Recommended Books (Autumn 2022)
Every generation undoubtedly feels a sense of dislocation, but the world seems to be growing increasingly strange. The old liberal order fashioned in the nineteenth century and bludgeoned horribly during the twentieth appears to be tottering in the early twenty-first—wars in Europe, spasmodic breakdown of social order in major cities in the West and East, COVID-19 and the ensuing social chaos and governmental overreach, and economic...
Textual Criticism and the Local Church
Textual criticism is nearly impossible to avoid in the local church context. Textual criticism involves the decisions scholars make concerning the most original form of a text based on the manuscript evidence for the Hebrew Old Testament or the Greek New Testament. Every pastor deals with text-critical decisions each week as he prepares his sermon. Even the average Christian encounters text-critical issues when he or she picks up a...
Eleven Baptist Ecclesiology Texts Every Baptist Should Read
by Jesse Owens and Jake Stone In the fall of 2021, I (Jesse) had the pleasure of teaching a master’s level seminar on Baptist ecclesiology at Welch College. The course consisted primarily of reading and discussing Baptist texts in ecclesiology, many of which were from the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. We read texts from General Baptists and Particular Baptists on issues such as the nature of the church, believer’s baptism,...
Revisiting the Sabbath
We need Sabbath. Peter Scazzero remarked, “Without the Sabbath, we easily find ourselves lost and unsure of the larger picture of God in our lives.”[1] Our human nature prioritizes tasks over relationships, activity over rest. It favors constant stimulation through electronics and an overall rejection of the rhythm God ordained for human flourishing. Scazzero continues his vivid description of the human need for Sabbath, saying,...
Teaching Apologetically
I have written a fair amount over the years on the importance not only of teaching theology but also of teaching (and living) theologically in relation to youth ministry. I want to encourage youth pastors (and all pastors) always to have a mind toward the theological truth behind what they are teaching. How does one teach in a form that effectively respects and represents the important content they are communicating? It is this...
Blessing the Nations: Biblical Nationalism II
Earlier this year, I offered a short reflection on God’s creation of nations as recorded in Genesis 10 and 11. In that post we found that God created nations with distinct characteristics, such as a shared language, kinship, common territory, culture, and laws. Since God created these distinctive categories for our benefit, we cannot blame them for the existence of human conflict. Nor should we attempt to eliminate them in favor of...
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