On the Death of the Old Testament
Andrew Bunt of ThinkTheology has shared an overview and some thoughts on Brent Strawn’s book The Old Testament is Dying.
Strawn’s basic thesis is that knowledge, understanding and good use of the Old Testament are waning; in short, the Old Testament is dying. He uses a helpful analogy to explore this by likening the Old Testament to a language. Languages help us make sense of reality, and the Old Testament has the potential to do the same. But languages can die, and so the analogy provides a useful way for Strawn to explore the possibility that the Old Testament is dying…
Strawn then explores how this demise can be seen more broadly, and it is here that he makes particular use of the language analogy. The process of a language dying is called repidginization because as the original language dies out the simplified version that is left is like a pidgin language. When languages repidiginize sometimes the pidgin version then develops into a new, but different, language called a creole. Creoles are completely regular – they remove all the complexities of the original language…
On Resolving to Control My Tongue, 14-20
In his Some Pastors and Teachers, Sinclair Ferguson “takes a leaf out of Jonathan Edward’s Resolutions” and writes twenty resolutions on the tongue from James (pages 638-642). They are resolutions I need to better keep. I will be posting all twenty, and here are six through thirteen. Resolutions 1-5 are here, and 6-13 are here.
(14) Resolved: To never allow anything but total integrity in my speech.
But above all, my brothers, do not swear, either by heaven or by earth or by any other oath, but let your ‘yes’ be yes and your ‘no’ be no, so that you may not fall under condemnation (James 5:12)…
On Resolving to Control My Tongue, 6-13
In his Some Pastors and Teachers, Sinclair Ferguson “takes a leaf out of Jonathan Edward’s Resolutions” and writes twenty resolutions on the tongue from James (pages 638-642). They are resolutions I need to better keep. I will be posting all twenty, and here are six through thirteen. The first five are here.
(6) Resolved: To speak in the consciousness of the final judgment.
So speak and so act as those who are to be judged under the law of liberty (James 2:12)…
On Resolving to Control My Tongue, 1-5
In his Some Pastors and Teachers, Sinclair Ferguson “takes a leaf out of Jonathan Edward’s Resolutions” and writes twenty resolutions on the tongue from James (pages 638-642). They are resolutions I need to better keep. I will be posting all twenty, and here are the first five.
(1) Resolved: To ask God for wisdom to speak and to do so with a single mind.
If any of you lacks wisdom, let him ask God, who gives generously to all without reproach, and it will be given to him. … in faith, with no doubting. … For that person must not suppose that he will receive anything … he is a double-minded man, unstable in all his ways (James 1:5-8)…
On the Imitation of Christ as Key to Pastoral Discipleship
I have found myself thinking of my own graduation from seminary in the midst of this commencement season, as well as the charge that was given to me and my fellow graduates by our professor of New Testament Interpretation, Dr. Dan McCartney.
Dr. McCartney delivered a charge based on 2 Timothy 2:23-26, and I still return to and ponder his counsel from that night. Imitation of Christ is the foundation of ministry. To be a disiscpler, I must be an imitator of the one who is discipling me…
