From the category archives:

Discernment

Blog Tour – Day 4: Tim Challies Answers Questions Concerning Discernment

January 10, 2008

Although I am on a blog holiday at the moment, it gives me great pleasure to welcome my friend and newly published author, Tim Challies, to the blog for the next portion of his blog tour. Today he will answer a question submitted by another blogger.
As I discuss spiritual discernment with other people, one of [...]

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Discernment: Coming Soon to a Blog Near You!

January 4, 2008

I just received the following announcement in my e-mail about a blogging tour that Tim Challies will be taking next week. I have previously highlighted Tim’s book here on my sidebar, and in my review of it, in which I said:
“Tim Challies takes us from the turbulent marketplace of ideas that is the modern western [...]

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BOOK – Piper on Wright, Conclusion: What is Justification?

November 21, 2007

I have now come to the end of my series responding to John Piper’s new book, The Future of Justification. Here is a list of the previous posts:

John Piper, N. T. Wright, and Gracious Discernment
John Piper Challenges N. T. Wright on Justification
Piper Explains the Classic View of Justification Versus N. T. Wright’s View
Piper and Wright: [...]

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Hard and Soft Legalism

November 12, 2007

There is a very interesting quote from Matt Perman, one of John Piper’s students, which Piper includes in his book, The Future of Justification. It addresses N. T. Wright’s view that Judaism was not legalistic. Matt argues that there are, in fact, two types of legalism. Speaking of Wright and others he says:
“They appear [...]

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Legalism Versus Grace in First Century Judaism

November 9, 2007

Anyone who has read anything about the New Perspectives on Paul will realize that one of the key arguments is that we have misunderstood the Pharisees through the perspective of the Reformation. The first century Jews were never legalists, we are told. There are a number of problems with that position. The first is looking [...]

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John Piper: Is N. T. Wright Preaching Another Gospel?

November 8, 2007

We are continuing to look at John Piper’s elegant exposure of the heart of the differences between his position and that of N. T. Wright’s. For those without the time to read massive volumes written by the current Bishop of Durham, Piper has done a great service. His scrupulous attempts to be fair to Wright [...]

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Piper and Wright: Does Justification by Faith Save Us?

November 7, 2007

So far in this series we have looked at the following:

John Piper, N. T. Wright, and Gracious Discernment
John Piper Challenges N. T. Wright on Justification
Piper Explains the Classic View of Justification Versus N. T. Wright’s View

Today I want to share a quote from The Future of Justification in which Piper responds to another of Wright’s [...]

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Piper Explains the Classic View of Justification Versus N. T. Wright’s View

November 6, 2007

Today I will take you further into Piper’s argument where he explains the long-held position, which Wright denies, that God cannot simply ‘forgive’ the guilty, but instead an exchange between guilt and righteousness must take place:
An omniscient and just judge never “finds in favor” of a guilty defendant. He always vindicates the claim that is [...]

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John Piper Challenges N. T. Wright on Justification

November 5, 2007

On Friday I introduced a series on John Piper’s response to N. T. Wright in The Future of Justification. We saw that to Piper the most critical difference between N. T. Wright and himself is that Wright does not believe that Christ’s righteousness is in any way transferred to our account. This is a vital, [...]

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Of Tone, Discernment, and the Charismatic Question

November 3, 2007

Phil Johnson has a second post answering my two-paragraph criticism of him. My schedule does not permit me to make a full reply as I am traveling on business. (All the posts you will see for the next few days were written before I left.) All I will say in reply, therefore, is this: [...]

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John Piper, N. T. Wright, and Gracious Discernment

November 2, 2007

Bishop Tom Wright has long been the darling of many evangelicals. He is praised particularly for his work on the resurrection. But there is another side to Wright which is coming increasingly to the fore. His ability to woo evangelicals has, according to some observers, made it easy for him to subtly change some key [...]

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Mark Driscoll Firm, But Kind, About Joel Osteen on Prosperity Teaching

November 1, 2007

In the context of my ongoing debate with the fire-lovers about the best way to critique those from other churches, the following clip is most illuminating. Mark Driscoll is not known for being a weak feminist man. In this video he gives us a fantastic example of how to call out the errors of the [...]

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Applying Discernment – Far From Simple

October 30, 2007

If there is one thing that the discernment debate between the Pyromaniacs and myself has confirmed these past few days, it is surely that discernment is far from easy!! It’s a good thing Tim Challies has written a book on it. I really like the following extract from his book, which I think totally sums [...]

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Blogging, Discernment, and a Book by Tim Challies

October 25, 2007

UPDATE—February 19, 2008In January 2008, the following post was identified as the 2nd all-time most popular post with readers of this blog. The 3rd most-read post was “The ESV: A Bible Translation for Everyone?“
This post was an expression of some of my own concerns and frustrations about the blogging world I have come to love [...]

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