Phil Gons

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Accountability

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By Philip R. Gons, Matthew C. Hoskinson, and Andrew David Naselli

(cross-posted at our respective blogs: Gons, Hoskinson, Naselli)

Accountability FormChristians will give an account to God for their lives, and wise Christians live in light of that sobering reality (Rom 14:12; 2 Cor 5:10). Consequently, we have covenanted to keep each other accountable in preparation for our future accounting. Since some of our friends have asked us about our method of accountability, we decided to co-author this article in order to glorify God by provoking other Christians to seek out a greater degree of accountability.

God has used many different means to emphasize to us the importance of accountability. Among these are Scripture (e.g., Heb 3:12–13; James 5:16), books (e.g., Paul David Tripp’s Instruments in the Redeemer’s Hands and Bryan Chapell’s Holiness by Grace), and especially John Piper’s pastoral accountability questionnaire. Chapell, for example, describes the importance of accountability:

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Augustin on Postmodernism

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Chapter 14.—Error of Those Who Think that There Is No Absolute Right and Wrong.

22. But when men unacquainted with other modes of life than their own meet with the record of such actions, unless they are restrained by authority, they look upon them as sins, and do not consider that their own customs either in regard to marriage, or feasts, or dress, or the other necessities and adornments of human life, appear sinful to the people of other nations and other times. And, distracted by this endless variety of customs, some who were half asleep (as I may say)—that is, who were neither sunk in the deep sleep of folly, nor were able to awake into the light of wisdom—have thought that there was no such thing as absolute right, but that every nation took its own custom for right; and that, since every nation has a different custom, and right must remain unchangeable, it becomes manifest that there is no such thing as right at all. Such men did not perceive, to take only one example, that the precept, “Whatsoever ye would that men should do to you, do ye even so to them,”1 cannot be altered by any diversity of national customs. And this precept, when it is referred to the love of God, destroys all vices when to the love of one’s neighbor, puts an end to all crimes. For no one is willing to defile his own dwelling; he ought not, therefore, to defile the dwelling of God, that is, himself. And no one wishes an injury to be done him by another; he himself, therefore, ought not to do injury to another.2

  1. n34: Matt. 7:12. Comp. Tobit 4:15. [↩]
  2. ECF 2.2.1.2.3.14; NPNF1, II, 562. [↩]

James Tauber’s Graded Greek Reader

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At BibleTech:2008 James Tauber of MorphGNT.org gave the opening presentation in Room 1, “MorphGNT and the Building of Linguistic Databases for New Testament Greek,” during which he shared a little bit about his work on a graded Greek reader. Unfortunately, he ran out of time and had to rush through his material. The MP3 audio is available at the BibleTech Conference website. He discusses the graded reader at the tale end of his presentation (50:15–55:30).

He argues for a more inductive approach to learning Greek, and suggested that word frequency is not the best choice for the order in which students should learn new words. Students should first learn the words that occur together most frequently, allowing them to read a broader base of the Greek New Testament earlier on. He also suggests learning the inflected forms first, and then learning the lemmas and other deductive categories later.

The biblical text would be a combination of Greek and English words (following Greek word order) that would take into consideration the vocabulary that the students have learned. As they learn more, the English words would become Greek words. This approach allows students to dive in just about anywhere in the Greek New Testament without the clunkiness of multiple levels of text that you get with interlinears.

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A Blog Post Is Not a Blog

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BlogA pet peeve of mine is the improper usage of the term blog. I find that many use blog to refer to a blog post (a.k.a. blog article, blog entry, or blog posting). For example, “I wrote a blog that I think you might enjoy reading.” Or, “In my previous blog, I explained how this concept is used in the Old Testament.” In both cases, the writer is referring to a specific blog post, not his entire blog. From what I can tell, this is incorrect.

Blog, of course, is a shortened form of weblog (formerly web log). A weblog is a category of website. The Concise OED defines it as “a personal website on which an individual records opinions, links to other sites, etc. on a regular basis.”1 The American Heritage Dictionary defines it as “a website that displays in chronological order the postings by one or more individuals and usually has links to comments on specific postings.”2

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  1. Catherine Soanes and Angus Stevenson, “Weblog,” Concise Oxford English Dictionary, 11th ed. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004). [↩]
  2. Cf. Merriam-Webster. [↩]

“Savior” in Titus

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In my Bible reading a couple of days ago, I was struck by Paul’s use of Savior (σωτήρ) in Titus. Several things stood out to me. First, it occurs 6 times in the small letter of only 46 verses—twice per chapter. It occurs only 24 times in the whole NT. So it’s significant that 25% of the NT occurrences are in Titus.

σωτήρ in the Greek New Testament from Logos Bible Software

Second, it occurs three times with reference to the Father and three times with reference to the Son. Paul alternates consistently between calling the Father our Savior followed by the Son as our Savior. The occurrences in chapters 1 and 3 even share the same main thought.

Titus 1:1–4

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The Triune God ≠ A Non-Triune God

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A couple of evenings ago I read Rick Love’s response to John Piper’s thoughts on “Loving God and Neighbor Together: A Christian Response to ‘A Common Word Between Us and You.'” (“A Common Word Between Us and You” is available at http://www.acommonword.com/.)

One portion caught my attention:

Q: The Yale Response seems to imply that Allah is the same God that Christians worship. Is this true?

A: I do not hesitate to refer to the God of the Bible as Allah, since Arab Christians before and after the birth of Islam use the term Allah to describe the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ.

Christian and Muslim views of God are similar in that we both worship the one true God, creator of the heavens and the earth. We both believe this God will judge all peoples at the end of history. We both believe this God has sent His prophets into the world to guide His people. Christian and Muslim views of God differ primarily regarding the Fatherhood of God, the Trinity, and especially regarding the life, teaching, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ.

I believe that Muslims worship the true God. But I also believe that their view of God falls short of His perfections and beauty as described in the Bible. Thus, I try to model my approach to Muslims after the apostle Paul who said to the Athenians: “What you worship in ignorance, this I proclaim to you” (Acts 17:23).

Muslim background believers all over the world testify that they were previously worshiping God in ignorance and now they have come to know him in Jesus Christ.

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Free Upgrade from Logos Bible Software OC to ND

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Logos just released a new round of base packages labeled ND. No, that’s not an abbreviation for anything. They serve merely to distinguish the various versions of the base packages. The previous base packages were OC, the ones before that were QB, and the ones before that were RA. You can upgrade from your current OC package to the corresponding ND package for free (you pay only for the media and shipping). They’ve added the TNIV and NIrV to all of the base packages that include the NIV (i.e., all but Christian Home and Original Languages).

“Christian” Piracy and the Blinding Effects of Sin

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FBI Anti-piracy WarningA friend notified me today about a “Christian” website where “Christians” illegally share a variety of forms of digital Christian content—from Christian music to Christian movies to Christian software. Scores of people, many of whom are in seminary training for pastoral ministry, post pirated Bible software on the web and invite others to download it, giving detailed instructions on how to unlock the software and bypass the security features. I’m blown away by how easily “Christians” can steal in order to enable them to have access to biblical resources.1 Something about that just doesn’t make sense. But that’s what sin does to us. It causes us to act in utterly irrational ways.

Take, for example, how one seminary student responds to another who shared stolen software with him: “God Bless You!” Another individual has this in his signature: “Live Hard, Play hard and let your life show WHO u live for.” Hmm. Another has a link to his website, “What Would Jesus Download,” in his signature. Good question indeed. Perhaps those downloading pirated software should ponder it a bit.

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  1. I’d image that most of these individuals wouldn’t walk into a Christian bookstore and steal content off of the shelves. The fact that downloadable media and software is intangible makes it much easier to justify. [↩]