An International Journal for Students of Theological and Religious Studies Volume 36 Issue 2 July 2011
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An International Journal for Students of Theological and Religious Studies Volume 36 Issue 2 July 2011 EDITORIAL: Generational Conflict in Ministry 180 D. A. Carson MINORITY REPORT: A Word to the Conscience 183 Carl Trueman Is the Reformation Over? John Calvin, Roman Catholicism, 185 and Contemporary Ecumenical Conversations Scott M. Manetsch Intrinsic Canonicity and the Inadequacy of the 203 Community Approach to Canon-Determination John C. Peckham Canon as Tradition: The New Covenant and the 216 Hermeneutical Question Mark R. Saucy Not Ashamed! The Sufficiency of Scripture for 238 Public Theology Dan Strange A Preacher’s Decalogue 261 Sinclair B. Ferguson Book Reviews 269 DESCRIPTION Themelios is an international evangelical theological journal that expounds and defends the historic Christian faith. Its primary audience is theological students and pastors, though scholars read it as well. It was formerly a print journal operated by RTSF/UCCF in the UK, and it became a digital journal operated by The Gospel Coalition in 2008. The new editorial team seeks to preserve representation, in both essayists and reviewers, from both sides of the Atlantic. Themelios is published three times a year exclusively online at www.theGospelCoalition.org. It is presented in two formats: PDF (for citing pagination) and HTML (for greater accessibility, usability, and infiltration in search engines). Themelios is copyrighted by The Gospel Coalition. Readers are free to use it and circulate it in digital form without further permission (any print use requires further written permission), but they must acknowledge the source and, of course, not change the content. EDITORS BOOK ReVIEW EDITORS Systematic Theology and Bioethics Hans Madueme General Editor: D. A. Carson Old Testament Trinity Evangelical Divinity School Trinity Evangelical Divinity School Daniel Santos 2065 Half Day Road; D-632 2065 Half Day Road Universidade Presbiteriana Mackenzie— Deerfield, IL 60015, USA Deerfield, IL 60015, USA CPAJ [email protected] [email protected] Rua Maria Borba, 15 Sao Paulo, SP, Brazil 01221-040 Ethics (but not Bioethics) and Pastoralia Consulting Editor: Carl R. Trueman [email protected] Dane Ortlund Westminster Theological Seminary Chestnut Hill, P. O. Box 27009 New Testament Crossway Philadelphia, PA 19118, USA Alan Thompson 1300 Crescent Street Sydney Missionary & Bible College Wheaton, IL 60187, USA Managing Editor: Charles Anderson [email protected] Oak Hill Theological College PO Box 83 Chase Side, Southgate Croydon, NSW 2132, Australia Mission and Culture London, N14 4PS, UK [email protected] Jason Sexton [email protected] History and Historical Theology St Mary’s College Administrator: Andrew David Naselli Nathan A. Finn University of St Andrews Grace Bible Church Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary South Street 107 West Road P. O. Box 1889 St Andrews, KY16 9JU Moore, SC 29369, USA Wake Forest, NC 27588, USA Scotland [email protected] [email protected] [email protected] EDITORIal BOARD Gerald Bray, Beeson Divinity School; Oliver D. Crisp, University of Bristol; William Kynes, Cornerstone Evangelical Free Church; Ken Magnuson, The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary; Jonathan Pennington, The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary; James Robson, Wycliffe Hall; Michael Thate, Durham University; Mark D. Thompson, Moore Theological College; Garry Williams, The John Owen Centre, London Theological Seminary; Paul Williamson, Moore Theological College; Stephen Witmer, Pepperell Christian Fellowship. ARTIcleS Articles should generally be about 4,000 to 7,000 words (including footnotes) and should be submitted to the Managing Editor of Themelios, which is peer-reviewed. Articles should use clear, concise English, following The SBL Handbook of Style (esp. for abbreviations), supplemented by The Chicago Manual of Style. They should consistently use either UK or USA spelling and punctuation, and they should be submitted electronically as an email attachment using Microsoft Word (.doc or .docx extensions) or Rich Text Format (.rtf extension). Special characters should use a Unicode font. ReVIEWS The book review editors generally select individuals for book reviews, but potential reviewers may contact them about reviewing specific books. As part of arranging book reviews, the book review editors will supply book review guidelines to reviewers. Themelios 36.2 (2011): 180–82 EDITORIal Generational Conflict in Ministry — D. A. Carson — D. A. Carson is research professor of New Testament at Trinity Evangelical Divinity School in Deerfield, Illinois. bout five years after the Berlin wall came down and the communist regimes of Central and Eastern Europe had mostly fallen or been transmuted into something rather different, I had the privilege of speaking at a conference for pastors in one of those formerly eastern-bloc coun- Atries. The numbers were not large. Most interesting was the way this group of men reflected a natural breakdown. They were clearly divided into two groups. The older group—say, over forty or forty-five— had served their small congregations under the former communist government. Few of them had been allowed to pursue any tertiary education, let alone formal theological training. Most of them had served in considerable poverty, learning to trust God for the food they and their families needed to survive. Some had been incarcerated for the sake of the gospel; all had been harassed. The men in the younger group—say, under forty or so—without exception were university graduates. Several had pursued for- mal theological education; two or three were beginning their doctorates. They were interested in ideas and in the rapidly evolving cultural developments taking place in their country now that their media were a good deal freer. Quite a number were engaged in university evangelism and wanted to talk about postmodern epistemology. The older group viewed the younger men as untested, ignorant of the lessons learned by suffering, far too cerebral, dizzyingly scattered and ill-focused, cocky, impatient, even arrogant. The younger group viewed the older men as, at best, out of date: they had slipped past their “sell by” date as much as had the communist regimes. They were ill-trained, defined too narrowly by yesterday’s conflicts, unable to evangelize the new generation, vainly clutching to power, consumed rather more by tradition than by truth. And in very large measure, both sides were right. More recently I spoke at a denominational meeting of ministers in a Western country. Again there was a generational breakdown, cast somewhat differently. The older men had, during the decades of their ministry, combated the old-fashioned liberalism that had threatened their denomination in their youth. Many of them had been converted out of rough backgrounds and subsequently built strong fences around their churches to keep out alcohol and sleaze of every sort. Most of their congregations were aging along with their ministers; only a handful of them were growing. They loved older hymns and patterns of worship. The younger men dressed in jeans, loved corporate worship where the music was at least 95 decibels, were interested in evangelism, and loved to talk to the ecclesiastically disaffected—homosexuals, self-proclaimed atheists, mystically orientated “spiritual” artists. Some were starting Bible studies, fledgling churches, in pubs. This group thought the older men were out of date, 180 Editorial too defensive, unable to communicate with people under twenty-five without sounding stuffy and even condescending, much too linear and boring in their thinking, and largely unable to communicate in the digital world (except by emails, already largely dismissed as belonging to the age of dinosaurs), mere traditionalists. The older group thought the younger men were brash, disrespectful, far too enamored with what’s “in” and far too ignorant of a well-integrated theology, frenetic but not deep, energetic but not wise, and more than a little cocky. And in very large measure, both sides were right. Doubtless there have always been generational conflicts of one sort or another. Arguably, however, in some ways they are becoming worse. There are at least two reasons for this. First, the rate of cultural change has sped up, making it far more difficult for older people to empathize with a world so very different from the one in which they grew up three or four decades earlier, while making it far more difficult for younger people to empathize with a world in which people used typewriters and wired telephones and had never heard of Facebook or Twitter. Second, and far more important, the social dynamics of most Western cultures have been changing dramatically for decades. The Sixties tore huge breaches into the fabric that had united young and old, assigning more and more authority to the young. The cult of youth and health that characterized the Eighties and Nineties, complete with hair transplants and liposuction, along with gated communities for the middle-class elderly and social welfare that meant families did not really have to care for, or even interact much with, the older generation, built a world in which integration across generational lines could be happily avoided. Even the new digital tools that facilitate interaction tend to enable people to link up with very similar people—very much unlike the way the church is supposed