Two books, briefly

Crossway has dipatched more books to review in spite of my lack of earnestness in reviewing all the books they send me. The title to the left is Religion Saves, and 9 other misconceptions, by Mark Driscoll.

You heard the sermon series last year, I am sure. I was reading the other title I received this weekend while my wife was paging through this one. She says to me, "Are you going to review this one?"

Of course, I said. That's the deal.

"You better throw it away when your finished with it. Our kids are readers, you know. If you leave this laying around, they'll read it and it's not appropriate for them."

So I'll have to review that one pretty quick before my wife takes summary action with it.

The other one is the title you see to the right here -- Southern Baptist Identity, edited by David Dockery. On the one hand, thank God someone is talking about this besides me and iMonk. Seriously.

I was having an e-mail conversation with a Southern Baptist Missiologist who didn't ask to be drawn into this conversation but did contribute to this book (this was about 2 years ago) and he was going on about how the SBC was a denomination -- and I told him that this was the problem. He didn;t get my sly remark, so I clarified: the SBC was never intended to be a denomination: it is a convention. The distinction there is that a denomination can and will dictate terms to member churches because that's the point of a denomination: centralized leadership through which to force conformity. A "convention" ought to be a mode of cooperation by local churches who are seeking to do more for the Gospel collectively than they can do individually -- the agenda is driven from the bottom, up.

And in the ways that this book speaks to that truth, it's a useful book for Southern Baptists to read and think about and discuss vigorously.

You can look forward to some discussion about that book here in the near future.

And sometime this week a debate about the Trinity is going to break out at the D-Blog. I am sure it will edify someone.

Home Work

When we had the bookstore, I really, really hated selling devotionals. I mean, to the order of talking people out of buying them so that they would get something else. Anything else.

Because let's face it: not every devotional is When I Don't Desire God, right?

And from my standpoint, children's devotionals ... ugh. Most of them are just ... look, let's not revisit the past. I'm not writing this review of What does the Bible Say About That? because it's part of the gin mill of sad and sorry time killers which substitute for real discipleship or study of God's word.

This book is actually different.

Now, before I gush on this book, let's make sure we frame my praise properly: this is a book for ages 8-12, and it's meant to be a devotional, not a 12-hour semester in post-graduate seminary training. But for about $16 (less from CBD), you get about 340 short devotionals like this one:

The page/topics are listed in alphabetical order, and the topics range from things as theologically-rich as the Trinity and Blasphemy to practical topics like Personal Hygiene and Competition. While it's a book designed for children, it's not just a book for kids: it's a book well-suited for family devotion time that can give you the opportunity to talk about our faith as if it was a real thing. You can call it "home work" if you're clever.

It's another winner from Crossway. At some point, other publishers are going to have to take notice and start committing themselves to top-shelf content like this for all ages.

A book you should love

I panned a book from Crossway over in the meta of TeamPyro yesterday, and I have a small stack of books from them on my shelf which I have been trying to get reviewed for about 4 months now. So to offset the panning they got at the other blog, I'm going to gush a little about a book about house churches.

Tim Chester and Steve Timmis have written what I think is a fabulous book about the life of the local church called Total Church: A Radical Reshaping Around Gospel and Community. It's in the RE:LIT series co-branded with Mars Hill Church in Seattle, and I love it.

Before I get all gushy over this book -- which I think is ridiculously-easy to do -- let me point out some of its limitations. For example, in the chapter on "Theology", it takes a swipe at Protestant models of Scriptural authority and salutes the "Anabaptist" model of "Gospel in community" over that. Eh. I though the point needed more work to convince me than they gave it in the 4 paragraphs on pp 158-159, but at least their point of view is transparent.

Another shortcoming of this book is its radical focus on a church without walls. The idea that a church is a community and not a building is a great maxim, an excellent and transformative point when you really "get it", a great theological point. But I think that, truth be told, in Western Civilization, every significant local community with a particular common interest in the last 500 years at least has raised up a place where it can assemble and demonstrate whatever it is they have in common -- be it a love of a sport or a love of fine art or a love of beer. Our God does not live in a temple, as Paul would say, but I would add: His people need someplace to call home, at least for now.

But that said, there isn't anyone reading my blog who can't learn something significant, church-improving, and of Gospel-centered seriousness from Total Church. Chester & Timmis have really made a labor of love to advance for the church a practical theology of the church which advances beyond the core of the Gospel without for one second taking the Gospel for granted.

The first chapter, in fact, underscores their focus -- it is called "Why Gospel?" Their conclusion is that the Gospel is a word, therefore the church must be word-centered. But it is not to be word-encased -- the word is not a tomb or a bunker in which the church resides, but a place which calls people out of the world, and into community.

How that community ought to -- and can -- work is the case made in the rest of Total Church, and as is my habit I'm not going to poison it for you by trying to distill it for you. Go out and buy this book, read it, and apply directly to your church.

The Golden Tables

First of all, let me heap my unadulterated scorn on Office 2007. I used to be productive with Office, and now I spend half my life trying to find things in the “ribbon”. Hey Redmond: thanks for wasting July 2008 for me, you coneheads.

OK – with that off my chest, I have mentioned this before, but I really loathe study bibles. On the one hand, they are way too much for the average person to grasp – I mean, what do I read first? Do I read the notes at the bottom of the page first, or read the page, then the notes? And what are all these little letters in the text – they’re not verse numbers? And is that map inspired or merely helpful?

And on the other hand, a study bible is usually not even enough to get after real study of the actual text. The closest thing to serviceable I have ever encountered in that respect are the billion notes included with the NET Bible – and even those have the problem of not really being consistent in content or intent. If you want scholarly emendations, you ought to go grab a book about your question and get the actual answer and not the headline of the actual answer.

And really, those complaints are actually symptoms of my larger concern here, which is the actual reading of the actual Bible. You know: people have a hard enough time getting past the book of Exodus as it is. When Exodus becomes an archeological conundrum or geographic puzzle or sociological interpretations of cross-cultural baloney, the average guy will give up and go listen to Joel Osteen or something because at least Joel has a wife who’s tough enough to punch a flight attendant when she doesn’t get her way in first class.

I mean: we want people to read God’s word, right? We’re Protestants after all, and if we make the Scripture into something which requires a Scribe or a Pharisee or academic magisterium just to get past the introduction, our man Wycliffe may be rolling in his grave.

So I say all that to say this: at some point, I’m going to post a review of the new evangelical translation of the Golden Tables (also known as the ESV Study Bible), and I come at the job with a pretty obvious and unashamed bias against the genre. I read the “Literary Study Bible” and found it “helpful”, but frankly I wouldn’t hand it to a new Christian. He needs to read the actual book of Hebrews and not the high-falootin’ grad-school spin about genre and style those of us with too much time on our hands might enjoy with a cigar and a glass of brandy.

Stay tuned for that.

Shack Attack version 2.0

Tim Challies has self-published a PDF revision of his review of the Shack.

Very frankly, it is one of his best pieces ever. I highly recommend anyone reading the Shack or thinking about reading the Shack or has had the Shack recommended to them download that PDF (that's what your right-click button is for), read that, and then read the book to see if Challies has treated it fairly.

Excellent format. Great resources listed in the back. Tough on what ought to be treated with toughness.

On a related note ...

A lot of people have said to me that the Shack is a harmless book of fiction which has edified them or given them a fresh look at their spirituality. A lot of people.

When I start asking them questions about the book and the things I found troubling with it, they all have a very unanimous answer which comes in various forms. They all say, in words to this effect, "doctrine isn't everything; sometimes it's OK just to enjoy something for what it is."

You know: I play video games. I admit it. I am currently addicted to Team Fortress 2, in spite of its apparent datedness. And when I'm spawned as a Fatty in order to "move little cart" and mow down the opposing players with my chain gun, I'm not thinking about doctrine. I admit it: I have moments when I'm not thinking about doctrine.

But here's the thing: I can promise you that the disconnect from TF2 to my Sunday School class is entirely mutual. In the same way that my doctrine regarding God's covenants with Israel does not effect whether I will heal opposing players when I'm a Medic in TF2, I can promise you that whether or not I dominated my friend Josh this week does not effect my ability to teach right doctrine in Sunday School.

My practice my be, um, unsanctified (we can talk about that if you want to try to get me there), but what I teach to others doesn't get scuttled by my enjoyment of TF2.

Let me suggest that it is at least suspicious that a book wants to call itself Christian fiction but, in fact, dismisses or diminishes almost every single foundational principle of the Christian faith. It is possible to "enjoy" such a thing, I am sure. The results of "enjoying" it, it seems to me, are a little more invasive than enjoying a couple of rounds of Goldmine.

So I recommend Tim's review to enhance your enjoyment of the Shack. If you find that affirmation troubling, tell me why in the meta.

Truth War Skirmish!

Well, welcome to the blog this week. Had a few throw-away posts this weekend, but I got redirected a few times to a post by a guy named Bob Robinson at Vangard Church regarding his review/evaluation of the Truth War by John MacArthur. I read it, read a review of the review, and after making a brief post on one of the referring blogs I chose to spend my morning today sorting out the original post for the sake of posting something substantive for the first time since my blog allegedly came back from "hiatus".

Here's the headline of the original blog post:

MacArthur Fits His Own Criteria for an Apostate

Now, before you fly off the handle, let's read the thesis statement of the post:

I’d like to juxtapose three statements by John MacArthur in order to show that, while MacArthur is quick to label other Christians “false teachers” and “apostate,” these labels can just as easily be leveled unfairly at MacArthur.

And to Robinson's credit, he does go through 3 quotes from Dr. MacArthur in an attempt to do what he says he's going to do. But let's make sure we understand what he's trying to do here to determine whether or not it deserves any redress: he's trying to prove that Dr. MacArthur's use of "apostate" is so ill-defined that it can be applied to Dr. MacArthur himself because it is such a broad category.

Here's the first quote Robinson gives, with exposition:

Statement #1:
“What we are called to defend is no less than ‘the faith which was once for all delivered to the saints.’ Jude is speaking of apostolic doctrine (Acts 2:42) – objective Christian truth – the faith, as delivered from Jesus through the agency of the Holy Spirit by the apostles to the church … Jude speaks of ‘the faith’ as a complete body of truth already delivered – so there is no need to seek additional revelation or to embellish the substance of ‘the faith’ in any way. Our task is simply to interpret, understand, publish, and defend the truth God has once and for all delivered to the church. That is what the Truth War is ultimately all about.” (p. 75)

Let's make sure we have a handle on what Dr. MacArthur has said here before we read what Robinson interprets. Dr. MacArthur makes it clear that, on the one hand, new revelation and embellishments on the substance of faith are out of bounds, but interpretation, understanding, publishing, and defense of truth are all in-bounds. I have added emphasis in that text, above, to make that clear.

So what Dr. MacArthur has put in his scope are things which add to revelation (by which he means "Scripture" and the fullness of revelation in Christ), and things which embellish or exaggerate "the faith". What he has –not- decried are writings or teachings which interpret (that is: writings which make what is in the text more clear), understand (that is: teachings which draw in the larger picture of Scripture), publish (that is: the simple act of disseminating such teachings through print media), and defend (that is: teachings which draw out the contrasts between the faith and other ideas or philosophies in order to show why the faith is itself better).

Let's see where Robinson takes this:

So, MacArthur is saying that Brian McLaren, Rob Bell, Stan Grenz, John Franke, John Armstrong, Donald Miller, and Chris Seay are all guilty of embellishing the substance of the faith in some way. They are not being loyal to the faith “once for all delivered to the saints.”

Yes, I think this is exactly what he's saying, and the word Robinson uses here is exactly right: "embellishing". That is: they have gone beyond the bounds of the texts involved, and therefore have engaged in exaggeration thereby creating a caricature of the faith which is false. And like all caricatures, it might be funny of they weren't serious about making that creation into the faith itself.

Now watch what Robinson does here:

Let’s take this criterion and apply it to John MacArthur. MacArthur is a Dispensationalist, a form of theology that originated in the late 1800s with John Nelson Darby in England and in moved to the United States in the early 1900s when C. I. Scofield began teaching it. Don't miss this: Dispensationalism’s interpretation of the Bible is very novel, less than 150 years old. Dispensationalism insists that God deals with Israel and the Church differently through a dispensational grid and that this grid determines how we must interpret every passage of the Bible so that we can determine whether the passage is referring to Israel or the Church. It insists that the Church must be raptured away from the earth into its heavenly existence so that God can finish His plan for Israel in its earthly existence.

I repeat: This theology is new. It is not the same theological understanding that “was once for all delivered to the saints.” It grew out of a admittedly individualistic interpretation of the Bible (the Dispensationalists insisted that they were reading the Bible literally and letting the Bible alone determine their theology, with little regard for the history of interpretation).

I have two disclosures that I have to make before I go on. The first is that I'm not a fan of dispensationalism – it's a somewhat broad category of eschatology and hermeneutics that includes all kinds of people from John Macarthur to Tim LaHaye to Clarence Larkin, and you simply can't know what kind of thinker you're dealing with by the label "dispensationalist". I don't find it helpful, personally, to know if someone is a "dispensationalist" because it's a category which doesn't mean anything.

And let's be honest: people like Clarence Larkin are kooks. They might actually be "apostate" as Dr. MacArthur defines the term, but that's not the point of this post. I also think that bad forms of dispensationalism and premillenial enthusiasm have caused the American church in particular to exaggerate the priority of the individual in matters of faith -- but that's for another day. The point of this post is to take a look at what Robinson says about Dr. MacArthur's argument and see if it holds water. So no: I'm not a dispensationalist.

The second disclosure is that I'm not interested in reductionistic historical arguments. It's one thing to say that the systematic formulas of Ryrie and Scofield are "new", and it's another to overstate their newness for the sake of trying to make them fit inside an ideological box in order to call some book or some author's reasoning into question. You know: there's something "new" about translating the Bible using "dynamic" translation philosophy, and I doubt that Robinson would try to wedge that into the box of "apostate" – and I doubt that Dr. MacArthur would go there, either. The question is not how "new" something is, but whether or not its "newness" causes the truth to be somehow voided.

Let's be honest: one of the greatest systematic conundrums of the NT is whether or not God will ultimately deal with racial, hereditary Israel in a different way than He will with the rest of the world. To say the sorting out of this matter was somehow "done" by the end of the apostolic age is a little ambitious, and ignores a lot of things – like the anti-Semitism of the 4th and 5th centuries. And in that light, to call Ryrie's attempt to reconcile this issue in the 19th century "new" is, um, demonstrating a lot of gusto.

Here's the rub, however: we have to ask ourselves what's "new" about dispensationalism. Is it trying to renovate the cross to make it palatable for a culture, a worldview, a people, or a philosophy? Or is it "new" in the sense that the cross remains in tact and one view of the end times as a consequence of the way God reveals himself in history is being explored?

I think it's a big jump to say that interpreting the prophecy that God will save all Jews at some point in history as "all the Jews" is in the same league as interpreting the cross as a form of "cosmic child-abuse". That's the problem we face here – the scope of the claims, and the objective of the "newness".

Thus when we read what's next, we should have a pretty big problem:

So, using MacArthur’s criterion of whether someone is "seeking additional revelation or embellishing the substance of the faith in any way," Dispensationalists could be included. Now, I’m not saying that Dispensationalists should be included, just that MacArthur fits his own criterion for an apostate. Before he labels others as “false teachers” he had better know that, in doing so, he opens himself up to that same label.

If we apply definitions the way Robinson does here, the Trinity has to be called an innovative doctrine because the category "trinity" doesn’t occur by name in Scripture – yet I am sure that Robinson doesn’t have that kind of chutzpah. Just because one formulation of one doctrine is not given some name or specific systematic outline in the first generation of Christian writing, this doesn’t force the doctrine into the category Dr. MacArthur outlines – and Dr. MacArthur's paragraph here specifically defines why. A document teaching or explaining what Scripture says is not inherently apostate – even if the presentation is innovative.

What is at stake with the men specifically listed in this post by Robinson as identified by Dr. MacArthur as "apostate" is that they veer off the page of Scripture and into imaginative, speculative, and theological ditches which give us central themes of Scripture for some other ideological objective.

At this point, Robinson goes on to a second statement by Dr. MacArthur:

Statement #2:
“Every form of gnosticism starts with the notion that truth is a secret known only by a select few elevated, enlightened minds. (Hence the name, from gnosis, the Greek word for knowledge.) … Another dominant variety of gnosticism (know as Docetism) taught that all manifestations of Jesus’ human nature – including His physical body (and hence His crucifixion and resurrection) – were only illusions. God could not really have come to earth in the true material form of authentic human flesh, the Docetists said, because matter itself is evil.” (pp. 89, 92)

Who can argue with this, really? It's a historical set of definitions. I agree that this is what docetism and Gnosticism are.

Again, if we take this criterion and apply it to MacArthur’s theology, we see that he opens himself up to the same criticism. He talks about Gnostics in general and Docetists in particular, as if those in the Emerging Church are guilty of these heresies. However, it has been largely acknowledged that it is Dispensational theology that is the main culprit of gnosticism in the United States.

Wow. I mean – that's not a logical leap: that's a logical fall off the cliff – and the list of so-called evidences simply makes the case worse and not better.

* Dispensationalism stresses the hope of heaven over the hope of the redeemed earth.

That's not just "dispensationalism" which does this, btw – even post-millenial guys are in for the New Heavens and New Earth which are -far- -better- than what we have today. The question is not whether they will be better, but –how- they will be better. And in that paradigm, even the Dispensationalist says that the Earth is "redeemed" by Christ.

* Dispensationalism stresses the hope of a “rapture” over the hope of a resurrected physical life.

It's sort of breath-taking that someone is willing to say this out loud – because even the sort of weak-tea dispensationalism of a Tim LaHaye doesn't say that the rapture is the be-all and end-all of Christian life. The Resurrection is –still- the ultimate end of redemption, and it is a –physical- resurrection, not merely souls without bodies.

* Dispensationalism stresses the importance of saving people from the earthly existence and inviting them into a spiritual, heavenly existence.

That's almost laughable – especially in the context that Robinson is talking about MacArthur who wrote The Gospel According to Jesus and has opposed the ridiculous easy-believism of "Free Grace" guys like Zane Hodges. MacArthur is about an exclusively-eternal salvation? Document that in some way – especially in the context of his Dispensational leanings.

* MacArthur’s own books on Heaven are filled with hints toward gnostic ideas that matter itself is evil; that true “glory” is when we move out of the fleshly existence and into the spiritual existence.

This last one is interesting because it names "hints" rather than open statements and affirmations. Let me suggest something: frame MacArthur's work as a body of writings that hang together in some way and are related to each other, and these so-called hints will –all- evaporate. That can't be said about the guys Dr. MacArthur is criticizing in The Truth War.

So, before MacArthur accuses others of being “false teachers” and “apostates,” he had better know that he opens himself up to the same accusations.

See above. This is at best a strident accusation and at worst a completely-unsupported fiction which Robinson hasn’t substantiated at all.

Now, for critics who want to peck at this dismissal of Robinson's claims, let me offer you this: when it can be said that Dr. MacArthur advances a secret truth which is not available to all men that makes matter evil and the immaterial the only possible good, and that he preaches a Christ who was not a real man whose death was only a symbol or a metaphysical representation, then you can start barking up the tree of Gnosticism and/or Docetism.

Statement #3:
“Truth (the simple truth of the gospel, to be specific) is necessary for salvation … (Romans 10:13-14). Scripture is clear about this: there is no hope of salvation apart from hearing and believing the truth about Christ (cf. 1 Corinthians 1:21). That is why nothing is more destructive than false religion. Mere ignorance is devastating enough: ‘My people are destroyed for lack of knowledge’ (Hosea 4:6). But gospel-corrupting apostasy is the most sinister of all evils.” (pp. 119-120)

In light of MacArthur’s earlier warning against gnosticism, he had better be careful here. Remember that on page 89 of his book, MacArthur wrote, “Every form of gnosticism starts with the notion that truth is a secret known only by a select few elevated, enlightened minds. (Hence the name, from gnosis, the Greek word for knowledge.)”

What Robinson had better be wary of is a misrepresentation of Dr. MacArthur and the Gospel which he proclaims – because that's what's at issue here: whether the Gospel is proclaimed or if it is hidden. The Gospel is a public event, something (as it is said in the book of Acts) not done in a corner. And it is because of this aspect of the Gospel – the lifting up of Christ that all men may be drawn to Him – that there is –nothing- Gnostic about the Gospel MacArthur preaches.

But now watch what Robinson does in this next section:

One signature motif throughout MacArthur’s book is that he continually insists that what saves you is the knowledge of the truth. This, again, is a form of gnosticism: it teaches that Christians have a secret knowledge (gnosis) and that people are saved from this earthly existence by believing the knowledge that we can explain to them.
* For MacArthur, evangelism is explaining what he knows is the truth to others.
* For MacArthur, salvation is when someone accepts and knows this truth.
* Therefore, according to MacArthur, the key to Christian ministry is the proclamation of specific truths, so that people will hear these truths, accept these truths, in order that they too will be “in the know.”

This is a classic error on the part of novice critics of Christianity in general and critics of Baptists in particular. On the one hand, they confuse the categories of "proclamation" or "evangelism" with "apologetics" or "defense". On the other, they are seeking to press the philosophy of "gnosis" into service just because of the Biblical statement that we should "know" Christ.

"gnosis" is a secret knowledge which one gains by private means, sometimes referred to as an interior light or spark from God. What Dr. MacArthur advances, in the most obvious terms possible, is a knowledge of God obtained by public and special revelation on the part of God through Scripture and ultimately through Christ.

Only someone with no real understanding of either the Bible or Gnosticism could come to the conclusion that evangelical faith is appealing to a private center – but it would serve one well to compare that to some of the statements coming from guys like McLaren and Bell.

MacArthur is quick to point out that Jesus is truth incarnate, and that we need a personal relationship with Christ in order to be saved. THIS is the gospel. I wish he said this more often in the book.

How often does he have to say it in a lifetime of writing and preaching? Another pretty amateurish mistake on Robinson's part is trying to isolate MacArthur's criticism in this book for the fairly-encyclopedic body of writing he has turned out in 40 years of ministry.

If this were Dr. MacArthur's first book, or if he didn’t have a print and audio archive of what amounts to gigabytes of text and sermon audio, all of which in one way or another points to the fact of the incarnation of Christ as the fulfillment of Moses and the Prophets, Robinson's criticism would have some legs to stand on. Instead, it has to sit down and catch its breath.

However, the way he elevates “knowledge” as the key to salvation over and over again in this book opens him up to the accusation that he is the one that is hedging toward the apostasy of gnosticism, for it is not a secret knowledge of the truth that saves, it is a relationship with Christ that saves.

If MacArthur wants to point fingers at other teachers and accuse them of apostasy, MacArthur had better be ready for some of the same treatment in turn.

This is the basic problem with this book. MacArthur is seeking to label people "apostates" when they do not, in fact, fit the description. The proof is in that MacArthur himself fits his own description!

See above. I can frankly honor Robinson's good form as he structured his criticism here well – it's got good expositional form. It just doesn’t have any substantive expositional content, and falls down for lack of real substance.

UPDATED: For the record, I fixed some typos and clarified one statement, so your RSS feeders may have gotten a double copy of this post. Thanks to all alert readers who helped comb this out.

Hard-Core Southern Baptist

In spite of some heated words in the meta lately, it turns out that I know a little bit about Christian retail. This could be the part of the post today which could make your eyes glaze over where I go on and on about which bible translations with which type of hood ornaments sell the best and why, but there are no proof texts for those things, and we don't want to antagonize the various bye-bul factions reading the blog. Right now, anyway.

I bring up my store, however, because we're going to start carrying a new Bible published by Holman Bible Publishers called the Apologetics Study Bible, which is (as you might guess) a HCSB translation -- technically, the Holman Christian Standard Bible, but known to fans of Ed Stetzer as the Hard-Core Southern Baptist Bible. And to be as transparent as possible, I got my first copy for free because the marketing people at LifeWay.com saw that I have a blog and offered to send me one for free if I'd review it.

Challies has probably already reviewed it, so I'm just small potatoes here -- a side dish. But for the sake of coming clean for my free personal copy, here are my thoughts and you can do with them as seems right to you. For those who can't wait to the end, I'd say I'd give this set of study notes a thumbs-up, with a few high-lights and low-lights.

Study Bibles in General

My opinion is that study bibles are a distraction -- they are at the same time too much and not enough. On the one hand, they sort of overwhelm the reader with notes, comments, insights, introductions, devotions, whatever; on the other, they're not really like a teacher because a teacher (a good one anyway) wouldn't get in the way of the subject matter just when you get to the good part, and a good teacher would not try to impress you with how smart he is by pushing the word of God out of the way to get his footnote in edge-wise -- about the iron age, for example, when the Bible is talking about the construction of the temple.

And let's face it: if the Bible is hard to read already (and it can be), trying to read it and 50,000 footnotes can be frankly impossible. Most people don't need more notes: most people need to turn off the iPod and the TV and the cell phone and read their Bibles at least as intently as they read their daily blogs.

So I'm not a huge fan of the "study bible" genre because these are usually a lot more than the average reader needs, and a lot less than the average disciple needs, if you follow me.

That's not to say that someone past the mid-point of Bible literacy couldn't use a few lessons in history, geography, translation theory and/or theology -- they probably could. So if we start with the premise that "study Bibles" are for the intermediate Bible reader, we can start talking about what's going on with the Apologetics Study Bible (hereafter, APB).

Apologetics: mixed fruits and nuts (and metaphors)

However, I have one other small axe to grind, and that's about the insane intellectual wildlife preserve known as "Christian Apologetics". It's a veldt in which everything from the high primates, the low marsupials, the craven scavengers and the feline predators roam. Don't go out there without a guide, 'kay?

Because apologetics is such a mixed bag, and because context is almost everything when you start reading it, I'm not sure that anyone ought to enter in to the field even as a hobby without doing some essential reading of whole books -- like one or two systematic theologies, and a coupla books on church history -- before wading into a pool of apologetic authors that range in theological bent from William Lane Craig to John Frame to Norman Geisler to (a-hem) Ergun Caner.

In that respect, I found the Reformation Study Bible -- in spite of it being NIV -- far more helpful than my first couple of passes at the APB. That Bible approached theology, and therefore apologetics, from one consistent perspective, and you didn't run into issues where in Jude William Lane Craig is advancing Molinism (while failing to note it is a counter-reformational theology, opposed to reformed views of God) and back in Isaiah Bruce Ware gives the reformed view of God's sovereignty and man's freedom, while the reader is left somewhat on his own to sort it out.

So my over-arching caveat, then, is that when you pick this Bible up, don't expect to walk away with the rosetta stone of Christian apologetics which equips you to be the next Gene Cook with an appropriately-narrow mind. The range of essays from the wide range of theological perspectives here is eclectic and probably doesn't square you up to any particular systematic view very well.

The Good News

On the other hand, there are quite a few things to sort of enjoy and savor about the notes in this Bible. For example, the introductions to each book of the bible are good -- like the introduction to Isaiah which points out that many recent objections to the book of Isaiah being written by the prophet himself ought to be overcome by recognizing that Isaiah wrote from the prophet's perspective with supernatural revelation, and that affirming the supernatural is a central part of the Christian worldview. That's basic apologetics 101, and regardless of your theological persuasion it's foundational for talking about the faith in a substantive way.

And the real win in this study bible is the collection of essays distributed throughout the text on topics pointed at by the scriptures. If we account that I have already warned you about the mixed bag/lack of context issues, there are over 100 (the dust jacket says 130) essays and articles on topics from Genetic Engineering to whether we can trust the text of the OT to life after death. In fact, in spite of my little poke at Dr. Caner, his essays about the contrast between Islam and the Bible are really among the better essays in the text -- because these are his areas of expertise.

Another big win is what the editors of this set of study notes call "twisted scripture" where particular cultic misinterpretations of the text are called out and highlighted to keep the canny student between the theological ditches. My only complaint about those notes is that the aren't called out very clearly, and they tend to run into the text if you're not paying attention. Maybe in the second edition Holman can use some hairline borders or something to make these note more accessible and clear to the reader. There is also no index of these notes, and that would have also been very helpful.

And because it's a study bible, APB has the full array of color charts and maps, many of church history and big moments in apologetic history. If you like that sort of thing, you will definitely like these.

Do you need one?

But the big question, really, is "do I need another Bible?" And in a Christian culture where we have 80 distinct translations of the Bible but nobody seems to know the difference between Ahaz and Belshazzar, that's an important question -- do we need another set of "study notes" which turn out to distract us again from reading the Bible itself and getting all "Deuteronomy 6" with God's word?

If you have read the Bible, and you'd like a text which has a quick index of basic apologetic arguments, this is probably a very good edition for you. But if you're looking for an intro to apologetics to start up your own branch office of Alpha Omega ministries, you'll need a lot more than 130 1-page essays to get started.

Holman has published a very concise, useful, interesting, readable volume of apologetic essays from a wide variety of thinkers in this work. Apologetic fan-boys like me will love to get it for Christmas or a birthday or whatever. But let the buyer beware: this Bible is not a substitute for reading far more substantive treatments of these issues and considering them against the text of Scripture itself for the final word of what God hath said.

And for your convenience, you can go here and buy one. Note that there are a wide variety of bindings to choose from.