Phil Gons

Bible & Tech

The Trip to Bellingham

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Well, we made it safely to Bellingham last Tuesday (11/6). Sorry for the very delayed update. We finally got internet set up with Comcast on Tuesday. Prior to that we had been connecting by using Shanna’s Verizon phone as a modem, which was incredibly slow! Anyway, we enjoyed our trip out here far more than we anticipated. We’re thankful to God for the safety and nice weather during the entire trip. Of course, it did start raining shortly after we arrived, but we had been warned that it would rain often, so we were mentally prepared. Our first Saturday here was absolutely gorgeous, though!

I want to thank everyone who came over to help us pack, load the truck, and clean. We appreciate your sacrifice and kindness immensely! Thanks to Josh McCarnan, Jason Cornwell, Dave Wike, Jim Gaston, Josh and Laurel Louk, Melissa and Bryan McKinnon, and Jordan Gons. Thanks as well to those who called and offered to come over. We should have taken more of you up on your offer to help! Thanks as well to all of those who prayed for our trip. We’ll certainly miss all of our friends from Greenville. Please come out and visit us. There’s lots to do in the Bellingham area, and we’d love to have you stay with us!

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Moving to Bellingham & Joining Logos

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Logos Bible SoftwareShanna and I are in the midst of a major transition. We are wrapping up things here in Greenville, SC (like packing and trying to sell or rent our condo) and preparing to move about 2,900 miles across the country to Bellingham, WA. I will be taking a job (in the marketing deparment) with Logos Research Systems, Inc., the makers of Logos Bible Software, and Shanna will be looking for work once we get settled in. I didn’t realize how big of a task preparing for a move like this would be! It’s good for us, though, because it’s making us rely upon God more than when we feel like we have things under control.

We’d appreciate your prayers. Here are some specific things you can pray for us:

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Fonts Supporting Polytonic Unicode Greek

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Greek ManuscriptRod Decker, Professor of Greek and New Testament at Baptist Bible Seminary, Clarks Summit, Pennsylvania, recently blogged about how new Vista fonts Cambria, Calibri, Candara, Consolas, Constantia, and Corbel unfortunately do not support polytonic Unicode Greek. Be sure to check out the PDF where he evaluates them.

In a comment, I noted that another new Vista font, Segoe UI, does support polytonic Unicode Greek. I also mentioned some nice polytonic Unicode Greek fonts that come with Adobe’s Creative Suite: “Arno Pro (serif), Garamond Premr Pro (serif), and Hypatia Sans Pro (sans serif)—a free gift downloadable after registering the product.” Decker responded and asked if I would post a PDF with samples, so that’s what I’m doing.

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The Failed Strategy of “Trinity & Subordinationism”

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trinity-and-subordinationism.jpgKevin Giles’s The Trinity & Subordinationism is easily one of the worst books I have ever read.1 I say that not because I disagree with the position he defends (i.e., the Son is not in any sense eternally subordinate to the Father); I’m still in the process of evaluating the evidence. Rather, I make that statement based primarily2 on what the book itself sets out to do.

Giles’s goal in T&S is to move beyond the exegetical impasse regarding eternal subordination in the Trinity by appealing to tradition.

Quoting biblical texts and giving one’s interpretation of them cannot resolve complex theological disputes. . . . I believe this approach [to “doing theology”] should . . . be abandoned today because it always leads to a “text-jam.” . . . What we have today is a bitter stalemate (3).

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  1. I should clarify that I have read and am referring to only his section on the Trinity, which is its own distinct unit. [↩]
  2. I’ll probably follow up this post with the book’s other problems, such as (1) misunderstanding and misrepresenting complementarians, (2) selective reading of history, (3) eisegesis of historical texts, (4) category confusion, etc., etc. Here’s one example of misrepresentation to give you an idea of the way Giles interacts with complemenatarian Trinitarianism throughout the book: “Rather than working as one, the divine persons have been set in opposition—with the Father commanding and the Son obeying.” I wrote this in the margin, “Opposition?!!! What a massive misrepresentation!” I challenge Giles to show one complementarian who considers the Father and the Son to be in a relationship of opposition! [↩]

Free Piper & Sproul Sermon Tapes

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tape.jpgI’m getting rid of all of my old sermon tapes and planning to donate them to Goodwill. Does anyone want them before I do? Here are the series that I have:

John Piper

  1. Four Sermons on the Holy Spirit (4 Sermons on 2 Tapes)
  2. Hallowed Be Thy Name: Eight Sermons on the Names of God (8 Sermons on 4 Tapes)
  3. Preach As Worship: Meditations on Expository Exultation (4 Sermons on 2 Tapes)
  4. The Providence of God (2 Sermons on 2 Tapes)
  5. Romans 8:28–30: Eight Sermons (8 Sermons on 4 Tapes)
  6. What Is Baptism? (4 Sermons on 2 Tapes)

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The Father = The Trinity

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trinity-and-subordinationism.jpgThis is the assertion of Kevin Giles in The Trinity and Subordinationism (IVP, 2002):

Here it is to be recalled that in the Bible and in the early church, the title “Father” is used in two cognate ways: in reference to the Godhead and to the person of the Father. Torrance argues that the Cappadocians’ error was to completely conflate these two meanings of the title “Father.” In the former sense, the Father (i.e., the Godhead) may be thought of as the source or font of all being. In the second sense, the Father (i.e., the Father of the Son) is he who is coequal and coeternal with the person of the Son and the person of the Holy Spirit (43).

In support for his claim that the Bible and the early church use Father to refer to the entire Trinity, he points to Torrance, The Christian Doctrine of God, 137, 181; Trinitarian Faith, 241; and LaCugna, God for Us, 71.

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The Life of David Brainerd

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life-of-brainerd.jpgThis month’s free audiobook download from ChristianAudio.com is Jonathan Edwards’s The Life of David Brainerd. This is one you’ll definitely want to pick up. It’s a classic, and its reflective, devotional nature will make for great listening. Make sure to use the code OCT2007.

It’s read by Nick Cordileone, has a runtime of 9 hours and 55 minutes, and consists of nine MP3s totaling 273.3 MBs.

PureText

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[rate 5]

Someone pointed me to a helpful little piece of software that I now use daily, so I thought I’d mention it here. The tool is called PureText. It allows you to paste text into any program or file without all the formatting. I use it frequently when working on a document in Word, composing an email in Outlook, or writing a blog post in WordPress. Instead of using the normal control+v to paste text, you use windows+v (or another combination of your choosing) to paste text without its formatting. It’s that simple.

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