2024 Annual Moore College Lectures now online
Video recordings of the 2024 Annual Moore College Lectures by Dr Tom Schreiner have now been published online.
Dr Schreiner, Associate Dean for the School of Theology at the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Kentucky, spoke on “The Battle for the Truth of the Gospel” from the Letter to the Galatians.
A Review of “The Widening of God’s Mercy: Sexuality within the Biblical Story” by Christopher B. Hays and Richard B. Hays
“Sometimes when people change their mind it is occasion for joy and celebration, for there is no virtue in adhering to past opinions for the sake of tradition or fear of criticism.
In this case, however, Richard Hays’s change of mind is a cause of grief and sadness instead of joy, especially for those like me who have learned so much from his outstanding scholarship over the years. …”
– At The Council on Biblical Manhood and Womanhood, Thomas Schreiner reviews “The Widening of God’s Mercy: Sexuality within the Biblical Story”.
See also:
At The Gospel Coalition, Rebecca McLaughlin shares her review of the book:
“For decades, Christians seeking to uphold the Bible’s ‘no’ to same-sex sexual relationships have quoted Richard Hays’s treatment of this topic in his Moral Vision of the New Testament. But Hays (emeritus professor of New Testament at Duke Divinity School) has coauthored a new book, The Widening of God’s Mercy: Sexuality Within the Biblical Story, arguing for ‘the full inclusion of LGBT+ people in Christian communities.’
Readers might expect to find that Hays has changed his mind about the meaning of the verses that apparently prohibit same-sex sex. But he hasn’t. Instead, he and his son, Christopher (an Old Testament professor at Fuller Theological Seminary), suggest God has changed his mind. …”
Moore College School of Biblical Theology 2024
Coming up next week!
We understand it’s not too late to register.
Positive Masculinity
“Friends in Christ, this month, Micaela Cronin, the country’s first Domestic, Family and Sexual Violence Commissioner, handed down her first ‘report card’ to federal parliament on progress of the government’s National Plan to End Violence against Women and Children. …
Also highly significant in my view, Ms Cronin urged governments to help redefine masculinity and engage men effectively. She said, “we need to have eyes on men in different ways than we do now”. She said she was being told consistently by women to “please work with our men” and data uncovering how men become violent and stopped being violent was desperately needed. [Source]
It’s at this point I offer some Christian reflections.”
– The Dean of Sydney, Sandy Grant, turns to Scripture to show us what a real man must be like.
Latest issue of Themelios (49/2) now available
The latest edition of Themelios (volume 49, no. 2) is now available for download – or to read online – from The Gospel Coalition.
Includes a book review by Moore College’s Lionel Windsor (that’s also available here).
– Download or read online the full issue here.
Review – Darkness: The Conversion of Anglican Armidale
Presbyterian Minister Graham Barnes reviews Darkness: The Conversion of Anglican Armidale, 1960-2019, by Thomas Fudge.
“Darkness is Professor Fudge’s ‘accidental (p.1)’ book on the history of the Anglican Diocese of Armidale from 1960 to 2019, and the battles between theological liberalism and evangelicalism. The book is thirteen chapters long, 800+ pages, and for the most part theology and history are interwoven.
For Fudge, the watershed moment was the 1964 Election Synod where the evangelical Clive Kerle was elected Bishop of the Diocese. …
Not being an Anglican, and not knowing the individuals nor the events that Fudge seeks to describe, I will try limit this review more to Fudge’s theology, focusing on the earlier and later parts of his book. In truth, many of his comments, in particular about individuals, were poor to say the least.”
– Read the full review at AP.
Related:
Responses to a new book about the recent history of the Diocese of Armidale – 09 April 2024.
“John Chapman led a diocese to go evangelical, and outrage lingers still” – 17 June 2023.
Chappo’s contribution to the Anglican Diocese of Armidale – Tim Stevens, 2014.
John Chapman touched on his time in Armidale several times in this 2012 interview with Richard Chin (on Vimeo). If you only have time for one segment, you may want to jump to 1:13:27. (He recalls events around the 1959 Billy Graham Crusade.)
Fearing God Our Creator
“When was the last time you heard a sermon about the fear of God?
My guess is that if you have, it was a long time ago. But the Scriptures teem with references to the fear of the LORD. Most famously: “the fear of the LORD is the beginning of wisdom” (Prov 9:10). Or again, from the great Psalm 2: “Serve the LORD with fear and rejoice with trembling” (Ps 2:11).
Yet one of the most frequent commands in Scripture is “do not be afraid”. So are we to fear, or not to fear?…”
– Richard Chin begins a series of articles on the fear of God – at The Gospel Coalition Australia.
Image: Richard Chin speaking at Moore College earlier this year.
How Long, O Lord…?
“In April 2017, The Spectator (UK) carried an article by Douglas Murray who asked, ‘Who Will Protect Nigeria’s Northern Christians?’ Murray pointed out that the Fulani (militia) are watching everything closely from the surrounding mountains. Every week, their progress across the northern states of Plateau and Kaduna continues. Every week, more massacres – another village burned, its church razed, its inhabitants slaughtered, raped or chased away…
‘For the outside world, what is happening to the Christians of northern Nigeria is both beyond our imagination and beneath our interest…’ …”
– In his Word on Wednesday at The Anglican Connection, John Mason draws us back to Palm 13.
The battle for the truth of the gospel — with Thomas Schreiner
From The Pastor’s Heart:
“One of the world’s leading New Testament Scholars Thomas Schreiner is in Sydney for the Moore College Lectures on ‘The Battle for the truth of the gospel.’
At the centre of his attention is NT Wright and the New Perspective on Paul, a debate that questions whether ancient Judaism was legalistic.
Schreiner tells of his roots in Roman Catholicism, a transformative evangelical faith, and the enduring importance of the Reformation perspective of justification by faith alone.
Schreiner, who chairs the Christian Standard Bible translation committee, takes us behind the scenes of the Christian Standard Bible’s translation process, revealing the rigorous debates and decisions that shape how we read that translation.
He outlines how denominational diversity influences translation accuracy.
Plus we unpack the profound need to teach biblical gender roles in contemporary culture.
Thomas Schreiner is professor of New Testament at Southern Baptist Theological College in Louisville, Kentucky.”
– Thirty-two minutes well worth watching / hearing.
Songs for the Summer – Psalm 1
At The Anglican Connection (and writing for a North American readership), John Mason shares two reflections on Psalm 1 for his Word on Wednesday –
Part 1: Happiness, Part 2: The Path to Life.
Elite sports chaplain Ashley Null: ‘The gospel is the antidote to performance-based identity’
“We’re not two minutes into our interview before Rev Canon Dr Ashley Null starts weeping gently.
It is not what I was expecting.
The danger with the relentless researching of your subject in preparation for an interview is that you’re bound to make some assumptions. My first was that Null, a Yale and Cambridge alumnus who is a leading expert on Thomas Cranmer and the theology of the English Reformation, might be intimidatingly intellectual and inaccessible to us mere mortals.
My second was that this might make for a difficult interview with an overly fastidious subject.
I was wrong on both counts. …”
– At Premier Christianity, Emma Fowle speaks with Ashley Null. Take the time to read. (Link with thanks to Anglican Mainstream.)
Related:
Chaplaincy on Track – SydneyAnglicans.net.
Photo courtesy Gafcon.
Review of Packer’s ‘Proclaiming Christ in a Pluralistic Age’
“I was eating pizza the other night with two young men, one a Christian, the other a seeker. We talked about what it means to be a Christian and some of the challenges of the Christian life.
The first surprise was that they/we couldn’t get through two family-sized pizzas. The youth of today!
The second was that they thought that becoming a Christian in 2024 was a way of rebelling.
One told how his boss, a Gen X Roman Catholic, explained that young men shouldn’t be going to church but should instead be finding a girlfriend to sleep with and getting drunk. The young man found this boringly orthodox, ignoble, and distasteful. He felt certain that there must be a better way to live.
I’m having conversations like these more and more these days. Are we seeing early signs of a spiritual awakening among young people? I wonder whether the Lord is beginning a new work among these younger generations.
What I know for certain is that the Church must be ready to receive young seekers. That means that our churches must be refuges of radical, self-sacrificial love. Parched and thirsting for meaning and community in today’s desert of online isolation and spiritual desolation, nothing will attract young people more than an actual flesh-and-blood loving Christian community. “By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you love one another.”
This kind of strange Christ-like love can arise only from an intimate relational knowledge of Jesus himself.
This is where a book like Proclaiming Christ in a Pluralistic Age comes in.
J. I. Packer (1926–2020) was a British theologian, author of the now-classic Knowing God (1973), who for most of his working life was a professor of theology at Regent College in Vancouver. He stands alongside John Stott, F.F. Bruce, Michael Green, Dick Lucas, Martyn-Lloyd Jones and other superb conservative-evangelical British preachers and theologians of the twentieth century.
The book is in fact a lightly edited transcription of five lectures that Packer first delivered at Kuyper College in Grand Rapids in 1978, and then at Moore College in Sydney. …”
–At AP, Campbell Markham reviews J I Packer’s Proclaiming Christ in a Pluralistic Age. (Bold added.)
And you can also see or hear Packer’s five lectures at the Moore College Annual Lectures in 1978 – in glorious grey and white, thanks to the Donald Robinson Library at Moore College.
His series title was “We Preach Christ Crucified”. Very much worth watching.
At about an hour each, why not consider watching these with your Bible Study?
Lecture 1 – We’ve a Story to Tell.
Lecture 2 – The man Christ Jesus.
Lecture 3 – He emptied himself: the divinity of Jesus Christ.
Lecture 4 – The wonderful exchange.
Lecture 5 – No other name: the uniqueness of Jesus Christ.
Related:
The Moore College Annual Lectures 2024 with Tom Schreiner.
A way back from disillusionment and disappointment in ministry — The Pastor’s Heart
From The Pastor’s Heart:
“Disillusionment is one of the great threats to the Christian life and to Christian ministry
A wise man said the worst thing in ministry was not a pastor who quits, but a pastor who doesn’t quit, but who keeps going when they’ve given up.
Sydney Missionary and Bible College Karl Deenick shares his own experience of hitting a major wall after seven years of pastoral work.
We unpack how ministry challenges can lead to a sense of disillusionment, especially among millennials, plus a way back.”
– Many will resonate with this one. Watch or listen here.
Related:
Gathered Together by Karl Deenick. (Matthias Media.)
Peter Adam’s talks at the 2001 Proclamation Trust Senior Ministers Conference:
The Making of a Man of God – 1.
The Making of a Man of God – 2.
The Making of a Man of God – 3.
God’s Sovereignty, Moral Evil, and the Attempted Assassination of Former President Trump: The Theological, Historical, and Political Issues
Albert Mohler has recorded a special (mid-Summer-holiday) edition of his The Briefing broadcast after the attempted assassination of Donald Trump.
He speaks about God’s Sovereignty, moral evil, Providence, and related topics – and reminds us that nothing happens by accident.
It’s also a reminder to pray for the USA in the election season.
Related:
God, make me a man like Corey Comperatore – Peter Heck writes at NotTheBee.
(Corey Comperatore is the crowd member who died using his body to shield his family from the incoming bullets.)
And a tribute from his daughter – “He was a man of God, loved Jesus fiercely, and also looked after our church and our members as family.”
A Word for the Church of England — and all of us
The latest Carson Center Podcast from The Gospel Coalition is an address by Don Carson on 1 John 2:3-27, “Christian Obedience, Love, and Perseverance”.
It shows God’s word is every bit as relevant today as it was when it was written –
“John lived at a time when there were many competing religions and Christianity was just old enough to be losing its edge. You had now second- and third-generation Christians. Many people who had been around for a while had lost something of their first love, and others … new young Turks … were convinced that new rising theologies were far more attractive, far more convincing than the old stuff passed down by the has-beens.
At the same time, there was a great deal of pressure in the empire towards what we would call today philosophical pluralism. That is, you could believe anything you like, so long as you don’t say that your view is right and other views are wrong. That you must not say. Then, inevitably, there were some people who were very strong on picking up particular points and making them everything. …
In that context, John writes his epistle. What he tends to do is to gravitate towards the essentials of the faith and set up absolute boundaries. They are as striking, they are as definitive today as they were 2,000 years ago. In this passage I read, John articulates three contrasts: those who talk and those who perform, those who love the world and those who love the Father, and those who are antichrists and those who are Christians. He does not leave much room for anything in between. …”
What we believe
The message at the heart of Christianity is really quite simple…