Archive for April, 2009

Knowledge and Abandonment of the Son

Posted by Mark on April 30, 2009
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abandonmentSome food for thought!  Seamus, an ex-Moore College student has posted up a few good thoughts on some aspects of Christology.  These are a stimulating bunch of short readings, and quite helpful too!

Here’s a short excerpt:

“I want to affirm that the punishment Jesus endures involves separation in terms of fellowship and favour of the Father, but not ‘presence’, because God is omnipresent, neither ‘ontological’ separation – the Son cannot be separated from the Father because they are one Substance. Thus, when Jesus dies on the Cross, and dies in his human nature, the Divine Son experiences, mysteriously for the Living God, Death in his Human Nature for sin.”

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New Themelios Out Now!

Posted by Mark on April 27, 2009
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ThemeliosThe latest Themelios is out now…. In case you haven’t heard of it, it’s a theological journal sponsored by the Gospel Coalition.  And as a theological student – it’s a great resource!  This issues articles include:

Editorial | D. A. Carson
Minority Report: A Lesson from Peter the Barber | Carl Trueman
The Embattled Bible: Four More Books | Robert W. Yarbrough
How Far Beyond Chicago? Assessing Recent Attempts to Reframe the Inerrancy Debate | Jason S. Sexton
Divine Retribution: A Forgotten Doctrine? | Andrew Atherstone
Calvinism and Missions: The Contested Relationship Revisited | Kenneth J. Stewart
Pastoral Pensées: Power in Preaching: Decide (1 Corinthians 2:1–5), Part 1 of 3 | Raymond C. Ortlund Jr.
Book Reviews | 38 reviews
Old Testament | 5 reviews
New Testament | 10 reviews
history and historical theology | 6 reviews
systematic theology and bioethics | 10 reviews
ethics and pastoralia | 2 reviews
missions and culture | 5 reviews

Check it out – it comes in PDF and HTML format.

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UN opens up a global treasure of ancient documents

Posted by Mark on April 22, 2009
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unThis looks simply amazing.  It’s a website which offers digitally scanned images and information of books, manuscripts, maps and artifacts from ancient places.  Africa, Europe, the Middle East, Oceania, the Americas – it’s all there.  Looks pretty cool and there might even be some finds for my Church History essay…. Let’s hope so!

Here’s what the BBC are reporting:
“Unesco says the World Digital Library will help to promote curiosity and understanding across cultures.
Among the artefacts are a 1,000-year-old Japanese novel and the earliest known map to mention America by name.
About a tenth of the 1,200 exhibits are from Africa – the oldest an 8,000-year-old painting of bleeding antelopes.
But this is an ongoing project in its early stages, and the collection is expected to grow substantially.”
Check it out: http://www.wdl.org/en/

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Request for thoughts: What makes a good blog?

Posted by Mark on April 22, 2009
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myoldblog2At the prompting of Dave Miers, I’m toying with the idea of revamping this old blog…

It’s been a few years since I’ve worked in the online IT world, but I think now’s the time to resurrect some of those skills.  My area of expertise was in the realm of online adverting at Sensis (Yellow Pages, White Pages, Whereis, Bigpond, Telstra etc) and am keen to see what sort of interesting things I might be able to conjure up…. And thus, I’m going to try and step this site up a notch and see what happens. But I really want you to tell me what you think makes a good blog site or website generally:

- Layout – do you like a 2 or 3 columned look?
- Audio/Video/Text – What do you mostly scour the net for?
- Blog posts – Do you like short or long posts?
- Other sites – What other sites do you really enjoy visiting? Why?

Basically, any thoughts on what you like in blogging websites, I’d love to hear!

Much love in Christ,
Mark

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Technorati’s State of the Blogosphere

Posted by Mark on April 20, 2009
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technoratiI stumbled across the Technorati State of the Blogosphere 2008 report tonight, and it’s fascinating.  I’m not sure whether I’m surprised or not in the general volume of blog traffic, but there are some interesting statistics to be taken note of.

Firstly, some stats from other sources:
comScore MediaMetrix (August 2008)
Blogs: 77.7 million unique visitors in the US
Facebook: 41.0 million | M
ySpace 75.1 million
Total internet audience 188.9 million
eMarketer (May 2008)
94.1 million US blog readers in 2007 (50% of Internet users)
22.6 million US bloggers in 2007 (12%)
Universal McCann (March 2008)
184 million WW have started a blog | 26.4 US
346 million WW read blogs | 60.3 US
77% of active Internet users read blogs

 

From reading over some of these stats, I really do feel like this is a great thing to do in 
service to our Lord.  Perhaps some of these stats might shape the direction of our blogs and link into what’s going on in the blogging world around us!

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Rice Youth Sydney 2009

Posted by Mark on April 20, 2009
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rice_moore-1After another encouraging night at a RICE gathering, I’m convinced that this is a truly wonderful ministry!

Two weeks ago was the RICE Vision night held at MTC.  They packed the house! Steve Chong opened, Sam Mak delivered, John Woodhouse endorsed, and a whole host of other people chimed in with introductions to the many different facets of the RICE ministry (Marriage Counselling, Conferences on Desires and Giftings, Theological training etc!).
And tonight a gathering of nearly 60 leaders of differing youth groups arrived to join together in thinking through how to reach the youth of Sydney with the Gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ.
I’m very keen to see our youth from St. Anne’s, Strathfield joining in this Gospel work with the hope of seeing many from the local area coming to a saving relationship with our Lord.  And I’m praying that our Sovereign and Almighty Father might send His Spirit powerfully in order to do this!

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Slashdot News

Posted by Mark on April 19, 2009
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2 good articles from every techie’s favourite: Slashot.org
“A report from The Scientific Committee on Antarctic Research says that Antarctic ice is growing, not melting away. Ice core drilling in the fast ice off Australia’s Davis Station in East Antarctica by the Antarctic Climate and Ecosystems Co-Operative Research Centre shows that last year, the ice had a maximum thickness of 1.89m, its densest in 10 years. The average thickness of the ice at Davis since the 1950s is 1.67m. A paper to be published soon by the British Antarctic Survey in the journal Geophysical Research Letters is expected to confirm that over the past 30 years, the area of sea ice around the continent has expanded.”
“The Wall Street Journal profiles Vincent Connare, designer of the web’s most-hated font, Comic Sans. Not surprisingly, the font’s origins go back to Microsoft Bob, where he saw a talking dog speaking in Times New Roman. Connare pulled out Watchmen and The Dark Knight Returns for reference, and created the comic book-style font over the next week. ‘Mr. Connare has looked on, alternately amused and mortified, as Comic Sans has spread from a software project at Microsoft Corp. 15 years ago to grade-school fliers and holiday newsletters, Disney ads and Beanie Baby tags, business emails, street signs, Bibles, porn sites, gravestones and hospital posters about bowel cancer. … The jolly typeface has spawned the Ban Comic Sans movement, nearly a decade old but stronger now than ever, thanks to the Web.”
Gotta love the old Slashdot!

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Social Networking with the Gospel Coalition

Posted by Mark on April 18, 2009
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Now this is interesting!
Adrian Warnock announces the public opening of The City for the Gospel Coalition – and yes, there’s an Australian subsection!
My friend Lynne, who was working over at Mars Hill earlier this year told me all about this fantastic tool.  Apparently it’s used by pastors, laymembers, and has all sorts of groups which dialogue and meet to discuss things – and it seems to work there very well.  Basically, it was developed over at Mars Hill for their own networking – both administratively, and socially.
Here’s what Adrian Warnock says:
“Whenever this [The City] is spoken about, the thrust behind it is to build real community not just an online “virtual” community. Thus, in the life of Mars Hill Church it is where people connect to small groups, interact with each other, share prayer requests, share practical needs, and many other things.
It seems that a similar philosophy is behind the version of the network developed for the Gospel Coalition. If you attend one of their conferences, you can use this tool to keep in touch with friends you meet there. If you want to find other gospel-focused Christians who live near enough to you to make face-to-face meetings a possibility, the tool can also help you find them.“
I’m not really sure how it all works yet, nor how it’ll work in Oz, but I’ve signed up, and I’ll see what happens!
For the Australian signup page: Click Here

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Schaeffer on the Unease of the Next Generation

Posted by Mark on April 17, 2009
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Over at the Sola Panel, Andrew Barry has written a gracious and thoughtful short piece on some of the dangers in the current wave of Unease in the Next Generation.  If you haven’t read them, can I encourage you to.  In fact, I think they are applicable to the current generation too!

From the many young Christians I’ve worked with over the last years, I’ve not seen many putting substance over style, or commending rather than contending – though I must admit that some I’ve come across do those things.  Actually, some of the most passionate advocates of this New Calvinism are serious readers and thoughtful Christians.  And where there is a disdain for previous generations (and I know that exists), perhaps a healthy dose of some of Robert E. Webber and a short trip to L’Abri UK might help…?  I’ve found that using the Prayer Book in creative ways is seriously appreciated by the younger evangelicals!
Anyway, I’m not so sure that the current movement of younger Evangelicals is just reacting against Evangelical culture, but mainly acting from the external forces coming from society at large.  Whether it’s an anti-institutionalism, or anti-simplistic-meganarratives, or anti-propositionalism – the last thing we want to do is to convey a message of “Shut-up and sit-down, Billy.” That’s why I think it’s a great start that Moore College has tried to listen to some of the younger evangelicals and enable them.  Wouldn’t it be great to see this energy and enthusiasm channelled in a good direction for the Lord!
This quote of Francis Schaeffer from The Church at the End of the Twentieth Century, is helpful here:
“One of the greatest injustices we do to our young people is to ask them to be conservative.  Christianity today is not conservative by revolutionary.  To be conservative today is to miss the whole point, for conservatism means standing in the flow of the status quo, and the status quo no longer belongs to us.  Today we are a minority.  If we want to be fair, we must teach the young to be revolutionaries, revolutionaries against the status quo.”

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Jelly and the New Calvinism

Posted by Mark on April 16, 2009
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There’s a certain slipperiness and jelly-like quality to what’s being called The New Calvinism. Terms like Reformed and Calvinist are wobbling around like they’ve been served up for dessert.  But is this a bad thing?

Even Brian McLaren’s getting in on the act and calling out the Calvinists (there must be some low-flying pigs – he’s even citing John Frame!).  Why?

Well it seems that with the growth in the Young, Restless and Reformed types, there’s an umbrella-like movement rising with seismic results – just ask Time magazine.  Embracing Baptists, Presbyterians, Dutch Reformed types, other traditions, and even Anglicans (yep, that’s me) – this movement seems to have a fairly large theological scope.  The main bounds are the 5 points of Calvinism (Total Depravity, Unconditional Election, Limited Atonement, Irresistable Grace, and Perserverance of the Saints).  So, the main ingredients are the same for these types, but it wobbles around a bit depending on things like baptism etc.

 


Others, like R. Scott Clark, have preferred the more stable dessert of Calvinism.  It’s a solid jelly (and no, I wouldn’t go as far as to say a frozen chosen jelly!),  a one size and colour fits all jelly.  In the above-linked article, Clark says:
“If Mark Driscoll presented himself for membership in St Peter’s in Calvin’s Geneva, he would have been rejected. Why? He doesn’t believe the faith confessed by the church. He would have been rejected by the consistories and synods in the Netherlands, France, and by the sessions in Scotland. They would not have recognized his confession as Reformed.

The ugly truth is that too many Reformed folk are too excited that a prominent leader in evangelicalism, someone with increasing visibility in the media, identifies himself as Reformed. Pastor Driscoll feels comfortable co-opting the adjective “Calvinist” because real Calvinists, those who actually believe and practice what Calvin believed and practiced, let him use it.“
So, should the New Calvinism be a hard or soft jelly? A wobbly, yet palatable dessert for many – or a harder and more refined treat? Or bluntly, must one go beyond TULIP and sign up to a certain bunch of confessions in order to use the word Calvinist or Reformed?

Personally, I like John Frame’s (as usualy, such a helpful and gracious theologian!) stance towards these sorts of issues:

“I look forward to the time when God will equip his church to write new confessions. The Reformed confessions of the 16th and 17th centuries are wonderful documents that have served the church well. But we need confessions that speak to the issues of our own time: abortion, postmodern ideology, egalitarianism, new spiritualities, ecumenism, the gifts of the Spirit, common grace, the precise role of the Mosaic law the status of non-Christian religions, the obligation of Christians to the poor, the nature of worship, biblical standards for missions and evangelism, and, indeed, the nature of confessional subscription. We need confessions also that can state the old Reformed and biblical doctrines in contemporary language and support those doctrines with the biblical scholarship that has developed over the last 400 years. Perhaps we are not ready yet to write new confessions, granted the spiritual immaturity of the contemporary church and the proliferation of denominational division. But if we are ever to reach the point at which new confessions can be written, we need to train pastors and teachers for the church who are able to develop doctrinal formulations from the Word of God itself. And we need to graduate students who understand that the 16th and 17th century confessions are not the final word, that there is much more that God calls us to say to the church and to the world.”
 

Perhaps we can settle for a slowly hardening jelly?

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