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What Martin Luther Really Said ::: Luther’s Sola Fide
Martin Luther’s doctrine of justification is all too often assumed to be the same doctrine that later wound up in the Reformed Orthodox creeds. This sola fide (the one of Reformed Orthodoxy) tends to be read back into the magisterial Reformers, and in this manner the nuances of the original Reformation sola fide are missed.
The excerpts below come from Martin Luther’s introduction and summary of the book of Romans. Martin Luther, Commentary on Romans, trans. J. Theodore Mueller (Grand Rapids: Kregel Classic, Zondervan, 1954).
Notice that Luther’s notion of justifying righteousness is faith itself because faith satisfies the law. Luther’s notion of justifying righteousness, then, was not Christ’s active and passive obedience, as in much of the Reformed versions of the doctrine of imputation. (more…)
Allah is the Only God, and Jesus Too, and the Holy Spirit Too
A missionary to Muslims who goes by From the Middle East, shared in post form what he shares with Muslims to get them more interested in the gospel. His post wasn’t intended to be a gospel presentation itself, only pre-evangelism, but it didn’t take long for evangelicals in the blogosphere to pounce on him for supposedly watering down the gospel. Some objected to his use of the word “Allah” for God, even though it’s the word used to translate YHWH in Arabic Bibles, and is apparently the only word for God in that language. Although not all the comments were off base, in my opinion the comment thread is a sad example of how quick we evangelicals are to vilify their fellow brother serving in a rough place due to lack of understanding and failure to come across with a gracious tone.
________________HT: sbcImpact
:::: A Video Everyone Must See … Spread It Around ::::
I’m not kidding … I’ve never seen a video this moving. I can’t even tell you what it’s about or I will ruin it.
————————–HT: The Doorpost
:::__Don’t Be a Haydenite__:::
An interesting look at a sectarian minister.
A preacher that can’t stop arguing. A denominational leader causing discord and division. A prolific writer who spews vitriol. He viciously attacks his opponents. He agitates at the Southern Baptist Convention. He plays politics. Apparently he thinks highly of himself and enjoys notoriety. He builds himself up, by tearing others down.
N.T. Wright vs. John Piper ::: Ding Ding Ding
A few excerpts from N.T. Wright on his exchange with Piper from Kingdom People.
My anxiety about what has now been seen as the traditional Reformed view (though there are many traditional Reformed views!) is that it focuses all attention on ‘me and my salvation’ rather than on ‘God and God’s purposes’, which – as we see in the Gospels, and in e.g. Romans 8 – are much wider than just my salvation.
A R I S T O T L E ::: Legacy
“Plato is dear to me, but dearer still is the truth.”
– Aristotle
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All quotations without a footnote link are from Thomson & Missner, On Aristotle, Belmont, California: Wadsworth, 2000.
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Aristotle was born in 384 B.C. and died in 322 B.C., which means he lived to be roughly 62 years old. We would say he died young, yet no single individual did more to influence the history of thought than Aristotle. “He single-handedly founded the sciences of Logic, Biology and Psychology.”¹ (more…)
___–__-_Making the Gospel More Accessible_-__–___
U R B A N G L O R Y just released a new podcast where Aaron Skinner continues to talk about how the quality of media can make a difference in how willing people are to listen to the message communicated through the media.
________________—–HT: U R B A N G L O R Y
^_^_^__Tony Jones’ Test of Orthodoxy__^_^_^
The following is an interesting excerpt from Tony Jones’ post entitled, “The Orthodoxy of Down Syndrome”
Since I’m probably as philosophically as theologically bent, I’ve often struggled with the more conservative conceptions of orthodoxy because they surely tend to overestimate the ability of many human beings to articulate complex theological ideas. Jesus (“Come, follow me”) and Paul (“if you confess with your mouth, ‘Jesus is Lord,’ and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved”) both had thresholds of belief to which, I assume, most developmentally challenged persons could rise.
• The • Sufficiency • of the • Gospel • Mark Dever on Richard Sibbes
As I was cleaning my room today I listened to a lecture by Mark Dever, who did his Ph.D. at Cambridge on the Puritan Richard Sibbes. Richard was not like the other Puritans in that he did not ultimately break with the Church of England during the time of the great Exodus of Puritan preachers. Why? Because he believed that unity in the gospel was more important than correctness in the secondary matters. I was actually surprised to hear Mark Dever approve of Sibbes’ perspective, and challenge young evangelical ministers to recover the distinction between the essential (the gospel) and the non-essential. I agree with the spirit of Dever’s understanding as expressed in this lecture, only I wouldn’t confuse the basic gospel message with the doctrine of justification the way he does (see below). I believe Eastern Orthodox Christians and Catholic Christians believe in the redemptive death, burial and resurrection and lordship of Jesus Christ regardless of what their doctrine of justification might be.
Here are some quotations from Dever’s Gheens Lecture Series at Southern Baptist Theological Seminary:
“We must be united, Sibbes taught, and we must be united around the gospel.” – Mark Dever
“In Sibbes’ hand, the centrality of preaching was a force for unity, not for dissent. … And it did so exactly because whatever other problems the church might have had, it was a church committed to the Protestant—that is to say the Biblical—gospel, the good news of justification by faith alone in Christ alone. And to leave such a church, would be tantamount to rending Christ’s body.” – Mark Dever
“Sibbes knew that the main point is the reconciliation of man to God, which is accomplished by the preaching of the gospel of Jesus Christ. So, preaching is more fundamental than polity. I could be convinced of congregationalism biblically, and convinced that the gospel is more important. One of the things that we as evangelicals must do is recover that territory in between essential and unimportant. … It’s a vast tract that we must recover for faithfulness to scripture. There could be many things that are important that are not essential. There could be things that are important that are not essential. And there could be things that are kind of important that are not essential. … But simply because something is not essential does not therefore mean it is unimportant. We need to recover this in our own reflection on our lives, reflection on scripture, and in our preaching in our churches. If we do we’ll easily understand how preaching is more fundamental to polity, and yet polity is not a matter to be disregarded.” – Mark Dever
—————————————HT: Good Soldiers
:: Dawkins, Hitchens, and McGrath ::
____________HT: The Hour______________
T h e o • p h i l o g u e 