I just bought three books from Buy.com for a little over $30. The same three books would have cost me closer to $60 at Amazon. If you use Google Checkout, you save $20 instantly. There is no limit to the number of orders that you can place. This really is a phenomenal savings (that’s 40% off for those of you who were reaching for your calculator). Plus you get free shipping on orders over $25. I highly recommend checking this out.
Books
“New Perspectives on Paul”
I just finished reading what is probably the best summary and most mature exposition of the contours of N. T. Wright’s theology of justification that I have read so far: “New Perspectives on Paul” by N. T. Wright, the final essay in the new volume Justification in Perspective: Historical Developments and Contemporary Challenges (2006), edited by Bruce L. McCormack. Wright responds to the numerous critiques that have been leveled against him over the past several years. The result is a more carefully nuanced and cogently expressed discussion of the central issues.
One thing I found very interesting was Wright’s assertion that the essence of his views on Paul was pre-Sanders. In other words, Wright didn’t rely on Sanders for his ideas. Rather, Wright came to his convictions independently—many of Sanders’s central points merely confirming what Wright had already been thinking (245–46).
By Faith, Not By Sight
Richard B. Gaffin Jr., By Faith, Not by Sight: Paul and the Order of Salvation. Paternoster, 2006. 114 pp.
[rate 4.5]
I’ve been reading portions of Richard Gaffin’s new book, By Faith, Not By Sight: Paul and the Order of Salvation (WTSBooks), and have found it helpful. Particularly insightful are his comments on (1) justification and the center of Paul’s theology and (2) the concept of eschatological justification.
The Center of Paul’s Theology
This selection summarizes his position well:
Fighting for a Clean Conscience
I just posted an excerpt from John Ensor’s The Great Work of the Gospel: How We Experience God’s Grace. It’s an encouraging read that I needed. I commend it to you. Here is a portion of that excerpt:
INSTRUCTING OUR CONSCIENCE ABOUT THE CROSS
Not that this sense of liberty is always there and never flags. It surely does. One problem is that our conscience is not sufficiently informed about the gospel. It needs training in righteousness. In terms of human experience, we must often “reassure our heart before him; for whenever our heart condemns us, God is greater than our heart” (1 John 3:19-20). I take this to mean that we need to bring the work of God in Christ to bear on our stubborn conscience. We must grasp the truth of the cross and wrestle our conscience into alignment and conformity. We must instruct our conscience about the cross until our conviction of guilt gives way to joy and confidence. Hebrews 10:22 calls this having “our hearts sprinkled clean from an evil [burdened] conscience.”
Google Books, Google Scholar, and Amazon Books
There’s a new article at the SBL website entitled “Google Books and Biblical Studies: A Developing Resource.” If you’re not familiar with Google Books, this article will give you a good overview of the potential that Google Books has for research.
Google also has a site called Google Scholar, which, in addition to searching all the books from Google Books, searches lots of major journals like Journal of Biblical Literature, Novum Testamentum, The American Journal of Theology, and Journal of the Evangelical Theological Society, and other things like Society of Biblical Literature: Seminar Papers. With a couple of these (SBL and NT) you won’t be able to view the hits in the resources themselves, but at least you are taken to the first page of the article so you know where to look it up in the print copy if it looks promising.
I also recently found out that you can search all of Amazon’s searchable books at the same time. Go to A9.com and select “books by Amazon.”
These are valuable resources that you’ll want to bookmark and use.
Carson on 1 Cor 13:8–13—What Am I Missing?
On Sunday I’m teaching our Sunday school class on the subject of tongues. I’m basically going to do an overview using the paper I wrote for Dr. Reimers’s Pneumatology class. In doing a little review, I reread Gaffin’s article in Are Miraculous Gifts for Today? Four Views and found it insightful and solid. I then decided to take a look at Carson’s Showing the Spirit since I bought it recently for my Libronix Digital Library System. Carson takes issue with Gaffin on a few points, but I’m at a loss to understand one of Carson’s objections. Maybe you can help me see what I’m missing.
Gaffin says,
It is gratuitous to insist that this passage teaches that the modes of revelation mentioned, prophecy and tongues, are to continue functioning until Christ’s return. Paul is not intending to specify the time when any particular mode will cease. What he does affirm is the termination of the believer’s present, fragmentary knowledge, based on likewise temporary modes of revelation, when “the perfect” comes. The time of the cessation of prophecy and tongues is an open question so far as this passage is concerned. (Perspectives on Pentecost, 111; quoted in Showing the Spirit, 69 n. 57)
[Read more…] about Carson on 1 Cor 13:8–13—What Am I Missing?
Paradigm Shift—Paul’s Use of Σάρξ
Over the past couple of years, and particularly the past several months, I’ve been in the process of a fairly significant paradigm shift in the way I read the NT—particularly Paul. Though I have already made a major shift, I’m still somewhat in transition; I’m still testing my conclusions to see if they fit naturally or if they must be forced to work. The shift involves a significant challenge to the way interpretors for hundreds of years have understood Paul’s use of σάρξ.
Several factors have influenced this transition.
(1) I chose Herman Ridderbos for my Adv. NTT theologian project, whose emphasis on Heilsgeschichte has opened my eyes to the objective, historical elements of Paul’s thought that are too often read in a more existential, ahistorical (and acontextual!) way. One example: when Paul says that now is the day of salvation, he doesn’t mean this text to be used (primarily) as a appeal to teenage campers to make a decision for Christ before it’s too late; rather, he is arguing that the fulfillment of the promise of the New Covenant has dawned with the death and resurrection of Jesus. We are living in the era of salvation foretold by the OT prophets.
LibraryThing.com
Well, I finally decided to check out this LibraryThing that I’ve been hearing so much about, and I must say that I’m sold. In fact, after about 15 minutes of playing around with it, I paid the $25 for a lifetime membership. The options are: (1) 200 books for free, (2) unlimited books for $10/year, or (3) unlimited books for life for a one time $25 charge. That decision was a no brainer.
So what does it do? Well, you’ll need to try it out for yourself to really get the feel for it. In short, it allows you online access to a database of your library. But wait, there’s more: you also get access to the library of everone else who has a public listing. In addition, you have access to other users’ comments and reviews of books in your library. You can also discuss books you share with other users and even get connected with someone who may want to swap books with you. I could go on, but you need to check it out for yourself to see how cool it is.
You can view my list of books here. How did I get all those in there, you might be wondering? Well, the books you see there come from four different sources. (This doesn’t include most of the books in my print library.)