Many intelligent Christians are puzzling today over what is being called "the new perspective on Paul." Seminary students run across it in their New Testament course reading and class lectures. Pastors hear about it from fledgling theologues wanting to impress them with their newfound knowledge of the latest in Pauline studies. Laypeople find it being peddled ubiquitously on websites, in various online discussion groups, and in numerous books on the Christian market, even from conservative evangelical publishing houses. By J. Ligon Duncan.

There is a fine line between the use and the overuse of a word. The same is true with public figures. When someone is getting exposure, we are excited for them. But when they are over-exposed we are embarrassed for them. In my view, the word covenant has crossed that line in Christian circles. As such, one often hears it applied in dubious ways...

This time of year, we might be forgiven the thought that the reference to the "king of terrors" in Job is to the IRS, but in fact it something much worse--death (Job 18:14)! It is Dr. Johnson who is credited with the remark that when a man knows he is going to be hanged in a fortnight,

The scale of suffering and the magnitude of the disaster in Southeast Asia defy the imagination. Sitting comfortably in our own homes and offices, we can look at the images, video segments, and computer simulations, knowing all the while that, in the nations that encircle the Indian Ocean, the death toll continues to mount.

I never thought a movie would ever do justice to Tolkien, but this one did, and that is high praise from a Tolkien fanatic. I should say, as a whole, the movie is incredibly intense (definitely not fare for younger children -- in that regard, the PG-13 rating needs to be taken seriously: there is no sexual content or foul language, but the violence, while not gratuitous, is realistic).

I have been listening to Dimitri Shostakovich’s Trio No. 2 in E Minor, op. 67. It is a vivid depiction of the Nazi death camps.

The Alliance's refutation of Harold Camping's view of the church is here. This paper, written by Council Members J. Ligon Duncan and Mark Talbot, points out on several levels, using Scripture, why Harold Camping's view on the church is wrong.

These remarks were given during the Wednesday Evening Special Prayer Service, September 12, 2001 at First Presbyterian Church, Jackson, Mississippi

A transcript of remarks delivered at Capitol Hill Baptist Church on September 16, 2001

I never tire of hearing a Beethoven symphony even though I must have listened to all nine (ten, if you count an unfinished one) hundreds of times. The same is true of all great literature—particularly those that feed our souls and draw us nearer to God. And the best literature of that kind comes from the Puritan era.

This little book, its website reports, has been a runaway best-seller, appearing on both the New York Times and the USA Today Top 10 Lists and winning Nonfiction Book of the Year, Retailers Choice Awards. Over six million copies are in print. Time magazine has chronicled its extraordinary success. The New York Times ran a front-page article on it.

How successfully do you handle the sins of others? Observation suggests that the Christian family too often reacts with either hot indignation or cold indifference, without a proper sense of biblical responsibility. Sometimes we seem as bad at handling others’ failures as we are at overcoming our own. No doubt these two things are related. Yet, given the nature of the gospel, would we not expect that the church should be vastly different from the world on this point?

One of the very first “Christian” possessions I ever had, apart from a Bible, was a “Promise Box”—a box containing hundreds of biblical promises printed on small cards, one for each day of the year. I cannot now remember whether it was a gift or a personal purchase. Perhaps my forgetfulness is a personal convenience.

I expect that when you hear the phrase “living by faith,” you think only of Christians trying to exist without guaranteed financial support and that when you hear the word “fundamentalism” you think only of a version of Evangelicalism that seems to you coarse, crass, combative, crude, and best avoided.

Evangelical Christianity now offers heaven on the installment plan. Through a magical kind of faith we can take advantage of a spiritual lay-away plan. We can sell the gospel on a 90-day payment system. The future can be ours, now. How does this legerdemain work? With the proper formula, the new magic brings the rabbit out of the hat without the use of mirrors. It is the “name it and claim it” gambit, a ploy that even Houdini failed to grasp.

Perhaps no individual has done more to shape modern interpretation of the Bible than the late Marburg professor, Rudolf Bultmann. Known for his radical program of demythologizing the New Testament, he argued that an objective grammatico-historical method of biblical interpretation is neither possible nor desirable.

The question of whether particular people are saved, or are converted, or are believers, is often heard in evangelical circles. We recognize it in some form a necessary question, because it points to the momentous passage from spiritual death to spiritual life that everyone needs, and does so in away that excludes the sacramentalist fancy that merely being baptized makes you safe forever.

How does one measure spiritual growth? The question assumes that we do grow spiritually, that there is something to be measured. But can I take that for granted? Scripture tells us to grow—“grow in the grace and knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ,” says Peter. But I suspect that, with all our passion for bodybuilding and personal development, very few of us are seeking to grow in the way that Peter tells us to. So very few of us are actually doing so.

Someone I knew recently expressed an opinion that surprised and in some ways disappointed me. I said to myself, “I thought he would have more discernment than that."

Recently a Christian educator remarked to me, “The modern student faces the alternatives of a Christian education or a good education.” Though on the surface the remark seems bathed in cynicism, it was actually delivered in a tone of profound alarm. The speaker is committed to the enterprise of Christian education, but is concerned that in an effort to maintain a spiritual purity unblemished by the world, much of Christian education may be compromising the goal of academic excellence.

To begin at the beginning, taking nothing for granted, is always the wise way. So the first thing to do is face up to the basic question: Does “right living” matter anyway? Is the moral quality of a Christian’s personal life important? To this question you would, of course, expect all believers to reply “yes,” for any other answer would sound shocking. But if our “yes” were motivated only by a desire not to shock nor lose face

Thomas Chalmers (1780-1847) was one of the most remarkable men of his time—a mathematician, evangelical theologian, economist, ecclesiastical, political, and social reformer all in one.  His most famous sermon was published under the unlikely title: “The Expulsive Power of a New Affection.” In it he expounded an insight of permanent importance for Christian living: you cannot destroy love for the world merely by showing its emptiness.

It has always been difficult for Christians to think in harmony about the state. This is due to two ambiguities. One ambiguity is that the church, although it should be sacred in the sense of being devoted wholly to God and his kingdom, is often quite secular and thus, to the embarrassment of many believers, frequently takes its authority, theology, agenda, and methods from the world. It is not noticeably unique.

Four more days until she would be 17. It would be her father’s birthday, too, but there would be no celebration this year. It was the depth of the Great Depression and her father was dying. The children knelt around the bed while their mother prayed, but the girl wondered whether anyone was listening. Was God near enough to hear a prayer? Did he take any notice of their situation?

It is generally felt that guidance is a tricky subject, and most of us have had first-hand experience of what we would call guidance problems, either our own or those of others whom we have tried to help.

Something about Easter cuts through mere religious profession. At other times of the year and on other subjects the outwardly religious person can mask an empty spiritual life without words. Not on Easter. At Easter we proclaim the resurrection, which is difficult to do if we have not had a personal encounter with the One who rose form the dead 2,000 years ago.

My first doctor was a man of great personal warmth and reassuring presence. As a child, I thought of him with deepest admiration and affection. However, there was one part of his examinations I always disliked—when he spoke the words “Stick out your tongue, and say ‘aah.’” Yet while always feeling terribly discomfited by this procedure, I was also always amazed that he could apparently tell so much about my health by this “tongue test”!

An encounter with a friend from my teen-age years reminded me of the wise and pithy words of the Puritan writer John Flavel: “The providence of God is like Hebrew words—it can be read only backwards.” I was leaving a restaurant in my native town in Scotland one day and there was my friend being helped along by his elderly mother.

In two previous articles I urged that God ordinarily guides His children in their decision-making through Bible-based wisdom. I dismissed the idea that guidance is essentially an inner voice telling us facts otherwise unknown and prescribing action in light of them, and I criticized the way some Christians wait passively for guidance and “put out a fleece” when perplexed, rather than prayerfully following wisdom's lead. By now, I am sure, there are mutterings: readers are feeling that I have played down, and thereby dishonored, the guiding ministry of the Holy Spirit.

Screaming headlines spill out of the paper on our doorstep, shocking reports interrupt the music coming from the radio, shattering news from the TV is followed by weather reports and news of the latest strike. We get almost numb to the point of simply mashing the potatoes a little harder before beating them with hot milk and butter, turning our minds away from having to deal with the present history we are living in.

“It’s a grand life if you don’t weaken,” says the British platitude. It’s a good life only when you do weaken, says the Bible. Once more the wisdom of God upsets the conventional wisdom, the wisdom of this world. Christians must always be alert to points at which God’s thoughts cut across what society takes

You may have heard these words (or some variation on them) quoted before:  “What a man is in secret, in these private duties, that he is in the eyes of God and no more. The most frequently quoted version is usually attributed to the young Scotsman, Robert Murray McCheyne. But other masters of the Christian way

One way in which evangelicals differ from most Roman Catholics and liberals is that they are constantly uptight about guidance. Does any concern command more interest or arouse more anxiety among modern Bible-believers than discovering the will of God for one's life? I do not think so.

By F.F. Bruce
In the wake of centuries of anti-Jewish prejudice, many Christian scholars and leaders are busy today mending fences. Spokesmen from the Pope to Billy Graham have explicitly relieved the Jewish people from the unique and blanket charge of deicide¯a real milestone in Jewish-Christian relations.

Five years exactly after the publication of the Revised Standard Version of the Bible, the Revised Standard Version of the Apocrypha has appeared (September 30, 1957).  The translation of the Apocrypha will probably not cause such heartburning as was aroused by the translation of the canonical books; for most of the severest critics of the R.S.V. hold, with the Westminster Confession of Faith, that the apocryphal books, not being of divine inspiration, are of no part of the Canon of the Scripture.

Some of the most desirable things in life are obtained not as goals for which we chart a straight course but as by-products of other pursuits. This is true of Christian unity. There are movements which make Christian unity their sole or principal aim; there are others which exist for quite distinct purposes but find that in the course of fulfilling them they have achieved a remarkable degree of Christian unity. In this connection I think of the great Bible Societies.

First of all, because the Christian faith, unlike other major religions, is not built merely on a set of religious or ethical ideals. Rather it is grounded in real historical events. The heart of the gospel is that Gods Son came into the world, suffered, died and rose again for our eternal salvation. If it can be shown that the New Testament was not compiled until several generations after Christ, the door would be left open for serious garbling of the facts or even outright manipulation.

The Alliance's response to Evangelicals and Catholics Together Two, "The Gift of Salvation."

A hypothetical description of the kinds of questions and overlooked details that Columbo might contribute if he investigated the "other tongues" of Acts 2.

Much of the present controversy is concerning the will of God. On this point many questions have arisen. The chief one is that which touches on the connection between the will of God and the will of man. What is the relation between these? What is the order in which they stand to each other? Which is first?

It is with our sins that we go to God, for we have nothing else to go with that we can call our own. This is one of the lessons that we are so slow to learn; yet without learning this we cannot take one right step in that which we call a religious life.

This article seeks to demonstrate that a socio-linguistic approach to the understanding of the "other tongues" of Acts 2 is more helpful than previously suggested approaches. The arricle proceeds in two patrs: after problems with existing interpretations are pointed out, an alternative is presented, which focuses on the function of the Hebrew language in first-century Judean culture.

The essay presented here was first published in Biblical Theology Bulletin (© 1997, vol. 27) and is used by the permission of the author.