Justin Taylor's Blog, page 315

New Testament Textual Criticism: Free Audio and Video

From the Center for the Study of New Testament Manuscripts:

Today the Center for the Study of New Testament Manuscripts (CSNTM) announces that it is now available on iTunes U, a dedicated area of the iTunes Store (www.itunes.com) that offers free audio and video content from leading educational institutions.

The Center for the Study of New Testament Manuscripts (CSNTM) has always been committed to helping others understand the reliability of our New Testaments, the history of translations, the study of the text, and significant figures who have made this possible.

Beginning today, CSNTM is making a series of videos concerning New Testament manuscripts, textual criticism, history of the New Testament, and expert commentary on key verses available as a free download on iTunes U.

Featured in the videos are interviews and footage shot around the world of important people involved in the work of the Center. Dr. Daniel B. Wallace will also be featured as he explains important aspects in the study of the text of the New Testament.

The Gospel and the Gay Moral Revolution

Albert Mohler:

In this most awkward cultural predicament, evangelicals must be excruciatingly clear that we do not speak about the sinfulness of homosexuality as if we have no sin. As a matter of fact, it is precisely because we have come to know ourselves as sinners and of our need for a savior that we have come to faith in Jesus Christ. Our greatest fear is not that homosexuality will be normalized and accepted, but that homosexuals will not come to know of their own need for Christ and the forgiveness of their sins.

This is not a concern that is easily expressed in sound bites. But it is what we truly believe.

It is now abundantly clear that evangelicals have failed in so many ways to meet this challenge. We have often spoken about homosexuality in ways that are crude and simplistic. We have failed to take account of how tenaciously sexuality comes to define us as human beings. We have failed to see the challenge of homosexuality as a Gospel issue. We are the ones, after all, who are supposed to know that the Gospel of Jesus Christ is the only remedy for sin, starting with our own.

We have demonstrated our own form of homophobia—not in the way that activists have used that word, but in the sense that we have been afraid to face this issue where it is most difficult . . . face to face.

My hope is that evangelicals are ready now to take on this challenge in a new and more faithful way. We really have no choice, for we are talking about our own brothers and sisters, our own friends and neighbors, or maybe the young person in the next pew.

There is no escaping the fact that we are living in the midst of a moral revolution. And yet, it is not the world around us that is being tested, so much as the believing church. We are about to find out just how much we believe the Gospel we so eagerly preach.

John Piper:

My sense is that we do not realize what a calamity is happening around us. The new thing—new for America, and new for history—is not homosexuality. That brokenness has been here since we were all broken in the fall of man. (And there is a great distinction between the orientation and the act—just like there is a great difference between my orientation to pride and the act of boasting.)

What's new is not even the celebration of homosexual sin. Homosexual behavior has been exploited, and reveled in, and celebrated in art, for millennia. What's new is normalization and institutionalization. This is the new calamity.

My main reason for writing is not to mount a political counter-assault. I don't think that is the calling of the church as such. My reason for writing is to help the church feel the sorrow of these days. And the magnitude of the assault on God and his image in man.

Both pieces are worth reading carefully and in their entirety. Piper also has a post pointing to the work of Robert Gagnon. The following half-hour video clip from, a larger DVD teaching set, is a help overview on what the Bible teaches about homosexuality. Fast-forward to 1:45 to hear Gagnon start talking.

We're Not Just "Broken"

I'm glad to see this good reminder from Randy Newman that though "brokenness" is a legitimate metaphor and it is an aspect of the fallen condition, it is far from the whole truth.

And as J. I. Packer reminds us, "a half-truth masquerading as the whole truth becomes a complete untruth."

Race, Cross, and Culture: A Testimony

Bryan Lorrits has a helpful post here, tracing how the Lord has been changing him as he moved pastorates from a predominately black church to a predominately white church and now to a multi-ethnic church.

Here is one of the lessons learned:

I have become entrenched in my conviction that culture is not to be ignored but subjugated to the master culture of the kingdom of God. My blackness is not to be dismissed, but submitted and subjugated to the redeeming power of the cross, and in humble participation to this new chosen race and royal priesthood called the church of Jesus Christ. This becomes a dance where 1) Christ is preeminent in my life, 2) I constantly go to war with the sinful expressions of and affections for my ethnicity, and 3) yet I allow redemptive expressions of my culture to be woven into the beautiful tapestry of the body of Christ which is both unified and uniquely diverse.

You can read the whole thing here.

See also this interview with him about pastoring a multi-ethnic congregation.

HT: David Francis

Bell on Hell: Did We Get Gamed?

Tim Challies' piece on "Bell, Hell, and What We Did Well" is worth reflecting on. I agree with many of his points. But it may be worth making one or two observations.

First, many people have noted the power of Social Media in commenting about the book. But Social Media was also at play in terms of interpreting the commentary and the controversy.

Scot McKnight was one of the first to pull together the themes, some of which continue to stick. In an interview with Christianity Today on the same day as my post, he (1) predicted the controversy would be here today and gone tomorrow ("in a week it will all be gone"); (2) he said that I would owe Rob Bell "a huge apology" if I was wrong; (3) he suggested the book's pre-pub publicity "worked perfectly" and that I and many of my readers "bit" on it; (4) and he said that John Piper's infamous tweet ("Farewell, Rob Bell") was a "flippant dismissal of Rob Bell" and "unworthy of someone of Piper's stature," and that a phone call or private letter to Bell would have been better.

I still disagree with all four of these suggestions.

Let me comment, briefly, on just one of these points since Challies seemed to echo it, going even further and saying that "we got gamed." The implication seems to be that HarperOne's publicity department cooked up this brilliant strategy and that we walked right into it. Like all books, the marketing folks want it to sell well. More specifically, they want people to be intrigued, provoked, and motivated to discuss it, buy it, and recommend it. With this book, they succeeded spectacularly. But the fact that this sort of thing is not replicable points more to the idea that this was the result of a "perfect storm" rather than a carefully crafted plan hatched in a smoke-filled office in Manhattan in order to goad or provoke the "New Calvinists" into making their book a bestseller.

Many have lamented that those of us who were critical of Bell helped him and his publisher to sell a boat-load of books. My opinion is that we should not care one iota about that (cf. Matt. 6:19). What matters, as one friend put it, is the question of "influence," not "sales." And I hope that the controversy made Rob Bell's ideas less influential, not more. But ultimately that is not ours to decide. Our job is to seek to be faithful.

10 Principles for Church Music

Wise reflections from Kevin DeYoung (part 1 / part 2), outlined below:

Love is indispensable to church singing that pleases God.
Our singing is for God's glory and the edification of the body of Christ.
We ought to sing to the Lord new songs.
Church singing should swim in its own history of church singing.
Sing the Psalms.
We should strive for excellence in the musicality and the poetry of the songs we sing.
The main sound to be heard in the worship music is the sound of the congregation singing.
The congregation should also be stretched from time to time to learn new songs and broaden its musical horizons.
The texts of our songs should be matched with fitting musicality and instrumentation.
All of our songs should employ manifestly biblical lyrics.

On Two Ways to Despise a Dandelion

From chapter 16 of G.K. Chesterton's Autobiography:

The only way to enjoy even a weed is to feel unworthy even of a weed.

Now there are two ways of complaining of the weed or the flower; and one was the fashion in my youth and another is the fashion in my later days; but they are not only both wrong, but both wrong because the same thing is right. The pessimists of my boyhood, when confronted with the dandelion, said with Swinburne:

I am weary of all hours

Blown buds and barren flowers

Desires and dreams and powers

And everything but sleep.

And at this I cursed them and kicked at them and made an exhibition of myself; having made myself the champion of the Lion's Tooth, with a dandelion rampant on my crest.

But there is a way of despising the dandelion which is not that of the dreary pessimist, but of the more offensive optimist. It can be done in various ways; one of which is saying, "You can get much better dandelions at Selfridge's," or "You can get much cheaper dandelions at Woolworth's."

Another way is to observe with a casual drawl, "Of course nobody but Gamboli in Vienna really understands dandelions," or saying that nobody would put up with the old-fashioned dandelion since the super-dandelion has been grown in the Frankfurt Palm Garden; or merely sneering at the stinginess of providing dandelions, when all the best hostesses give you an orchid for your buttonhole and a bouquet of rare exotics to take away with you.

These are all methods of undervaluing the thing by comparison; for it is not familiarity but comparison that breeds contempt. And all such captious comparisons are ultimately based on the strange and staggering heresy that a human being has a right to dandelions; that in some extraordinary fashion we can demand the very pick of all the dandelions in the garden of Paradise; that we owe no thanks for them at all and need feel no wonder at them at all; and above all no wonder at being thought worthy to receive them. Instead of saying, like the old religious poet, "What is man that Thou carest for him, or the son of man that Thou regardest him?" we are to say like the discontented cabman, "What's this?" or like the bad-tempered Major in the club, "Is this a chop fit for a gentleman?" Now I not only dislike this attitude quite as much as the Swinburnian pessimistic attitude, but I think it comes to very much the same thing; to the actual loss of appetite for the chop or the dish of dandelion-tea. And the name of it is Presumption and the name of its twin brother is Despair.

Should Christians Care about Economic Freedom?

It seems to me that they should. "Economic freedom" can be a legitimate good without being an ultimate good. It should be something we care about and work toward (in proportion to our gifts and calling) even if it, in and of itself, it will save no one in the ultimate sense (in the same way that we should care about well-functioning Fire Stations even though they cannot prevent people from the flames of hell).

Wayne Grudem recently recommended some good books on economic development, and the brief videos below stimulate further thinking on these issues:

Second Thoughts on Family Worship

I found this post by Jerry Owen refreshing and helpful. Most of us have a strange mixture of laziness and legalism in our hearts, and a post like this could fuel either—or both! So . . . "test everything; hold fast what is good" (1 Thess. 5:21).

Here is his outline:

Family Worship isn't required by the Bible.
Family Worship, if done, is not the most important spiritual thing you do.
Family Worship should be delightful for everyone.

Here is his explanation of the first point:

This might seem impious, but it's really only impietistic. We simply are not required to have a set, formal, liturgical time of worship as families. I'm glad some people do this and benefit from it, and as far as they do, I'm for it, but no one should feel it is something they ought to do. This is not the same thing as saying parents shouldn't read the Bible, pray and talk about God with their children. Of course they should. And it's helpful if this is regular, methodical, and often. But some of the healthiest Christian families I know never had "family worship" formally conducted. They would read and discuss the Bible at meal and other times for particular seasons, sing and pray before going to bed etc, but these things were not done primarily in one sitting, not in what we would typically call family worship. I know there are lazy parents, particularly fathers, who don't make time to regularly read and teach the Bible to their kids, and I know my point here will be used by them to justify and continue their laziness. This is what gracious biblical standards always do, and in response legalists try to curb sin by adding rules. So no excuses for lazy people, and no excuse for pietists combating laziness with legalism.

Keller, Horton, Chandler: The Church and Culture