Themelios: Issue 35-2, July 2010

by The Gospel Coalition

Publisher:

Gospel Coalition

, 2010

Contents

• "Minority Report: Not in the Public Interest" by Carl Trueman
• "B. B. Warfield on Creation and Evolution" by Fred G. Zaspel
• "Why Evangelicals Should Ignore Brian McLaren: How the New Testament Requires Evangelicals to Render a Judgment on the Moral Status of Homosexuality" by Denny Burk
• "A Member of the Family or a Stranger? A Review Article of Ancient Near Eastern Themes in the Biblical Theology" by Stephen Dempster
• "Parallels, Real or Imagined? A Review Article of Jeffrey J. Niehaus, Ancient Near Eastern Themes in the Biblical Theology" by William Edgar
• "How to Write—and How Not to Write—a Review: An Appreciative Response to Reviews of Ancient Near Eastern Themes in the Biblical Theology by Dempster and Edgar" by Jeffrey J. Niehaus
• "Pastoral Pensées: Motivations to Appeal to in Our Hearers When We Preach for Conversion" by D. A. Carson

Top Highlights

“If your hermeneutical framework matches Hays, then the answer is no. If Scripture is the norm that is not normed by any other norm, then we cannot set homosexuality aside as an issue of moral indifference. In other words, it is impossible to hold to biblical authority and follow McLaren’s view. They are mutually exclusive. We cannot be silent on this. The revisionist scholars are not silent, and we dare not be either. The stakes are too high because Paul says that homosexuals and effeminate persons will not inherit the kingdom of God (1 Cor 6:9).³⁰ Would not evangelical silence on this issue be a death-sentence for sinners who must repent?” (Page 219)

“None of us works in a vacuum, and we are all conditioned by our own experiences and context. Yet our own experiences and context should never be turned into a pretext for distorting the interpretation of Scripture.” (Page 220)

“Jesus and Paul do not look to any of them as the paradigm for understanding marriage and sex. Instead, Jesus and Paul look back without exception to the pre-fall monogamous union of Adam and Eve in Gen 2 as the norm of human sexuality and marriage. ‘For this cause a man shall leave his father and his mother and shall cling to his wife; and they shall become one flesh’” (Page 224)

“When Burridge says that ‘Jesus and the gospels have nothing to say’ about these issues, he echoes the objections that homosexual activists have raised for years. They protest that Jesus’ silence on the issue shows that homosexuality was of little or no concern to the historical Jesus.” (Page 218)

Product Details

• Title: Issue 35-2
• Editor: D. A. Carson
• Series: Themelios
• Publisher: The Gospel Coalition
• Publication Date: 2010
• Pages: 182

About The Gospel Coalition

Brian J. Tabb (PhD, London Theological Seminary) is academic dean at Bethlehem College & Seminary and an elder of Bethlehem Baptist Church in Minneapolis, Minnesota. He also serves as managing editor for Themelios, published by the Gospel Coalition, and is the author of Suffering in Ancient Worldview.

D.A. Carson is a research professor of New Testament at Trinity Evangelical Divinity School in Deerfield, Illinois. He has been at Trinity since 1978. Carson came to Trinity from the faculty of Northwest Baptist Theological Seminary in Vancouver, British Columbia, where he also served for two years as academic dean. He has served as an assistant pastor and pastor and has done itinerant ministry in Canada and the United Kingdom. Carson received a bachelor of science in chemistry from McGill University, the master of divinity from Central Baptist Seminary in Toronto, and the doctor of philosophy in New Testament from the University of Cambridge. Carson is an active guest lecturer in academic and church settings around the world. He holds membership on the Council for the Alliance of Confessing Evangelicals. Carson has also written many books that have garnered international acclaim, including his award-winning title The Gagging of God: Christianity Confronts Pluralism.

Daniel Strange is academic vice president and lecturer in culture, religion, and public theology at Oak Hill College, London. He is the author or coauthor of several other books, including The Possibility of Salvation Among the Unevangelised: An Analysis of Inclusivism in Recent Evangelical Theology.