Category Archives: People

Tom Wright for anyone?

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My attention has been drawn to this recent talk, followed by a Q and A session, by Stephen Kuhrt about his book ‘Tom Wright for Everyone’.

Stephen Kuhrt’s talk on ‘Tom Wright for Everyone’

Stephen is vicar of Christ Church, New Malden.  He is clearly an avid fan of Tom Wright and, as the subtitle of his book indicates, he is interested in ‘putting the theology of N.T. Wright into practice in the local church.’

Since I’m reasonably well acquainted with Wright’s more popular writings (but less so the big scholarly tomes), there wasn’t much in Stephen’s talk that was new to me. …

The Holy Spirit – before and after Pentecost

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J.I. Packer writes:-

‘Prior to Pentecost…the Spirit sustained creation and natural life, renewed hearts, gave spiritual understanding, and bestowed gifts for service both in leadership and in other ways, and all this he still does.  The difference since Pentecost is that all his present ministry to Christian believers relates not to Christ who was to come, as was the case when he ministered to Old Testament sains (see, for hints of this, John 8:56-59; 1 Corinthians 10:4; Hebrews 11:26; 1 Peter 1:10); nor as it did when Simeon and Anna recognised him (Luke 2:25-38), and during his three years of public ministry; it relates now to Christ who has come and has died and risen and now reigns in glory. 

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‘Myths About Calvinism’

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My eye was caught by a review in Christianity Today of a recent book by Kenneth J. Stewart entitled Ten Myths About Calvinism.  Stewart writes as a Calvinist himself, but is somewhat critical of some trends and tendencies within the latest resurgence of the movement, especially as represented by the ‘young, restless and reformed’ brigade.

Here are some of the ‘myths’ about Calvinism, as identified by Stewart.  These ones, he says, are all held by Calvinists themselves.…

Genes: masters or slaves?

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In Richard Dawkins’ celebrated book The Selfish Gene, there is a passage which (rather typically for him) smuggles non-empirical assumptions into a statement that purports to be a scientific one.

The passage reads as follows:-

[Genes] swarm in huge colonies, safe inside gigantic lumbering robots, sealed off from the outside world, communicating with it by tortuous indirect routes, manipulating it by remote control.  They are in you and me; they created us, body and mind; and their preservation is the ultimate rationale for our existence.

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Oral tradition and the Gospels

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Craig Blomberg has written extensively on the historical reliability of the Gospels.  In the relevant article in the Dictionary of Jesus and the Gospels, he identifies a number of factors that support the probability that the Gospels faithfully preserve the oral traditions on which they are based.

1. Jesus was perceived by his followers as one who proclaimed God’s Word in a way which demanded careful retelling.

2. Over ninety percent of his teachings has poetic elements which would have made them easy to memorize.

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The Ironies of the Cross

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In the following address, D.A. Carson sets out four ‘ironies of the cross’ as presented in Matthew 27:27-51.

The Ironies of the Cross

In summary:-

  1. The man who is mocked as king, is the king.
  2. The man who is utterly powerless, is powerful.
  3. The man who can’t save himself, saves others.
  4. The man who cries out in despair, trusts God.
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Beware the disjunctive fallacy!

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Ephesians 5:23 says: ‘The husband is the head of the wife as Christ is the head of the church, his body, of which he is the Saviour.‘

Lawrence O. Richards argues that headship in the NT has nothing to do with authority: ‘Authority, with its right to control and demand obedience, is not suggested.  The fact that the living head of the church, Jesus, is a person with supreme authority is presented to comfort and assure it of His ability to meet its needs…As head He is the source and origin of our life. …

Christ’s illegal trial and condemnation

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Outline of a sermon on Luke 23:23f by John Flavel (1628-1691).

I.  The trial of Christ was conducted most maliciously and illegally by his unrighteous judges.  The righteous Judge of all the world is judged most unrighteously.

1.  He was inhumanly abused, both in word and action.

2.  He was falsely examined by a court (the Sanhedrin) that had no authority to try him.

3.  He was absurdly accused of perverting the nation, and of denying tribute to Caesar.…

How should we refer to the Saviour?

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Don Carson writes of an awkward correspondence he had with an individual who criticised him for repeatedly referring to “Jesus” (rather than “the Lord Jesus Christ”) in an address.

The criticism was based on Romans 10:9 (‘if you confess with your mouth, “Jesus is Lord”…you will be saved.’)

As Carson points out, there is no reason to suppose that Romans 10:9 provides a necessary and unvarying formula for how we refer to our Lord.  By such reasoning, Matthew 1:21 (“you are to give him the name Jesus, because he will save his people from their sins”) could equally be insisted upon as a formula.…

“Your God is my devil”

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At about 3pm on 1st August 2007 a interstate bridge over the Mississippi River in Minneapolis collapsed.  Workmen had, just a few days previously, been conducting extensive repair work to the 40-year-old bridge.  There were tons of building materials piled up on the bridge at the time of its collapse.

Bethlehem Baptist Church is within sight of that bridge, and John Piper is its Senior Pastor.  Just a few hours after the disaster Piper, not yet knowing the scale of human injury and loss, or whether any of his own friends and colleagues had been directly affected, wrote of his immediate thoughts and feelings about what had just happened.…