Thought Life
Just saw that the new Themelios is out. You will want to give this one some time. Oodles of good pieces and reviews geared at thinking Christians of all types.
The new issue includes a nice piece from D. A. Carson of Trinity Evangelical Divinity School on the imperative behind missions. Here’s a snatch:
But the best warrant for Christian mission is Jesus himself. He claims all authority is his, but he speaks not as a cosmic bully but as the crucified Lord. He insists that men and women have rebelled against his heavenly Father, but he joins himself to the human rebels so as to identify with them. He declares they deserve punishment, then bears the punishment himself. He claims to be the Judge they will meet on the last day, and meanwhile entreats them to turn to him, to trust him, and live. If one is going to follow a leader, what better leader than the one who demonstrates his love for his followers by dying on a cross to win them to himself? What political leader does that? What religious leader does that? Only God does that!
And then, in a small piece of mimicry, his followers are challenged to take up their cross and follow him. If one of the results is a worldwide missionary movement, I for one will pray for it to thrive.
There are many reviews to read. In Historical Theology/Church History, Tony Chute of California Baptist University assesses a new book on evangelicalism, while Nathan Finn of Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary analyzes a new monograph on John Stott.
I chipped in on a book penned by Carl Trueman. Here’s a teaser:
It is fallacies Trueman is after in the fourth chapter, “A Fistful of Fallacies,” and it is fallacies he finds. Denouncing reification (pp. 142-46), oversimplification (pp. 146-52), post hoc propter hoc (pp. 152-56), and several other missteps common in the guild, Trueman again suggests by dint of material that the historian’s task is a careful one. He also briefly weighs in on “providentialism,” or an overly confident reading of the hand of God in discrete historical events. Of course, providence is for Trueman “a sound theological doctrine” (in another realm the Westminster divines breathe a sigh of relief), but to his mind, the universality of providence means that it is “of no great use in particular explanations” (p. 167). There is a whole school of evangelical historiography that will read the rather short section on providence with some discomfort; I wondered as I read what Trueman would think of the way George Marsden closes his larger work on Jonathan Edwards by ascribing his greater significance to the greatness of God.
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