Last night I read the final installment in the six-part email debate that has been taking place over the last month on ChristianityToday.com between atheist Christopher Hitchens (website) and Christian theist Douglas Wilson (blog). I thoroughly enjoyed it and heartily recommend it. Wilson is a cogent thinker, effective debater, and engaging writer, and he did a phenomenal job of presuppositionally obliterating the notion of philosophically consistent atheistic morality.
My NT Logos Workspace
A friend recently asked me how to get the most out of some of the great resources in SESB (now in version 2). My response was that he should create two workspaces—one for OT studies and one for NT studies—and integrate the texts and apparatuses with his other language tools. That led me to revisit my NT workspace and tweak it to take advantage of some newly acquired resources. Here’s a screenshot of my NT workspace, which was inspired by Rick Brannan’s workspace. I’m able to fit three columns comfortably on my 22″ Acer. I haven’t tried this on my 15″ laptop screen, but I imagine it would be a little cramped.
Was Jerry Falwell Reformed?
Ben Witherington (Theopedia | Wikipedia) apparently thinks so. In his recent post “Mr. Falwell Moves On Up” he said, “Throughout his adult life he remained a committed Reformed Dispensationalist Baptist.” When I read that I did a double take, as you probably just did. Reformed?! In what sense?! It seems that he is using Reformed as a synonym for Calvinist rather than as a synonym for Covenantalist, since it occurs alongside Dispensationalist.
Jerry Falwell (Wikipedia) a Calvinist?! The same man who just pronounced limited atonement heresy?! Here are the words from a chapel message entitled “Our Message, Mission and Vision,” which Falwell preached at Liberty University on Friday, April 13, 2007—almost exactly a month prior to his death.
Great Deal on Acer 22″ Widescreen
Several months ago I bought an external keyboard for my laptop because I was getting really sore wrists and arms from being lazy and letting my arms rest on the laptop. The edges were pressing into my arms and making them sore and numb. The external keyboard along with a wrist rest fixed that problem but created another one. In order to use my keyboard, I had to push my laptop back an additional foot or so. As a result, I was consistently getting headaches from straining to read the screen.
Book Deals at CBD
CBD has some decent books on academic closeout right now. Here are a few examples:
All of the New International Biblical Commentaries are on sale for $7.99 $19.99 (hardbacks)—$5.99 if you buy 5 or more! The NT set (18 vols. covering the whole NT) includes volumes by some solid scholars:
Justification and the New Perspectives on Paul | Guy Prentiss Waters
Guy Prentiss Waters. Justification and the New Perspectives on Paul: A Review and Response. P&R, 2004. 273 pp.
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I just recently came across Perrin’s evaluation of Waters’s Justification and the New Perspectives on Paul (WTSBooks).
“Whatever the merits of Justification and the New Perspectives as a primer on twentieth-century Pauline scholarship, the author has been less than successful in his interaction with the NPP. Indeed, assuming that Waters’s primary goal is to construct a convincing argument against the NPP (and N. T. Wright in particular), the book must be judged to have failed at a fundamental level.”1
[Read more…] about Justification and the New Perspectives on Paul | Guy Prentiss Waters
- Nicholas Perrin, “A Reformed Perspective on the New Perspective,” WTJ 67:2 (Fall 2005): 381-89. [↩]
Titus 2:11 in Calvin
A few days ago I discussed Titus 2:11 in Context in light of my personal Bible reading and my stumbling across this rather bothersome statement by Donald Bloesch:
The Calvinist position, especially as transmitted through Reformed orthodoxy, stands in palpable conflict with the New Testament witness.1 Titus 2:11 assures us that “the grace of God has appeared for the salvation of all men.” The Pauline writer of 1 Timothy contends that Jesus Christ sacrificed himself “to win freedom for all mankind” (2:6 NEB).2
In case you skipped over the footnote, Bloesch said, “In this discussion we need to bear in mind that Calvin’s position and that of later Calvinism are not identical.”
Garlington’s Galatians Commentaries
I previously posted about Don Garlington’s commentary on Galatians being available as a free PDF from the Paul Page. But I wasn’t sure exactly which Galatians commentary it was. So I emailed Dr. Garlington and got the official answer.
As for Galatians, I appreciate that the situation is confusing. The thing has gone through an “evolutionary process.” First there was the manuscript for EBC, which was submitted three years ago and still awaits publication (supposedly in the Fall). That is a very basic commentary aimed at a more general audience.