Alex Chediak

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Theology

Nine Marks Blog

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Mark Dever and the Nine Marks guys have started a blog called Church Matters (which reminds me of Bob Kauflin's blog, Worship Matters). Mark announces: "I'm going to try to kick this off over the next couple of weeks by doing a brief series of 10 influences that I think God has used to bring about the current resurgence of reformed theology among the young. Stay tuned!!" It should be good. Related: Christianity Today story (September 2006) on the same theme. … [Read more...] about Nine Marks Blog

Law and Gospel – Part III

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Sorry for the week-long absence of posts. I was out of town, and it was logistically difficult to get enough Internet time to add posts. But we return to our series on law-gospel issues, addressing the second question from my Romans 9:30-10:13 paper. 2. According to Romans 9:31-33 and 10:2-3, what was Israel’s problem? The first option is that Israel’s problem is not vertical (i.e., a legalistic pursuit of law-keeping to earn right standing before God) but rather horizontal. Dunn suggests that the Jews “confused the law and the righteousness it speaks of with works like circumcision which … [Read more...] about Law and Gospel – Part III

Law and Gospel – Part II

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Continuing this series from the last post, here is my response to the first question (I have footnotes in the paper that do not transfer into this post): 1. What does it mean that the Gentiles have attained righteousness (Rom. 9:30)? Some think that “attained righteousness” means that the Gentiles gained entrance into the covenant community of God by faith in Jesus the Messiah and apart from the distinctively Jewish works such as circumcision, food laws, and Sabbath. The emphasis is not on how individual sinners are made right with a holy God but rather on how the locus of God’s covenant … [Read more...] about Law and Gospel – Part II

Law and Gospel – Part I

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Since I'm reading about law and gospel, I'm going to do a series of posts from my Romans 9:30-10:13 paper. This is a paper in which we were asked to answer five questions: 1. What does it mean that the Gentiles have attained righteousness (9:30)? 2. According to Romans 9:31-33 and 10:2-3, what was Israel’s problem? 3. How should the two occurrences of “righteousness of God” in Romans 10:3 be defined (and translated)? 4. What does it mean that Christ is the τέλος of the law (10:4)? 5. Does Paul draw a contrast or comparison between Romans 10:5 and 10:6-8? What is the significance of … [Read more...] about Law and Gospel – Part I

Wilson vs. Hitchens

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Though I only read parts of it, I thought that Pastor Doug Wilson did a masterful job debating atheist Christopher Hitchens (author of the recent book God is not Great, which argues that religion has been bad for the world). Wilson employs presuppositional apologetics with the rhetorical style of a C.S. Lewis. A great combo. Christianity Today hosted the debate, and my friend Joe Rigney sent me this PDF version. … [Read more...] about Wilson vs. Hitchens