On Sunday evenings at Beaver Baptist Church  I am teaching a survey of the Bible.  I got the idea from The Story of a Kingdom, a survey of the Bible using principles of biblical theology.  The author, Jonathan Gibson,  credits a number of books on biblical theology, including Graeme Goldworthy’s According to Plan, William Dumbrell’s The Faith of Israel, and Tim Chester’s From Creation to New Creation, all of which are excellent.  You can particularly tell the influence of Goldsworthy.  The only shortcoming for my purposes is that his course is designed for students of English as a second language, thus the lesson outlines are somewhat simple.  So I decided that I would supplement the lessons with my own reading.

One resource that I have found to be quite helpful is book that I feel deserves a wider reputation: Yesterday, Today and Forever: The Continuing Relevance of the Old Testament , by Larry Helyer.  It is not a comprehensive survey, but it treats a number of key periods in the OT and key themes.  The Table of Contents will give you the idea:

1. An Overview of the Old Testament
2. The Old Testament Teaching on Creation
3. The Fall and the Flood
4. The Promise to the Patriarchs
5. The Exodus from Egypt and the Sinai Covenant
6. The Kingdom of God: Part One
7. The Kingdom of God: Part Two
8. The Word and the Spirit: Prophesy in Israel
9. Eschatology of the Old Testament
10. The Way of Wisdom and Worship
11. Epilogue: The Relationship of the Old and New Testaments

This post hardly qualifies as book review, since I am currently reading chapter 5 on the Exodus.  But I can testify to the book’s helpfulness.  For example, in chapter 2 on the Creation, Helyer has a very even-handed discussion of the various approaches to the issue of Genesis chs. 1 & 2 and modern science.  (For the record, I am an “Old Earth Creationist”).  I like a number of his charts and tables, which I have utilized in my handouts, and each chapter has a useful bibliography for further study.  Helyer is familiar with the scholarly literature, and yet incorporates it with a very accessible style.  It’s a book I will recommend to anyone wanting to get a grasp of the Old Testament.

Yesterday, on the way home, I started yet another book: What Are Spiritual Gifts? Rethinking the Conventional View, by Kenneth Berding, professor of New Testament at Talbot Theological Seminary.  Berding challenges what he calls the conventional view:

Let’s begin by looking at the conventional approach to the so-called spiritual gifts. . . . This approach says that the spiritual gifts are abilities or enablements, given by the Holy Spirit to individual believers to help them serve others.  There are three main components in any conventional definition of a spiritual gift: (1) the entity itself is an ability or enablement; (2) it is given by the Holy Spirit; (3) it is to be used in building up the community of believers. . . .

In this approach, every believer who has a relationship with God through Jesus Christ has been given at least one special ability that he or she is to discover and use in building the community of faith. [pp. 25-27]

Berding claims that nearly all discussions about the spiritual gifts begin without defining from scripture what a spiritual gift is.  That is, all spiritual gifts are assumed to be abilities that are supernaturally given by the Holy Spirit.  Here Berding describes an alternative understanding:

In this alternative approach, the so-called spiritual gifts are not special abilities; they’re Spirit-given ministries.  According to the contextual evidence in the letters of Paul, the so-called spiritual gifts should be viewed as the ministries themselves.  Every believer has been assigned by the Holy Spirit to specific positions and activities of service, small and large, short-term and long-term.  These are ministry assignments that are given by the Holy Spirit to individual believers and, in turn, these individuals in their ministries have been given as gifts to the church. [p. 32]

Berding asserts that this is not a charismatic vs. non-charismatic issue in that both parties believe that spiritual gifts are abilities given by the Holy Spirit, it’s just that they disagree on whether the Holy Spirit still gives miraculous gifts, such as speaking tongue, prophecy, etc. [p. 29]  In arguing for the ministry-assignment view, Berding concedes that some ministries such as prophecy, but not all ministries, would have required a supernatural enablement.  [p. 34]

Berding argues that in Paul’s usage of the Greek word, charisma, every usage of the word can fit the concept of ministry, and that in a number of cases, that is the only viable meaning for the term.  The heart of the book, chapters 5 through 14, lay out Berding’s argument, but I have only read through chapter 7.

There are a number of practical implications if this view is correct.  For one, there would no longer be any need for believers to seek to discover just what gift or gifts they have been given by the Holy Spirit.  The believer merely need to seek where God would have him minister.  This could come in the form of some sort of inner confirmation by the Spirit, but it would also be informed by the believer’s identification of needs in the church, and wise counsel from others.  In addition, one would not be limited by the lists of so-called spiritual gifts found in Ephesians 4:11, Romans 12:6-8; 1 Corinthians 12:8-10; and 12:28-30.  They would be taken as a representative, and not exhaustive, list of ministries. [p. 49]

I know that in my own preaching and teaching I have emphasized that every on has a spiritual gift that they need to put to use in the kingdom work of the local church.  But I have not been helpful in showing how our church members are to identify those gifts.  I’m beginning to think that I should modify that to say that every believer has been called to at least one ministry in the local church.  I think it would be easier to give guidance to those who respond to such exhortations and who want to know what to do next.

Shane Becker of Lifted Veil has kindly asked me to join the team at New Covenant Theology.  The purpose of the site is not to produce new content, but to be a reference where people can find out what’s on other sites dealing with new covenant theology.  Shane explains:

What this site is not:  The aim of this site isn’t to be a repository of NCT material.  It is to contain no articles, blog postings, audio, video, contact lists, etc.  It is to be substanceless.   

 

What this site is:   My aim is to create a portal to point people to NCT articles, blogs, audio, video, contact lists, etc.  I’d like people to know that if they are looking for a particular NCT site or materials they will be able to find it at NewCovenantTheology.org. 

Although NCT has been a topic of discussion and debate since the 1970s, it is still a relatively little-known approach to biblical theology.  Although NCT is a work in progress, I believe it is essentially correct in its understanding that the New Covenant fulfills and supercedes the Old Covenant.  As a result, the Mosaic Law only applies to the Christian only insofar as it is fulfilled and taken up in the law of Christ.

Keeping up with the discussion and developments in NCT is no easy task, so I am glad Shane has taken on this project, and I hope to play a small part in its success.

I first encountered the theological journal Themelios some 26 years ago.  Over the years, when I have had access to a theological library, I enjoyed browsing it for interesting, well-written articles, and for its book reviews.  I often wanted to subscribe, but always found something more pressing to spend my money on.  A couple of years ago, I think, Themelios went dormant, but it has been revived by The Gospel Coalition, and is edited by D. A. Carson and Carl Trueman.  This in and of itself is good news, but it gets better: the journal is now available online (no more print version) in both PDF and HTML formats.  And it gets better yet: you can read it online or download it for free.  You can check it out at: Themelios.  Although it has high scholarly standards, its intended audience is “both theological/religious studies students and pastors.”  As a pastor I can attest to its value, e.g., a helpful and relevant discussion of the church’s mission by Keith Ferdinando, and 38 (!) pages of book reviews.  Shawn Wright, a friend of mine now teaching at Southern Seminary, is the book review editor for the History and Historical Theology category.  Highly recommended.