Roundtable with Michael Licona on the Resurrection of Jesus
This past Spring I was invited by the Southeastern Theological Review to join a roundtable discussion about Michael Licona’s recent book, The Resurrection of Jesus. That discussion will soon appear in the Summer, 2012 issue. Participants included myself, Danny Akin, Craig Blomberg, Paul Copan, Michael Licona, and Charles Quarles. Licona has written an excellent volume on the resurrection and I was pleased to be a part of the conversation.
The discussion was not only about Licona’s book, but particularly about the controversy over his view that Matt 27:52-53 may not be historical when it describes graves opening and people rising from the dead after the resurrection of Jesus. Licona … Continue reading...
Did God Really Say? A New Book on the Authority of Scripture
Last year at the 2011 General Assembly for the Presbyterian Church in America (PCA), I participated in a conference on the authority of Scripture that was sponsored by Reformed Theological Seminary, Westminster Theological Seminary, and Covenant Theological Seminary. Two scholars from each institution were asked to present papers on a variety of different topics. The idea behind the conference is that the church is never finished waging the battle over the authority of the Bible–each new generation needs to do its part to address contemporary issues.
Those papers have now been gathered together in a book edited by David Garner: Did God Really Say? Affirming the Truthfulness and Trustworthiness of … Continue reading...
Can the New Testament Canon be Defended? My Interview with Derek Thomas
Reformation 21, the website of the Alliance of Confessing Evangelicals, just posted my interview with Derek Thomas on my new book, Canon Revisited. I appreciate Derek’s invitation to do this interview–it was an interesting discussion on a number of important topics related to canon.
Here is an excerpt:
…[DT] What are the most crucial issues relating to a conservative/reformed defense of the canon today?
[MK] I think one of the critical weaknesses in modern canonical studies is that Christians often have no theology of canon. We have a lot of historical facts–anyone who has read the fine works of Metzger and Bruce will have plenty of patristic
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10 Misconceptions About the NT Canon: #3: “The NT Authors Did Not Think They Were Writing Scripture”
Note: This is the third installment of a new blog series announced here.
Sometimes, even in the academic world, things get said so many times that people assume they are true. And when that happens, no one bothers to look at the historical evidence in a fresh way. This has certainly been the case when it comes to this third misconception about the New Testament canon. It is routine these days to assert that the New Testament authors certainly did not think they were writing Scripture, nor had any awareness of their own authority. Mark Allan Powell, in his recent New Testament introduction, affirms this view plainly, “The … Continue reading...
Is Tradition the Only Way to Know Which Books are in the Canon?
Over at the Parchment and Pen blog, Michael Patton has objected to the statement of faith of Together for the Gospel (T4G), particularly as it pertains to the relationship between tradition and canon:
…Think of it another way: Without tradition being an authority we would not even have the Scriptures themselves, as it is only through tradition that we know what Scripture is actually Scripture. The Scriptures have no place where there is an inspired list telling us which books belong in the Scripture (we call this the “canon” of Scripture). It is through the traditions of the church that we know which books are the final authority. Therefore, tradition
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