New Commentary on Philippians

GoogleBooks has what appears to be the complete new release of The Pillar Philippians Commentary by G. Walter Hansen published 2009.  Go and check it out.  Thanks to Nijay Gupta for pointing it out.

Rethinking the Openness of God

Calvin Smith did a recent post on the Openness of God.  Before I get into his posting I wanted to say that Calvin Smith is the Principal and teacher at my new school “King’s Evangelical Divinity School“, and is a active blogger.  If you haven’t added him to your Reader you should he is very thought provoking.

He just posted on the subject of the Openness of God, in which he has given further thoughts on his reading of “The Openness of God: A Biblical Challenge to the Traditional Understanding of God by Clark Pinnock, Richard Rice, John Sanders, William Hasker and David Basinger”.  His interaction was very irenic, and as any good book should do, it caused him to rethink his position.  In summary he says:

…the Openness of God is a useful book that emphasises God’s great love and forces us to re-examine our theology, particularly what it means to have a genuine relationship with God. Some very probing questions concerning free-will successfully challenge all theologically-minded readers, not just Calvinists…

Go and check it out even if this subject is not of interest to you.  You will find that he is an engaging writer, and hopefully you will find value in what he has to offer.

I enrolled in KEDS

I was accepted into the BTh program at King’s Evangelical Divinity School (KEDS).  I also enrolled in my first class, and have already order some text books, and purchased my first one at the local Christian book store.

The class that I am enrolled in is “Introduction to the Bible”.  The book I purchased at the local book store was Biblical Interpretation “Past & Present” by Gerald Bray.  The others I ordered from Amazon.com.  I am very impressed so far, the on line lectures that they provide so far have been really good.  I have heard two lectures so far, and plan to listen to them again.  I am devoting about 2-3  hours per day on my studies, and hope to keep up with it. There is a lot of reading to do so that is great since I do love to read.  The only draw back right now is that I have been really sick with the flu and it has been difficult to read for any length of time.

I will have a choice between writing a 2000 word essay or a book review.  Since this is an introductory course they do give you an option.  If you have not been in school a long time they do encourage you to write a book review as it will get you in the practice of writing again, and should be a bit easier and less demanding.  Not sure what I plan to do at the moment, I am challenged about doing the essay, but maybe I should do the practice run and submit the book review?  The book review will be based on Biblical Inspiration by I. Howard Marshall, which is also required reading (core text).

I plan to document my progress as this will also serve others that might be considering a biblical education at KEDS.  This will also provide me a base to think out loud and interact with some of my friends.  They do provide an internal forum that I also plan to use and interact with other students.  I do hope to make some new friends along the way.

Quadrilateral Thoughts

I have been following Ken Schenck blog for some time now. He teaches New Testament and philosophy at Indiana Wesleyan University. He is a busy blogger and I have learned a great deal from him. I don’t know why I have not added him to my blogroll it must have been something I overlooked.  Anyhow, he is on now

He just posted a lecture on Constructing a Biblical Theology, Which is really good.  He posts these now and then.  Go and check him out.

Out Sick

I have been down with some sort of flu symptoms, not the swine flu . That’s why I have been MIA. I am still not feeling well bad headaches, congestion, achy body, the usual things one feels with the flu.

I’ll try and catch up on some blog reading today.

Interview with Roger Olson

This interview was done on January of this year, but I just found it. He is being interviewed by two Calvinist (very nice guys), and it the kind of dialog that should occur more often. It is lengthy, but very engaging.

Friday’s with Fee

Speaking of Paul the Apostle Gordon Fee writes:

To advance the gospel has been his lifelong passion; he has thus ordered his life so that nothing will hinder, and everything advance, the message of Christ…Evangelism was his “meat and potatoes” (or “rice,” in the case of Asian Christians), since he believed not only that the gospel is God’s “message of truth” (Gal 2:5, 14), but that it thereby contains the only good news for a fallen, broken world. – Gordon Fee “NICNT Paul’s Letter to the Philippians” p111

I wonder how foreign Paul’s lifestyle would be to us, and if we can even comprehend the level in which he operated at?

Starting Series on Philippians Tonight

Tonight I kick off my series on the book of Philippians.  I always feel like I have not done enough research when preparing sermons such as these.  Please keep me in your prayers today as I hope to have done my best, in prayer, study, and allowing the Holy Spirit to lead me.

Want to learn Greek

I was reading Jeff’s blog where he stated that one of his goals is to “learn Greek well enough to use a Greek Reader’s NT”.  Shortly after reading that I came across Concordia Seminary that has all of it’s video lectures on Elementary Greek.  They are available at iTuneU Concordia Seminary.

You can also access them here through the Concordia Seminary RSS feed.  Been meaning to post this but got a bit busy.  Now you have yet another source to learn Greek.

Friday’s with Fee

This is just one of many reason why I like Fee, he is always straight to the point.  “Tongues is a very biblical expression of Spirituality”.

Mention “salvation by grace alone” and immediately most people think, “the Apostle Paul”; but mention “speaking in tongues” and most people think, “Pentecostals” or “charismatics.”

And this, despite the fact that Paul claims to have spoken in tongues more than even the Corinthians themselves.  This little exercise merely illustrates how much most of us read the New Testament through filters of our own experience of the church.  Moreover, this instinctive way of hearing the word “glossolalia” is probably unfair both to Paul and to those who currently experience this (very biblical) expression of Spirituality.

Gordon Fee “Listening to the Spirit in the Text” p105