The ERLC has shared several videos in which Pastor Sam Allberry tackles difficult and important questions regarding the church and homosexuality.
You can see the full collection videos at ERLC’s website.
Below are a few samples.
Recommended Media
RECOMMENDED: Frequent Bible Reading Can Turn You Liberal
Frequent Bible reading has some predictable effects on the reader. It increases opposition to abortion as well as homosexual marriage and unions. It boosts a belief that science helps reveal God’s glory. It diminishes hopes that science will eventually solve humanity’s problems. But unlike some other religious practices, reading the Bible more often has some liberalizing effects—or at least makes the reader more prone to agree with liberals on certain issues.
I’m not sure what you will make of this article. But I find it incredibly interesting and a little self-reassuring that I’m not crazy due to some of my own deviations from stereotypical conservative Christianity’s political views. If nothing else, it’s further evidence, alongside church history and the global church, that moving from Bible to political convictions is not as simple and straightforward as some would like to make it seem, that good, honest, well-intentioned, Bible-believing Christians throughout history have held differing views and various political matters.
RECOMMENDED: The Final Break Between God and Country (Thomas Kidd)
“Perhaps the best thing that can come out of the gay marriage decision is for the church to make a final break between our faith and our nation.”
RECOMMENDED: On Recovering a Practice of Devoting Ourselves to the Public Reading of Scripture (Article by Scott Newling)
I just read/listened to this article by Scott Newling, “Devoted to the public reading of Scripture,” advocating a recovery of the actual practice of devoting ourselves to the public reading of scripture in our churches.
As 1 Timothy 4:13 says,
Until I come, devote yourself to the public reading of Scripture….
Scott Newling says,
Let me be blunt: when we reduce the Bible reading in order to privilege something else in our meetings we are shifting the congregation’s understanding of what church is. When we choose not to read some bits because we deem them inappropriate, we forget that God wrote them—and that in his wisdom he knew what he was doing when he did. When we choose not to read parts because they seem irrelevant or unclear, we teach our congregations and ourselves that God’s word isn’t eternal or understandable. When we choose to not read the Old Testament because it is ‘unfamiliar’—how else are we going to get familiar with it? The non-Christian world certainly isn’t going to help us. If we find Scripture to be boring, it’s not God’s fault, and the solution isn’t to silence God! If we find a part boring, we must ask God to give us interest in it, because we love him and want to know what he has to say. The Bible is well aware that some bits are harder to understand than others (2 Pet 3:16-17). But where did we get the idea that the solution to this is to stop reading?
When we choose to reduce Bible readings for something else, do we then in effect say that our means, our words, are better than God’s to grow people?
I loved this article. It reflects a lot of my own convictions on the matter and thoughts I’ve been having for a little over a year now.
You can check it out over at Matthias Media’s The Briefing. Click here.
RECOMMENDED: “Mystery and Fulfillment: Toward a More Comprehensive Paradigm of Paul’s Understanding of the Old and the New” by D.A. Carson
I just finished reading D.A. Carson’s chapter “Mystery and Fulfillment: Toward a More Comprehensive Paradigm of Paul’s Understanding of the Old and the New” in Justification and Variegated Nomism, volume 2 subtitled “The Paradoxes of Paul.” These two volumes, the first of which deals with the variegated nature of 1st century/Second Temple Judaism while the second addresses the interpretation of Paul himself, are a collection of essays which seek to respond to the claims made by what has been called the New Perspective on Paul (or better: New Perspectives [plural] on Paul).
The following is my attempt to summarize the main argument of the chapter:
Carson presents the “coherent tension” between mystery (which entails some degree of discontinuity) and fulfillment (which entails some element of preceding anticipation and thus continuity) in Paul’s thought and applies to a response to the proposals of the New Perspective.
He argues that the New Perspective on Paul, which in many ways views Paul as not diverting from Judaism but, rather, in essence advancing what could be understood as a sect of Judaism in continuity with Judaism and as fitting the criteria of “covenantal nomism,” fails to grapple with the way in which Paul’s thought, although containing a strong sense of continuity with the Old Testament and its religion, which is evidenced by Paul’s pervasive “fulfillment”-framework, nonetheless has strong currents of discontinuity, which are evidenced by his inclusion of mystery concepts alongside his “fulfillment”-framework.
In other words, he argues that the New Perspective on Paul, which stresses significant continuity between Paul and Judaism and/or “covenantal nomism,” fails to handle with integrity the continuity and discontinuity framework in Paul, a framework evidenced by the existence of “mystery” and “fulfillment” concepts in Paul.
Although I have significant interest in the conversations and debates inspired by the proposals of New Perspective, I actually set out to read this chapter because of its interaction with matters pertaining to redemptive history, issues continuity and discontinuity, typology, the role of the law, the relationship between the Testaments, the concept of mystery in Paul and the NT, etc. Carson provides some helpful insights into these matters as he “utilizes” them in his interaction with the New Perspective.
In other words, if either the New Perspective or any of the other topics interests you, I’d add this essay to your reading list.
Kirk E. Miller 