Bits and Pieces, This and That

I'm taking a bit of time this morning to tie things up around here before the weekend hits. For those of you who have taken an interest in the Two Wills of God post, here are a couple of links that go deeper into that subject:

Are There Two Wills in God by John Piper.

Finding God's Will God's Way from In-Depth Studies.

**********************************

Adding to the blogroll: Jollyblogger and View from the Pew. Its only right that I add them because I have begun reading them almost daily. Warren of View from the Pew has some interesting articles on what exactly is fundamentalism as historically defined, and Jollyblogger has an article that really interested me on translational issues.

I also want to point you to J. Mark Bertrand's article on Church History. It's his May 3rd entry--no permalinks that I can find. Here is a quote to whet your appetite:

If there is anything the modern Church could benefit from today, it is historical perspective. We stand at the end of a long history of God's work in and through His people. Because they were not always perfect, we have sometimes disowned Christian thinkers of the past, or constructed sanitized versions of them. But we of all people should not be surprised to find that our Christian forebears were both sinful and finite, and that they didn't have the "whole" Truth. Indeed, a study of our history might teach us that we ourselves do not possess the whole Truth, or even understand fully what -- or should I say who? -- it is. Isaac Newton had the good grace to attribute his own discoveries to the "shoulders of giants" upon which he stood. In our enthusiasm for our own postmodern achievements, we should be similarly mindful.

**********************************

And now a little more from Herman Ridderbos in Paul: An Outline of His Theology on the way sarx or "flesh" is used by Paul (This comes up as a side issue in Jollyblogger's post above.):

"Flesh" does not refer only to the physical, nor merely to human as such, but to the human in its weakness, transitoriness, that Paul elsewhere terms being "of the earth, earthy" (1 Cor. 15:47), and what in Galatians 4 is called "being born of a woman." In Romans 8:3 he speaks of "the likeness of sinful flesh," in which God sent his Son. "Flesh" and "sinful flesh need not coincide. But sin in the nature of the case takes place in the flesh and stamps the human mode of existence as "the sinful flesh." It is in "the likeness" of this that God sent his Son, a phrase with which Paul elsewhere expresses the difference between correspondence and identity (cf. Romans 6:5). Christ came, therefore, in the weak and transitory human state, without sharing in the sin of the human race. It was in that way, in that mode of existence, that he was "known" before his resurrection (2 Cor. 5:16). In this "flesh" he lived and he died, or as it is called: "in the body of his flesh" (Col. 1:22) which expression likewise not only refers to the physical as material organism, but to the whole of Christ's existence as a man subject to transitoriness, dishonor, frailty (cf. 1 Cor. 15:42ff.) (pages 65, 66)