WTSBooks points out via Twitter a 5-part series (plus 2 Q&A sessions) by Richard B. Gaffin Jr. on “The Mystery of Union with Christ.” Gaffin delivered these messages at Matthews Orthodox Presbyterian in March of 2005. I’ve downloaded them and listened to part of the first one. It looks to be a very good series. They are available as free downloads courtesy of SermonAudio.com.
Resources on the Doctrine of Union with Christ
A pastor friend of mine sent out an email to a few friends last week asking for recommended resources on the doctrine of our union with Christ. I’ve done some reading and studying on the subject in the past, so I pulled together a bibliography of articles, books, etc.
I haven’t read everything on my list, but of the ones I’ve read, here are some of my top picks:
- Michael P. V. Barrett, “Union with Christ: The Security of the Gospel,” in Complete in Him: A Guide to Understanding and Enjoying the Gospel (Greenville, SC: Ambassador-Emerald, 2000), 93–118. [Amazon]
- Bruce A. Demarest, “The Doctrine of Union with Christ,” in The Cross and Salvation: The Doctrine of Salvation, Foundations of Evangelical Theology, ed. John S. Feinberg (Wheaton: Crossway, 1997), 313–44. [Amazon | Google Books | Logos]
- Wayne A. Grudem, “Union with Christ,” in Systematic Theology: An Introduction to Biblical Doctrine (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2004), 840–50. [Amazon | Google Books | Logos]
- Michael Horton, “Union with Christ,” in Christ the Lord: The Reformation and Lordship Salvation, ed. Michael Horton (Grand Rapids: Baker, 1992), 107–15. [Amazon]
- D. Martyn Lloyd-Jones, “Union with Christ,” in God the Holy Spirit, vol 2. of Great Doctrines of the Bible (Wheaton: Crossway, 1997), 106–16. [Amazon | Logos]
- John Murray, “Union with Christ,” in Redemption Accomplished and Applied (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1955), 161–73. [Amazon | Google Books]
- Robert L. Reymond, “Union with Christ,” in A New Systematic Theology of the Christian Faith, 2nd ed. (Nashville: Nelson, 1998), 736–39. [Amazon | Logos]
Go have a look at the new page, and feel free to add recommendations of resources that you’ve found helpful in the comments either on this post or on that page.
See also my review of Demarest’s The Cross and Salvation. I wrote it in seminary several years ago, but it may still be of some benefit. :)
Pettegrew on the Cessation of (All of) the Spiritual Gifts
I had a discussion with a friend over dinner a few days ago, and we were talking about books on the Holy Spirit that we liked. We talked about Sinclair Ferguson’s The Holy Spirit, and then Larry Pettegrew’s The New Covenant Ministry of the Holy Spirit came up. I commented on Pettegrew’s unique view that all of the gifts—not just miraculous and revelatory ones—were temporary and had passed with the time of the apostles. My friend responded with surprise, thinking I was talking about someone else or just mistaken. So when I got home that evening, I pulled out Pettegrew’s book and found what seems to me to be evidence in favor of my reading of Pettegrew. (If memory serves me correctly, my Pneumatology professor, Gary Reimers, is actually the one that tipped me off to Pettegrew’s view.) I sent some key quotes on to him, and, to my surprise, he still wasn’t convinced. So I’ll let you decide.
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Bill Clinton: “I’m too much of a Calvinist.”
I saw this video this morning and just have to pass it along.
[Edit: The video is no longer available.]
Here’s a transcript of the short exchange:
John Roberts: US News & World Report this week commissioned a poll that surveyed a bunch of women in American asking what role you should take on with your wife as Secretary of State. Thirty-seven percent, the greatest number of women, said, “House husband.” We’re wondering what you think about that.
Bill Clinton: I—well, you know, it’s funny. I told her when she left that I—that I wish now that I was an ordinary citizen, because I wish I could go with her and be there when she comes home at night and do for her what she did for me when I was President. But it’s not in the cards. I’m—we’re doing the best we can to work through this and do the right thing.
John Roberts: Would you ever be comfortable being a house husband?
Bill Clinton: No. I have to go to work. I’m—I’m too much of a Calvinist. If I don’t work every day, I get nervous.
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20 Tracks of Classical Guitar for $2.99
Amazon is currently offering Guitar Sampler, a 20-track album of classical guitar music, for only $2.99—the price of just three individual tracks in the album. I downloaded it last night and have been really enjoying it. If you like classical guitar, you’ll most likely enjoy this album. You can listen to samples of all 20 tracks to find out.
HT: Steve McCoy via Aaron Sauer
Long Strings of Genitives in the Greek NT
The last two Sunday mornings at church I’ve seen some lengthy strings of genitives. Last week was 1 Timothy 6:14, and this week was James 2:1. I remembered seeing some even longer ones in the past, so I thought I’d do a quick search and see what I would come up with.
This was pretty easy to do with the OpenText.org Syntactically Analyzed Greek New Testament. I simply called for a genitive word and asked for it to be repeated x number of times. I refined the number to give me hits I was looking for. (Download the query if you want, and put it in your My Documents\Libronix DLS\SyntaxQueries folder.)
The award for longest string of genitives goes without contest to Luke, who in Luke 3:23–38 strings together a massive 153 genitives.
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MS Word Tip: How to Replace Hyphens with En Dashes
Though most people don’t know (or care when told), the correct character to use for a range of numbers is the en dash (–), not the hyphen (-). Even if you’re committed to using en dashes between digits, hyphens are a tad easier to type,1 making a find and replace necessary at some point. If you’re diligent and use the en dash faithfully, you will undoubtedly get a rogue hyphen in there somewhere if you do any copying and pasting from the internet or other documents that don’t consistently use the correct character.
A simple find and replace (- for –) would do the trick—if you wanted to replace all hyphens with en dashes. But you don’t want to do this, since hyphens in hyphenated words are correct. :) Alternatively, you could run that query but, instead of replacing them all at once, replace one at a time only the ones that appear between digits. But this could be time consuming on a large document like a dissertation. Another option would be to set up a query to find 0-0 and replace it with 0–0, then 0-1 with 0–1 and so forth, but that would require 100 different searches and probably take longer than the previous method! The previous method could probably be simplified by dropping the second digit since there aren’t likely to be any instances when you’d have a digit followed by a hyphen not followed by another digit. That would make only 10 find-and-replace queries. So this is as least doable, though still not ideal.
Fortunately, there is a better solution than any of these.
[Read more…] about MS Word Tip: How to Replace Hyphens with En Dashes- To type an en dash in Word, you can either use the default key combination Ctrl + – (the one on the keypad) or create your own shortcut. My shortcut is Ctrl + – (the one on the main part of the keyboard). [↩]
Most and Least Religious States
A new Gallup Poll evaluates states according to their religiousness.
Want to be almost certain you’ll have religious neighbors? Move to Mississippi. Prefer to be in the least religious state? Venture to Vermont.
A new Gallup Poll, based on more than 350,000 interviews, finds that the Magnolia State is the one where the most people — 85% — say yes when asked “Is religion an important part of your daily life?”
Less than half of Vermonters, meanwhile — 42% — answered that same question in the affirmative.
. . .
Overall, Gallup researchers found that 65% of all Americans said religion was important in their daily lives.