Deus Misereatur

  If I’ve heard it said once, I’ve heard it said hundreds of times, “Nothing in the Old Testament applies to us Christians, except what is specifically restated in the New.” Therefore, I was excited to see the recently published 400-page softback “The Old Testament Law for the Life of the Church: Reading the Torah in the Light of Christ”. This manual was put together by Richard E. Averbeck, professor of Old Testament and Semitic languages at Trinity Evangelical Divinity School. It is an easily readable work that takes Christians, step-by-step, into the ongoing value of the Hebrew Scriptures for New Covenant people. Rightly does Averbeck state that to “ignore the Old Testament is to misunderstand the New Testament” (5). Thus, the author sticks to his purpose throughout the book, and that purpose is to show how “ the whole law was and still is good and profitable for the Christian and applies to the life of the Christian today in a new covenant way” (21).   Averbeck builds a...

Old Testament Ethics: A Guided Tour by John Goldingay My rating: 5 of 5 stars Old Testament Ethics may sound to some like an oxymoron, with all of the bloodshed, wrath of God, conquests, sexual trysts, aged legal requirements, and prohibitions. But John Goldingay, professor of Old Testament at Fuller Theological Seminary, past principal and professor of Old Testament and Hebrew at St. John's Theological College in Nottingham, England, and prolific author, takes a stab at laying out the ways and means of morality in the Hebrew Scriptures in his new book. "Old Testament Ethics: A Guided Tour" is 288 pages of reading fun and fastidiousness, ideal for seminarians, pastors, professors and interested parties. Neither fatiguing nor flocculent, this softback is accessible to most any reading audience. The author focuses mostly "on what is the Old Testament's own agenda and how it raises questions that we have to respond to" (2). And so his approach is to side ...

The First Testament: A New Translation by John E. Goldingay My rating: 4 of 5 stars John Goldingay, professor of Old Testament at Fuller Theological Seminary and accomplished scholar and writer, has compiled his own translation of the Hebrew Scriptures in a soon-to-be-released 944 page hardback, "The First Testament: A New Translation". This sturdy tome puts forth, in one place, a substantially revised version of the author's rendition of the Old Testament that he had published in the commentary series "The Old Testament for Everyone". It is a work intended for those who have a familiarity with "some standard translations but might appreciate something a bit different" (vii). The translational work of "The First Testament" stands on its own. In other words, it's not "The Message," it's not the "Authorized Version," but it's definitely not the "New World Translation of Holy Scriptures"! It is u...

Old Testament Theology for Christians: From Ancient Context to Enduring Belief John H. Walton InterVarsity Press (IVP Academic) PO Box 1400 Downers Grove, IL 60515 Ivpress.com ISBN: 978-0-8308-5192-8; November 2017; $27.00 To help Christians read, and grasp, what the Old Testament says and doesn’t say, John H. Walton, professor of Old Testament at Wheaton College and Graduate School, has compiled a new 320 page hardback. “Old Testament Theology for Christians: From Ancient Context to Enduring Belief ” is, overall, an easy volume to peruse, because it is written for those who have little or no specialized background in Old Testament studies. If a reader is unfamiliar with Walton’s program in his “Lost World” series, this is a great entry point. Most of Walton’s central ideas are mapped out and visited in these pages. Outside of the introduction and conclusion, the work covers six Old Testament foci: Yahweh and the Gods, Cosmos and Humanity, Covenant and Kingdo...

Against the Gods: The Polemical Theology of the Old Testament John D. Currid Crossway 1300 Crescent Street Wheaton, IL 60187 www.crossway.org Copyright: 2013 ISBN: 978-1-4335-3183-5; $17.99 Reviewed for Deus Misereatur by: Rev. Dr. Michael Philliber Reading Polemically – 4 stars out of 5 There are several parallels between the Old Testament stories and the mythical tales from the cultures and societies that surrounded ancient Israel. Many biblical scholars, skeptics and supporters alike, have accepted the view that the Hebrew writers were simply bootlegging those tales, cleaning them up, and inserting them into Israel’s history. Dr. John D. Currid’s new 192 page paperback, “Against the Gods: The Polemical Theology of the Old Testament”, addresses this trend, and seeks to offer a different set of plausibilities for seeing these parallels. This book is mildly technical, but not burdensomely so. Dr. Currid was a seminary professor of mine in the 1990s, and I was d...

I was recently huddled in a discussion group with other ministers, and – no surprise – we began talking about preaching. The conversation narrowed itself down to the way we preach each Sunday. There were some great sentiments voiced and out-loud-thinking presented, but there was also an uncertainty with regard to expositional preaching (where you preach through a passage, and deal with its content). Some of the guys started rummaging around for biblical examples or standard patterns for preaching. This got me to thinking: is there any evidence in Scripture for what we call expositional preaching? I quickly noticed that the few specific sermons recorded in Acts are predominately outside-of-church sermons. They are presentations of the Gospel in open-air (Acts 2 and 4), synagogues (Acts 13), amphitheaters (Acts 18) and courtrooms (Acts 22 and 26). The only episode we have that depicts inside-the-church preaching is Acts 20.7, “On the first day of the week, when we were gathered tog...

I ran across this guy while playing online chess. He identified himself as an Orthodox Jew in Canada and asked me a question, “I see you’re a Christian minister. How do you Christians interpret Scripture?” It was an excellent question I thought. We had a nice, short discussion. The major answer I gave him came as a direct quotation from J. Todd Billings’ recent book “The Word of God for the People of God: An Entryway to the Theological Interpretation of Scripture”, Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Co., 2010. Billings writes, “”Jesus was not just a great teacher, nor was he just God with limbs and a mouth. In Jesus, the whole history of Israel--and through Israel, humanity--was recapitulated, or lived again. But this time the one who was true Israel and true human being did not take the path of the first Adam. As the second Adam, Christ was the righteous one, the perfect human covenant partner. But this perfect covenant partner was also the Word incarnate, the one in whom the fullness of d...