Theology

Driscoll and Piper on Love and God’s Commands

April 25, 2009 by Phil Gons

I follow Mark Driscoll on Twitter and just watched a little 4:27 video that he tweeted about: “Song of Solomon Q&A 3.” I’ve embedded it below.

It contains some solid practical advice for troubled marriages. On the whole, it’s good stuff.

Two items caught my attention—particularly because of how they seem to be at odds with things John Piper teaches:

“If [love is] commanded, that means it’s not a feeling.”
“God couldn’t command you to do something that was impossible for you to do.”

Here’s a transcript of the relevant portion with the key parts in bold:

[Read more…]

Gaffin on Union with Christ

April 3, 2009 by Phil Gons

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

March 16, 2009 by Phil Gons

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

February 24, 2009 by Phil Gons

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.

A Case of Major Plagiarism

January 10, 2009 by Phil Gons

The weekend before Christmas I was doing some reading and research on the Trinity (which is what I spend most of my weekends doing), and I stumbled across something in a journal article that sounded very much like something I had read in a systematic theology book. So I opened the book to compare, and sure enough it was verbatim (the only difference being a single word missing the italics from the original source).

So I turned back to the article expecting to see that the author was quoting a large portion from the theology book and that I was simply reading somewhere in the middle of the quote, but I saw no quotation marks and no mention of the author’s work. Perplexed I started comparing further, wondering if perhaps this was just a very long extended quotation. To my shock I discovered the the author of the journal article had reproduced without quotation marks nearly verbatim (somewhere between 95% and 99% identical content) the entirety of his 24-page article from the other individual’s theology book—almost a complete copy and paste with just a handful of very minor cosmetic changes. The only credit he gave to the author of the content was a mention in his first footnote where he listed a few sources on the doctrine of the Trinity. At the end of the footnote, he mentioned his particular indebtedness to the author whose content he plagiarized. (Most readers have no idea how indebted he really was!)

Theo-Logic by Hans Urs von Balthasar for $27

January 9, 2009 by Phil Gons

Ignatius Press is having a nice sale on a number of volumes. I just picked up Hans Urs von Balthasar’s three-volume Theo-Logic: Theological Logical Theory in hardback for just $27. That’s just a tad more than the cost of one of the volumes at Amazon.

Here are the three volumes in the set:

Theo-Logic: Theological Logical Theory, Vol. I; The Truth of the World
(Retail: $29.95; Amazon: $21.86; Ignatius: $9.00 $29.95)
Theo-Logic: Theological Logical Theory, Vol. II; The Truth of God
(Retail: $29.95; Amazon: $21.86; Ignatius: $9.00 $29.95)
Theo-Logic: Theological Logical Theory, Vol. III; The Spirit of Truth
(Retail: $34.95; Amazon: $26.56; Ignatius: $9.00 $34.95)

The Second Best Book in the World

December 12, 2008 by Phil Gons

I read an endorsement recently that really grabbed my attention. A well-known individual described a book that is not very well known in these terms:

This book is much better than any other book in the world, excepting the Bible, in my opinion.

The individual was Jonathan Edwards.

The book was Peter Van Mastricht’s A Treatise on Regeneration, which was published by Soli Deo Gloria, now a part of Reformation Heritage Books.

Wow! I want to read that book. I wonder how it compares with John Piper’s Finally Alive.

Two New Theology Books Now on My Wishlist

November 18, 2008 by Phil Gons

P&R just published J. van Genderen & W. H. Velema’s Concise Reformed Dogmatics, which the publisher describes as “a crystallization of the best confessionally Reformed Dutch thought in a single, manageable English-language volume.” The translation is the merger of Gerrit Bilkes’s and Ed M. van der Maas’s separate English translations of the original 1992 Dutch edition, Beknopte Gereformeerde dogmatiek.

It is the product of a multistep process of comparing the two translations and combining their strengths. With an eye for clarity and theological integrity, a team of readers—including W. H. Velema, the lone surviving author, together with Lawrence W. Bilkes and Gerald M. Bilkes—checked the entire work.

One might be tempted to question if this nearly 1,000-page tome rightly bears the descriptor concise. Compared to many systematic theology books, 1,000 pages is by no means brief, but held to the standard of other Dutch works like those of Bavinck (3,024 pp.), Kuyper (3,486 pp.), and Vos (≈1,900 pp.), it is definitely on the smaller side.