Text, Community & Mission

I forgot to mention in the first chapter review of SROG my great appreciation to Wipf & Stock for supplying me with a review copy.  Now Raydeen Cuffe, Marketing Coordinator at Wipf & Stock has offered a great deal for all Text, Community & Mission readers: 40% the book at the Wipf & Stock website.  Retail is usually $30 so the 40% brings it down to $18, a great deal!  The promo code is BIRD09.  Please feel free to announce this sale on your own blog if you wish, but please point your readers back here for the promo code.  The discount will be good through my final chapter review.  Don’t miss out on this great deal!

When I was kid I wanted to be a historian.  Now, not so much.  I am doing a paper on the Sea Peoples and Philistines origin and migration into the Levant and its effect on the nation of Israel and am finding historical research to be much different than studying a text. While I certainly enjoy using historical data to enlighten my Biblical research,  I think I’ll stick the textual side Biblical studies.

The recent SBTS/Boyce College Forum composed of Denny Burk, Mark Seifrid, Brian Vickers and Tom Schreiner on Tom Wright’s new book Justification has already received a couple of responses from Mike Bird and Celucien Joseph. I will start with what good things I think were said by the three panelists and then discuss some of the serious problems I have with what they said.

Good Things

1. I am glad to see that all four men recognized that the idea of the imputation of Christ’s righteousness isa  synthetic view that is not specifically expressed in any text of the Bible. I am glad to hear them all affirm this. I will concede that such an idea can be logically extrapolated in systematic theology from what the NT does say; I still think it is an entirely (more…)

Comfort, Philip W., ed. The Cornerstone Biblical Commentary: Ephesians, Philippians, 1-2 Thessalonians, Colossians, Philelmon. Vol. 16. Carol Stream, IL: Tyndale House, 2008.

I would like to thank Christy Wong at Tyndale for providing me with this review copy.

The Tyndale Cornerstone Biblical Commentary is a medium level commentary set combining exegesis and theology.  The set is edited by Philip W. Comfort.  The sixteenth volume contains the following: Ephesians: Harold W. Hoehner, Philippians, 1-2 Thessalonians: Phillip W. Comfort, Colossians, Philemon: Peter H. Davids.  In this review I will examine the introductory issues each section discusses and a few of the significant or debated passages in each section.  The commentary is based on the NLT, but the commentators often refer to the Greek (in transliterated form, with the Tyndale and Zondervan dictionary numbers included) and do not shy away from disagreeing with its translation when they deem necessary. The format is similar throughout the individual book sections.  The NLT translation is given for the section discussed, then notes on the text followed by a paragraph form commentary with a decent sized bibliography at the end of each book. (more…)

Celucien Joseph at Christ, My Righteousness is the first to respond to the SBTS forum on Tom Wright’s new Justification book.  I think Celucien is right and the Bishop’s view are not correctly represented in the forum.  Celucien also gives a quick explanation of his own view, which I happen to agree with, from a slightly different angle: the fourth Gospel.  I hope to post a response soon as well.  I lent Justification to a friend and as soon I get it back I will try to put up a full response with a comparison of the content from audio and the book.  Until then check out Celucien’s.

I am finishing up a review of Cornerstone Biblical Commentary:Ephesians, Philippians, Colossians, 1&2 Thessalonians, Philemon.  The individual commentators are split on Rome and Ephesus as the provenance of the Prison Letters.  This reminded me of one of the charts on the situation of the Prison Letters I created for NT survey and introduction class I used to teach.  This chronological situation is mostly taken from Dan Wallace’s introductory material on Bible.org.  (I included the text below incase you cannot read it in the picture.)  Enjoy!

(Click on picture to enlarge)

1. Paul, imprisoned, is sent from Caesarea to Rome.  He plans to go to Spain if he is released, so he starts to write Ephesians, a circular letter, as   a summary of his teaching for his Asian churches.                                        

2. Epaphroditus is sent by the Philippians to Paul in Rome. On his way he stops at his home church in Colossae and hears about some problems. 

3. Epaphroditus travels to Rome with the gift from the Philippians and the news of the trouble in Colossae.                      

4. Onesimus, a slave, runs away from his master, Philemon, and finds Paul in Rome.

5. Paul sends Tychicus to Asia Minor with Ephesians, to be circulated amongst the churches; Colossians, for the Colossian church; and Philemon, for Philemon to work on his relationship with Onesimus.

6. Once healed from his serious illness, Epaphroditus is sent back to Philippi with the Philippian letter.

Introduction & Chapter 1

The Saving Righteousness of God (SROG) is an attempt to merge what the traditional Reformed view of justification had right with some of the positive insights of the New Perspective.  The volume opens with a short introduction where Bird describes what led him to pen this volume, a list of the recent discussions of Paul’s understanding of justification and righteousness, and how he will tackle them.  The highlight of the introduction was Bird’s definition of justification: “Justification is the act whereby God creates a new people, with a new status, in a new covenant, as a foretaste of the new age.  Justification is forensic (it refers to status, not moral state), eschatological (the verdict of judgment day is declared in the present), covenantal (Jews and Gentiles belong at one fellowship table), and is effective (sanctification cannot be subsumed under justification but neither can they be completely separated)” (4). (more…)

If you are familiar with Christians in Context you probably remember Jeff’s review series of Mike Bird’s The Saving Righteousness of God (SROG) from last summer where Dr. Bird was kind enough to answer some of Jeff’s questions after each chapter:  Ch. 1, 2.1, 2.2, 3, 4, 5, 6.1, 6.2, 7, 8.

I appreciated  this series so much and thought the dialogue with Dr. Bird was so helpful that I decided I had to shamefully steal Jeff’s idea and do the same.  After reading the book and Dr. Bird’s answers to Jeff’s questions, I had some additional of my own, and once again Dr. Bird has been gracious enough to answer them for me.  So over the next week or so I will be posting a review from each chapter and my own additional questions along with answers from Dr. Bird.  If you have read SROG before and have your own questions for an upcoming chapter, leave a comment on this or any following post and (if its a good question) I will include it in my dialogue with Dr. Bird.

There is an interesting new website with devotional resources.  I was interested in the Spurgeon and Ray Ortland resources.  Also, if you do not keep up with the Gospel Coalition or Don’t Waste Your Life on YouTube, you can watch the videos there! Check it out! 

What role should the reliability of historical sources play in whether we use them in personal apologetics, preaching or evangelism?  Within an academic debate, your opponent has the ability and opportunity to challenge the validity of any sources you might cite or rely on for your argument, but in preaching, evangelism/apologetics, the vast majority of the time the person you are talking to does not have the ability to evaluate sources your arguments depend on.  What level of historical reliability then should we require for our sources in such endeavors?  I ask this question because yesterday I heard an otherwise excellent Easter service where the pastor quoted (more…)