Bob’s Blog Finds: Magic, Polygamy, Abortion, Politics & More

In my blog finds I highlight some of the best articles I’ve found online recently. You can see all my blog finds in my sidebar, under the Bob’s Blog Finds & Bob’s on Twitter sections.

Magic

Barry Wallace of Who Am I? has an interesting post examining the question “Is All Magic Evil?” It has special reference to reading books about magic such as the Chronicles of Narnia or even Harry Potter. I left my reasons for reading (and enjoying) the Harry Potter series in the comments there.

Polygamy in America

Albert Mohler directed my attention to a fascinating article in National Geographic re: polygamy in America. The profile of the Mormon Fundamentalist Church of the Latter Day Saints is shocking, interesting and sad at the same time.

Abortion

Speaking of Al Mohler, he has a good article on a new trend among abortionists. They are leaving the profession largely due to their encounters with ultrasound images of babies and abortions. Read his post entitled, “Mugged by Ultrasound“.

Politics

I didn’t listen to the State of the Union address. And all accounts I’ve seen of it make me glad I didn’t. I don’t like to get mad over politics and I would have been! La Shawn Barber pointed out (via her twitter feed), a good review of the speech at Politics Daily.

Profiles: Tony Dungy & Don Carson

I also found a fascinating write up of Tony Dungy by ESPN. It examines his character and his role as one who helps troubled sports starts gain reconciliation. The article elevated my respect for the man (which was already quite high). It’s worth the read.

Sharper Iron also recently posted a tribute to Don Carson. He truly is the epitome of a Christian Scholar who serves the church. It is good to see fundamentalists learning from people like Carson, and respecting him while disagreeing with his “non-fundamentalist” actions. I appreciated the article and you might to.

A 21st Century Theological Taxonomy

The fundamentalist blog Sharper Iron is running a series of posts by Dr. Jeff Straub of Central Baptist Theological Seminary (Minneapolis) on the future of fundamentalism. The series is entitled “The Fundamentalist Challenge for the 21st Century: Do We Have a Future?”. The first post is quite good.

The post links to a chart describing the different groups within fundamentalism. The chart goes on to describe a few groups within evangelicalism as well. I’m always impressed by such charts, and the word “taxonomy” just sounds so smart. No, actually, it really does help, especially for those who have changed from one category to another (as I have).

I am in general agreement with the chart as a whole, although there will probably be exceptions to the rule, and a few people listed that don’t fit exactly where they are listed on the chart. I think it’s a helpful chart all in all, and wanted to point you to it.

Click here to find the chart (you can also save it, as it is a .pdf file).

The chart splits Fundamentalism up into 3 categories: Hyper Fundamentalism, Historic Fundamentalism, and New Image Fundamentalism. Evangelicalism also finds itself a tripartite being: Evangelical Right, Broad Evangelicalism, and Evangelical Left. Then there’s Neo-orthodoxy and Radical Non-orthodoxy. Currently I find myself at times within the Evangelical Right category and at times in the New Image Fundamentalism category.

Let me know what you think, and be sure to read the next parts of Straub’s assessment of fundamentalism.

“The Erosion of Inerrancy in Evangelicalism” by G.K. Beale

Author: G.K. Beale
Publisher: Crossway
Format: Softcover
Publication Date: 2008
Pages: 304
ISBN: 9781433502033
Stars: 4 of 5

In recent years, Evangelicalism has seen a number of challenges to the doctrine of the inerrancy of Scripture. Chief among these have been new insights into the cultural and historical background of the Old Testament provided by newly found ancient Near Eastern sources (ANE for short). A recent turmoil was raised by a professor at Westminster Theological Seminary named Peter Enns who published a controversial book Inspiration and Incarnation. Eventually he was deemed to have violated the Westminster Confession of Faith in his views and was removed from his teaching post at Westminster.

In scholarly journals, G.K. Beale responded to Enns’ book and open questioning of the popular understanding of biblical inerrancy. Enns and Beale responded back and forth to each other in a series of journal articles, which in a slightly emended form make up the first four chapters of this book. I’m glad that G.K. Beale chose to put the discussion in a book for a wider Evangelical audience, as he has done us all a great favor. His book, The Erosion of Inerrancy in Evangelicalism: Responding to New Challenges to Biblical Authority addresses this issue head on and offers a confessionally faithful model of approaching ANE parallels to Scripture.

I must admit that when I began this book, I was skeptical of Beale’s position and open to what Enns had to say. By the end of the book, I realized that Enns had indeed erred, and that Beale represented a careful scholarly approach worthy of consideration. Still, the objection could be raised that Beale is making a mountain out of a molehill and is just interested in muddying Enns’ image, even as he threatens the scholarly Evangelical community with the same if they dare tip the sacred inerrancy cow. Such is not the case however. Let me allow Beale to explain his rationale for the book:

… most of the problems that [Enns] poses are not that hard to solve, though he gives the impression that they are difficult to square with a traditional view of inerrancy. Indeed, this is partly why I felt a burden to write the review (of Enns’ book) that I did. Instead of helping people in the church gain confidence in their Bibles, Enns’s book will likely shake that confidence””I think unnecessarily so. (pg. 66-67)

After laying out the issues, Beale jumps right in to the back and forth between Peter Enns and himself. He splits the discussion into two topics: recent OT studies’ developments and the study of the Old Testament in the New. For each he gives his rejoinders to Enns and Enns’ responses. While at times the back and forth leaves the typical reader dazed and confused (at times one feels like he’s looking over the various scholars’ shoulders or that the discussion is moving on too quickly to follow), key issues and main points are driven home through these first four chapters. Differing approaches to ANE myths and their implications for Genesis, and second Temple Judaistic hermeneutical principles and their bearing on our understanding of the New Testament are fleshed out.

After the various approaches are displayed through the back and forth of chapters 1-4, the book moves on to the unity of Isaiah as a case study. Will we trust the Bible’s witness to itself when it comes to Isaiah’s unity, or move with the scholarly winds and deny that which Jesus and the apostles appeared to assume? While Beale is a NT scholar, he handles the Isaiah question capably, referring to recent scholarly evangelical assessments on this point.

Beale then provides a fascinating discussion of Gen. 1 and a biblical cosmology model in the form of the universe as God’s temple. In this section, Beale really shines as he develops a compelling case for the tabernacle, Temple and indeed Eden and the universe as a whole as all being models of God’s true cosmic temple. This applies to the book in general because to understand Gen. 1-2 as a temple cosmology allows one to assimilate insights from ANE studies without defaulting to teaching that the early chapters of Genesis are intended to be taken as a myth.

Two appendices are also provided. One is a rather detailed discussion of postmodernism, epistemology and the like. The second is an exposition of the “Chicago Statement on Biblical Inerrancy.”

This book is not for the average reader. Beale develops a case and brings you into the world of Biblical scholarship today. He explains how one can maintain a high view of Scripture and assimilate insights from scholarship successfully. He also warns of the dangers of forsaking inerrancy. I learned a ton in reading this book, but the part I enjoyed the most was when Beale left polemics aside and focused on a positive development of his cosmic temple idea concerning Gen. 1-2. Beale has written an entire book on that subject (The Temple and the Church’s Mission: A Biblical Theology of the Dwelling Place of God), and I’m interested in picking it up soon.

I recommend this book, but have to admit it was put together in a piecemeal fashion. Still it has great value and needs to be read by anyone interested in OT scholarship.

Disclaimer: this book was provided by the publisher for review. The reviewer was under no obligation to provide a positive review.

This book is available for purchase at the following sites: Westminster Bookstore, Amazon.com, or direct from Crossway.

Generational Patricide

In a recent forums discussion at Sharper Iron, I came across some insightful and I thought quite helpful comments on what I call “generational patricide”. We were discussing Phil Johnson’s recent post explaining the demise of Neo-Evangelicalism. He wrote off the entire movement with nearly the same fervor he showed when declaring that the independent fundamentalist (mostly Baptist) movement is dead.

Now, it is common for former fundamentalists, like myself, to write off our former movement completely, just as Johnson dismisses Neo-Evangelicalism as just a mistake. I do grant Phil much more academic credentials than the average young fundamentalist (or reforming fundamentalist). Still, the tendency to write off the previous generation seems to be a normal human reaction. This is evidenced by how the emergent movement disdains the evangelicalism that birthed it.

Anyway, I think the following comments by Joseph are spot on. They should give us all pause, and encourage us to think more deeply about the movements we have left. Hopefully it can help us carefully step out into the future in a more charitable spirit toward our forebears.

First, it is a common historical occurrence that one group will emerge or coalesce as a reaction to a set of concerns, and when those concerns seem less relevant or are a matter of history, many within that group will criticize the group itself as being a mistake, as having serious problems, etc.. What happens here is that people ignore the fact that much of their criticism is only possible because of the successes of the original reaction.

Fundamentalism was, truly, a disaster for a robust, more-than-merely-orthodox Christianity; having a powerful intellectual and social testimony is not something unusual in Christianity. From the witness of the early church’s social practices to the likes of theologians like Augustine, it has historically not been that case that orthodox Christianity has to place itself within a cultural and intellectual ghetto. So, Fundamentalism, itself an important reaction to modernism with many successes, truly had the weaknesses New Evangelicals saw in it.

Now, a couple generations later, it’s easy for Fundamentalists and people like Johnson to criticize New Evangelicalism, even though, if we imagine it away, the vast majority of our textbooks in conservative seminaries and colleges as well as some of our best theological and historical thinking as conservative Christians gets imagined away as well.

So, like the New Evangelical reaction to Fundamentalism, this reaction to the New Evangelicalism is predicated on the inadequately acknowledged successes of New Evangelicalism. In that sense, it’s no better off, structurally, than Emergents or anyone else, for all these groups, in their failure to properly acknowledge their debt to those things that they criticize, react in an unbalanced way, and therefore produced equally if not more narrow slices of the Christian pie that only appeal to an equally narrow constituency. I think most of the criticisms of New Evangelicalism are sound; but I think they are also wrong in that they often them stem from a profoundly imbalanced conception of their significance and meaning, when the fact of the matter is that the clarity of the intellectual hindsight that produces such cogent criticism is often enabled by the successes of that which is being criticized (e.g. David Wells, sitting in his perch at Gordon-Conwell, issuing some of the best and most powerful criticisms of evangelical Christianity as a whole, is a good example; he’s right, but if you’re not balanced, you miss the obvious implications of his being paid to study and write by Gordon-Conwell and other funding institutions).

The tendency of every group and generation is to kill its father, which it can only do after it has been nourished and supported by and gained some independence from that which it later attacks. The only way such patricide can be mitigated is through the balanced integration of sharp, necessary criticism with a profound acknowledgement of its indebtedness — and the implications of such indebtedness — to that which it criticizes. That is something too often lacking in criticisms of any movement, in this case New Evangelicalism. And this imbalanced criticism comes down on our heads when the generation following us rises up, as the Emergents and many others have done, to decry a lack of balance, etc. in those groups that fostered them and to repudiate them with a breathtaking recklessness and ungratefulness. If we wish to avoid that, we must model the better way. [from this comment]

I’ve been thinking about what I wrote for a long time, and Phil’s comments were the occasion for putting them down. What you highlight is really important, I think, especially as a critique or warning for anyone who founds their identity on a movement; generally speaking, that’s just not a good idea – it will only maintain itself for a generation, and in order to survive it naturally institutionalizes; but the institutions that result are often reflective of concerns, emphases, and modes of expressions that passed with the original founders of the movement, and thus they often represent a kind of rigid, narrow, a provincial outlook if they fundamentally seek to ground their identity in the original movement.

If I ever wrote on either Fundamentalism or New Evangelicalism, my titles wouldn’t be about how they are dead, they would be: “After Fundamentalism” or “After New Evangelicalism.” Not stark repudiations, but recognitions that history has changed, new problems have emerged, and what we should gain from these movements is not a rigid commitment to their historically particular expressions, but to the fruit they bore and to the commitment they manifested to the principles, truths, and the one institution (the Church) that don’t pass away with history. Anything more than this and we’ll inevitably lapse into (unnecessary) provincialism and undercontextualization to our current context, a problem that, as Keller as noted, is no better than over-contextualization, for it simply means one is contextualizing to a different era or culture than the current one. [from this comment]

Goodbye TNIV, Hello 2011 Updated NIV

Yesterday, Zondervan Publishing House and Biblica (formerly the International Bible Society) announced plans to revise the NIV in 2011 and discontinue the controversial TNIV. Many conservative evangelicals, and groups like the Council for Biblical Manhood and Womanhood (CBMW) openly opposed the gender neutral translation choices of the TNIV. So to hear this coming from Zondervan is encouraging. Every gender neutral decision will be reviewed, but they aren’t promising a wholesale about face when it comes to their translation philosophy.

Still I am encouraged and hope the best for the updated NIV. Personally, I prefer a more formally equivalent translation (word for word), but I admit the validity and value of a dynamic equivalent translation. In fact I think the ESV which I use, is closer to the NIV in its translation philosophy than it admits.

Anyway I wanted to spread the news in case my readers hadn’t heard. Here are a few links which may help you get a better understanding of what this all means.