Kruger on the Canon

If you are not familiar with the work of Michael Kruger then I encourage you to check him out. Dr. Kruger is President and Professor of New Testament at Reformed Theological Seminary, Charlotte, NC. He is the author of the EXCELLENT Canon Revisited: Establishing the Origins and Authority of the New Testament Books. He is also the writer of the helpful blog Canon Fodder. His forthcoming book is entitled The Question Of Canon.

The following articles written for his blog are well worth the time to read carefully:

1. “The New Testament Books are the Earliest Christian Writings We Possess”
2. “Apocryphal Writings Are All Written in the Second Century or Later”
3. “The New Testament Books Are Unique Because They Are Apostolic Books”
4. “Some NT Writers Quote Other NT Writers as Scripture”
5. “The Four Gospels are Well Established by the End of the Second Century”
6. “At the End of the Second Century, the Muratorian Fragment lists 22 of Our 27 NT Books”
7. “Early Christians Often Used Non-Canonical Writings”
8. “The NT Canon Was Not Decided at Nicea—Nor Any Other Church Council”
9. “Christians Did Disagree about the Canonicity of Some NT Books”
10. “Early Christians Believed that Canonical Books Were Self-Authenticating”

Great new website...

Thanks to Carl Trueman for pointing out a great new website by Dr. Michael Kruger. The purpose of the site is to explore the reliability of the New Testament canon and other related biblical and theological issues. Take some time to check it out.

Christ in the Old Testament...

The Gospel Coalition has launched what looks like a helpful new site: Preaching Christ from the Old Testament.

But don't let the title fool you. It seems to me that all believers, not just preachers, will benefit from these resources.

"The Bible Among the Myths"

From Andreas Kostenberger:

In a recent Zondervan publication, John Oswalt, long-time Old Testament scholar and author of the two-volume commentary on Isaiah in the NICOT series, discusses The Bible among the Myths. In light of recent controversial books by writers such as Peter Enns or Kenton Sparks, Oswalt tackles an important question: How is the Bible (actually, the Old Testament) similar or different from other ancient (Near Eastern) literature? Is it, to quote the subtitle, “Unique Revelation or Just Ancient Literature”?

In essence, Oswalt argues that while there are doubtless numerous surface similarities between the Old Testament and other ancient literature, on the larger level of the underlying worldview, the difference is vast: only the Old Testament lodges a robust claim of divine revelation, and as a result, only the three religions that take their cue from the Bible—Christianity, Judaism, and Islam—hold to divine revelation as a foundational components of their worldview. This simple, yet profound finding brings much-needed clarity to the debate.

One of my favorite sections in this book is Chapter 9, “Origins of the Biblical Worldview: Alternatives.” The respective headings tell the story: “John Van Seters: Israel’s Understanding of Reality Arose as a Late Creative Fiction”; “Frank Cross: Israel’s Understanding Arose in a Prose Rewriting of an Earlier Epic Poem”; “William Dever: Israel’s Understanding Is an Imposition of a Small Elite”; “Mark Smith: Israel’s Understanding Is a Natural Development from West Semitic Religion.” Understanding alternative views is very helpful especially for students.

Overall, Oswalt’s book excels in clarity of analysis and presentation. It is well written and argues and defends an exceedingly important thesis: that on a worldview level, Christianity and Judaism, with their claim of divine revelation, are unique. Perhaps my only criticism is that references to the above-mentioned Peter Enns or Kenton Sparks are conspicuously absent. This may be because Oswalt is narrowly focused on worldview rather than hermeneutical issues or because his volume was conceived prior to the publication of these other scholars’ works.

In any case, I highly recommend this volume as a supplementary text for courses in Old Testament survey or even in apologetics courses. This is a very welcome contribution to both fields, and I am sure Oswalt’s book will find a devoted following and many grateful readers.

The voice of Jesus in the book of James

Over at Ref21 there is an excellent article by Anthony Selvaggio on the nature of James' epistle.

James D.G. Dunn once referred to the epistle of James as "the most Jewish, the most undistinctively Christian document in the New Testament." [1] We all know that Martin Luther had serious concerns about the content of the epistle of James referring to it as "an epistle of straw" and noting that it contained "nothing of the nature of the gospel." [2] The epistle of James has been saddled with accusations of being "sub-Christian" and bereft of Jesus. On top of all this, the epistle has to be continually defended against charges that it conflicts with the Pauline doctrine of justification by faith alone.

Clearly, the epistle of James is much maligned and, in my opinion, these charges have resulted in a paucity of preaching Christ from the epistle of James. While it does require some additional exegetical effort, the voice of Jesus can be heard among the verses of this grand epistle. In fact, the voice of Jesus can be heard in the epistle of James in ways it is heard no where else in the New Testament epistolary corpus. This article will explore three ways in which the voice of Christ resounds in the epistle of James.

Read the entire article HERE.

Bart Ehrman on Colbert

The Colbert Report	Mon - Thurs 11:30pm / 10:30c
Bart Ehrman
colbertnation.com
Colbert Report Full Episodes Political Humor NASA Name Contest

Ehrman is a hack who gets his facts wrong. He is a man who, for whatever reason has a grudge against biblical Christianity.

Read Professor Denny Burk's review of Ehrman's last book HERE.

The New Testament's Use of the Old

There has been controversy for generations surrounding the various ways that the New Testament makes use of the Old. For biblical errantists the solution is clear: the New Testament simply gets it wrong. Paul gets it wrong. The writer of Hebrews gets it wrong. Jesus gets it wrong. Of course this line of reasoning sounds boundlessly arrogant.

Evangelical scholars who uphold the inerrancy of God's Word believe that there is a depth to the ways that the New Testament uses the Old that cannot merely be dismissed as error.

Andy Nasselli recently posted this wonderful observation from New Testament scholar Doug Moo:

We have encountered several places in Romans where Paul does not seem to apply the Old Testament in quite the way the original Old Testament context would seem to validate. This creates a theological problem. How can a New Testament writer use the Old Testament to claim that something is true when the Old Testament does not even teach what he claims it does? Such a procedure wouldbe like our trying to prove a doctrine from a text that we have misunderstood. Understandably, we would convince few people. Answers to this problem, which theologians have discussed for years, are not simple. In fact, each of the texts has to be taken on its own, because they present different kinds of problems. But one part of the solution is to recognize that New Testament writers sometimes use the Old Testament not to prove a point but to borrow its language and ethos. An illustration will make the point.

When I was young, and my sons were even younger, we often played basketball out on the driveway together. Then I, and they, grew. I became weaker and slower; they became bigger, stronger, and faster. Foolishly, I kept trying to compete. One day, I was playing one-on-one with my third son, Lukas. He had grown to about six feet six inches and 240 pounds, and was a very strong, highly skilled basketball player. I warned him, “Watch out, Luke, I’m going to take the ball to the basket on you!” He shot back, “Go ahead, Dad, make my day.” He was “quoting” the lines of the character Dirty Harry from the movie starring Clint Eastwood. Eastwood, portraying a cop, uses these words to dare a criminal to draw his gun on him. Luke did not have a gun; he was not threatening to shoot me. He did not intend to quote the author’s “original intention,” nor did I think that he was doing so. The language was a striking way of making a point: if I was foolish enough to try to take the ball to the basket on Luke, I could very well suffer the violence that Dirty Harry’s bad guy suffered in the movie. The quotation worked because we both knew the movie; it therefore communicated the point very well. So Paul and other New Testament writers often use Old Testament language. They know that their readers will understand it, and the application of the language often helps them to perceive a situation in a new light. Thus, in Romans 10:18, for instance, Paul quotes Psalm 19:4 not because he thinks that this text speaks directly about the preaching of the gospel to Israel; rather, he quotes it because the words would awaken echoes in his
readers’ minds that would lend force to his assertion.

You can find this quote in Dr. Moo's outstanding and accessable Encountering the Book of Romans: A Theological Survey. I highly recommend this resource for individual or small group study. If you are endevouring to study Romans then this is an excellent place to start. Also, if you would like to dig deeper then Dr. Moo's The Epistle to the Romans in the NICNT series is THE standard.

Another very resource that you may want to add to your reference library is the excellent Commentary on the New Testament Use of the Old Testament.

Does the Bible Err?

* I have changed the original title of this post because, upon further reflection I decided it was a bit snotty.


One of the important functions of the pastor is to identify error. The church is constantly confronted with preaching, teaching, and literature that leads many of God's people into error. One book that has garnered much attention in recent days is Kenton Sparks' God's Word in Human Words. I do not know Dr. Sparks (Professor of Biblical Studies at Eastern University) but I am sure he is a fine man. His book however should trouble anyone who believes the Bible to be the Word of God.





Andy Naselli has posted some helpful thoughts on Dr. Sparks' book.

Sparks uncritically accepts critical views and is overconfident in his conclusions while severely criticizing evangelicals like D. A. Carson, Robert Yarbrough, Kevin Vanhoozer, and James Hoffmeier. Sparks takes the debate beyond Peter Enns’s Inspiration and Incarnation. The book’s subtitle should not include the word “evangelical”: God’s Word in Human Words: An Evangelical Appropriation
of Critical Biblical Scholarship.

More reviews of this book are forthcoming. (For example, look for one by Robert Yarbrough in the next issue of Themelios.) Here are a couple of others already published:

1. The enthusiastic RBL review by Arthur Boulet, an M.A. student at Westminster Theological Seminary and an ardent supporter of Peter Enns, is sad. A sharp friend of mine who is working on a PhD elsewhere emailed me this after reading it: “This
review makes me want to cry. May God grant grace.”

2. The review by Kevin Bauder is a breath of fresh air in comparison.

Updates:

1. S. M. Baugh reviewed Sparks’s book for Reformation21 in August 2008.

2. Gary L. W. Johnson comments on Sparks’s book in the introduction to Reforming or Conforming: Post-Conservative Evangelicals and the Emerging Church (ed. Gary L. W. Johnson and Ronald L. Gleason; Wheaton: Crossway, 2008), 23n21:

Sparks in particular paints contemporary defenders of inerrancy in very unflattering colors. Old Testament scholars such as R. K. Harrison, Gleason Archer, and E. J. Young are accused of sticking their heads in the sand to avoid dealing with the real issues raised by critical Old Testament scholars (133ff ) while New Testament scholars such as D. A. Carson and Douglas Moo are said to be guilty of deliberately dodging the issues of New Testament critics (167). Even greater disdain is heaped on Carl Henry, who had the misfortune of simply being a theologian and not a biblical scholar (138). However, the most reprehensible aspect of Sparks’s work is the facile labeling of all defenders of inerrancy as Cartesian foundationalists. Sparks declares Cornelius Van Til, and his presuppositional apologetics, to be Cartesian because Van Til underscored the importance of certainty, which to Sparks’s way of thinking automatically makes one a Cartesian (45). If that is the case, then we must place not only the Reformers and the church fathers in that category, but Christ and the apostles as well! Van Til was no Cartesian. His apologetical approach was rooted in classic Reformed theology, especially in the Dutch tradition of Kuyper and Bavinck, stretching back to the noted Dutch Protestant scholastic Peter Van Mastricht (1630–1706), who was an outspoken critic of all things Cartesian. As Richard Muller notes, “Mastricht’s consequent stress on the necessity of revelation for Christian theology (theology defined as ‘living before God in and through Christ’ or as the wisdom leading to that end) led to an adamant resistance to Cartesian thought with its method of radical doubt and its insistence on the primacy of autonomy of the mind in all matters of judgment.” Richard Muller, “Giving Direction to Theology: The Scholastic Dimension,” Journal of the Evangelical Theological Society 28 (June 1985), 185.

Read Andy's entire post HERE.





The theory of the seminarian in one generation will become the theory of the church in the next.