Recent Martyrs

Stop whatever you are doing and go read this post on these three men:

Ugur Yuksel

Tilman Geske with his wife and three children

Necati Aydin

I have often heard John Piper say that the Muslim world will not be won without martyrs. May the Lord be pleased to use the testimony of these men to bring many Muslims to faith.

PCA Study Report on Federal Vision

If you’ve heard of “Federal Vision, which is synonymous with “Auburn Avenue Theology,” this committee from the PCA:

Committee Members:

TE Paul Fowler, Chairman

TE Grover Gunn, Secretary

TE Ligon Duncan

TE Sean Lucas

RE Robert Mattes

RE William Mueller

RE John White.has done you a favor. They have carefully described Federal Vision, along with summarizing the New Perspective on Paul. In addition, they have compared Federal Vision and the New Perspective to the Westminster Confession of Faith. You can read the whole thing here.

Perhaps best of all–this is so rare in our day, they actually tell you what they think about the whole thing: “The fourth section sets forth nine features of NPP and FV teaching that the committee finds to be contrary to the Westminster Standards.”

Wright on Substitution

In a previous post I wondered whether Wright includes the notion of God’s wrath being satisfied by Christ on the cross in his thinking about Penal Substitution. Several quotes have come to my attention that indicate that he has affirmed this idea in writing, so to my thinking he has answered that question. Here are the quotes:

Wright, Matthew for Everyone:

“The Old Testament prophets speak darkly about the ‘cup of YHWH’s wrath.’ These passages talk of what happens when the one God, grieving over the awful wickedness of the world, steps in at last to give the violent and bloodthirsty, the arrogant and oppressors, the reward for their ways and deeds. It’s as though God’s holy anger against such people is turned into wine: dark, sour wine which will make them drunk and helpless. They will be forced to ‘drink the cup,’ to drain to the dregs the wrath of the God who loves and vindicates the weak and helpless. The shock of this passage is that Jesus speaks of drinking this cup himself” [pp. 60, 61]

From Wright’s Romans commentary:

“No clearer statement is found in Paul, or indeed anywhere else in all early Christian literature, of the early Christian belief that what happened on the cross was the judicial punishment of sin. Taken in conjunction with 8:1 and the whole argument of the passage, not to mention the partial parallels in 2 Cor 5:21 and Gal 3:13, it is clear that Paul intends to say that in Jesus’ death the damnation that sin deserved was meted out fully and finally, so that sinners over whose heads that condemnation had hung might be liberated from this threat once and for all.”

From ch. 12 of Wright’s Jesus and the Victory of God:

“God, because in His mercy He willed to forgive sinful men and, being truly merciful, willed to forgive them righteously, that is, without in any way condoning their sin, purposed to direct against His own very Self in the person of His Son the full weight of that righteous wrath which they deserved.”

I note also that in their response to Wright, the editors of Pierced for Our Transgressions say that the disagreement is methodological, and they don’t question his commitment to Penal Substitution.

UPDATE: Mike Bird has a helpful post here.

May the Lord give his people unity on this central aspect of the Gospel!

The Northbrook Conference on Biblical Manhood and Womanhood

Doug McHone will be live blogging The Northbrook Conference on Biblical Manhood and Womanhood with Randy Stinson beginning tonight.

Watch Eric Schumacher’s blog, or check back here, for the audio.

N. T. Wright and Penal Substitution

N. T. Wright has written an essay in which he “strongly” affirms penal substitutionary atonement. Adrian Warnock has thoughts on how this relates to the theological controversy in the UK. Justin Taylor quotes important excerpts from an insightful review by D. A. Carson on one of Wright’s recent books.

Wright claims to “strongly” affirm penal substation, but he never says that Christ satisfies the just wrath of God against sin. He rejects the caricature of a vengeful Father, but vengeance is not the same thing as just wrath. Wright speaks of Jesus absorbing evil and dying in place of his people, but he seems to carefully avoid stating that Jesus satisfied the just wrath of God against sin, which is at the heart of the traditional understanding of penal substitionary atonement. We are left wondering whether or not he thinks that God feels personal wrath against sin, and whether he includes this in his understanding of penal substitution. If he does not, even though he claims to strongly affirm the doctrine, one must wonder whether he is affirming what most others who affirm it mean by it.

All Hail King Jesus: Revelation 19:11-21

On October 4, 2005, I preached on Revelation 19:11-21. I just found the sermon online here.

May the Lord prosper his word!

N. T. Wright on C. S. Lewis

One great writer analyzes another, and light is shed on both. N. T. Wright reviews C. S. Lewis’s Mere Christianity. Enjoy!

HT: JT

War and Peace in the Criswell Theological Review

Every issue of the reactivated Criswell Theological Review has been both timely and engaging. They’ve done it again with the latest issue on war and peace.

Daryl Charles’s essay on Just War Theory is a helpful primer on both the biblical texts and the early fathers.

Richard Land’s applications of these principles to the situations in North Korea, Rwanda, and Darfur, was so fascinating that I read every word slowly. You can check it out here.

The consistent relevance of this journal and the impressive quality of its discussions force the conclusion that those who are not subscribed are only troubling themselves with the problem of having to access this journal through a library or some other means. You have to read it, and it’ll be so much easier to sign up and let them bring it to your doorstep.

Mohler on Motherhood

Here’s an excerpt from Dr. Mohler’s post, “Does Motherhood Mean Anything?”

Iran scored a huge publicity coup in the capture and release of 15 British sailors and Royal Marines in recent days. Iran has played this game before, and is likely to play it again. The tactic puts the nation directly into the headlines around the world — and that is the whole point.

Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad played the media like a musical instrument, greeting the captives just prior to their release. The Muslim world loved it. Tragically, the most damaging element of Ahmadinejad’s media triumph was handed to him by the Royal Navy in the person of Leading Seaman Faye Turney, the only woman among the captives and the mother of a 3-year-old daughter.

Her presence among the captives taken from the British patrol vessel gave Ahmadinejad the opportunity to make this observation:

“You will know that among the detainees there is one lady who is a mother of a child. Why is it that the most difficult work like patrolling at sea should be given to a woman?

“Why is there no respect for motherhood? Why does the West not value its women?”

Ahmadinejad’s questions still reverberate around the Muslim world. Nothing could more effectively demonstrate the immorality of Western values before Muslim eyes than this — a mother of a little girl sent as a warrior.

As Kathleen Parker remarked in The Washington Post:

On any given day, one isn’t likely to find common cause with Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. He’s a dangerous, lying, Holocaust- denying, Jew-hating cutthroat thug — not to put too fine a point on it.

But he was dead-on when he wondered why a once-great power such as Britain sends mothers of toddlers to fight its battles.

Driven by a fanatical ideology of feminism, the West has turned its back on a reality as basic as motherhood. We have adopted a new morality that insists — nature’s obstinacy notwithstanding — that there is no difference between men and women. This produces mothers of babies and toddlers in uniform and in the killing zones.

Source.

Mohler’s Top Ten Christian Biographies

Here’s a great list of books to start chipping away at: Mohler’s Top Ten Christian Biographies.