Os Guinness Renaissance: The Power of the Gospel However Dark the Times Downers Grove, IL: IVP, 2014. Available at Amazon.com By Kara Martin Os Guinness has been a prophet for God’s people for more than 30 years. This book reminds me of The Global Public Square meets The Calling. It is a critique of our culture, and also a wake-up call for the church. In some ways the material is arranged around an old idea: An Evangelical Manifesto, which was partly drafted by Guinness and published in... Read more

I just got through reading an interesting piece b y Markus Zehnder, “Why the Danielic ‘Son of Man’ Is a Divine Being,” BBR 24.3 (2014): 331-47. Zehnder argues that Daniel’s Son of Man belongs to the “upper level” on the divine spectrum and notes the various features that make him divine like coming with the clouds of heaven, receiving worship, worldwide and everlasting dominion, human-like shape, intertextual relations with Pss 89 and 110, and reception in 1 Enoch. Zehnder gives good caveats on... Read more

Glad to see that Peter Leithart is reading through Markus Barth’s excellent book Acquittal by Resurrection. More people should read Markus Barth. Wipf & Stock do some really good imprints of his shorter volumes. Barth does a great job of showing that Jesus’ death AND resurrection is what constitutes the basis of justification … not just Jesus’ death. Don’t believe me, read Romans 4:25! Barth is exactly right to emphasize that the resurrection has to be integral to justification. Without it,... Read more

My good friend Chris Tilling has a great interview with Eerdmans about his book, Paul’s Divine Christology. Read more

Almighty God, give us grace that we may cast away the works of darkness, and put upon us the armor of light, now in the time of this mortal life in which thy Son Jesus Christ came to visit us in great humility; that in the last day, when he shall come again in his glorious majesty to judge both the quick and the dead, we may rise to the life immortal; through him who liveth and reignth with thee and... Read more

Logos has recently published the first two of five volumes of Gerhardus Vos’ Reformed Dogmatics available at Amazon.com in print and electronically at Logos. It is translated and edited by Richard Gaffin. First two volumes are on theology proper and anthropology. My particular interest is Vos’ supralapsarianism and his integration of biblical and systematic theology. Proof of the popularity of Vos’ Reformed Dogmatics is the photo below of a Presbyterian (Horton), Catholic (Hahn), and an Anglican (Bird). We all agree that we like... Read more

Excellent piece in CT about Why Do Pentecostals Keep Growing? by Ed Setzer. Of the 25 largest faith groups in the United States, the only two orthodox Christian groups on the list that are growing are the Assemblies of God and Church of God (Cleveland). So, what do all of the declining denominations have in common? Most are mainline, a few are evangelical, but most simply are not as excited about what they believe—and don’t think it needs to be propagated as... Read more

Jonathan Edwards Had an Opinion about Mentoring Too By Rhys Bezzant (Ridley College) I heard a leading American evangelist preach a sermon recently in which Jonathan Edwards was never named but his signature theology was everywhere. Edwards’s views on creation as an overflow of the life of God, and his understanding of the Christian life involving the gift of a new sense of God’s beauty are now commonplace in evangelical circles. Unfortunately, his influence has not yet washed through to the... Read more

See my RBL review of Joseph Fantin’s excellent study Lord of the Entire World: Lord Jesus, A Challenge to Lord Caesar? Here’s the blurb: How would the confession, ‘Jesus is Lord’, have been understood in the first-century Roman world? Was it more than a statement of one’s devotion to Jesus? Was it also an implicit challenge to the living Caesar, the lord of the Roman empire? There were many lords in the first century and the use of the title kyrios... Read more

If you’re going to SBL in San Diego then remember, remember the 22nd of November. Here’s why: Extent of Theological Diversity in Earliest Christianity 11/22/2014 9:00 AM to 11:30 AM Room: Room 8 (Upper level) – San Diego Convention Center (CC) Theme: A Panel Review of Bart Ehrman’s How Jesus Became God: The Exaltation of a Jewish Preacher from Galilee (HarperCollins, 2014) David Capes, Houston Baptist University, Presiding (5 min) James McGrath, Butler University, Respondent (15 min) Michael Bird, Ridley Melbourne, Respondent... Read more