It has been awhile since I last posted. I have been quite busy with school starting, both for me and the college students I minister to at church. Hopefully, now that classes have begun their will not be as many distractions and I can get back to reading and writing more while I study. So here is chapter 4 of WGNW
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Chapter 4 is the longest and by far the best of WGNW so far. The chapter begins with Webber explaining the influence Francis Schaeffer had on his life, namely in viewing theology and interpretation via its historical and cultural context. Webber then identifies six paradigms for understanding human thought throughout the ages: Biblical, ancient, medieval, Reformation, modern and emerging postmodern. The main thesis of this chapter is that Western culture has lost its understanding of God’s narrative as it shifted from the Reformation to the modern and postmodern paradigms. (more…)
I updated the “Theological Lectures” Page today. New audio includes:
Hebrew Audio Bible
Greek Audio Bible
Bruce Waltke’s 18 talks on the Psalms
Andreas Kostenberger and NT Scholarship
Oak Hill College’s Lecture Page
Reggie Kidd on Paul and the Pastoral Epistles
This is not the beginning of my review posts. They should start appearing in a day or so. This is only a preview.
I sat down to start Paul, Judaism, and the Gentiles today and while reading Watson’s take on “works of law” I came across what is, in my opinion, the best description of Paul’s debated term.
“It is argued in this book that the phrase “works of law” refers to the distinctive way of life of the Jewish community, but without any necessary orientation toward “boundary markers” such as circumcision, food laws, or sabbath. In this account “works of law” retains its particularity, but without detriment to its comprehensiveness. As a result, there is no need to import a reference to “boundary markers” every time Paul uses the term “works.” When, for example, Paul states that “by works of shall no flesh be justified” (Rom. 3:20), he means that the practice of the law of Moses within the Jewish community is not the divinely ordained life-orientation that constitutes human “righteousness” before God.” (pg. 19)
It is not often that I can say I completely agree with what another theologian or scholar says, but I think this is exactly right.
Chapter 3 of WGNW, “God’s Narrative Influence on the Foundation of Western Civilization” does not quite live up to its title. It seems to me that the bulk of the chapter is not given to explaining how the narrative of God influenced the values, societal structure and ethics of post-Roman Western Culture, but to detailing in greater depth the disparages between the dominate pagan cultures of the first and second centuries. The first section explains why Rome fell. Here he lists four factors, the ineptitude of pagan religion and philosophy, rampant mistreatment of women, low sexual ethics and a lack of care and compassion, which led to an inability to handle the epidemics and plagues that faced the empire in the second and third centuries. To counter this, Webber says Christians held firm belief in Jesus as the true revelation of God, made significant progress in the treatment of women, had well established sexual ethics and often sacrificed for those who had become ill due to the plague, often contracting the disease and dying themselves (more…)
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I will never get any work done now. Check out this new website and blog! Countless bibliographies including Glynn’s, Carson’s, Longman’s and many more. You can browse by book, author, and series and it has a pretty comprehensive list of forthcoming titles. On the blog you can get a feed for recently published books, new book reviews and others. This is awesome! I will spend countless hours here. Please pray for my wife.
This past week I attended The Leadership Summit Conference hosted by Willowcreek with the church that I serve at. The sessions were mostly good. A highlight of mention came from Efrem Smith, a inner-city pastor in Minneapolis, speaking on the theology and practicality of a multi-cultural and multi-racial church body. However, the most profound thing I heard during the conference came from John Burke, the pastor of Gateway Community Church in Austin, TX. This may not be a verbatim quote, but here is how I wrote it in my notebook, “The questions from today’s unchurched people are not ‘Are you Calvinist or Arminian?’ or ‘Are you pre-mill or amill?’ They are ‘How do you feel about homosexuals?’ and ‘How do you feel about other religions?’” (more…)
Acts 2.14-36 is Peter’s Pentecost sermon where he explains Jesus’ Messiahship, Lordship, death and resurrection. Luke describes the people’s response in v. 37 as being “pierced through the heart” and responding by saying “Brother’s what shall we do?” It seems to me that this response shows that the people who were listening to Peter’s sermon, at least those of whom Luke described this way and attributed this question to, understood the facts about Jesus’ Messiahship, Lordship, death and resurrection and acknowledged them to be true. Their question seems to be asking what they must do to receive salvation. I think it would be unnatural to read this any other way, such as “Ok we acknowledge that to be true and we are now saved what must we do to become good disciples.” This is important because of the way Peter responds. Peter’s answer is, “Repent and be baptized.” (more…)
It has been a couple weeks since I posted on my Romans exegetical study. The next post was supposed to be a commentary on the first half of the passage. However, my Romans commentary collection is not yet complete and the library at Southwestern does not allow you to check out commentaries (they are all on permanent reserve). Since I cannot do my studying at the library because of my day job, I had to request them through ILL with the Fort Worth Library. So far I have written my own comments and interacted with the commentaries I have but am waiting to interact with the others that I have ordered from the library. When these arrive, I should have the first half of the commentary up a week or so later.
One of Robert Webber’s greatest gifts to the emerging evangelical community is the challenge to reintegrate the study and tradition of the early Church into worship. Only recently, with much credit to Webber, has the evangelical church begun to realize that the time between the apostles and the Reformers was not void of true worship and good theology. In chapter 2 of WGNW Webber seeks to position the story of the beginning of the Christian Church within its original context: the Empire of Rome. Chapter 2, “God’s Narrative Emerges in a Pagan Roman World” introduces the reader to a world where the reigning worldview was not influenced by or the product of the Christian story. Webber does an excellent job of explaining how the Church’s infant and toddler years were not spent with a world that embraced and fostered the message of Jesus, but one that was opposed and often militant against such a message, to culture that often has a hard time understanding this. (more…)
