Phil Gons

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Archives for 2010

Works of Michael Barrett Coming to Logos

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Michael Barrett CollectionI’m very excited at the prospect of having the works of one of the most influential Bible teachers in my life, Dr. Michael P. V. Barrett, available digitally for Logos Bible Software in the four-volume Michael Barrett Collection. I’m also happy that many who don’t know anything about him might soon have the chance to be enriched by his excellent teaching.

The collection includes his four books published by Ambassador International:

It doesn’t include his Love Divine and Unfailing: The Gospel according to Hosea, which was published by P&R.

I’ve mentioned Barrett’s works before. His chapter “Union with Christ: The Security of the Gospel” in Complete in Him (93–118) is one of the top picks in my list of resources on union with Christ. Sadly, it was out of print recently. But thanks in part to Chris Anderson’s efforts, it’s back in print for the time being. The others are in limited supply.

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Are the Father, Son, and Spirit Equally Persons?

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Here’s Karl Barth’s answer:

. . . even if the Father and the Son might be called “person” (in the modern sense of the term), the Holy Spirit could not possibly be regarded as the third “person.” In a particularly clear way the Holy Spirit is what the Father and the Son also are. He is not a third spiritual Subject, a third I, a third Lord side by side with two others. He is a third mode of being of the one divine Subject or Lord.

. . .

He is the common element, or, better, the fellowship, the act of communion, of the Father and the Son. He is the act in which the Father is the Father of the Son or the Speaker of the Word and the Son is the Son of the Father or the Word of the Speaker. (CD I,1, 469)

This sounds on the surface like a denial of full trinitarianism (and I am a little uncomfortable with it), but it shares much in common with the views of Augustine and Jonathan Edwards, both of whom tended to talk about the Spirit in ways that seem less than fully personal.

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My Church Is Better Than Your Church

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Rick Warren, one of America’s most popular pastors, tweeted earlier today to his 130,296 Twitter followers, “I challenge any church in America to match the spiritual maturity, godliness & commitment of any 500 members of Saddleback.” This tweet came on the heels of two earlier tweets:

RickWarren: Mary, it’s true. Over 10,000 Saddleback members have now served in missions overseas through our network & P.E.A.C.E. plan.

RickWarren: For 30 yrs our plan was to turn spectators into participators, consumers to contributors, an audience into an army. It worked!

The final tweet was later deleted, but managed to get quite a few responses from the Christian twittersphere. Here are a few:

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Free Amazon Prime for Students

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Amazon PrimeAmazon is currently offering a free one-year subscription to Amazon Prime, which will give you free two-day shipping on most items that Amazon sells with the option to upgrade to one-day shipping for $3.99. The annual cost for Amazon Prime is $79, so this is a great deal that every student should take advantage of, even if you only shop at Amazon occasionally.

Undergraduate and graduate students qualify for the free subscription. To sign up, you’ll just need to do enter your .edu email address and choose your state, school, year, and major. I’m not sure how long they’re running this special, but if you’re a student, I’d recommend signing up soon.

Writing Standards for the Web

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The Yahoo! Style GuideIs it e-mail or email, Internet or internet, Web site, Website, or website? In a new book that deals with standards for writing online, Yahoo addresses these questions and many more. Coming in at 528 pages, The Yahoo! Style Guide: The Ultimate Sourcebook for Writing, Editing, and Creating Content for the Digital World is available for pre-order from Amazon for $14.84 and is scheduled to ship on July 6. Some of the content is also available online, as well as supplementary content not available in the book.

Standard guides like The Associated Press Stylebook1 and The Chicago Manual of Style will remain useful and worth consulting. But there’s a lot these tried and true guides don’t cover, and I find them to be a tad dated when it comes to keeping up with the fast-paced world of the Facebook, Twitter, blogging, etc. For example, AP just recently switched from Web site to website.

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  1. The new 2010 edition isn’t available at Amazon yet. [↩]

Edwards on Faith and Works in Justification

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Justification by Faith Alone by Jonathan Edwards

In my estimation, Jonathan Edwards’s Justification by Faith Alone contains one of the most important and misunderstood1 evangelical discussions on the relationship between faith and works as they pertain to justification and salvation. Delivered in 1734 and first published in 1738, it may be found in 1:622–54 of his two-volume Works (Worcester rev. ed.),2 4:64–132 of his four-volume Works (Worcester ed.), 5:351–452 of his ten-volume Works (Dwight ed.), 19:147–2423 of his twenty-six volume Works, as an individual volume, and online in as many as seven different places.

As I continue my discussion on whether evangelicals, who affirm sola fide, are forced to sweep the passages that insist on holiness and good works under the rug, I turn to Jonathan Edwards, against whom no informed person would make such an accusation, as you can see for yourself in the quotations below. Except for the first, all of these selections come from his third and fourth sections, which discuss evangelical obedience and answer objections. I’ve bolded the most relevant portions.

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  1. If you’re concerned about Edwards’s view on sola fide, Don Kistler’s post on the Puritan Board is a helpful clarification. [↩]
  2. Cf. Amazon, CBD, Logos, and WTS Books. [↩]
  3. Or 19:143–242 including the editor’s preface. [↩]

More Than One Third of the Internet Is Porn

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A recent study by Optenet finds that more than one in three pages on the web is pornographic, and it’s growing at a faster rate than last year.

Predominant content on the Internet is pornography, which makes up 37% of the total number of Web pages online, according to a new study published by Optenet, a pioneer and global leader of enabling SaaS offerings  and delivering “on-premise” security solutions.

The report, which includes a representative sample of approximately 4 million extracted URLs, shows that adult content on the Internet as well as illegal content such as child pornography and illegal drug purchase has undergone a significant increase of 17% in the first quarter of 2010, as compared to the same period in 2009.
. . .

Ana Luisa Rotta, director of child protection projects at Optenet, said that, “When you consider that more than one third of the Internet’s content is pornographic, combined with the overwhelming increase in young people now curiously visiting web sites with such ease of access, it is becoming increasingly imperative that adults take responsibility for the management of home PC security.”

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Luther on the Necessity of Good Works

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I’m involved in a discussion where the claim was made that the Protestant church has distorted the gospel by removing the necessity of good works for salvation—something the early Christians unanimously affirmed. Luther was singled out as one who cared nothing about good works—at least not in the context of salvation. I pointed out this section from Luther, in which he indicates that “works are necessary to salvation.”

I reply to the argument, then, that our obedience is necessary for salvation. It is, therefore, a partial cause of our justification. Many things are necessary which are not a cause and do not justify, as for instance the earth is necessary, and yet it does not justify. If man the sinner wants to be saved, he must necessarily be present, just as he asserts that I must also be present. What Augustine says is true, “He who has created you without you will not save you without you.”1 Works are necessary to salvation, but they do not cause salvation, because faith alone gives life. On account of the hypocrites we must say that good works are necessary to salvation. It is necessary to work. Nevertheless, it does not follow that works save on that account, unless we understand necessity very clearly as the necessity that there must be an inward and outward salvation or righteousness. Works save outwardly, that is, they show evidence that we are righteous and that there is faith in a man which saves inwardly, as Paul says, “Man believes with his heart and so is justified, and he confesses with his lips and so is saved” [Rom. 10:10]. Outward salvation shows faith to be present, just as fruit shows a tree to be good.

“The Disputation Concerning Justification,” LW, 165.

It’s a caricature of Luther to claim he didn’t care about good works.

  1. N21: Sermo 170. Migne 38, 923. [↩]