God’s Word in Human Words (Part 1)

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Kenton Sparks serves as professor of Biblical Studies at Eastern University, which is located on the northwest side of Philadelphia. His 2008 release through Baker Academic, God’s Word in Human Words, stands as a beneficial work for evangelicals who hold to the inspired and authoritative nature of Scripture who are also looking to engage within the realm of biblical and historical criticism.

The book is not unlike Peter Enns’ Inspiration and Incarnation (of which I review in part 1 and part 2). But, as one acquaintance said: Sparks’ book is like Enns’ on steroids. And that it is. Whereas Enns’ work is 208 pages, Sparks’ treatment of a very similar topic weighs in at just over 400 pages.

I specifically wanted to review this book in 3 parts, mainly for a couple different reasons:

  1. The book is longer and has much to offer, and so this will keep my own word-count down with regards to each of the two posts.
  2. The book addresses something that I believe is very important for evangelicals to understand. First, how we understand knowledge and, secondly, dealing practically with critical scholarship. It is the first point of #2 here that I will look at in this post, moving on to the rest of the book in my second and third articles.

From the outset, Sparks makes his purpose clear with writing this book: Continue reading →

Stirring Story in Our Resurrection Sunday Gathering

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Yesterday, for our Easter-Resurrection gathering at Cornerstone, we had Stephen Lungu with us. Stephen hails from Lilongwe, Malawi, and is International Director of African Enterprise.

I commend his message from yesterday, which was centred in how the reality of Christ and the resurrection powerfully changed his life. His was a kind of ‘Damascus Road’ transformation. Once a guerrilla fighter and gang leader, he shares much of his background of living on the streets from 6 years old. It all came to a head with encountering Jesus one evening when he and his gang had decided to blow up (yes, with TNT bombs) a revival tent gathering of 3000 people. His life took a major redirection that evening. Continue reading →

Inheritance Cycle

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I’m just finishing up an intense fiction-epic series known as The Inheritance Cycle, a 4-book sequence of 2800+ pages authored by Christopher Paolini. It’s in the vein of something like the Lord of the Rings or Harry Potter. I love fantasy fiction and so I was easily drawn into this series.

There was one beautiful little section I wanted to quote here, which gives insight into the series, but also speaks into some of the things worth considering with regards to the perspective of the ancient Hebrews-Jews who crafted the Scriptures.

Here is a little background to the characters referred to in the section I shall quote:

  • Eragon is the main character, a young boy coming from a small town in the greater land of Alagaësia, but who has now grown into a brave dragon rider.
  • Saphira is Eragon’s dragon. Saphira communicates via her mind, since dragons cannot officially talk, though Eragon can communicate via both spoken words and mind.
  • Glaedr is a very old and wise dragon who was killed in an earlier battle, but his spirit or essence has lived on and can communicate via the mind as well.

And now to the selection from the book: Continue reading →

The Anomaly of Evangelism (Part 8)

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This is my next-to-last post in my series on the gospel and evangelism. Hallelujah! In the last post, I spent some time laying out foundational elements for evangelism and the evangelist. I specifically highlighted these few points:

  • The evangel is about the good news.
  • An evangelist is a bearer, or proclaimer, of the good news.
  • The whole body of Christ is an evangel-proclaiming community, and that works itself out in varying ways.
  • As we are all involved in evangelism, we take this message of good news wherever we go, living it out and telling it, even if we do not specifically quote a Bible verse in or conversation.
  • Yes, the evangelist will be an evangel-proclaimer. But she or he is also a gift to the church by Christ to help equip us to be more faithful and effective in our evangel-bearing (ala Eph 4:11-13).

That is a pretty sufficient summary of what I believe evangelism and the ministry of evangelist is all about.

Still, at the end of the article, I asked this particular question - How do people ‘get saved’ when they hear this simple message? Continue reading →

The Cross as the Power & Wisdom of God?

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It’s holy week in the Christian calendar. This Friday is Good Friday, remembering the crucifixion of Christ. Sunday is Easter Sunday where we celebrate that Jesus walked out of the grave alive.

In connection with holy week, yesterday I decided to look at the cross-event in my message (which you can listen to or download here). But rather than viewing the cross through the eyes of one of the Gospel writers, I looked at Paul’s words found in 1 Cor 1:10 – 2:5. Continue reading →

Four Views on the Apostle Paul

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Coming this July, a new book will be released called, Four Views on the Apostle Paul, published by Zondervan and edited by Michael Bird.

This is a popular way to discuss theology in book-format today. You’ve got this kind of 3 views or 4 views approach to almost every theological topic out there. Well, almost all. Hey, maybe I could propose to Zondervan that we do a book like this around the topic of apostles today.

The 4 debaters in the book are Luke Timothy Johnson (Catholic View), Thomas Schreiner (Reformed View), Mark Nanos (Jewish View), and Douglas Campbell (Post-New Perspective View).

Below is a 13-minute promo video for the book. It’s probably a bit too long, but if you view the first 3:05, that should be sufficient to get a feel for the book. Continue reading →

My Journey Away From Calvinism

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Fairly soon after my initial salvation experience in Christ, I moved to embracing the theological framework known as Calvinism. You know, the 5 points of total depravity, unconditional election, limited (or particular) atonement, irresistible grace and perseverance of the saints.

I had come with excitement to this new found system of doctrine. I ate it up, lapped it up like a thirsty puppy. It was a major part of my theological digestion. I began defending Calvinism with the best of them, believing I had very good and reasonable answers to many mysteries of the faith surrounding God’s sovereignty and humanity’s responsibility. I was even willing to accept some of the stronger points such as Augustine’s double predestination.

And anything counter-Calvinism was just not biblical. I was even smug enough to one day comment that Calvinists tend to be intellectually smarter than non-Calvinists.

God have mercy on my soul! Continue reading →