. Finally, after more time is given to complete the excavations, study and evaluate the finds by specialists, the final scientific report is published with all the data reproduced for all to see. This careful and deliberative process is how serious archaeological discoveries are handled before going public and popularizing the results. This time-honored process is even more critical when matters related to the Bible are involved because much is at stake.

When an archaeologist makes an end run around their professional colleagues and goes directly to the press, we naturally have to ask "why"? Tabor and Jacobovici evidently do not want to be scrutinized and their views challenged before publishing their popular book. By going to the press and the public with a splashy news conference, sales of their book will skyrocket. Academic books don't sell; popular ones that are slickly promoted with sensational titles do. This approach is not the one taken, however, by serious, objective scholars.

What's NEXT?

Having been to some of The Next conferences, I would highly recommend it, especially for students and young adults. This year it's being held in Orlando on May 26-29.

Here are the speakers:

Matt Chandler, "The Church and Culture"
Kevin DeYoung, "The Church and Friendship," "The Church and Holiness"
Jeff Purswell, "The Church and the Purpose of God"
C.J. Mahaney, "The Church and Disappointment"
Ian McConnell, "The Church and Sunday"
Jared Mellinger, "The Church and Membership"

More info here.

Steven Curtis Chapman Is Not a Good Man

I love this post from Andrew Peterson about his friend Steven Curtis Chapman:

And yet, though everyone seems to know him, I've never heard a single negative story about the guy. I've been in Nashville for 15 years now, and, well, you tend to hear less-than-flattering stories about folks from time to time (I'm sure there are a few about me floating around out there), but I have yet to hear one of those about Steven. What that might lead a rascal like me to conclude is that either a) Steven is so squeaky-clean he must be hard to like or b) he's a complete wreck and he's hiding it.

I didn't realize until this tour was underway that there's a third option. Here it is: Steven is a wreck, he's not hiding it, and because of the mighty presence of Jesus in his life, grace abounds to those around him.

It's the great, confounding reversal of the Gospel of Jesus. If the word we preach is one of attainable perfection, of law, of justification by works, then when we fail, our testimony fails with it. But if we preach our deep brokenness and Christ's deeper healing, if we preach our inability to take a single breath but for God's grace, then our weakness exalts him and we're functioning as we were meant to since the foundation of the world.

Steven isn't super-human. He's just human. But what a glorious thing to be! An attempt on our part to be super-human will result only in our in-humanness—like a teacup trying to be a fork: useless. But if the teacup will just be a teacup, it will be filled. Humans were made (as was everything under the sun) for the glory of the Maker. Why should we try to be anything but fully human? Let God fill us up and pour us out; let him do what he will, let us be what we were meant to be. That gives us the freedom to sing about what's really happening in our hearts without being afraid of sullying the good name of God.

If our hearts are contending with the forces of darkness, clinging desperately to the hope of a Savior, then to sing boldly about the battle is no shame to us and all glory to our King.

The proof is in the pudding. Everyone I know in Nashville who knows Steven has said to me something like, "I love Steven. He's a good man." But from the first week of the tour I discovered that Steven isn't a good man. He's as sinful as the rest of us. He wears his weakness on his sleeve. He's quick to share his pain and his struggle. That doesn't make him mopey—he's quick to share his joy, too. But what's so wonderfully subversive about the Gospel is that our ability to honestly bear our grief and woundedness just makes room for God's grace to cast light on all that shadow; it makes room for us to love each other. When we encounter that kind of grace we come away remembering not just the sin but, overwhelmingly, the goodness, and the grace, and we say, "I love that guy. He's a good man." What we're really saying is, "I love that guy. God is so good."

You can read the whole thing here.

Are You Called to Be a Pastor?

I've often thought of doing a joint interview by email, where two people receive the same questions and provide independent answers, then the results are published together.

Well, procrastinate long enough and someone will beat you to the punch! Here's a great interview with Derek Thomas and Carl Trueman.

An excerpt:

  What counsel would you give to a young man considering and assessing a possible call to the ministry of the Word of God?

DT: Put yourself firmly and securely under the oversight of a competent session (elders) and don't believe Aunt Joan who thinks you're the best thing since sliced bread. Don't think that the church is going to put out its arms to welcome you, seeing you as the hero it has been looking for. Ministry is service, Jesus-shaped service, which means humbling oneself, considering others more important, and a call to suffering if needs be. Please don't say, "I need x amount of dollars or I'm not even going to consider you as worthy of me." Read John Owen on Mortification, Calvin on Cross-bearing and Self-Denial (Institutes, Book 3) and several biographies of missionaries (like David Brainerd, John Paton, Jim Elliot).

CT: First, you need an internal call, a desire to teach and preach the word but you also need more than an internal call.

Have you external evidence that you are being led in this direction? Have you had opportunities to teach and preach? Have they been well-received?

Look at the qualifications for eldership in Paul's Pastorals. Do you meet the criteria? More important, do other people think you meet the criteria?

Second, do not rush. When you are in your twenties, a year can seem a long time but it is not really so. Paul clearly assumes most people in church leadership positions will be older—family men, men established in their communities, men who have a track record of godliness and spiritual reliability. So go and receive the appropriate ministerial training but do not necessarily assume you should then go straight into a pastorate. I am taking on my first pastorate this year, aged 45 with 28 years of being a Christian, a decade of secular work experience, a decade of teaching at seminary, a marriage of nearly 22 years, two more or less adult children and service on two kirk sessions behind me. I hardly feel qualified now. I could not have done it aged twenty-five!

You can read the whole interview, about a variety of subjects, here.

For those wanting a more in-depth exploration, the best resource I know of is now Dave Harvey's Am I Called? The Summons to Pastoral Ministry . J. I. Packer writes, "This is the fullest, most realistic, down-to-earth, and genuinely spiritual exploration of God's call to pastoral ministry that I know. I recommend it most highly."

The Theological Commons Digital Library

Princeton Theological Seminary has partnered with the Internet Archive to provide an online database called the Theological Commons digital library. It provides free, online access to over 50,000 theology and religion books from the PTS Library.

This digital collection also includes about 100 rare seventeenth-century theological books from the private library of the late Professor Thomas Torrance, the father of PTS president Iain Torrance.

Just How Big Is God and How Small Are We?

(Image credit: Mark Subbarao, Dinoj Surendran, and Randy Landsberg for the SDSS team.)

Ethan Siegel:

Although "only" about 250,000 galaxies are shown in the above image, the entire Universe is estimated to have at least hundreds of billions of galaxies, spread out over a spherical region about a million times larger in diameter than our galaxy is. In other words, you and everything you know resides on a tiny, wet rock nearly a million times less massive than the star that powers it, in a solar system one ten-millionth the diameter of our galaxy, which contains at least hundreds of billions of stars not so different from ours, in a Universe filled with hundreds of billions of galaxies, and maybe perhaps more.

You. Are. Tiny.

HT: Andrew Sullivan

Here is some video perspective:

And the ultimate perspective:

Psalm 8:3

When I look at your heavens, the work of your fingers,

the moon and the stars, which you have set in place,

what is man that you are mindful of him,

and the son of man that you care for him?

Psalm 147:4

He determines the number of the stars;

he gives to all of them their names.

Psalm 148:3

Praise him, sun and moon,

praise him, all you shining stars!

Seeing this again reminded me of a section of J.B. Phillips's New Testament Christianity, entitled "The Angels' Point of View (or, The Visited Planet)":

Once upon a time a very young angel was being shown round the splendours and glories of the universes by a senior and experienced angel. To tell the truth, the little angel was beginning to be tired and a little bored. He had been shown whirling galaxies and blazing suns, infinite distances in the deathly cold of inter-stellar space, and to his mind there seemed to be an awful lot of it all. Finally he was shown the galaxy of which our planetary system is but a small part. As the two of them drew near to the star which we call our sun and to its circling planets, the senior angel pointed to a small and rather insignificant sphere turning very slowly on its axis. It looked as dull as a dirty tennis-ball to the little angel, whose mind was filled with the size and glory of what he had seen.

"I want you to watch that one particularly," said the senior angel, pointing with his finger.

"Well, it looks very small and rather dirty to me," said the little angel. "What's special about that one?"

"That," replied his senior solemnly, "is the Visited Planet."

"Visited?" said the little one. "you don't mean visited by ——–?

"Indeed I do. That ball, which I have no doubt looks to you small and insignificant and not perhaps overclean, has been visited by our young Prince of Glory." And at these words he bowed his head reverently.

"But how?" queried the younger one. "Do you mean that our great and glorious Prince, with all these wonders and splendours of His Creation, and millions more that I'm sure I haven't seen yet, went down in Person to this fifth-rate little ball? Why should He do a thing like that?"

"It isn't for us," said his senior a little stiffly, "to question His 'why's', except that I must point out to you that He is not impressed by size and numbers, as you seem to be. But that He really went I know, and all of us in Heaven who know anything know that. As to why He became one of them—how else do you suppose could He visit them?"

The little angels face wrinkled in disgust.

"Do you mean to tell me," he said, "that He stooped so low as to become one of those creeping, crawling creatures of that floating ball?"

"I do, and I don't think He would like you to call them 'creeping, crawling creatures' in that tone of voice. For, strange as it may seem to us, He loves them. He went down to visit them to lift them up to become like Him."

The little angel looked blank. Such a thought was almost beyond his comprehension.

"Close your eyes for a moment," said the senior angel, "and we will go back in what they call Time."

While the little angels eyes were closed and the two of them moved nearer to the spinning ball, it stopped its spinning, spun backwards quite fast for a while, and then slowly resumed its usual rotation.

"Now look!" And as the little angel did as he was told, there appeared here and there on the dull surface of the globe little flashes of light, some merely momentary and some persisting for quite a time.

"Well, what am I seeing now?" queried the little angel.

"You are watching this little world as it was some thousands of years ago," returned his companion. "Every flash and glow of light that you see is something of the Father's knowledge and wisdom breaking into the minds and hearts of people who live upon the earth. Not many people, you see, can hear His Voice or understand what He says, even though He is speaking gently and quietly to them all the time."

"Why are they so blind and deaf and stupid?" asked the junior angel rather crossly.

"It is not for us to judge them. We who live in the Splendour have no idea what it is like to live in the dark. We hear the music and the Voice like the sound of many waters every day of over lives, but to them—well, there is much darkness and much noise and much distraction upon the earth. Only a few who are quiet and humble and wise hear His Voice. But watch, for in a moment you will see something truly wonderful."

The Earth went on turning and circling round the sun, and then quite suddenly, in the upper half of the globe, there appeared a light, tiny but so bright in its intensity that both the angels hid their eyes.

"I think I can guess," said the little angel in a low voice. "That was the Visit, wasn't it?"

"Yes, that was the Visit. The Light Himself went down there and lived among them; but in a moment, and you will be able to tell that even with your eyes closed, the light will go out."

"But why? Could He not bear their darkness and stupidity? Did He have to return here?"

"No, it wasn't that" returned the senior angel. His voice was stern and sad. "They failed to recognise Him for Who He was – or at least only a handful knew Him. For the most part they preferred their darkness to His Light, and in the end they killed Him."

"The fools, the crazy fools! They don't deserve —-"

"Neither you nor I, nor any other angel, knows why they were so foolish and so wicked. Nor can we say what they deserve or don't deserve. But the fact remains, they killed our Prince of Glory while He was Man amongst them."

"And that I suppose was the end? I see the whole Earth has gone black and dark. All right, I won't judge them, but surely that is all they could expect?"

"Wait, we are still far from the end of the story of the Visited Planet. Watch now, but be ready to cover your eyes again."

In utter blackness the earth turned round three times, and then there blazed with unbearable radiance a point of light.

"What now?" asked the little angel, shielding his eyes.

"They killed Him all right, but He conquered death. The thing most of them dread and fear all their lives He broke and conquered. He rose again, and a few of them saw Him and from then on became His utterly devoted slaves."

"Thank God for that," said the little angel.

"Amen. Open your eyes now, the dazzling light has gone. The Prince has returned to His Home of Light. But watch the Earth now."

As they looked, in place of the dazzling light there was a bright glow which throbbed and pulsated. And then as the Earth turned many times little points of light spread out. A few flickered and died; but for the most part the lights burned steadily, and as they continued to watch, in many Parts of the globe there was a glow over many areas.

"You see what is happening?" asked the senior angel. "The bright glow is the company of loyal men and women He left behind, and with His help they spread the glow and now lights begin to shine all over the Earth."

"Yes, yes," said the little angel impatiently, "but how does it end? Will the little lights join up with each other? Will it all be light, as it is in Heaven?"

His senior shook his head. "We simply do not know," he replied. "It is in the Father's hands. Sometimes it is agony to watch and sometimes it is joy unspeakable. The end is not yet. But now I am sure you can see why this little ball is so important. He has visited it; He is working out His Plan upon it."

"Yes, I see, though I don't understand. I shall never forget that this is the Visited Planet."

The Bible Made Impossible or the Church Made Implausible?

From Carl Trueman's review of Journeys of Faith:

[Brad] Gregory is more savage: for him (as for his Notre Dame colleague, Christian Smith), the diversity of Protestant interpretations of the Bible puts the lie to any notion of perspicuity. This is very much at the heart of his book, The Unintended Reformation, and I hope to address his case in more detail in my review of that work next month. Yet as I read his response to Castaldo, I could not help but feel considerable irritation, especially when Gregory argues that perspicuity depends upon a circular argument.

Roman Catholicism can scarcely stand in judgment on circularity when it comes to issues of authority. The papacy in its modern form emerges over time; it is, if you like, a result of historical process. How do we know the results of this process are the right ones? Well, there is a sense in which Roman Catholics just do. This was not, of course, quite so clear at the start of the fifteenth century, but we can brush that aside as a momentary aberration. . . .

If Gregory can claim that Protestants exclude those with whom they disagree on interpretation in order to manufacture a consensus, then it seems to us Protestants that Roman Catholics do much the same with the historical process: the theological significance of late medieval conciliarism is routinely minimized; the flip-flop on doctrinal issues over the years is simply side-stepped; the ecclesiastical use of things as disparate as the Turin Shroud and the Donation of Constantine is ignored, excused or spun; and the pro-active fostering of the cult of charlatans like Padre Pio is simply weird and deeply unChristian to Protestant eyes.

If Roman Catholics are free to argue that the history of Protestantism has made the Bible impossible, I submit that for Protestants like myself, the history of Roman Catholicism has made the Church implausible.

Matt Chandler's First Book

Matt Chandler's first book, The Explicit Gospel, is being released next month.

Matt is convinced that even though there is a lot of talk these days about the "gospel," the message still hasn't reached the wider church and culture. And even those of us in the so-called gospel-centered resurgence tend to focus either on (what he calls) "the gospel in the air" and the "gospel on the ground." Matt shows that the gospel has implications for both conversion and for the cosmos, both for our individual lives and for the full scope of redemptive history. And he does it all in a deadly serious way laced with humor. Mark Dever picks up on this in his blurb, saying that the gospel is unpacked in a way that is "balanced, hope-filled, and very, very serious, all the while presented with Matt's trademark humor. Even more faithful than funny, Matt insults all of us (including himself) in a strangely edifying way."

Crossway is partnering with The Resurgence and the musical duo Shane & Shane to sponsor a number of events on the East Coast in six cities, from April 16th – 21st. Matt will speak on the pertinence of Jesus' life, death, and resurrection for both salvation and sanctification, and Shane & Shane will lead worship. If you're near any of these cities, it might be a great place to take an unbelieving friend.

You can find more information here.

Here's a video related to the book: