go over and check out my friend Ryan’s new WP blog – we went to seminary together and he’s a great guy. He has a post on why he loves the AG and for obvious reasons, I concur! Head on over and say hello!
I would say the AG strongest advantage is its strong emphasis on missions support, be it overseas missions or even home missions. Denominations that are heavy on missions and outreach are strong groups and always will be so long as they keep the missions (Great Commission) emphasis.
joy once again filled my heart as I commenced upon my mailbox at the post office and the package I was wating for had arrived – the package from IVP that is! what were it’s contents you ask? two books!
John Walton’s The Lost World of Genesis One: Ancient Cosmology and the Origens Debate (IVP Academic, 2009)!
Here is the publisher blurb – (you can see some excerpts from the book at the IVP website):
In this astute mix of cultural critique and biblical studies, John H. Walton presents and defends twenty propositions supporting a literary and theological understanding of Genesis 1 within the context of the ancient Near Eastern world and unpacks its implications for our modern scientific understanding of origins.
Ideal for students, professors, pastors and lay readers with an interest in the intelligent design controversy and creation-evolution debates, Walton’s thoughtful analysis unpacks seldom appreciated aspects of the biblical text and sets Bible-believing scientists free to investigate the question of origins.
This will most likely be reviewed sooner rather than later!
Ivan Satyavrata’s The Holy Spirit: Lord and Life Giver (IVP Academic, 2009)! Dr. Satyavrata is presently the J. Philip Hogan professor of World Mission at the Assemblies of God Theological Seminary, which is a one year appointment (2009-2010) that involves teaching and overseeing the doctoral programs in missions. Part of the appointment too is to write a monograph on some aspect of missions.
Here is a publisher’s blurb (you can see excerpts from the book at the IVP Website):
The past two centuries have seen a slow but definite turning away from enlightenment dismissal of the spiritual realm, and a new openness to spiritual realities, including the work of God the Holy Spirit, has emerged.
Theologian Ivan Satyavrata believes that while there is much to celebrate in this focus on the Spirit and his workings after several centuries of relative neglect, there is a pressing need to relate our present experience of the Spirit to the teaching of God’s Word. In a context of growing cultural and religious plurality, how can we recognize where and how the Holy Spirit is present and at work today? This is a task to which this book is devoted.
As a theologian and leader of the church in India, Ivan Satyavrata brings a unique perspective to our understanding of the work of the Holy Spirit throughout the world. His voice makes a strong contribution to the Christian Doctrine in Global Perspective series, which is edited by David Smith with consulting editor John Stott and provides intercultural exposition of key tenets of Christian belief by leading international evangelical thinkers.
This too will probably be read and reviewed sooner rather than later!
TC is doing a series of posts on why he’s no longer in the dispensational camp. I can agree with him on many points. I came across J. Ramsey Michaels’ IVP commentary on the book of Revelation over at the IVP Website and really appreciated the publisher’s blurb about his commentary which reads:
Interpretations of the book of Revelation are numerous and varied. The preterist view focuses on first-century social analysis of John’s environment. The church-historical view sees the Revelation as a prophetic survey of the history of the church. The futurist view sees the book as a precise prediction of unfolding events in the yet-to-come end of the world.
The trouble with all three, argues J. Ramsey Michaels, is that they make the Revelation of John irrelevant to Christians throughout much of history. Failing to take seriously what John saw, such interpreters do not comprehend the value of the Revelation to Christians in any age. Michaels strives to recapture the Revelation as a prophetic letter of testimony, a testimony as relevant to today’s church as it was to John’s as it faces evil and looks for the victory of the Lamb.
Now, I haven’t read this commentary but I like the gist of it. I think this is it. This is a big reason why like TC, I am done with dispensationalism – in the overall scheme of things it misses the point and that by a mile! The Revelation isn’t about desciphering when the end of the world will come or how; it’s not a road map to end times; it’s not future, preterist, history and all that, but instead it is about the hope of God’s presence with us in the midst of suffering and persecution. I think a key verse in the Revelation is 1:9 where John says in part:
9 I, John, your brother and companion in the suffering and kingdom and patient endurance that are ours in Jesus, was on the island of Patmos because of the word of God and the testimony of Jesus.
or Revelation 14:12 where it reads:
12 This calls for patient endurance on the part of the people of God who keep his commands and remain faithful to Jesus.
Seen through this situation I think the Book of Revelation becomes much more readable and understandable and relevant in the life of the church than when it is distorted into some effort to soley discern the future.
Kevin Sam of New Epistles in now on WordPress! Head on over and welcome him to the blessed realm!
Kevin Sam, at New Epistles, is thinking of switching over to WP – he knows it is the way to go but I suspect he needs some more support (he already has an account he just needs to work it and go live!) - so all you WP guys head on over (tolerate the blogger commenting deal a moment) and give him lots of reasons why he should move on over to WP without further hesitation. Share the advantages you have found so he can be further persuaded. Let’s see if we can get him to switch his “someday” to “Sunday”! Come on guys! Together we can do it! Let’s all say it toghther: YES WE CAN!!
Courtesy of Jesse Hillman at Zondervan I got a copy of John N. Oswalt’s The Bible Among the Myths: Unique Revelation or Just Ancient Literature? (Zondervan, 2009). It just came out this month! It came yesterday but I’ve been too busy to really look it over but I am really looking forward to it. It’s only 208 pages too so it’s not overwhleming reading! It’ll help me on my need to have a better grasp on Hebrew Bible/Old Testament issues. He does address the life of Jesus and Bultmann too so that should be interesting since Bultmann is really taking some hits lately around the biblioblogsphere! And I know he has a solid pastoral approach to things so I know it will help me as well in that respect.
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From the Zondervan Website:
The Bible Among the Myths is a sometimes controversial, always engaging corrective to a growing rejection in Western society of the revelation found within the Old Testament regarding a transcendent God who breaks into time and space and reveals himself in and through human activity.
Description:
Sixty years ago, most biblical scholars maintained that Israel’s religion was unique—that it stood in marked contrast to the faiths of its ancient Near Eastern neighbors. Nowadays, it is widely argued that Israel’s religion mirrors that of other West Semitic societies. What accounts for this radical change, and what are its implications for our understanding of the Old Testament? Dr. John N. Oswalt says the root of this new attitude lies in Western society’s hostility to the idea of revelation, which presupposes a reality that transcends the world of the senses, asserting the existence of a realm humans cannot control. While not advocating a “the Bible says it, and I believe it, and that settles it” point of view, Oswalt asserts convincingly that while other ancient literatures all see reality in essentially the same terms, the Bible differs radically on all the main points. The Bible Among the Myths supplies a necessary corrective to those who reject the Old Testament’s testimony about a transcendent God who breaks into time and space and reveals himself in and through human activity.
Looks pretty interesting! Review forthcoming!
ps. I know too I want to get his commentaries on Isaiah too.
I was shocked (only because I had been out of the loop) to learn yesterday when I got the latest Mission Frontier Bulletin that on May 20, 2009 at 9:05 p.m., Ralph D. Winter, founder of the US. Center for World Missionpassed away in his home in Pasadena, CA.
Winter was a world renown strategist who had a very significant influence on the direction of the Protestant Church’s world wide missions efforts. He was singularly most influential through is work on the Mission Frontiers Bulletin and in founding and running the U.S. Center for World Mission located in Pasadena California. He had a huge impact on many a young person who is now involved in missions work both locally and globally.
For me reading his editorials challenged me to think about missions in different ways and reading the Mission Frontiers Bulletin pushed me to new levels of understanding with regard to missiology and related issues. For example it wasn’t always just about evangelism as in witnessing but also about finding ways to fix various social problems or even finding cures for various diseases and so on. Missions is not always and only just about witnessing, it is also about finding ways to show people the real impact the gospel can have on cultures. It was also through the Mission Frontiers Bulletin I learned about people groupings and the need to read specific groups and not just countries. I have gotten the Bulletin for a lot of years and I plan to continue getting it as missions is a passion of mine and want to always be challenged to think about missions in new and creative ways.
You can read more about him here.
In the mail today I received James McGrath’s The One True God: Early Christian Monotheism in its Jewish Context (hardcover)(University of Illinois Press, 2009).
Description from Amazon:
Monotheism, the idea that there is only one true God, is a powerful religious concept that was shaped by competing ideas and the problems they raised. Surveying New Testament writings and Jewish sources from before and after the rise of Christianity, James F. McGrath argues that even the most developed Christologies in the New Testament fit within the context of first century Jewish “monotheism.” In doing so, he pinpoints more precisely when the parting of ways took place over the issue of God’s oneness, and he explores philosophical ideas such as “creation out of nothing,” which caused Jews and Christians to develop differing concepts and definitions about God.
Eugene Peterson, in his book Under the Unpredictable Plant: An Exploration in Vocational Holiness (Eerdmans, 1992), talks about two polarities of the pastoral vocation: geographical and eschatological. In regards to eschatology (dealing with last things) he writes:
Eschatology is the tool we use to loosen the soil and weed the field. Eschatology is the pastor’s equivalent to the farmer’s plow and harrow, hoe and spade (but not the developer’s bulldozer and earth mover). We keep this topsoil loose and moist, open to the rain and sun, planted, weeded, tended, cared for, and under the pull of a harvest, fulfillment, a teleioson.
Pastoral work is eschatological. Jonah entered Nineveh, embraced the locale, and immersed himself in the particulars. But when he opened his mout to preach, he didn’t make appreciative comments on the landscape; he let loose with something arrestingly eschatological: “Yet forty days, and Nineveh shall be overthrown!” (3:4).
This is not the kind of message we commonly associate with pastoral work. We are more apt to see this message as the province of street preachers or hit-and-run evangelists, not someone who cares about a congregation and is committed to its welfare by entering at considerable depth into its life. But that is caricature; true and authentic pastoral work is eschatological to the core. “Yet forty days, and Nineveh shall be overthrown” is a basic and essential pastoral proclamation (140-141).
This is giving me some things to think about. Pertson is right, “this is not the kind of message we commonly associate with pastoral work.” In all honesty, I’m tired of eschatology, at least the false notions of it. I don’t really want to preach or teach about it right now. I grew up with the typical dispensational premillennial/pre-trib futurist view on last things where folks like Hal Lindsey, Tim Lahaye, John Hagee, Grant Jeffries, all had the stage front and center. This burned me out on last things (I think). I got tired of the road map approach to the end of the world and got tired of all the debates about the rapture, or the millennium and all the crazy different views. There was gross misunderstanding and confusion that immediacy meant immediately and that wore me out.
So, when Peterson tells me “true and authentic pastoral work is eschatological to the core” I want to shrugg or wince. Don’t get me wrong, I know the end is near, at the door even. I am just realizing this is an area I need renewal in so that the Lord will give me a new heart for a proper take on eschatology and be able to enter into that in a vocationally holy way. This is what has been occupying my mind of late.
What say you?
There’s a test going around to test how calvinist (one’s “C-Factor”) one is – it’s a terrible test really – so many misnomers and misunderstandings and non-sequitors it’s nearly appalling. I mean, just because one is “hard working” it doesn’t necessarily follow that one has a “Calvinist work ethic” so therefore one is a Calvinist, or that because one is not keen on public displays of affection or emotions (which I am fine with as long as it is appropirate, we are afterall, in the image of God, emotional people) it doesn’t follow one is Calvinists and so on. Well, I came out at 47%.
It makes some sense anways, since I see myself as a mongeristic synergist. I take the middle road. (In Seminary Dr. McGee said we in our movement tend to be ”Augustinian Synergists”). God is alone the author of our salvation. Period. However, we are also to work out our salvation in humility and obedience to God and his direction in our lives. Philippians 2:12-13 may be a prime example of what I mean by mongeristic synergism as it reads:
Therefore, my dear friends, as you have always obeyed – not only in my presence, but now, much more in my absence – continue to work out your salvation with fear and trembling, for it is God who works in you to will and to act in order to fulfill his good purpose (TNIV).
So, we can see here that while it is God who “works” in us, it is also us who “works” out our salvation through faith and obedience to God and to one another in humily and service. And this is how and why I see myself as a monergistic synergist. I see tension between the two, sort of like that of a tandem bike. It takes two to make a tandem bike work, does it not? Otherwise it won’t ”work” well. To use the sorely inadequate analogy then, God works his salvation in us, and in tandem, we “work” out that salvation in our lives through our relationship with him and in our relationships within the community faith in which we are a part.
So I am happy enough to be 47% Calvinist!
