The Septuagint: What It Is and Why It Matters
Lanier and Ross do not disappoint in providing a picture of the current state of scholarship in the field, and the footnotes will direct you to many other important works worth considering. This book clearly and simply explains the burgeoning field of Septuagint studies, but also succeeds in showcasing its value for all Christians today.
There are plenty of good books on the Septuagint, and The Septuagint: What It Is and Why It Matters by Greg Lanier and Will Ross is unquestionably the best one to begin with, but it’s also tremendously valuable for anyone already well-versed on the subject. It’s a quick read and easy to understand. No knowledge of Greek or Hebrew is required. The authors offer a simple presentation of a complex topic and make a significant contribution to the understanding of its authority, while interacting with a plethora of scholarly literature along the way.
Part 1 (“What Is the Septuagint?”) establishes the definition of “the Septuagint” before surveying dominant origin theories, translation techniques, and the complex world of rescensions.
Part 2 (“Why Does It Matter?) attends to the Septuagint and its implications for OT and NT study before concluding with a thorough chapter on the authority of this ancient version. They convincingly argue for three forms of authority: normative, derivative, and interpretive. The Hebrew canon is authoritative, but the Septuagint aids in establishing that text. The derivative authority of the Septuagint means it’s the Word of God so long as it accurately reflects the message of the Hebrew canon. It’s interpretive authority is shorthand for its useful (yet fallible) role as ancient commentary.
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The Church Faces the Challenge of Pro-Abortion America
Written by Carl R. Trueman |
Wednesday, October 16, 2024
As America’s secularism becomes obvious, we who are Christians and church people need a strategy for the future. Strange to tell, such is nothing more than what should have been our strategy all along: a focus on things above, of the things of eternity, exactly that for which the Apostle Paul called in his letter to the Colossians.With the Republican Party’s shift on abortion and the exultancy of Democrats concerning “reproductive freedom,” one thing should now be clear to American Christians: Whoever wins in November will represent to some degree a deeper, more significant victory. That victory is not merely the triumph of the sexual revolution, where the popular imagination is gripped by the idea of sex as recreation, free of any obligations or commitments. It is the victory of a deeper vision of what it means to be human—to be radically free, autonomous, and responsible for self-creation. That is one lesson we can draw from the fact that most Americans are to varying degrees in favor of abortion.
It was clear in the aftermath of the fall of Roe v. Wade that the pro-life movement had no real strategy for addressing the way forward from that point. It was caught off guard by the comprehensive nature of the backlash so that in retrospect the victory now seems a Pyrrhic one, followed by nothing but defeats and setbacks everywhere the question has been put on the ballot. American churches now face an analogous question:
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Friendship is a Discipleship Issue
Written by T. M. Suffield |
Sunday, October 27, 2024
We need thicker communities, but saying that and doing it are very different things. Rebuilding life after it’s been stripped apart by the many arms of cultural change will take a long time, maybe even generations, but the church has all that’s required to do so. If we want to get practical, one of the ways we can thicken our communities is to make sure we have friends. Actively seek them, pray for them, make regular (habitual!) time in your life for them.The lack of male friendship is nothing short of an epidemic. The rise of therapy and a therapeutic culture for men and women is, not always but more often than we’d like to admit, a substitute for friendship. We’re lonely, we need friends, and you need good friends to live the Christian life.
I’m arguing that there are three shifts we can make to address the discipleship crisis. We can embed habits, we can thicken communities, and we can stretch minds.
I reckon we can thicken our communities by considering friendship, tables, and thresholds. Three topics which I write about a fair bit, so this won’t be super surprising.
To be a follower of Jesus you need friends. We might want to disagree and say instead that we need the familial bonds of the household of the church, but if you do this and don’t gain friends, I’m not convinced that you’re actually doing this (or someone else isn’t). Jesus casts his disciples as friends (John 15). Not slaves, but friends. Friendship is the love of the kingdom. It’s tighter than ‘brotherhood’ because it’s bound not by blood but by choice. God the son became God my brother and then called himself God my friend.
We become companions with God—literally ‘same bread’—as we eat with him. We become companions with others when we break bread with them. But that’s getting ahead of myself. In order to live a Christian life that bleeds out of Sundays and starts to colonise every hour of your life you will need friends to live that life with; friends to challenge and to laugh with. I use that martial language deliberately; Jesus is the rightful Lord of your life and will wage war against your other gods.
The remarkable thing is that the warrior King, here to crush your idols, has decided to make you a friend. He’s invited us into his inner ring. One of the ways we encounter Jesus is in other Christians. While we understand friendship in light of Jesus’ friendship of us, rather than the other way around—much like we learn what a father is in the face of the Father—it is easier to understand Jesus as your friend when you have good friends.
This is an instrumental reason to get friends though, don’t do it to understand Jesus better, do it because friends are great. Friend is a word much said and little understood in our present moment.
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‘The Gospel According to Satan’ by Jared Wilson
What I loved most about the book was Wilson’s commitment to biblical truth in the face of attractive ideas from our secular culture. The most potent lies are the ones that most resemble truth, and Satan knows this. He’s planted the lies we see in our culture, even in our Christian culture. When we believe them, we drift further from the faith. And that means we grow more confused about our identity, purpose, and our very approach to daily living. Lies open chasms that threaten to break us apart. The truth of Scripture builds our bridges.
Several books have come out recently that deal with Satan and his lies (see my review of John Mark Comer’s Live No Lies). There should be even more, since that’s the devil’s main strategy for assaulting God’s people. So, I was happy to work through Jared Wilson’s The Gospel according to Satan. As usual, he offers his casual, down-to-earth prose but scatters in plenty of profound insights. He works through eight of the popular lies that vie for our attention when it comes to the good news. Each one distorts or diminishes the real truth of who God is and what he’s done.
God just wants you to be happy.
You only live once.
You need to live your truth.
Your feelings are reality.
Your life is what you make it.
You need to let go and let God.
The cross is not about wrath.
God helps those who help themselves.What I Loved
If you’ve read any of Wilson’s other books, you’ll know that he approaches theology with an eye on practical application. How do the ideas we have about God and the gospel actually affect our behavior, our daily grind, our thought life? Certainly, the eight lies listed above have a had a profound effect on our culture. Many of us are influenced by these ideas even when we’re not aware of it. I’ve written at length, for instance, about how feelings are not reality (in the context of anxiety), and yet I still battle that on a daily basis. So, while these eight lies might be easy to pass off as patently unbiblical, we need to read with humility. Wilson invites us to do that, even while critiquing these lies.
What I loved most about the book was Wilson’s commitment to biblical truth in the face of attractive ideas from our secular culture. The most potent lies are the ones that most resemble truth, and Satan knows this. He’s planted the lies we see in our culture, even in our Christian culture. When we believe them, we drift further from the faith. And that means we grow more confused about our identity, purpose, and our very approach to daily living. Lies open chasms that threaten to break us apart. The truth of Scripture builds our bridges.
Favorite Quotes
Lots of favorite quotes from this one, but here are some of my top ones.“The devil would love for you to be perfectly happy, so long as you are not holy. He knows happily unholy people rob glory from God and go happily to hell” (p. 17).
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