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Review of Phillips, God’s Wisdom in Proverbs

By on July 31, 2012 in Bible and Theology, Books, Discipleship

Note: Themelios 37.2 has just appeared, in which this review is published. I would note also that what Dan Phillips does in this book, especially with Proverbs 22:6, goes very well with the previous post on child-training in the OT.

Dan Phillips. God’s Wisdom in Proverbs: Hearing God’s Voice in Scripture. The Woodlands, TX: Kress, 2011. xxi + 405pp. $24.99. Printed Caseside.

Dan Phillips is pastor of Copperfield Bible Church in Houston, TX, and he writes regularly with Phil Johnson and Frank Turk at the Pyromaniacs blog. In addition to the volume under review here, Phillips has written The World-Tilting Gospel. Both books come at readers with a deadly seriousness about the gospel and sound doctrine tossed in a breezy light-hearted writing style. The jocular sternness is a jolting combination: Phillips brings a grin to the face then grabs for the throat. He takes the biblical languages seriously too, so while this book does not have an academic feel the Hebrew text of Proverbs is consistently engaged.

God’s Wisdom in Proverbs comes in eight chapters with an epilogue and four appendices. Chapter one presents the essentials for understanding Proverbs: Phillips holds firmly to Solomonic authorship, an issue given 20 pages in appendix one; he interprets Proverbs in harmony with the rest of the Hebrew Bible; and he discusses the book’s structure (relying mainly on the headings), poetry, and parallelism as he orients the reader to the interpretation of the book. Chapter two is a thirty page discussion of Proverbs 1:2–6, and chapter three explores the fear of Yahweh. Chapter four focuses mainly on Proverbs 2:1–6 on the topic of “how to wise up.” Chapter five exposits the teaching of Proverbs on trusting and knowing God. Chapter six synthesizes the teaching of Proverbs on godly relationships, chapter seven does the same for marriage, and chapter 8 rounds out the body of the book with over 60 pages on the teaching of Proverbs on child-training. In the epilogue Phillips addresses the reader who might feel condemned by the high standards set forth in the book of Proverbs: he urges faith in Christ for justification, explaining how the transforming power of the Spirit to regenerate enables people to live according to the wisdom set forth in Proverbs. As mentioned above, appendix one deals with Solomonic authorship of Proverbs. Appendix two looks at “words related to teaching in Proverbs,” appendix three is given to the meaning of Proverbs 22:6, “Train up a child in the way he should go; even when he is old he will not depart from it” (ESV), and appendix four deals with “preaching and teaching the book of Proverbs.”

In appendix three Phillips takes the position that Proverbs 22:6 is a warning, which he translates as “Start out a youth according to his own way—even should he grow old, he will not turn from it.” Phillips shows how the bare Hebrew “his way” is typically translated such that the “way” referenced is the “right” way, but he contends, with Douglas Stuart and others, that this is an unwarranted addition. The defense Phillips provides for his interpretation of this verse, taking it to state that children will be confirmed in and stay in the way they are trained to go, whether that way is good or bad, is clear and compelling.

The teaching of Proverbs is desperately needed today. As our society descends into decadence, this book of the Bible will give us a backbone and help us to stand, and this applies to everything from fearing God to relating appropriately to others and cultivating marriage and training children, to say nothing of sound economic policy. We need no more “explanations” of Proverbs that nullify its teaching or assume it has no connection to its Old Testament context. Rather, we need balanced, studied, serious, joyful, and wise explanation and application of Proverbs. Enter Dan Phillips. This would be a great book for men’s discipleship groups, for a pastor planning to preach through Proverbs, for the recent graduate, and for much else. We can thank Phillips especially for his balanced and courageous presentation of how parents should use the rod for reproof.

Our day is also a day in which some are calling for “crazy” or “radical” expressions of Christianity. These presentations are seldom seasoned with the whole counsel of God: do they take Old Testament wisdom literature into account? Wouldn’t the Old Testament wisdom literature help us to follow Jesus, who taught people to count the cost of doing so? Often the calls to sell all or leave all appeal to younger people, typically college students, who have few responsibilities, are unmarried, and have no children—the very kinds of people for whom Solomon wrote Proverbs. All Christians today need the message of Proverbs, but it was expressly written to make wise the simple. Proverbs remains God’s word for God’s people. As we seek to follow Christ today, we will only be wholly committed to Jesus when we live by the wisdom the Spirit inspired Solomon to write in Proverbs. Dan Phillips has given us a study that would be a great place to start down the path of acquiring wisdom.

Comments { 1 }

A Biblical Theology of Motherhood

By on July 16, 2012 in Biblical Theology, Discipleship

The editor of the Journal of Discipleship and Family Ministry, Timothy Paul Jones, has generously granted me permission to post my essay from the most recent issue (table of contents).

Here’s a taste of “A Biblical Theology of Motherhood“:

What is a biblical theology of motherhood? A biblical theology of anything seeks to describe both the storyline and the network of assumptions and presuppositions and beliefs assumed by the biblical authors as they wrote. The only access we have to what the biblical authors thought or assumed is what they wrote. When we pursue biblical theology, what we are trying to get at is the worldview reflected in the assumptions of the biblical authors, the worldview from which their statements spring, the worldview in which their statements make sense. If we are trying to establish a biblical theology of motherhood, we want to see how motherhood fits in the plot of the Bible’s big story, how it interacts with other aspects of the story, and how these things shed light on the direct statements about motherhood in the songs of the Psalmists, the Proverbs of the sages, and the instructions of the apostles. Story and statements inform one another, each expositing, affirming, and explaining the other. This study will begin with motherhood in the Bible’s story before considering the Bible’s statements about motherhood.

You can read the whole thing here.

The essay has the following subtitles:

A Biblical Theology of Motherhood
Not Good for Man To Be Alone
Motherhood in the Bible’s Story
The Bible’s Statements About Motherhood
Conclusion

Bibliographic info: James M. Hamilton Jr., “A Biblical Theology of Motherhood,”Journal of Discipleship and Family Ministry 2.2 (2012): 6–13.

On a related note, see the review of Created To Be His Help Meet by Tim Challies.

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What I Learned in My First Pastorate

By on June 18, 2012 in Bible and Theology, Discipleship, Ecclesiology

A few years ago Towers invited me to reflect on what I learned in my first pastorate at Baptist Church of the Redeemer. I now post what I wrote then in this space.

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A small group of nobodies in a big room seemed really unimpressive, but I confess vanity and pride.

To be honest, I expected a lot of growth, and I expected it fast.

It didn’t happen.

Sunday after Sunday, month after month, the same four families and a few singles gathered for worship at Baptist Church of the Redeemer. As this happened, the Lord slowly disabused me of the notion that the church was going to grow because of me. It hurts to have your pride molded into humility, but it feels good, too, and how liberating! Not to mention the way others prefer humility to pride.

Through this experience, I learned that Jesus keeps His promise to build His church. I learned the power of the Word of God. And I learned – or made progress in learning – to love people.

Jesus keeps His promise His way

Jesus said, “I will build my church.” It’s His church. His glory is at stake in it. He keeps His Word. And he does it His way.

Have you noticed what a bad strategist the Lord seems to be? If you were God, and you wanted to save the world, would you do it by parading your deity or by sending Jesus to take on human flesh? And, if you chose the route of incarnation, would you go somewhere important, say, Rome or Jerusalem, or would you go to a hick town like Nazareth?

Once there, what would you do? Write some books and network with significant people? Or do manual labor for 30 years, then the big time: three more years of ambling around the Galilean countryside with smelly fishermen, preaching to unlearned crowds that happen to gather? To top it all off, would you let a bunch of wicked rebels kill you?

The Lord may seem to be a bad strategist, but His strategy is the best strategy. God accomplished salvation in Christ by the way of the cross, and Jesus calls His followers to take up their crosses, too. Jesus keeps His promise to build His church as His people follow in His steps.

Jesus gets glory when nobodies gather and love each other. Jesus gets glory when nobodies gather in moldy buildings in bad parts of town. Jesus gets glory when pastors forsake the wisdom of the world, set aside attempts to show off, open the Bible and preach it.

The power of the Word of God

David Wells says the mark of the evangelical church in America is superficiality. I am convinced that authenticity comes from the clear exposition of the Scriptures. People encounter God when His Word is read to them, explained to them and applied to them by the power of the Spirit. How do you get past the happy-smiley veneer people wear to church? Preach the Word.

Do you want singles in their late 20s and early 30s confessing anxiety about finding a mate, asking you to pray for them to trust the Lord’s providence in their lives? Do you want guys confessing their struggles with pornography as they seek to join the church? Do you want people with real problems (homosexual urges and the fallout from past sexual sin, whether lingering STD’s or guilt from an abortion) joining the church and coming for counsel in their struggle against sin? Do you want guys coming to you because they’re afraid of the way they’ve been rough with their wives and they don’t want it to go any further, so they’re seeking accountability?

You don’t get this from wearing cool clothes, having a trendy name for your church or learning to preach from comedians. If it comes – and if the authenticity about “big” sins is accompanied by authenticity about “acceptable” sins – it will come by the power of the Spirit through the preaching of the Word. The Bible convinces us to quit playing games. The Bible shows us the beauty of holiness. The Bible convicts us of the worth of this treasure, and we sell all we have – or risk exposing our sin – to buy the field in which the treasure lies.

Loving people

I can remember saying to Denny Burk when we were in school together: “I don’t want to spend time with people, there’s too much to read.” His reply came with a piercing look in tones of prophetic conviction: “Then you’re never going to minister to anybody.”

I also remember the sermon I preached on the absolute sovereignty of God, and there my sweet wife sat in the front row weeping. She wasn’t weeping because of the beauty of what I was saying; she was weeping because I was beating the people of God over the head with the club of truth in good know-it-all, seminary graduate fashion.

The people of God are familiar with us seminary types, and they have their guard up against us. There is only one way to convince them that they can let their guard down, to convince them that they can talk to us: love them. Listen to them. Let them talk. Stop correcting them. Let them explain their views, and if they don’t want your response to what they’ve said, don’t counter them. Ask the Lord to use your preaching to form their thinking. Trust him, and love the people in your care. Don’t back down from speaking the truth in love, but make sure that they sense love as you speak truth.

So did the church ever grow?

Yes, and do you want to know when? When I listened to my wife’s godly suggestion that we start a Wednesday night prayer meeting. We gathered together, sinful beggars clothed by faith with the righteousness of Christ, and we laid hold on the Lord in prayer. Drenched in His mercy, we called on the name of the Lord.

That church didn’t grow because of me. That church grew because Jesus kept His promise, because the Word of God is powerful and because we were all learning to love each other the way Jesus loved us. In spite of our insignificance, the moldy building in the bad part of town, the mediocre music and the non-flashy sermons that sought to explain the Bible, the Lord was adding to our number daily. “Not to us, O Lord, not to us, but to thy name give glory, because of thy lovingkindness, because of thy truth” (Ps 115:1).

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Are We Training Parrots or Making Disciples?

By on May 17, 2012 in Bible and Theology, Biblical Theology, Discipleship

In a guest post on the Crossway blog I discuss the relationships between exegesis, biblical theology, and historical theology in the process of disciple-making.

Are your assumptions about the people who hear you preach and teach an affront to the reality that they are made in the image of God?

Here’s the intro:

Solid exegesis, biblical theology, and systematic theology are necessary for preaching and teaching. We don’t exercise these skills merely for our own excellence in sermon delivery, but because the people in the pews have the ability to think, analyze arguments, read the Bible for themselves, and formulate answers to questions that we may never even address from the pulpit.

The whole thing.

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Use the Right Tool for the Right Job: Gospel Maturity for Seminary

By on March 26, 2012 in Bible and Theology, Discipleship

In my humble opinion, seminary students should seek from the seminary what the seminary exists to give them, and the seminary exists to give them the Bible. Let me be quick to add that the seminary’s main purposes include systematic theology and church history, but God has revealed himself in the Bible. Let me say that again, because it’s that important: God has revealed himself in the Bible.

Seminaries exist to teach people the Bible, which means seminaries exist to teach people Greek, Hebrew, and Aramaic, introduce them to the Bible’s big story, and teach them how to read that story parts and whole.

This means that there are many jobs the seminary does not exist to do: the seminary is not a church. The seminary is not an evangelistic crusade. The seminary is not your small group, your missions and evangelism coordinator, or even your pastoral internship.

I have often heard preachers comment on some pastoral difficulty then say, “They don’t teach you that in seminary!” I usually think to myself, “nor did they intend to; nor were they supposed to.”

Cars don’t sprout wings and fly, and they don’t teach you to pilot a plane in Driver’s Ed. Evaluate a car, or a Driver’s Ed. class, according to what it is intended to do. The seminary is built to prepare people for ministry, yes, but it’s a school. That bears repeating: a seminary is a school. This means, by definition, that a seminary is not a church. So the seminary is preparing people for ministry, but it can’t do everything necessary to prepare people for ministry. It’s not built to do everything necessary to prepare people for ministry. It’s built to be a school.

What’s the best way to ruin a tool? Use it for the wrong job.

Want to ruin a butter knife? Use it as a screw driver, chisel, or wedge. Want to ruin a baseball bat? Use it to hammer a nail. Want to ruin seminary? Expect it to do something it doesn’t exist to do.

How will bad expectations for a seminary ruin its utility? Much in every way. Here I want to focus on the main way I think people should use the right tool for the right job when they go to seminary.

What is the job the tool of seminary was built to do? Give people the Bible. I know that not everyone needs to learn Greek and Hebrew, nor does everyone need to learn legal theory. Law students need to learn legal theory, though, and those who would be unashamed workmen ought to give themselves to Greek and Hebrew (insert all relevant caveats about non-traditional students or those not seeking to be pastors, etc.).

A seminary is a school that exists (for the glory of God!) to teach people the Bible, and the Bible was written in Greek and Hebrew. What is more important than learning to read God’s revelation of himself in the language in which it was composed?

Here’s the payoff, two pieces of free advice, for what they’re worth:

1) Seminary students who want to learn the Bible in the original languages should take the languages early and often. Why let a semester pass in which you’re not in a Greek or Hebrew class? No one expects to be fluent in Spanish after two semesters. We’re unwise to think that after two semesters we’ll “know Greek.”  You’re at school to begin to learn Greek and Hebrew so you can spend the rest of your life studying the Bible in the original. Why not give all your electives to Greek and Hebrew exegesis classes? There are lots of conference opportunities where you can learn everything from counseling to preaching to evangelism and missions. There will never be a conference for pastors on Hebrew syntax. There will never be a Greek exegesis of 1 Peter conference where you are taught to diagram the Greek text and trace its argument. Get from the seminary what you can only get from the seminary, what the seminary exists to give you. You can get the rest in a good church, in a pastoral internship, or at a conference.

2) You are cultivating Christlikeness as you lay your life down for others by studying the biblical languages. Don’t forget that as you study Greek and Hebrew, you are serving people you will only meet in the future. You haven’t met them yet, but they will benefit from the ability to feed them the word of God you’re cultivating now. They will benefit from your character made strong from the diligence and discipline required to learn Greek and Hebrew. They will benefit from the humility such study produces, to say nothing of the wisdom and instinctive discernment that comes. Serve them now by preparing for your ministry to them in the future. Lay your life down for them by memorizing vocab, learning morphology, and sticking with it.

In The Reformation of the Sixteenth Century Roland Bainton tells of Thomas Platter, who was so eager to learn the Bible that he did manual labor by day and studied the languages by night, putting sand in his mouth so the gritty grains between his teeth would keep him awake (82–83). Bainton also tells of the enthusiasm with which Ulrich Zwingli received the edition of the New Testament in Greek Erasmus edited: Zwingli “memorized the entire Pauline corpus in the original” (81).

I keep these words of Martin Luther on a 3×5 card in my Greek New Testament:

Without the original languages we could not have received the gospel. Languages are the scabbard that contains the sword of the Spirit. They are the casket which contains the priceless jewels of antique thought. They are the vessel that holds the wine. If the languages had not made me positive as to the true meaning of the Word, I might have still remained a chained monk, engaged in quietly preaching Romish errors in the obscurity of a cloister. No sooner did men cease to cultivate the languages, than Christendom declined, but no sooner was this torch relighted, than this papal owl fled with a shriek! If we neglect the literature, we shall eventually lose the gospel!

[This article was written at the request of my friends at Desiring God, in connection with this series.]

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Can A Presbyterian Join a Baptist Church?

By on March 5, 2012 in Bible and Theology, Discipleship, Ecclesiology

How does one’s stance on baptism affect membership decisions? If a person is a convinced paedobaptist (i.e., one who holds to infant baptism) and declines to be baptized (i.e., immersed) as a believer, should that prohibit him or her from being a member of the church?

My attempt to answer these questions is on The Gospel Coalition Blog.

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Update on Baby Evie: Thanks for Your Prayers

By on February 17, 2012 in Current Events, Discipleship

I don’t typically post personal items here, but so many prayed for us that this seems the easiest way to provide an update and not leave anyone out.

With the words of the benediction reverberating in the air, I looked down at my phone to see the text message that had just buzzed in:

“Evie had a seizure. Going to Kosair children’s downtown.”

My wife and I have a kind of signal. If there’s an emergency, she can call repeatedly, and even if I’m in class I’m to answer the call. Yesterday as my class came to an end, I missed three calls in a row. I didn’t answer because it was right at the end of class.

I like to end class with everyone saying the words of 2 Corinthians 13:14 to one another: “The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, and the love of God, and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit be with you all. Amen.” With those words lingering in the air, I read that text message about our little girl who just celebrated her first birthday.

At that point I had a new experience: that of the helpless parent. Would that the seizure had been mine not hers. Would that it had come when I could at least be there.

Trying to be as polite as possible to students asking about papers, reading, and questions of interpretation that have never felt more irrelevant, I fought my way outside to call my sweet wife. My apologies to anyone who found me preoccupied at that moment. You never know what nightmare text a guy might have just read.

When my wife answered, she was in an ambulance with our baby girl. I hadn’t expected an ambulance. I told her I was on the way, and went to the door of my next class.

Would you ever dream that a PhD student who knows his stuff could play the part of the hero? You thought he was just a Garrett Fellow, a fancy title for a grader, but a man at ready could be a hero at any moment. Praise God that Mitch Chase wasn’t late, either. There he stood in the hall outside the classroom.

“Mitch, Evie’s had a seizure. I need to go to the hospital. Do you know today’s material? Can you teach today’s class?”

“Absolutely. Don’t worry about a thing. I’m ready to go.”

“Thank you, brother; thank you.”

I don’t know if that’s exactly how it went, but it was the gist.

I crossed paths with Chris Smith and Jerod Harper, who issued a call to prayer, and then I ran into Edward Heinze, my fellow elder, who offered to go to the hospital with me. I declined, but he prayed for us before I left campus.

What a unique place Southern Seminary is. Over the next twelve hours we got emails, texts, and phone calls communicating love, support, prayer. What a blessing not to be alone. What a blessing to be part of the family of God. Thank you all.

My wife and I have often observed that we don’t know how people live apart from the knowledge of God, apart from trusting him, apart from knowing that he is sovereign and good. As I drove from the school to the hospital, the feeling that a helpless, desperate parent has gave way to the feeling that a child of a wise, good, sovereign Father has.

To be the child of such a Father is to trust that he intends good, even if the precious baby girl faces a handicap, a lifelong condition, or even death. To be the child of such a Father is to know that his presence and help through the risen Lord Jesus and the power of the Holy Spirit is enough. Enough for whatever a helpless, desperate parent faces.

Our neighbor next door happens to work at the hospital, Kosair Children’s. Not long after I got there, she came to visit. Her words ring true about every experience we’ve had in a hospital. She said, “You come in here, and it’s like entering a time warp.” It’s stunning how quickly time passes when you’re waiting in a hospital room.

When I got there Evie just seemed sleepy, lethargic. She took naps in our arms. After several hours they ran all their tests, including a CT scan. Everything looked fine, except for an elevated white blood cell count, as a result of which they wanted to do a spinal tap to rule out spinal meningitis. We were thankful that our physician friend Paul Tennant happened to have visited us and was in the room when they told us about the spinal tap. It was a comfort to have Dr. Paul say if it was his son he would have it done. After all these tests, Jill was finally allowed to feed the baby, at which point Evie really got active and seemed her normal, happy self.

What a blessing to have good neighbors. Our across the street neighbor, the 85 year old lady with the green thumb and the beautiful flowers in her lawn, kept the boys until the next door neighbor who works at Kosair’s got home, at which point she took the boys. Around 7pm I went home to get the boys in bed and gather things for what I thought would be an overnight stay at the hospital for my wife and daughter. When I got the boys in bed, the good Dr. Denny Burk came over to keep the wolves away as they slept.

When I got back to the hospital our little girl was even more herself than before I left. I think she won the hearts of all the nurses, and I’m pretty sure the parent-hospital liaison guy was smitten with her. I’m gonna need a stick to beat the boys away.

And we waited. We thought we might hear the results of the spinal tap by 9:20pm, but they didn’t come. Sometime around 11pm we heard that those results were clear. Praise God.

Evie was doing so well that there had been some indications that we would get to go home and not have to spend the night at the hospital. Thankfully that’s what eventually happened.

Evidently babies can have seizures for all kinds of reasons. Since all the tests and things look normal, our best guess is that as she stood up and bumped her head slightly on that chair, she held her breath in response to getting hurt. She held her breath so long that she passed out, and at that point she turned gray and began to convulse. We’ve seen our boys hold their breath, but Jill had never seen anything like that, so she called 911.

Thank you all for your prayers. Thank God that all seems well with Baby Evie.

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Parents Won’t Want to Read This but Should

By on January 12, 2012 in Current Events, Discipleship

God help us. This is a sobering post by Mary Kozakiewicz on the Covenant Eyes blog, “My Daughter Was Caught by a Predator: A Word of Warning from One Parent to Another.”

Reader discretion advised. This is a broken and dangerous world.

I’m thankful for Proverbs 23:10–11, which teaches that the defender of the fatherless is strong and will plead their case against violators.

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Almost Heaven, West Virginia

By on January 11, 2012 in Bible and Theology, Current Events, Discipleship

We’ll be singing along with John Denver as we drive to West Virginia on Friday:

I’ll be teaching Genesis through Esther at Randolph Street Baptist Church in Charleston, WV, on Friday and Saturday, preaching there Sunday morning. You can find more info on this page. Would love to see you there.

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A Biblical Theology of Gender in Chicago

By on January 5, 2012 in Biblical Theology, Discipleship, Marriage

If you’re in the Chicago-land area I’d love to see you on February 25, 2012 at the Iron Sharpens Iron conference.

Kenny Luck and Voddie Baucham are the keynote speakers, and I’ll be doing a seminar on “A Biblical Theology of Gender.”

Details on this page.

May God help us to man-up and be Christlike.

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Dan Phillips Interviews Just Another Nobody

By on December 29, 2011 in Current Events, Discipleship, Missions

Here’s one of the exchanges:

How was the reception?

It is so encouraging to teach people who have experienced Psalm 19:9-10, “the rules of the LORD are true, and righteous altogether. More to be desired are they than gold, even much fine gold; sweeter also than honey and drippings of the honeycomb.”

God’s people love God’s word. The Bible is a subtle book, though, and it’s not always easy to see how later biblical authors have interpreted what earlier biblical authors wrote. It is God’s rich mercy to get to serve God’s people by helping them see the intrinsic connections, the inner logic of the most important book in the world.

The word of God is living and active. It is able to make us wise unto salvation. It is all profitable. For two weeks, we the thirsty, we who had no money, delighted ourselves on the richest of fare (Isa 55). “Not to us, O LORD, not to us, but to thy name give glory, because of thy lovingkindness, because of thy truth” (Ps 115:1, NASB).

The whole thing is here.

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Watch Your Life and Doctrine

By on November 15, 2011 in Bible and Theology, Current Events, Discipleship

Need proof that liberal theology is not morally neutral?

Check out this post. Here’s an excerpt from an evangelical describing his time at Princeton Theological Seminary:

My Outsider status became clear to me — if not for the first time, at least in a new way — when I sat with friends on the seminary field, stretching before a game of ultimate frisbee.  It was still my first semester, and I was getting to know the people and the place.  We were talking about the sins that were emphasized in the churches that brought us up.  I said that pre- or extra-marital sex was the grave sin against which we, in my youth group and Sunday School classes, were most gravely and constantly warned.  And, I said, I appreciated that, as it had helped me maintain my commitment to abstain from sex until marriage.

I might as well have said that I believe in eating toddlers with chipotle sauce and a side order of puppies.  My friends’ and fellow seminarians’ expressions had gone, suddenly, from benign conversational interest to something that looked like rats and skunks had deposited themselves deep in their nostrils, where they were scratching and relieving themselves and spreading their odors.  This, I saw, was the last thing my friends wanted to talk about.  And such a “backwards” and “judgmental” attitude (as it would later be described to me) really had no place at an enlightened seminary.

The point here is not really about sex.  Yes, intramural sex was distressingly common amongst the people I knew at Princeton Seminary.  So were drinking and at least recreational drug use.  There were many times – many – when we would watch one of our friends, drunken or cussing or talking profanely about women, and we would say: “Can you believe he’s going to be pastoring a church in a year?”

Where are Hodge, Warfield, Vos, and the rest?

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Jonathan Edwards as a Missionary

By on November 14, 2011 in Current Events, Discipleship, Education, Evangelism and Apologetics, History

Insightful article by Jonathan Gibson in the latest issue of Themelios, looking at how Edwards viewed his mission to the American Indians, how he adapted his preaching to the new context, and how he pursued “social justice”!

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R. C. Sproul and T. Lively Fluharty, The Barber Who Wanted to Pray

By on October 5, 2011 in Art, Bible and Theology, Discipleship, History

If you’re needing a little encouragement to do family devotions, or if you’re looking to spur someone in that direction, you’ll want to get your hands on The Barber Who Wanted to Pray by R. C. Sproul and T. Lively Fluharty. This book is a great encouragement to be reading the Bible, singing the Bible, and especially praying the Bible with our families. And it’s beautiful.

The message of the book is simple: pray the ideas in the Lord’s prayer, the ten commandments, and the Apostle’s Creed. This point is made through a poignant account of an encounter between Martin Luther and his barber, into whose hands Luther put his life. It’s only gradually revealed that Luther is the outlaw with the price on his head who sits down in the barber’s chair.

I read this book aloud to my older two sons, who have learned a little about Luther and are a little familiar with the reformation. When the moment of revelation came, they gasped aloud, exclaiming, “Martin Luther!” That reaction, for me, was the best part of us reading this book.

What will keep me coming back to this book, and what has me even now marveling at it, turning its pages slowly, are the works of art it contains. Don’t get me wrong: I believe in the importance of praying Scripture, and I love stories about Martin Luther. But the paintings by T. Lively Fluharty deserve more contemplation and consideration than can be given as a parent reads this book aloud to children who want to hear how things turn out.

R. C. Sproul has told a great story here, and T. Lively Fluharty brings it alive with lasting beauty.

If you’re looking for a good gift as we near the Christmas season, this would be a good book to put in the hands of anyone who has children, anyone who wants to pray, or anyone who might be drawn by great art to the God who works for those who wait for him.

If you like this one, don’t miss Fool Moon Rising by Kristi and T. Lively Fluharty (what a name that guy has!).

I don’t know if Fluharty has captured the historical circumstances, or if he just has a thing for cats, but judging from his paintings, Luther’s town was over-run by them. [There's a mouse in the last painting, and that little guy is glad that these are Muggle paintings. If they were housed in Hogwarts, the cats from previous pages would be on the chase.]

Crossway is committed to truth, goodness, and beauty. You can see it in projects like this one. Praise God for Sproul and Fluharty, and praise God he has given us his own word to pray back to him.

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Related: Biblical Theology for Kids!

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Denny Burk is Dead Right about SBTS

By on October 4, 2011 in Current Events, Discipleship

I echo the sentiments of the good Dr. Burk:

If the Lord has called you into ministry and you are wondering what seminary to attend for training, you need to know that there is no better place than The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary. I’m not just saying that because I work here. I work here because I really believe it.

The best way to get familiar with what we are all about is to visit. Southern Seminary will be hosting a Preview conference in a couple of weeks on October 14, and it will be the perfect time for you to come and see the campus, sit in a class, and visit with professors. The Seminary will put you up in a hotel room for the night and provide meals. All you need to do is get here. For more information and to register, click here.

I hope we see you soon!

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