13 July 2008
A local church here has agreed to host a four-week series on apologetics, taught by yours truly and starting this coming Friday (18 July), 7-9 pm in Orange, CA. Sorry about the short notice; we just got the details nailed down Friday night.
I’m titling the series “Biblical Apologetics for Busy Believers.” A rough, and tentative, outline follows:
Session 1: Start with God (Genesis 1-3) — All thinking must start with God, and the nature of God’s claims is such that no one can be neutral. A Christian must always begin with this understanding; to fail to start everything with God’s revelation is to make the same mistake that Eve made in the Garden of Eden. (As an example, we’ll consider a Christian response to the claim that there’s no good historical evidence for Jesus.)
Session 2: Without Excuse (Romans 1) — Unbelief has no excuse whatsoever; the unbeliever really does know the Christian God. To the extent that he refuses to acknowledge the triune God of the Bible, his Read the rest of this entry »
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Posted by Tim Nichols
13 July 2008
If you’re looking for encyclopedic, facts-and-figures resources, there’s a ton of them on the market, and Josh McDowell’s material is still some of the best. A recent publication, Evidence for Christianity, combines and updates the evidential material from a number of previous works, and that’s the one I’d recommend, if you haven’t already got a few of McDowell’s works on the shelf.
Facts and figures are important, but in this post I want to address resources for how you use them. McDowell was never the best source for this — he’s more of the “make a bigger pile” school of thought. Until very recently, all the really good basic instruction on how to use the facts was on audio, but there wasn’t a book that did the job effectively and accessibly. Gary DeMar at American Vision has changed all that by transcribing and editing a series of talks Greg Bahnsen did for high school and college students back in the early nineties. The resulting book, Pushing the Antithesis: The Apologetic Methodology of Greg L. Bahnsen, is a gem. It’s accessible, relatively simple, and it has study questions at the end of each chapter. It’s also a little spendy, but it’s worth it. Bahnsen’s other basic book, Always Ready: Directions for Defending the Faith, is cheaper, but it’s a set of course syllabi edited together by Robert Booth. It’s much denser, and because the material was designed to be accompanied by live instruction, it’s much harder to plow through without help. Thanks to Pushing the Antithesis, the necessary help is now available in print.
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Posted by Tim Nichols
6 July 2008
Commentary and translation choices are always tricky. The Bible has inspired a lot of comment and translation over the years, and a surprising amount has been poorly done. Nowhere is this more true than with the Song of Solomon.
The first and most blatant problem is the number of interpreters whose starting point is a red-faced “It can’t possibly be saying that!!! So they gin up a flimsy excuse and explain how the Song is really about Christ’s love for the church.
Apparently the church has captivating hair, an intoxicating navel, and really nice breasts (Song 7:1-5). Of course, the real problem with this view is not the patent absurdity of it — and it is absurd — but the starting premise. Why shouldn’t the Song be exactly what it sounds like — a frank celebration of married love in all its complexity, delicacy, and lush sensual splendor?
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Posted by Tim Nichols
22 June 2008
For those of you who last checked in with biblical counseling when Jay Adams was in his psychology-skewering heyday, you need to come have another look. The present generation of spokesmen for biblical counseling offers a more well-rounded, richer grasp of Scripture and a much more sober-minded tone. While there certainly was some justification for Adams’ jeremiads, the present generation seems to have rediscovered the value and utility of brotherly kindness, a mode of interaction sadly lacking in the early writings of the movement.
Of the present voices, one of the clearest and most articulate is David Powlison.
Seeing with New Eyes: Counseling and the Human Condition through the Lens of Scripture is not a “counseling model” as such. It is to a counseling model what a list of mountaintop elevations is to a topographic map of the entire mountain range: it touches on the high points, and leaves the rest alone. But this seemingly incomplete way of teaching turns out to be surprisingly instructive.
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Posted by Tim Nichols
15 June 2008
I recently renewed my acquaintance with John Donne’s Devotions, an outstanding work I first met as a senior in high school. As it always does, the closing passage from Meditation XVII really struck me.
No man is an island, entire of itself; every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main. If a clod be washed away by the sea, Europe is the less, as well as if a promontory were, as well as if a manor of thy friend’s or of thine own were: any man’s death diminishes me, because I am involved in mankind, and therefore never send to know for whom the bells tolls; it tolls for thee. Neither can we call this a begging of misery, or a borrowing of misery, as though we were not miserable enough of ourselves, but must fetch in more from the next house, in taking upon us the misery of our neighbours. Truly it were an excusable covetousness if we did, for affliction is a treasure, and scarce any man hath enough of it. No man hath affliction enough that is not matured and ripened by and made fit for God by that affliction. If a man carry treasure in bullion, or in a wedge of gold, and have none coined into current money, his treasure will not defray him as he travels. Tribulation is treasure in the nature of it, but it is not current money in the use of it, except we get nearer and nearer our home, heaven, by it. Another man may be sick too, and sick to death, and this affliction may lie in his bowels, as gold in a mine, and be of no use to him; but this bell, that tells me of his affliction, digs out and applies that gold to me: if by this consideration of another’s danger I take mine own into contemplation, and so secure myself, by making my recourse to my God, who is our only security.
(The bold emphasis is mine.)
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Posted by Tim Nichols
11 June 2008
Six Secrets of the Christian Life by Zane Hodges is one of the shortest, easiest books you’ll ever read, which is a good thing, because you’re going to want to read it several times. In his inimitably brief way, Hodges takes readers on a guided tour of central truths of the Christian life: its miraculous and transformative nature, the need to be open to God’s truth and to pray for His revealed will, the importance of mindset and understanding our position in Christ.
If this sounds like the same old standard stuff, that’s because in some ways it is — but you should hear Hodges tell it. As is typical for him, Hodges does not philosophize; he doesn’t “develop doctrines” or “draw out principles” that are abstracted from the text of Scripture. Rather, he teaches through a careful reading of (relatively few) key passages. The result is that by the time you’re done, you will understand the Bible more clearly, and also understand more clearly how to walk with God.
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Posted by Tim Nichols
25 May 2008
If those who hate the Word of God can succeed in getting Christians to be embarrassed by any portion of the Word of God, then that portion will continually be employed as a battering ram against the godly principles that are currently under attack. In our day, three of the principal issues are abortion, feminism, and sodomy. If we respond to the “embarrassing parts” of Scripture by saying “That was then, this is now,” we will quickly discover that unembarrassed progressives can play that game even more effectively than embarrassed conservatives can.
This gem comes to us from Douglas Wilson’s Black & Tan: Essays and Excursions on Slavery, Culture War, and Scripture in America. Weighing in at less than 120 pages, this is definitely not the last word on slavery or culture war. But then, it isn’t trying to be. Rather, Wilson raises some much-neglected points and offers a valuable corrective to typical contemporary evangelical sensibilities. Read the rest of this entry »
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Posted by Tim Nichols
Anti-Gnostic Song of Solomon Translations and Commentaries
6 July 2008Commentary and translation choices are always tricky. The Bible has inspired a lot of comment and translation over the years, and a surprising amount has been poorly done. Nowhere is this more true than with the Song of Solomon.
The first and most blatant problem is the number of interpreters whose starting point is a red-faced “It can’t possibly be saying that!!! So they gin up a flimsy excuse and explain how the Song is really about Christ’s love for the church.
Apparently the church has captivating hair, an intoxicating navel, and really nice breasts (Song 7:1-5). Of course, the real problem with this view is not the patent absurdity of it — and it is absurd — but the starting premise. Why shouldn’t the Song be exactly what it sounds like — a frank celebration of married love in all its complexity, delicacy, and lush sensual splendor?
Read the rest of this entry »