Someone's made it

It's not necessarily a big deal on the world-wide stage of biblical and theological scholarship, but Pete, co-author of But Now has recently had a review published in Themelios. It's the first thing either of us have had published (unless Pete's been working under a pseudonym), and if we were betting men I'd probably owe him a bottle of something. You can read it here. Personally I agree with his review of the book - it's an excellently balanced critique of Barth which as Pete notes, presents a 'robust and fair interaction with Barth'. And I can guarantee it's the first review you've read in a long time which contains the word 'prophylactic'. Congratulations Pete - we look forward to many more!

Doctrinal truth

The new edition of themelios is out (read it here), and Trueman has an excellent editorial on Machen's Christianity and Liberalism.

Indeed, one overarching concern in Christianity and Liberalism is simply the vital importance of Christian doctrine to the church: doctrine, he makes clear, is the very heart of Christian testimony. Claiming to honor the Bible without synthesizing the Bible’s teaching into doctrine, into systematic theology, is not really honoring the Bible at all, for the Bible teaches truth, truth which is coherent and can be articulated; and regarding with indifference those things which the Bible clearly sees as important is, in some sense, the worst sin of all.

It's been a long while since I read Christianity and Liberalism (although Trueman has encouraged me to go back to it), and so I can't remember whether Machen develops the point that one of the important aspects of doctrinal formulation is that it states negatives as well as positives. In systematising and articulating the Bible, the theologian articulates what the truth is, but also, by necessity, articulates what is not true. Not the most popular idea to offer up at this time, but a true one, nonetheless.