Wednesday, April 14, 2010

Things to Click

Around the blogosphere please note:

Justin Taylor blogs on ambition and the imitation of Christ (with some good quotes from an article by Jason Hood). Craig Evans debates Bart Ehrman on the historical reliability of the Gospels. The Bibledex has some good videos on Jude and 1 Peter. Stephen Carlson notes two recent articles in JTS about forgeries concerning Mark. The division in evangelicalism today is probably represented with the two conferences running in Wheaton (Annual Theology Conference) and Louisville (T4G) respectively and Brian LePort asks people where they'd rather be.

2 comments:

Unknown said...

Mike,

I'm with ya on the division in evangelicalism being represented in the attendants of the 2 conferences. However, what would you point to as the main reason for this division? New Perspective on Paul? Reformed theology? Justification?

Nick said...

I think it might be hard to say exactly what the root is. However, I think it comes down to imputation and what the center of the gospel is. If you have heard anything about what is going down at T4G it sounds like a lot of talk about what the gospel is not. When RC Sproul spoke about what the gospel is he basically gave a standard explanation of imputation. John Piper's talk was on whether Jesus preached the same gospel as Paul. The talk was all about whether Jesus preached imputation.

I think a better topic would be "Did Paul preach the same gospel as Jesus?" Ironically, N.T. Wright has done a great job in the some of his books (WSPRS) in showing that this is in fact the case. Paul preached a gospel centered on the crucified and risen Messiah. Because of this the New Age (or the Kingdom of God)had broken into the present and forgiveness of sins is available to all those who pledge their allegiance to Jesus, the Lord of the world.

That seems to be the problem with the 'reformed gospel'. It places imputation at the center and everything else is rarely spoken of.

With that said, I think imputation is incredibly important. But I think if we start where Wright starts (i.e. the fulfillment of God's promises to Israel) then we are on safer ground.

Also, a lot of Calvinists like exclusive fellowship with Calvinists.