Churchman article on Bishop J C Ryle

“Well-wishers sent him an ornately embroidered cope and mitre, but he returned them, saying he ‘had no intention of making a guy of himself’, and another gift of a pastoral staff was graciously, but firmly declined: ‘No staff for me, if you send me a staff I shall lock it up in a cupboard and never see it again. A Bishop wants a Bible and no staff.’…”

– Church Society has republished Eric Russell’s 1999 Churchman article on Bishop J C Ryle. Available here as a PDF file.

The Pursuit of Holiness – free audiobook

The free audiobook from Christian Audio for January 2011 is Jerry Bridge’s The Pursuit of Holiness. Grab it here.

Stott on Charles Simeon

In November 2004, at Taylor University in Indiana, John Stott delivered a 33 minute introduction to Charles Simeon. The video was recently uploaded to Vimeo.

On preaching, Stott quotes Simeon: “Does [the sermon] uniformly tend to humble the sinner, to exalt the Saviour, and to promote holiness?”

(h/t Justin Taylor, who also has some useful links.)

Narnia Invaded

Writing before the release of the most recent film, Steven D. Boyer looks at the Hollywood interpretation of the Narnia books.

“If there is a possibility that Lewis was right—even a bare possibility—then this loss of the original Narnia, this domestication of Aslan, is distressing indeed. It signals nothing less than an invasion by a foreign and hostile power.

The creators of this ‘new improved’ Narnia have taken the single element in Lewis’s tales that twenty-first-century viewers most need to be instructed in, and they have recast it so that it contributes to the error rather than correcting it.”

– In the November–December edition of Touchstone.

Biblical inerrancy

“I have long wanted to write a serious piece on the doctrine of biblical inerrancy. Recently I was given the opportunity to do so through an invitation to contribute to a volume essays, The Bible and the Academy: Critical Scholarship and the Evangelical Understanding of Scripture in the 21st Century, edited by James Hoffmeier and Dennis Magary and to be published by Crossway in 2011.

I do not intend to reproduce the article here but instead simply to outline its argument…”

– ACL President Mark Thompson writes at Theological Theology.

Accordance for iOS

Those who use Accordance 9 Bible software may be interested to know that it’s now available for the iPhone and iPad. It’s a free app, and if you already have purchased modules, they can be used. Details here.

Mark’s Gospel performed by Max McLean

Looking for something worthwhile to watch on New Year’s Eve?

Justin Taylor at Between Two Worlds points out that the video of Max McLean performing The Gospel According to Mark is available in its entirety on YouTube, thanks to the Fellowship for the Performing Arts Theater Company.

See at all here – you can see the entire Gospel performed in about 90 minutes. Well worth your time.

Two-Year Bible Reading Plan

One of the most-searched-for terms on our website is “Bible reading plans” – and here Stephen Witmer on The Gospel Coalition website has some helpful thoughts – as well as a quote from Robert Murray M’Cheyne.

Barry Newman on ‘Science & Genesis 1:1–2:3’

Barry Newman has now uploaded all his blog posts on “Science and Genesis 1:1 – 2:3” as a single PDF file.

“One of the most significant areas that we believers need to address is the scepticism that arises because of what is perceived to be the consequences for belief of commitment to certain cosmological, biological evolutionary, anthropological, psychological and sociological theories. This blog series and ones hopefully to follow, will attempt to examine afresh the early chapters of Genesis to see what implications there are for such theories. Its main emphasis however will be on the text of Scripture itself rather than the theories themselves.”

– There’s plenty to provoke thought and further investigation.

Assurance and Perseverance

“I was recently asked to write a brief response to a question about assurance. The questioner had been troubled by the question (or rather by some responses to the question) ‘Can a believer lose their salvation?’

The question of assurance is a deeply troubling one for many. In every church where I have served there have been people who have struggled with this question…”

– Mark Thompson writes on “Assurance and Perseverance” at Theological Theology.

See also Mark’s (unrelated) previous post, Whatever happened to ad fontes?

“Many of the great advances of the Renaissance and Reformation eras were built upon the humanist program of education in the eloquence of antiquity. Intellectuals such as Desiderius Erasmus believed that society could be improved, and the abuses and errors of the past corrected, through serious and extensive engagement with classical literature.

In the field of theology, one of the most decisive changes was an insistence on first-hand engagement rather than a reliance on secondary summaries of great thoughts from the past. Instead of relying on the Vulgate, Greek and Hebrew studies flourished. Instead of working from collections of purple passages from the church fathers, reading extensively in their works was encouraged as a means of properly understanding the context and significance of things they taught…”

Christmas Day sermon 2010 — Bp Stuart Robinson

Read Bishop Stuart Robinson’s Christmas Day sermon — to be preached this morning at St. John’s Reid, in Canberra. (PDF file.)

Bp of Canberra & Goulburn’s Christmas message

Bishop Stuart Robinson’s Christmas message, 2010 —

“Leo Tolstoy wrote a book in 1879 called A Confession. This work tells the story of his search for meaning and purpose in life. Rejecting Christianity as a child, Tolstoy left university and went out in search of pleasure. In Moscow and St. Petersburg he drank heavily, lived promiscuously, and gambled frequently. His ambition was to become wealthy and famous but nothing really satisfied him…”

– Read it all here.

A Christmas sermon ‘from Luther’

“Dr. Rod Rosenbladt preaches a Christmas sermon borne of Martin Luther’s writings, constructed by Dr. Roland Bainton, who taught history at Yale University from 1936 to 1961. Though Luther never wrote nor preached this sermon, it is assembled from his writings as a series of parts, as Dr. Bainton envisioned Luther could have written a Christmas sermon. This audio was dug up from the archives…”

– a 14 minute 9.6MB mp3 file from The White Horse Inn. Listen with a smile. (h/t Faith by Hearing.)

Seasonal Reflections from Carl Trueman

Carl Trueman has been posting some seasonal reflections at Reformation21. Part 1, part 2 and part 3 are now online.

From part 2,

“The glory of Christmas is the reality of the God in human flesh; and one of the greatest aspects of this incarnation is that which found its clearest doctrinal expression in the so-called Chalcedonian Formula of 451 AD. This rather dusty looking formula emphasized the union of the two natures, divine and human, in the one person of the Lord Jesus Christ.   While many of us instinctively recoil at the language of natures and person, as being somewhat abstract and philosophical, as taming what is really a most explosive biblical truth – that God entered history in human form — this formula is actually the most glorious of practical truths.  Actions are, after all, things performed by persons, not natures. Thus, Chalcedon underlines the fact that, when Jesus looked with pity on the woman with the flow of blood, we know that this was not something that his human nature did while the divine nature was somehow disengaged or hidden or even opposed to what he was doing. No, God manifest in the flesh looked with pity upon her. God saw, God knew, God acted with mercy.

Because God in Christ is a person, not two people or simply two natures spookily floating in the one space, the action of Jesus revealed something deep and wonderful about God himself: the one who created all things, the one who measures the very dimensions of the universe as if they were the mere span of his hand — this God looks with pity upon a poor, nameless woman in her sufferings which, while terrible to her, were of no cosmic significance whatsoever.”

‘Another day, another reason to dislike WikiLeaks’

“Listening to Radio 4’s Sunday programme this morning, there was an interview with Andrew Brown from the Guardian in which he said something like this: that the reason the WikiLeaks cables were so useful was that, unlike journalists, they could disclose their sources, because those who sent them assumed that they were speaking confidentially — “But of course, they were not.”

Now this was interesting, coming as it did from a journalist…”

– This last week John Richardson has been posting some thoughtful comments on the Wikileaks saga – at The Ugley Vicar. Today’s is no exception.

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