If you haven’t already registered for the conference, sign up today!  There will be free books and other materials given to all registrants.  Don’t miss this great opportunity to sit under some of the best Baptist scholars alive today!  Plenary Speakers include:  Tom Schreiner, Stephen Wellum, Maurice Dowling, David Bebbington, Glendon Thompson, James Fuller, and Danny Akin.  To find out more about the conference, please visit the conference webpage.

I have never gotten over the communitarian spirit of those far-off days of the 1960s when some of us were given a vision of community that the spirit of that era could not achieve. The solidarity of the Marxist International sparked by reading Che and Marcuse turned out to be nothing but a bad dream. And the communes of peace and love espoused by the hippie culture disappeared into the rigidity of the political correct communities and their watchdogs of the 1980s and 1990s.

But when we became Christians we knew we had found the real thing. Forty years on, I have no doubts at all that friendship with the Lord Jesus is the vision we glimpsed from afar in those heady days of the sixties. He is the only One with the words of eternal life. He is the only One who has a plan for community that is sweetly satisfying to the human soul and truly liberating to the human person.

And I admit it, reading such books as Augustine’s City of God and Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s Life Together spoiled me for anything less! And so I know the pain of those in our day who have been hurt by the Church and see that she is not what she should be. May God give me grace that I never give up on the Church, the beloved of my Beloved. But I wonder: what will it take for us to realize the hollowness of affirming we are a community of the Crucified One and yet know nothing of the pain and joy of walking with one another, our Lord’s brothers and sisters, in daily life? And don’t tell me, such is the way of life in the twenty-first century.

The members of the Confessing Church, blessings be upon the memory of those brethren, knew this so well when they stated as much in the Barmen Declaration: “Jesus Christ, as he is attested for us in Holy Scripture, is the one Word of God which we have to hear and which we have to trust and obey in life and in death. We reject the false doctrine, as though the church could and would have to acknowledge as a source of its proclamation, apart from and besides this one Word of God, still other events and powers, figures and truths, as God’s revelation.”

What we as Baptists reject is the confusion of church and state as in the days following Constantine. But make no mistake about it: to say Jesus is Lord is to make a political statement. The martyrs of the Confessing Church who died under Hitler cannot be understood without recognizing this truth.

Enjoy!

I recently posted the following on my personal blog.  Dr. Haykin has asked that I post it here, as well.

From time to time, students are called upon to write upon topics upon which they have little knowledge of the primary and/or secondary literature.  The following are some suggestions on how to begin researching unfamiliar topics.

1. Search the online databases of the closest research library (associated with a university or seminary, mine is Boyce Library at SBTS)  for key words or terms related to your topic.  If you don’t know where the closest research library is or you want to search multiple libraries at the same time, try WorldCat.org. A search on this database will bring up a list of books, when you click on a title you will have the option of inputing your zip code and libraries containing the book will be listed in order of their proximity to your location.
2. Look at the books generated from your search above.  Look at their footnotes/endnotes and/or bibliographies to find more books on the topic. Track their sources (going back to Worldcat.org if necessary) to find their sources, to find their sources, ad infinitum.
3. Another source for bibliographies listing works related to your topic can be general resources such as encyclopedias, dictionaries, and survey works (such as Church Histories and Systematic theologies in my field).  These will sometimes contain specific articles related to your topics written by specialists in the field.  Their bibliographies can be a goldmine for finding the most recent and best resources on a topic.  The general survey works, though probably not useful as a source themselves, will provide listing of more specialized works that will be useful for your research.  Again, track down their sources (going back to Worldcat.org if necessary) to find their sources, to find their sources, ad infinitum.
4. Search for articles on the topic or related topics using keywords in library databases or online at databases such as Google Scholar. Check their footnotes/bibliography. Then, track down their sources (going back to Worldcat.org if necessary) to find their sources, to find their sources, ad infinitum.
5. Another good source for bibliographies for further research are scholarly dissertations (which can be found at University/Seminary or through online databases, usually only accessible at research libraries) which have huge bibliographies. In dissertations, as well as the other resources mentioned above, the newer a resource is the better chance that its author has consulted the most resources and therefore would have the most up-to-date bibliography (this is not always the case with shoddy scholarship, so be careful here).

Tolle lege!

Believer’s Baptism: Sign of the New Covenant in Christ, eds. Thomas R. Schreiner & Shawn D. Wright (B&H Academic)

The Cross:  The Vindication of God, D. Martyn Lloyd-Jones (Banner of Truth)

Scandalous:  The Cross and Resurrection of Jesus, D.A. Carson (Crossway)

Posted by Steve Weaver, Research and Administrative Assistant to the Director of the Andrew Fuller Center for Baptist Studies, Dr. Michael A.G. Haykin

This interview is the third podcast of the Andrew Fuller Center.  You can subscribe to this podcast in iTunes using this feed.

You can still register for the conference here.  Discounts available for students.

Posted by Steve Weaver, Research and Administrative Assistant to the Director of the Andrew Fuller Center for Baptist Studies, Dr. Michael A.G. Haykin

The effects of the Reformation remain with us to this day; in fact, the world has been shaped and formed in far-reaching ways by the legacy of the Reformation.

Southern Seminary will host the first North American conference for Refo500, a global project to direct attention toward 2017 and the quincentenary of the beginning of the Reformation. The conference, titled “Celebration Reformation: Challenges and Chances between Now and 2017,” will take place Sept. 27-28, on Southern Seminary’s campus. Featured speakers include R. Albert Mohler Jr., Timothy George, Joel Beeke, Peter Lillback, Herman Selderhuis, David Hall, and others. For more conference information, call 502-897-4072 or visit www.sbts.edu/events.

Southern Seminary students can earn course credit by attending Refo500. Students should register for course #27177: “Studies in Theology: Reformation Theology and Piety” with Michael Haykin. This course is an intensive study of the magisterial Reformation in Germany, Switzerland, France and England, its main events and figures, its theology and piety. Each student is expected to attend eight class lectures on Friday, Sept. 24, and Monday, Sept. 27, and the entirety of the Refo500 conference. Students will also be responsible for three post-course assignments.

If you have questions on course #27177, please contact Academic Records at 502-897-4209 or academicrecords@sbts.edu.

Over at the Sola Scriptura blog, Dr. Haykin has reviewed a new edition of the 1689 London Confession of Faith which was edited by 17th Century Baptist Scholar James Renihan.