Theologizing Blind

There are books you disagree with and then there are books you disagree with. This is one of those books that is worth reading even though it has extremely unconventional conclusions. There is a wealth of exegetical material here, and the author is not simply and old-style fundamentalist stuck in the debates over lordship salvation. The scope is truly massive. The book is divided into three separate "volumes" with separate theses. Volume 1, "Salvation", argues that there are different kinds of salvation, and for a distinction between "entering" the kingdom and "inheriting" the kingdom. This is probably the most convincing part of the book, and the sections on language of "saving souls" being related to temporal judgment is quite fascinating. Volume 2, "assurance", deals primarily with the subject of how we can be sure of your salvation and the meanings of the apostasy passages. It contains an excellent critique of the Puritan ...

This was absolutely fantastic; easily in my top 10 reads of the year. This book takes a very close look at the Trinitarian doctrine known as eternal functional subordination (or, by some, eternal relationships of submission and authority.) This position states that what differentiates Father, Son, and Holy Spirit are not relationships of paternity, generation, and procession but relationships of authority and submission. This doctrine in particular focuses on the eternal submission of the Son to the Father, and arose out of the debates surrounding women in ministry. So argue the EFS proponents: just as men and women are equal in essence but differentiated by function, so the Father and the Son possess equally the divine essence but differ in their function and roles. A personal note: when I first began reading Complementarians this position was taken as a given. I didn't think much about it until many years later when I began exploring the question of the Trinity's relation to ...

Excellent, detailed scholarship. Considered as a monograph on Aquinas, superb. I feel compelled to give it four stars only because of some repetition and because much of Aquinas's material seems overly speculative and difficult to establish from Scriptural revelation. I can't be too hard on Aquinas, though, as pretty much all the medievals went wild trying to prove things about the Trinity that, in my opinion, we shouldn't expect to be able to know (see Russell Friedman for some very good treatments of the question more broadly.)

This was fascinating. The title is slightly misleading because the author is not arguing that "dispensationalism" existed before John Nelson Darby, but that many of its elements were being advocated by various theologians. (Most of these theologians were not ones that I was familiar with.) The most controversial will probably be his assertions that something like a "rapture" had precursors in certain works on the apocalypse. I personally found these references too vague to be entirely convincing. i also wish the author had added a treatment of Darby to the end showing how he had integrated these elements into a system. Notably, the author never attempts to show that Darby knew about or was influenced by the theologians the author covers in the book. Nevertheless, this was a fascinating treatment and I highly recommend it.

I'm sure scholars more knowledgeable than I am will find plenty of details to question in this book. It is especially helpful for showing the continuity of the Reformed orthodox with medieval forbears in understanding human nature. The later chapters on the influence of dualism are also excellent. Aside from one odd passage about the nonpersonhood of a human in a vegetative state, this book is a great introduction to the topic.

This was a fascinating book. The author's thesis is fairly simple: the Gospel is intimately connected to the redemption of Jerusalem and the Jewish people, in particular in light of Jesus's federal representation and enactment of Israel's mission to the world. The author's treatment of the land in chapter 1 and the nature of Israel's redemption in chapter 3 are especially well-done. In a book of this length, it would be impossible to detail every relevant Scriptural passages. Nevertheless, it would have been interesting if the author had interacted more with Matt. 24 and other prophecies concerning Jerusalem's destruction, since he acknowledges that AD 70 was an act of divine judgment on the city. His treatment of Revelation is also unfortunately sparse. It is in chapters 2 and 4 where the author proposes some considerably more controversial ideas. Chapter 2 is concerned with the temple, and Kinzer argues that Jesus' sacrifice and resurrection did not supers...

The Original Bishops: Office and Order in the First Christian Communities Alistair C. Stewart This is a work of truly impressive scholarship which sets forth a thesis I had not heard before. I am not familiar with the relevant literature, with which the author copiously interacts, so I am not in the best position to evaluate it. Nevertheless, his central contention--that the bishop was primarily responsible for distribution of the eucharist, an "economic" responsibility--strikes me as quite plausible. Further, explaining presbytyrs with reference to citywide federative models of churches goes some way to explaining a lot of the NT data. I think that Benjamin L. Merkle is right, however, to criticize some of the Scriptural lacunae in Stewart's argument (namely James 5:14 in particular). My other major criticism is that this book is extremely dry, and not particularly well-organized. i had a hard time summarizing the overall structure and shape of his argument once I got...

The Baptism of Jesus the Christ Ralph Smith This books is written by a "Federal vision" proponent, which means you will get lots of fascinating typological exegesis, particularly in chapters 2 and 3 which are masterful. I wanted to give this book 5 stars, but I had to knock off a star because of the author's seriously aberrant Trinitarian doctrine. He wants to affirm divine immutability and even simplicity (generally not a word that most FV sympathizers like), but also believes that rituality is intrinsic to God's nature. How this is in any way compatible with divine immutability, let alone divine simplicity, is beyond me. This is serious enough error that I cannot give the book 5 stars. If one skips the chapter on the Trinity, however, one will derive much benefit.

Spirit and Sacrament: An Invitation to Eucharismatic Worship Andrew Wilson This is a book that I really wanted to like. Wilson is an excellent writer, and I had been awaiting this book for some time. I am attracted to the vision of "eucharismatic" worship that Wilson describes. At the end of the day, however, there were two big problems. First, I still don't know what a church like this would look like; Wilson only hints at this, and admits to not being able to offer concrete examples. I suspect this is what some Anglican churches are trying to pull off with, at least from testimonies I've heard, very mixed results. Second, I am what many would call a theoretical continuationist but a parctical cessationist. That is, I see no Biblical evidence that miraculous spiritual gifts were only for the early church, but I remain unconvince that what we see in the American charismatic movement resembles what was going on in the early church to any serious degree. Even despite...