Who Seeks Discipline? The Seventh Mark of a Healthy Church Member

Really, who seeks discipline?
In our pleasure-seeking culture and churches so inundated with the gospel of self-gratification: Not Many! Yet for those who know Christ and are known by him, discipline is not a pain to be avoided, but a necessary and blessed part of the Christian life.  As Thabiti Anyabwile shows in his chapter on the subject in What [...]

Biblical Theology: The Second Mark of a Healthy Church Member

Whether you know it or not, you are a theologian!  
Being made in the image of God (Gen. 1:26-28), you are irreversibly created to think thoughts about God.    But whether or not you are a good ‘theologian’ is another story.   While everyone thinks about God — even the atheist who denies his existence — the unanswered [...]

Hearing the Word of God

In his chapter on the way God speaks in the Bible, Michael Horton quotes Gabriel Fackre to argue that God’s speech comes to us through a unified series of prophetic utterances that God commands that we hear and believe.  Fackre posits,
The Bible is a book that tells an “overarching story.”  While imaginatively portrayed, it is no fictive [...]

From Sinai to Chile to Zion: Why Visual Aids Do and Do Not Help Us See Christ in the Bible

I am not a big fan of visual aids.  So, when I preach or teach, I do not use powerpoint and rarely use other forms of multimedia to explicate the biblical text.  There is much to debate here, but as a personal conviction, I aim at–i.e. pray for and work at– letting the Word of God speak in and [...]

Book Review: The Kingdom of God

Bright, John. The Kingdom of God: The Biblical Concept and Its Meaning For the Church.  Nashville: Abingdon,1953.
If you like Graeme Goldsworthy, you will like John Bright; and if you come to John Bright’s book, The Kingdom of God, already familiar with Goldsworthy’s According to Plan, you will recognize some similar elements.  Bright unites the entire Bible along the lines [...]

The Hourglass of Biblical History

In his discussion of biblical history and the relationship between Old Testament Israel and the New Testament Church, John Bright correctly observes:
Through the Old Testament the reader senses that the focus has been continually narrowed.  It begins with the broad canvas of creation and tells of the dealings of God with the whole race of [...]

John Bright on Biblical Intertextuality

John Bright, in his book The Kingdom of God, offers a very historically-enriching and theologically-astute presentation of the kingdom which unifies the entire Bible.  I have benefitted much from reading it, especially in the way that he looks at the people under God’s rule as a unified and yet developing body of believers.  In this outline, [...]

Receiving and Believing the Word of God

When was the last time you started your car and consciously thought about the internal combustion engine involved?  Or how often do you eat and enjoy a meal without knowing the way it was prepared or the origin of all its ingredients?  Or more technically, do you ever think about the processes involved to make Wifi [...]

The Theologian’s Task

What is the task of a Christian theologian?  Or more generally, what is the task of understanding Christian doctrine?
Herman Bavinck answers that question in the opening chapter of his four-volume Reformed Dogmatics.  He writes,
The imperative task of the dogmatician [or theologian] is to think God’s thoughts after him and to trace their unity.  His work is [...]

New Studies in Biblical Theology Index

Andy Naselli has prepared an invaluable service for those committed to mining the biblical-theological depths of the Bible.  He has compiled a Scripture index for the twenty-four volume (and growing) New Studies in Biblical Theology series edited by D.A. Carson, with contributors like Andreas Kostenberger, G.K. Beale, Stephen Dempster, and others.  This is how Naselli [...]