New Partnership with Tyndale House

Tyndale House in Cambridge is working on a project called STEP - "Scripture Tools for Every Pastor" - providing biblical resources for ministers in the Developing World in electronic formats. Recognising that this Project matches very closely the aims of my own websites I am now working in informal partnership with them.

The firstfruits of this will be the digitisation of the Theological Students Fellowship Bulletin (1951-1975 - aka TSF Bulletin) which became "Themelios" in 1975 (Themelios itself is now online on the Gospel Coalition website).

Tyndale House has provided me with the scanned images of the articles and it will be my task to compile a table of contents, obtain permission from the authors (who hold the rights), and convert the scans to OCRed PDFs.

I am very excited about this new development and look forward to getting to work on it. I will be producing a list of authors in due course and requesting your help in contacting them or their next of kin.

For more about the STEP Project see the Tyndale House Newsletter (article on page 3 in both issues linked below):

Autumn 2008 Newsletter

Summer 2009 Newsletter

The TSF Bulletin Table of Contents is now complete and can be viewed here:

Robert Rendall's book History, Prophecy and God now online

The following book is now available online in PDF:

Robert Rendall, History, Prophecy and God. London: The Paternoster Press, 1954. Hbk.

My thanks to Paternoster Publishing for their kind permission to reproduce this title.

The blurb from the dustjacket reads:

Today's history was yesterday's prophecy; to­morrow, today's prophecy will have become history. Therefore history and prophecy are but different aspects of the same process, and must share a com­mon origin and end. This book seeks to shew that Biblical history and prophecy point to a Divine movement within and behind the flow of human affairs, and have their common origin in the purpose of God as it culminates in Christ.

As this book emphasizes, the authenticity of Biblical history is of vital importance. While myths may be used to illustrate and teach moral truths, they cannot document circumstances of fact. And the Event of Christ in history is an event linked with clearly-stated antecedent circumstances of fact. Consequently, Biblical history and prophecy must be viewed as a coherent whole, or we do but grasp isolated links instead of a chain.

Moreover, the unity of history and prophecy in God presents us with a moral dilemma and a personal challenge. If history be grounded in the decisions of the Divine will: if the structure of events be not fortuitous but deliberate: and if all moves to a culminating purpose—then it behoves all of us, who are the raw material out of which history and prophecy are made, to discover that Divine purpose for each of our lives, and to fulfil it.

The Very Rev Professor Geoffrey W. Bromiley (1915-2009)

I was saddened to hear today of the death of Geoffrey Bromiley on 7th August. Amongst his numerous works he will probably be best remembered for his translations of significant German language works, such as Kittel's Theological Dictionary of the New Testament and Karl Barth's Church Dogmatics. He also edited the revised International Standard Bible Encyclopedia. Among the 10 books he himself wrote I have particularly valued his Historical Theology: An Introduction.

I wrote to Professor Bromiley a couple of years ago and obtained his permission to place online all his articles from Evangelical Quarterly which should start to appear on my websites in the next few months.

You can find a bibliography of some of his works here. Fuller Theological Seminary has an obitiary here, T & T Clark (who published many of his books) here. Ben Myers has a blog entry here, as does Michael L. Westmoreland-White here and David Guretzki here,

26 Logical Fallacies in Brian McLaren's "A Generous Orthodoxy"

Levi Felton over on The Words has a long post and helpful on 26 logical fallacies to be found in Brian McLaren's A Generous Orthodoxy. Well worth a read.

Vox Evangelica Volume 23 now on-line

Volume 23 of Vox Evangelica is now available online in PDF:

Kwame Bediako, "Cry Jesus! Christian Theology and Presence in Modern Africa, (The Laing Lecture for 1993)," Vox Evangelica 23 (1993): 7-26.

Emmanuel Oladipo, "The Laing Lecture for 1993: First Response," Vox Evangelica 23 (1993): 27-28.

Peter Cotterell, "The Laing Lecture for 1993: Second Response," Vox Evangelica 23 (1993): 29-30.

Robert R. Cook, "The Art of God," Vox Evangelica 23 (1993): 31-38.

Peter Oakes, "Epictetus (and the New Testament)," Vox Evangelica 23 (1993): 39-56.

David F. Payne, "Apologetic Motifs in the Books of Samuel," Vox Evangelica 23 (1993): 57-66.
I found this the most interesting article in this volume from the perspective of a Bible student.

Ian. M. Randall, "Spiritual Renewal and Social Reform: Attempts to Develop Social Awareness in the Early Keswick Movement," Vox Evangelica 23 (1993): 67-86.
What was the attitude of early Keswick to social reform? Well, it can be summed up in the words of that great theologian the Rev A.W. Awdry: "It's not wrong... but we just don't do it"!