The Northbrook Conference

The Northbrook Conference begins tomorrow night. If you can’t make it to Cedar Rapids with us, you can follow along thanks to Doug McHone of Coffee Swirls, who will be liveblogging the conference.

May the Lord bless his people and sanctify them through his word!

Books Every Seminary Graduate Should Have Read

Let me first say that I did not have all the books listed below read by the time I finished seminary (either time, that is, some I didn’t read until after I was out of school altogether). Let me also say that I have not read every word of all of the books listed below. For instance, while I have read substantial portions of Calvin’s Institutes, I have not read the whole thing. So my apologies to you if you think that makes me a hypocrite. I still think the list is useful.

This is a list of books that I think a person who is theologically educated should have read or be planning to read.

Primary Texts

Bible

The whole Bible in the student’s mother tongue (sadly, this should not be assumed).

The whole New Testament in Greek

Genesis, Joshua, Joel, Jonah, and Ruth in Hebrew (or another substantial cross section)

Apocrypha and Jewish Literature

All of the Dead Sea Scrolls

1 Enoch

All of the Apocrypha

Early Christian Literature

The Apostolic Fathers (1 Clement, 2 Clement, the seven letters of Ignatius, Polycarp to the Philippians, the Martyrdom of Polycarp, the Didache, Barnabas, Hermas, Diognetus, Papias) in English. See Michael W. Holmes, ed., The Apostolic Fathers: Greek Texts and English Translations

Eusebius, Ecclesiastical History

Theology and History

Irenaeus, On the Apostolic Preaching

Athanasius, On the Incarnation

Basil, On the Holy Spirit

Augustine, Confessions

Dante, Inferno

Martin Luther, The Bondage of the Will

John Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion

John Owen, Of the Mortification of Sin in Believers

The Baptist Confession of 1689

Jonathan Edwards, The End for Which God Created the World

Modern Secondary Literature

Bible and Interpretation

Stephen Dempster, Dominion and Dynasty: A Theology of the Hebrew Bible, NSBT (Downers Grove: InterVarsity, 2003).

George E. Ladd, A Theology of the New Testament (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans).

Thomas R. Schreiner, Paul, Apostle of God’s Glory in Christ: A Pauline Theology (Downers Grove: InterVarsity, 2001).

Thomas R. Schreiner, New Testament Theology: Magnifying God in Christ

James M. Hamilton Jr., God’s Glory in Salvation through Judgment: A Biblical Theology

Theology, History, and Ministry

Roland Bainton, Here I Stand: A Life of Martin Luther

Mark Dever, Nine Marks of a Healthy Church

Wayne Grudem, Systematic Theology

J. I. Packer, Knowing God

John Piper, Let the Nations Be Glad

David Wells, No Place for Truth

September Prayer of the Month

This month I’ll be praying Colossians 1:9-12, which reads like this in the Holman Christian Standard Bible:

(9) For this reason also, since the day we heard this, we haven’t stopped praying for you. We are asking that you may be filled with the knowledge of His will in all wisdom and spiritual understanding, (10) so that you may walk worthy of the Lord, fully pleasing to Him, bearing fruit in every good work and growing in the knowledge of God. (11) May you be strengthened with all power, according to His glorious might, for all endurance and patience, with joy (12) giving thanks to the Father, who has enabled you to share in the saints’ inheritance in the light.

May the Lord fulfill these requests in our lives.

What Is Prophecy and Has It Ceased?

As Paul is describing the activity of prophets in 1 Corinthians 14:29–30, he writes, “Let two or three prophets speak, and let the others weigh what is said. If a revelation is made to another sitting there, let the first be silent.” 

From this statement, we know that (1) prophecy is revelatory because Paul refers to a “revelation” coming to a prophet. We also see from this that (2) prophecy is spontaneous, because these verses indicate that as one prophet is uttering a prophecy, another prophet gets an unexpected, unprepared revelation. This means that prophecy is not like teaching. Teaching is the communication of knowledge gained through study and preparation (cf. 2 Tim 2:15). I think it is also safe to say that (3) prophecy is inspired by the Holy Spirit, since prophecy is a spiritual gift (1 Cor 12:10). 

These points are generally agreed upon. Prophecy is Spirit inspired, spontaneous, revelatory utterance. The next question is whether the prophecies Paul is describing are like Old Testament prophecy. It is generally agreed that Old Testament prophecy is authoritative. Old Testament prophecy communicates the Word of God in the same way that the Bible communicates the Word of God. 

Wayne Grudem argues that NT prophecies like the ones Paul describes in 1 Corinthians 14 are not like OT prophecies. Grudem thinks that NT prophecies do not carry the authority Scripture carries, that they can be wrong, and that prophecy is basically the Lord bringing appropriate thoughts to people’s minds. 

If Grudem is correct, then every Christian who has ever communicated a thought that the Lord brought to mind has prophesied. He may be right, but I think that Paul’s use of the word “revelation” in 1 Corinthians 14:30 makes Grudem’s view unlikely. It seems that “revelation” entails more than the Lord bringing a helpful thought to mind. 

I think that NT prophecies are like OT prophecies. If they are inspired by the Spirit, they will not be erroneous and they will have the same authority Scripture has. The “weighing” of these prophecies probably refers to establishing whether the prophecy was inspired by the Spirit or not, and thus whether it was a true or false prophecy. If it was a true prophecy, they probably then weighed how it was to be applied, since it was the authoritative word of God. Let’s recall that the Christians in Corinth to whom Paul wrote did not have the whole New Testament as we have it. Paul was sending parts of it to them! 

I agree with Richard Gaffin’s argument that just as the twelve apostles are unique and not replaced by successors in the history of the church, so also the prophetic activity of the early church is foundational for the church. Once the foundation is laid, it is not repeated. I think this is what Paul means when he refers to the church being “built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets, Christ Jesus himself being the cornerstone” (Eph 2:20). Having discussed the exegetical issues in detail, Gaffin writes, “Consequently, a major conclusion in our study from Ephesians 2:20 is that the New Testament prophets, along with the apostles, are the foundation of the church. They have a foundational, that is, temporary, noncontinuing function in the church’s history, and so by God’s design pass out of its life, along with the apostles” (95–96). 

I don’t think anyone after Paul is an apostle of the Lord Jesus, and I don’t think the Lord is still giving revelations that carry the authority of Scripture. The canon, like the apostolate, is closed, which means that prophecy has ceased.