Phil Gons

Bible & Tech

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“New Perspectives on Paul”

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Justification in PerspectiveI 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).

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By Faith, Not By Sight

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by-faith-not-by-sight.jpgRichard 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:

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Firefox 2.0 Is Here

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If you’ve been using Firefox 1.5, you might be interested to know that Firefox 2.0 was officially released yesterday. (If you haven’t been using Firefox, now’s a great time to start.) It’s got a lot of great features that keep it a couple steps ahead of the new Internet Explorer 7. E.g., FF 2 (1) has a built-in auto spell checker that will underline misspelled words in red when you type text into text boxes (I love it! It’s great for bloggers!), (2) forces a new window to open as a tab instead of a new browser window (very nice), (3) implements improved tabbed browsing, and (4) will reopen your browser exactly how it was before if it happens to crash (which isn’t very often). Download it now.

The Ten Commandments (2006)

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Shanna and I got another call from the local movie store inviting us to come in for a free rental. We took them up on it and got The Ten Commandments. It was just shy of three hours long, which, in this case, was not a good thing! It stood in stark contrast to the commitment to following the biblical story that The Gospel of John evidenced. I’m not opposed to filling in some of the details to make the story flow. Nor am I totally opposed to omitting some of the story to make it a reasonable length. However, I am opposed to making up all sorts of ridiculous things and adding them in addition to or in place of the biblical account! I did benefit from the few portions that were an accurate recounting of the Exodus record. Seeing the events visualized brings them to life. I’ll read Exodus in a new way next time. This benefit notwithstanding, The Ten Commandments (2006) was incredibly poor. Don’t waste your three hours.

Catalyst Conference 2006—A Summary Article

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I had the opportunity to attended the 2006 Catalyst Conference (dubbed “Clearly”) in Atlanta on Thursday and Friday two weeks ago (Oct 5–6) with a good friend of mine—and ostensibly over 10,000 pastors. Catalyst claims to be the largest pastors conference around.

My place of employment asked me to write a review article of the event—and to be as objective as possible. I’d like to write a full critique of the conference, but probably will not due to time constraints. So if you read my review, please understand that the article would look significantly different if I had written it here. I believe what I wrote in the article is accurate; it just doesn’t go far enough (understatement!) in its critique.

Copernic Desktop Search 2.0

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The newest version of the Copernic Desktop Search is now available. If you don’t use a desktop search program, you’re missing out a real timesaver. If you use Google’s desktop search, you’re still missing out. (BTW, I love most of Google’s software, but their desktop search has some weaknesses that make it an inferior product–detailed quote searching being one of them.) Copernic’s desktop search is the best available–at least for the PC. Fast, intuitive, and incredibly accurate. There are plenty of new features in version 2 that make it even better. One I especially like is the ability to narrow down a search if it’s bringing up too many results. Narrow it by a word in the title, or the file type, size, date or folder. Check it out; you’ll be glad you did.