Category: Theology
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Hermeneutics with Samuel Johnson
Samuel Johnson gives some excellent advice in his Preface to Shakespeare (1765) that applies to reading in general, and especially well to Bible reading. Johnson advises readers to plow straight through a Shakespeare play, keeping up a good pace even when passages aren’t clear. To slow down and investigate the unclear passages more carefully would…
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Wordsworth in the West
William Wordsworth perfected a certain type of nature poetry, a particularly spiritual sort of nature lyric. He celebrated the movements of the infinite Spirit making itself known to humanity through the forms of nature as contemplated by poet-prophets who were the universe’s appointed spokesmen. Nature herself elected certain sensitive souls, forming them throughout early life…
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“English Bible” did not mean “Dumbed Down”
Earlier this year I noted the premiere of a new journal, the Journal of Inductive Biblical Studies. The second issue is out now, and among the essays published there I especially enjoyed the autobiographical piece by David Bauer entitled, “My Journey with Inductive Bible Study.” Bauer was one of my first Bible professors at Asbury…
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Progress and Regress on the Trinity: The Book
Zondervan has published select proceedings of the 2014 Los Angeles Theology Conference in a volume bearing the same title as the conference: Advancing Trinitarian Theology, edited by Oliver Crisp and Fred Sanders. Slipping into advertising mode, I was going to say “Get the book, don’t wait for the movie!” But then I remembered that the…
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Irrelevance & Relevance of the Trinity to the Christian Life
I was excited when Kyle Strobel and Kent Eilers invited me to write the Trinity chapter in their book Sanctified by Grace: A Theology of the Christian Life (Bloomsbury / T&T Clark, 2014), and I’m more excited now that the book is in print. I described the whole book briefly in a recent post, and…
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Sanctified by Grace: A Theology of the Christian Life
The doctrine of the Christian life –that is, a theological account of what it is to exist as a Christian– is a wonderful part of theology, but also one that is open to distortions in two directions. In one direction, the doctrine can become overly practical, and get reduced to a kind of applied spirituality.…
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Theology and California: The Book
I’m pleased to announce the publication of a strange, new book: Theology and California: Theological Refractions on California’s Culture (Ashgate, 2014), edited by Jason Sexton and me. It’s available in hardcover for your libraries, softcover with a gorgeous cover photo, and e-book for portability. As Kevin Vanhoozer asks back-handedly on the back cover, “Theology is…
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Where to go to Church
It recently came to light that the inimitable Billy Graham said that if he could do it all over again, he would be “an evangelical Anglican.” Such a sentiment immediately caught the attention of evangelical Anglicans everywhere: we could have both J.I. Packer and Billy Graham playing on our team? Then it sunk in: if…
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Wolfhart Pannenberg (1928-2014), Theological Outflanker
Wolfhart Pannenberg, retired from a long theology career at Munich, has died at age 85. Pannenberg was a major twentieth-century theologian by any count, with a series of brilliant articles, important books on the topics of revelation, christology, ethics, science, anthropology, and metaphysics, and a hefty 3-volume Systematic Theology to cap off his career. Pannenberg was…
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Amateurs Needed for the School of Translators
Last year, four professors from Torrey gave brief talks on some of our favorite 20th-century Christian thinkers (Chesterton, Sayers, Tolkien, Lewis). Videos of the talks are here; the whole thing was pretty obviously an excuse to collaborate with Chris Mitchell on a project where he could share his expertise with the whole Biola faculty. But…
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One of Those Critters
Here is a link to some footage of Bob Warren, who died last week, doing his thing: teaching. This is vintage Bob –although in one sense this footage is not characteristic of him, in that he doesn’t have his Bible open and he’s not digging away at a text. In every other way, though, this…
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“Grace motivates permanently, on all levels.” Bob Warren (1946-2014)
Bob Warren died this week, and I’m remembering the four years I spent studying the Bible with him in the late 1980s. Bob was a Bible teacher in Hardin, Kentucky, just a few miles down the road from Murray State University, where I went to college. He did some hog farming as well at that…