Book Review The Message of Luke (Michael Wilcock)

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While the BST series claims not to be a commentary series, many of the New Testament volumes follow a typical verse by verse approach. By contrast, the volumes covering Old Testament books take a broader view of the overall flow of a book, highlighting its major themes without necessarily touching on every verse or discussing all the interpretational or theological issues that are raised. Michael Wilcock’s volume on Luke is very much in the latter style.

The author acknowledges from the outset that this is an intentionally brief volume majoring on exposition rather than exegesis. There are no prolonged defences of traditional authorship or historicity. Neither is there more than a few passing references to what is and isn’t found in the other gospel records. Controversial or complicated passages are noted as such, but not explored in any depth. The introduction is particularly short, although this is compensated by an extended first chapter on 1:1-4. After that, the pace picks up considerably, and he begins by analysing Luke’s interesting literary style in the birth narrative.

Rather than treating each parable, miracle or teaching separately, Wilcock prefers to group them together and demonstrate what common themes are to be found in all of them. He is primarily concerned with grasping Luke’s flow of thought and discovering why he arranged the material in the way he did. This means that sections that you might expect to find a long section of comments on (e.g. the Lord’s prayer) are covered in only a few sentences. It also means that the book is not suitable as a reference for those who want an explanation of an individual pericope.

However, this book does do a good job of fulfilling the stated aim of the series – to highlight “the message of” a particular book. Luke’s portrayal of Jesus as the healer and saviour for all nations is at the forefront throughout the book. Also, in keeping with the rest of the BST series, practical and theological application is very important, and nowhere more so than in the chapter on the cross. Wilcock strongly disagrees with any suggestion that Luke had no theology of the cross.

If you want an overview of the book of Luke this is a good place to start. At 200 pages it is much more manageable than most commentaries on Luke. In fact it will serve well as a companion to other introductory level commentaries on Luke, which will leave out much of Wilcock’s treatment of the flow of thought in favour of cramming in more comments on individual verses.

Storms on Carson on Emergent

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Sam Storms has written a multi-part review of Don Carson’s recent book on the Emergent Church, very much agreeing with the concerns that Carson expresses in the book. Storm’s site is becoming a very useful resource with new articles being added regularly. And as a fellow reformed charismatic, I find myself agreeing with the majority of his writings.

I feel like I ought to do a bit more background research on the Emergent Movement before I head off to this year’s New Wine. The last two years they had alternative meetings for the 20s-30s called “Em Gen” (Emerging Generation) and last year “Em Church”. Personally I found them a bit trendy for my liking and mainly attended the meetings with the oldies. I don’t know whether the “Emergent” part of the name is emergent with a capital E or not, but this year I hope to find out.

If you’re wondering what the meetings were like, the worship was partly contemporary rock with some liturgical elements, but also had some more DJ style electronic music with video backdrops of candles and stuff. There were lots of tables round the edges where you could sit and observe the worship while you eat cakes and drink tea (which I confess to doing both times I went). The only sermon I heard there was from Amy Orr-Ewing of the Zacc trust who last I knew were anything but postmodern in their approach (in fact are quite likely to run seminars explaining postmodernism and critiquing it).

Back on the subject of Don Carson’s book, I’ll balance out Storm’s review with one here by someone from the London School of Theology who really didn’t like it. He reviews one of McLaren’s books first, and as you will see from the opening paragraph, is clearly a convert.

Book Review – The Pillar New Testament Commentary on Ephesians (Peter T O’Brien)

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Peter O’Brien has earned himself the reputation of being a fine scholar and commentary writer, specialising in the Prison epistles, having written highly acclaimed volumes on Philippians for the New International Greek Testament Commentary and Colossians and Philemon for the Word Biblical Commentary. This work on Ephesians thus completes the set, and although the Pillar Series isn’t as technical as the other series he has written for, this is by no means a basic level commentary.

It weighs in at 500 pages of commentary, 80 of which are devoted to the introduction. This is perhaps longer than might be expected for this series, but a good deal of this is given to providing a robust defence of Pauline authorship. Andrew Lincoln (author of the Word Biblical Commentary on Ephesians) is his main sparring partner, and he sets out Lincoln’s argument in detail before responding point by point. His thorough argument firmly puts the burden of proof back onto the doubters. He also takes some time to express serious misgivings about the validity of the rhetorical approach of interpretation taken by some commentators.

The commentary proper follows broadly the same format as the other Pillar volumes, and includes the text of Ephesians in the NIV. I would have preferred his own translation though, as in a number of places he favours significantly different sentence constructions. Each section and subsection of the book has a summary introduction outlining the flow of argument that will follow. Comments are then provided on one or occasionally two verses at a time. Sections are usually ended with another summary of the flow of argument often highlighting how the themes in the section under consideration fit with the rest of the book. There are six chapters of commentary – one for each of the chapters of Ephesians.

The long sentences of Ephesians 1 mean that fairly technical discussions of Greek grammar are inevitable, but O’Brien manages well to keep it from becoming inaccessible to the non-specialist. Any Greek is both transliterated and translated, although the footnotes contain Greek font but still provide a translation. Where a phrase has been interpreted in many different ways, O’Brien takes time to enumerate the main options before revealing his own preference.

O’Brien writes from a conservative evangelical perspective, and while he rarely preaches (preferring to let Paul do the preaching), he shows concern for contemporary application. The contentious section on wives in chapter 5 is given extra space to allow him to defend a traditional complimentarian position, but attempting to address some concerns that egalitarians may have with this approach. He believes Grudem’s paper rejecting the translation of kephale as ‘source’ rather than ‘head’ is decisive, and so this part of the debate is largely left to the footnotes.

Having said this, he does not feel the need to weigh in on every modern theological debate. For example the reader will only find hints of what he believes about “apostles for today” or “spiritual warfare techniques”, without explicitly mentioning the views he rejects.

Although the main discussion of Pauline authorship is confined to the introduction, where relevant O’Brien does make additional points, particularly with regards to the supposed “over-realised eschatology” of the author. O’Brien’s contention is that the theology of the letter fits well with Paul’s other writings and he demonstrates this wherever possible.

Ephesians is a book that is rich in both theologically and practical application. In this commentary O’Brien does a fine job of revealing Paul’s meaning as well as his flow of thought. The section on the familiar 2:8-10 is outstanding, and his careful exegesis sheds much light on some of the difficult to understand passages (e.g. 3:14-19 and 5:13,14). This is a commentary best suited to those who want to do some research for teaching of their own, and seems set to be the standard evangelical Ephesians commentary for some time to come. I highly recommend it to all Bible students or teachers.

New Frontiers June-August Magazine

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I picked up a copy of the latest newfrontiers magazine this morning. Its not online yet, but I expect it will be available here soon.

I haven’t read it all yet, but things that grabbed my attention were Terry Virgo’s glowing review or Alec Motyer’s BST message of Exodus which I’m hoping to read next month after I’ve finished Wilcock on Luke.

Also, there is an the interview with David Stroud who will now be heading up the New Frontiers UK work. It reveals that he studyied theology at Durham under James Dunn who he says has “written a lot of the best theological work on the Holy Spirit”.

I have a number of friends who have been part of David Stroud’s churches in Birmingham and London, and he has a strong church planting focus as well as a heart for “Word and Spirit” churches (a subject he spoke well on at one of the Brighton leadership conferences), so I think this will be a good thing for the New Frontiers group of churches.

I’ve also booked a couple of days off work to attend this year’s New Frontiers Leadership Conference in Brighton. I’ll go on the Wednesday, and then look after the children for Steph to go on the Thursday. Let me know if any of you fellow NFI bloggers are going – perhaps I’ll get to say hello.

Carson on the New Perspective

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Thanks to Adrian Warnock for alerting me to some online lectures by Don Carson on the New Perspective. Lecture 1 Lecture 2 Lecture 3.

Carson is the editor of two large books on the subject of the New Perspective (Justification and Variegated Nomism), which provide responses to the claims of Sanders, Dunn et al. I don’t have the time to read these at the moment, so the lectures are useful as a way of getting a summary of his viewpoint as well as a chance to hear his response to some of the NP criticisms of those books.

Lecture 1 gives a fairly succinct overview of the NP, while the other 2 lectures are used to provide a basic response. Carson does acknowledge that he has much respect for N T Wright, but particularly lays into his making the exile theme the controlling paradigm for his theology. Also, as a bonus, Lecture 3 includes the story of how Douglas Moo got his name!

Teach them to your children

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Two years ago I embarked on an ambitious program to teach my family from every verse in the New Testament (and perhaps one day the whole Bible). I read a few verses and then prepare a one page devotional message on it. I then read one of my commentaries on the same passage just to check I have not completely missed the point and steal any good points I missed. I would like to manage to write one a day, but in reality 3 or 4 a week is about my limit.

I then read them to the family at mealtimes and afterwards we have a short prayer time. Usually my two children (aged 2 and 4) misbehave the whole way through and so its not always the delightful happy devotional time you might think it would be. I have learned to read it quickly while they are quiet eating their pudding, which is the only moment of peace we get.

The talks themselves are not exactly classics, and hopefully I will improve as time goes on, but they have been a tremendous help to me in my own study of the Bible. Working through a book bit by bit over a prolonged period of time and wrestling with how to apply it is a great way to understand the Bible in a fresh way. I would highly recommend doing this to any of you with families.

The reason I’m posting this is to explain that it is the main reason why my blogging output has dropped recently. I have decided that teaching my family is a higher priority than teaching the varied visitors to my site, who have many more insightful blogs to choose from anyway. I was amazed at the boost to traffic that starting a blog gave me (going from an average of 12 pages a day to over 500 last month). This made me feel under pressure to have some great words of wisdom waiting for all these new readers every time they checked back, but it also took time away from preparing the studies I was doing for my family.

I am astonished at the consistency and quality that some Christian bloggers are managing to output, but I have come to realise that at best I will only be able to post a few short items a month. You can of course still expect plenty of book reviews from me, and hopefully I will be able to polish up some of the family devotions I have written into a form that I could post here.

Commentary News

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Eerdmans have recently announced their fall catalog. They publish a huge number of commentary series (including the excellent Pillar, New International, New Greek Testament, and Tyndale series) as well as many individual volumes, so I am always eager to find out what’s coming next from them.

5 new commentaries are on their way, although the only one that grabs my attention is the new NIGTC Matthew by Nolland, which is a generously sized 1600 pages and promises to bring “new evidence for an early date of composition”. There are also the first two volumes in a new series “The Two Horizons New Testament Commentary” which interestingly “[seeks] to bridge the chasm between academic biblical studies and systematic theology, [offering] section-by-section exegesis in conversation with theological concerns.”

IVP are still steadily heading towards completing their “Ancient Christian Commentary on Scripture” with a few more releases due over the next few months (Mark, Hebrews, Joshua, Judges, Ruth, 1-2 Samuel). They are also advertising a new Revelation commentary on the Greek Text by Stephen Smalley.

Book Review – The Message of Leviticus (Derek Tidball)

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This is the most recent addition to the Bible Speaks Today series, and follows firmly in the tradition of the others in the belief that God is speaking relevantly to us from all parts of the Bible, even the commonly neglected parts of the Old Testament such as Leviticus. Tidball’s writing style is engaging and the book begins with a fascinating introduction dealing with some of the themes and issues that come up in the book. Rather than breaking down the rules into categories of moral, civil and ceremonial, he prefers to seek the principles and paradigms expressed within them as we seek to apply them in the new covenant as Christians.

Tidball is clearly interested in some of the contemporary scholarly trends concerning Leviticus studies and often interacts with the views Milgrom, Douglas and others. He is not uncritically accepting of new theories and argues against them in places, but neither does he reject everything out of hand. Leviticus is of course the type of book that receives a lot of criticism for some of the unfashionable ethics it espouses as well as some of the rules and stipulations that are far from being ‘politically correct’. For Tidball, Leviticus is more about relationship with God than regulation, and his probing behind the letter of the laws to the spirit of the law often reveals strikingly modern concerns for human dignity and social welfare.

While the relevance for Christians is never far from the author’s concern, each chapter begins with a summary of the passage in question before concluding with a specific section of application. This proves to be a very helpful format for this commentary in particular. In these end sections, the sacrifices are thought of in light of Christ’s sacrifice for us, the priestly duties are used to draw out lessons for Christian leadership (although he stresses that OT priests are not analogous to NT leaders, as we are all priests in the new covenant), and purity laws serve to remind us that our religion concerns not merely what happens in the worship service but in every area of our lives – even in the kitchen and the bedroom God has something to say.

I can highly recommend this volume to anyone studying Leviticus whether for their own personal benefit or as part of preparing studies for others. Not only will it give a fuller understanding of the meaning of the book, but it will bring many practical challenges and encouragements for Christian life. I particularly enjoyed the sections on the Day of Atonement and Jubilee, as well as his discussion of the purity regulations, food laws and the sacrifices for unintentional sins.

Song – O Lord, How Majestic

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OK, here’s another song which I have recorded as part of my quest to improve my recording and mixing technique. This was one I started a few years back as part of a collection of songs that people in my church (which was then West Street Baptist Church in Dunstable) had written. I never got round to finishing them because I had planned to get some other people to do the vocals but I moved to Southampton before I got the chance.

[audio:o-lord-how-majestic.mp3]

This one was written by Katrina Peacham probably some time in the 1980s, and is based on Psalm 8. The melody is simple but effective. Its perhaps a bit dated now, but I still like it.

Lyrics

O Lord, how majestic is your name in all the earth
O Lord, how majestic is your name in all the earth
You have set your glory high above the heavens
From the lips of little children
You’ve established praise
When I see the heavens, the wonders you have made
How majestic is your name,
How majestic is your name
How majestic is your name in all the earth

Recording

I started with the original I made a few years back, and stuck with the arrangement I had decided on back then. I completely re-recorded all the parts, as they were either out of tune or had mistakes.

– The rhythm guitar effect was from my Behringer V-Amp which did a good job of recreating the original Boss ME-8 patch I had used.
– The guitar solo was recorded completely clean, and I used the excellent Free Amp SE VST plugin for the distortion.
– The piano part was from the Yamaha P200, and I tried to follow the advice people gave me from “Holy Spirit Will You Be” not to put too many bass notes in.
– Vocals were of course me (sorry), and I realised a little too late that it would have been good for me to raise the pitch of the song by a tone to suit my vocal range better. Effects were my new Kjaerhus GUP-1 compressor plus the free Anwida reverb. The vocals at the end used a band pass filter (courtesy of Kjaerhus Classic Filter) plus a delay with automated mix level.
– As usual, the drums took up far too much time. Again I used the Natural Studio kit lite through sfz. This time I decided I would bounce each part down to a separate audio track before applying effects to each one separately. Big mistake – it was a painfully slow process. I now know why people shell out the extra money to get drum samplers with multiple outs. Once they were finally out, I used GUP-1 compression and a Cakewalk room reverb. I was able to set the compression for each drum separately, but I still struggled to get the kick drum to cut through the mix the way I wanted it to. Percussion (tambourine and bongoes) were provided by hypersonic. I did record my own tambourine but the hypersonic tambourine’s jangle was at a much higher frequency which sat better in the mix. You will notice that it is more or less the same drum loop throughout the song. I had used some drum-loop WAVs when I first put the song together but they were never going to be used for the final thing as each variation seemed to have a subtly different snare, and also I couldn’t find a single-hit crash that matched for the transition to a slower tempo at the end. However, recreating the loop in MIDI took so long that I decided I wasn’t going to program any pattern variations for different parts of the song.
– Synth sounds were provided by Hypersonic, and the arpegiated synth for the third verse is an example of how the tempo-syncing just works with soft-synths in a way that was far too much hassle with hardware synths (maybe I’m just lazy though).
– Bass guitar was my Yamaha plus GUP-1 compression
– Final Mixdown: Reverbs were done on the 2 aux busses in SONAR rather than per-track, which was a first for me. Kjaerhus Classic Master-Limiter added the finishing touches.

I thought that this was going to be a fairly quick track to do, but it ended up taking slightly longer than the last one. Still, I feel I have learned a lot, and am slowly edging closer to being able to make mixes that I am actually happy with.

Song – Holy Spirit Will You Be

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Sometimes when I am having a prayer time, I will open the hymn-book up and sing a hymn. I like to turn to the section on prayer, and if I don’t know the hymn in question, I tend to make up my own tune rather than trying to learn the one in the book. So as a result of my recent urge to do some home studio recording, here is my version of Holy Spirit Will You Be which I originally wrote and partially recorded a few years ago. The hymn is from the Praise hymn book (number 604), and the words are written by Martin E Leckebusch (© 1999 Kevin Mayhew Ltd.) I like this hymn because it explores a rarely thought about theme of the Spirit helping us in our praying.

See below for details of the lyrics and recording process.

The lyrics

Holy Spirit will you be,
One who intercedes for me
When I wonder what to pray
How to phrase the words I say
Come in might and majesty,
Help me in my frailty
Holy Spirit will you be,
One who intercedes for me

Holy Spirit will you be,
One who intercedes through me
When I lack the words to tell
What my feelings say too well
Speak through every sigh and groan
Making my emotions known
Holy Spirit will you be,
One who intercedes through me

Holy Spirit will you be,
One who intercedes with me
Come search my heart and mind
My desires and motives find
Take my deepest thoughts and cares
Turn them into fervent prayers
Holy Spirit will you be,
One who intercedes with me

Holy Spirit will you be,
One who intercedes for me
You alone can understand
What the mind of God has planned
And within his will you will lead
All for whom you intercede
Holy Spirit will you be,
One who intercedes for me

The recording

Recording was done in SONAR 2 using my Audiophile 2496 soundcard. I had recorded a version of this a couple of years ago, but never finished it off, but this is a complete re-recording. I only recorded at 16bit 44.1kHz mainly because I forgot to switch the old project to 24 bit before I started recording the new material. The original had a very strong acoustic guitar part, but I decided to build slowly and have the piano as the lead instrument this time round.

  • Acoustic guitar – I recorded my Yamaha acoustic guitar both direct (piezo-electric) and miked using my Senheisser Evolution 845 dynamic mic. The miked version was dull and boxy and the direct was trebly. As it happened, I didn’t use the miked track in the final mix as the acoustic doesn’t play a very significant part in the mix and the direct one fitted better.
  • Shaker – This is one of my children’s toys. The secret to playing a shaker is not to think about what you’re doing. It goes wrong otherwise.
  • Drums – I recorded myself four times on my acoustic kit just to get some ideas down. Then I tried to program it in MIDI using the excellent NSKit (lite version) sounds through sfz. It mostly went well, although there was one thing I played on the real kit that I just couldn’t get to sound right with in MIDI (where the stick bounces on the closed hi-hat twice before hitting the snare).
  • Piano – This is simply my Yamaha P200 stage piano. I have yet to find a sample library that is as pleasing to play as this.
  • Electric Guitar – I originally recorded it clean, and tried out a host of VST amp and cabinet simulators before getting frustrated and using my trusty Behringer V-Amp to give me a nice patch with tempo-synced tremolo. Its about time I got myself a new electric guitar though – the intonation is miles out which is a real pain in the neck when recording.
  • Bass Guitar – As usual, my Yamaha bass was DIed but I used the compressor on my digital mixer first rather than software compression. I had to tail off the treble quite a bit to get rid of an annoying 6kHzish hum.
  • Vocals – I tried my best, I really did. But I have a habit of getting ‘high’ (well, high for me) notes slightly flat with depressing regularity.

The mixdown

The dynamics and EQ effects supplied with Cakewalk are not very intuitive to use, so I relied again on the trusty Kjaerhus Classic Compressor and Classic EQ on most tracks. I did use the Cakewalk reverb, which sounded better than the Kjaerhus one. The free Voxengo Span spectrum analyser plugin was useful for choosing EQing frequencies.

  • Acoustic Guitar and Shaker – just a bit of reverb on these
  • Vocals – some compression, EQ and a room reverb. It was in danger of getting lost in the mix in the fourth verse, but I think its just about OK.
  • Bass Guitar – was already compressed, so I just added a bit of EQ
  • Electric guitars – were thinned out with Classic EQ so they didn’t trample over the piano. The two parts are panned hard left and right.
  • Piano – left entirely untreated (it already had reverb)
  • Drums – I had programmed each drum on a separate MIDI track so I could bounce to separate audio tracks and apply different effects, but too be honest I had spent a very long time mixing already and just wanted to finish things off. I simply put a bit of compression and reverb onto the output of sfz. If I had the time to bounce down to separate tracks I would probably mix the cymbals slightly lower and get the kick drum to cut through a bit better.
  • Mastering – I used the Kjaerhus Classic Mastering Limiter just to boost the level of the track slightly, but no additional reverb or EQ. Oh yes, and thankfully I remembered to cut the beginning and end tails off the recordings and fading things out properly (rather than my usual accidentally leaving in the recorded sound of me walking across the room to press the stop button).

Overall, doing this recording was a good learning experience for me, but I still feel I have a long way to go. I’m hoping to find the time next month to do another one.