What would you ask a Lord of the Rings’ expert if you had the opportunity? Well, you have such an opportunity. Dr. Michael N. Stanton is Professor Emeritus of English at the University of Vermont and author of Hobbits, Elves, and Wizards: Exploring the Wonders and Worlds of J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings. Dr. Stanton taught a class on Tolkien’s great epic for over 25 years and has graciously agreed to be interviewed by me for the benefit of Eucatastrophe readers. So, what should I ask him? What do you want me to ask him?

Here’s part one of the interview.

Here are all the audio links to the lectures given by T.F. Torrance in the early 80’s at Union Theological College in Belfast, Northern Ireland:

Lecture 1
Lecture 2
Lecture 3
Lecture 4
Lecture 5
Lecture 6
Lecture 7

Robert Letham, author of The Holy Trinity: In Scripture, History, Theology, and Worship, believes that “Thomas F. Torrance (1913-) is arguably the most significant theologian in the English-speaking world of the past fifty years or more” (356). So, let me encourage you to give the above lectures a listen.

(HT: Ben Myers)

Justin Buzzard has interviewed Graeme Goldsworthy over at his blog. If you are not familiar with Goldsworthy (or even if you are) or are new to gospel-centeredness discussion, particularly as it relates to interpretation, you’ll want to check this interview out. Thanks, Justin, for making this Goldsworthy interview available.

Read what Tim and Kathy Keller say about The Jesus Storybook Bible:

“I would urge not just families with young children to get this book, but every Christian–from pew warmers, to ministry leaders, seminarians and even theologians! Sally Lloyd-Jones has captured the heart of what it means to find Christ in all the scriptures, and has made clear even to little children that all God’s revelation has been about Jesus from the beginning–a truth not all that commonly recognized even among the very learned.” - Tim Keller

“Sally Lloyd-Jones, a Redeemer member for many years, has done a wondrous thing. She has captured the plot line of redemption in a children’s story Bible that sings the praise of Jesus and his saving grace on every page, in every story.” - Kathy Keller

Purchase a copy here.

I am amazed afresh at the kind providence of God. Last June my wife and I led a team of 13 college girls to Fuzhou, Jiangxi, China to serve in a government sponsored orphanage. Our desire was to live out James 1:27 as best we could. I am convinced that “visiting orphans in their affliction” is ultimately accomplished through adoption (I argue for this position here), but adoption was not possible for any of us. So, we went to serve these children in any way we could, short of taking them home with us. One of our chief desires and prayers, though, was to see these children adopted by Christian families. Well, yesterday, to my surprise, I received this e-mail from a 2005 BBC graduate:

Mr. Cruver,

My name is ____________________. I graduated in 2005 and I had you for my senior theology exam. I am writing because my parents are adopting a little girl, Fu ________ ___________, from the same orphanage that you and a team from BBC visited this past summer. Fu __________ _________ is “13” years old… When I read the Summit article on your trip, my family was pretty excited! That same day my parents had received a bunch of pictures from another family that had adopted one of Fu __________ _________’s friends and was back in the states. I’ve attached one for you to see. My parents are waiting on their Travel Approval from China – any day now! I am so excited and can’t wait to hug my sister! Thank you for carrying Jesus’ love to the children at the Fuzhou orphanage and maybe even my little sister! If you are interested – my parents have a website where they’ve begun recording our Journey to Anna (this is the name my parents have chosen if she likes it) www.caringbridge.org/visit/coiner (maybe you will recognize some of the other girls in the pictures.)

Waiting for our Fu girl to come home ~

I can’t begin to describe the joy that filled me when I read this e-mail. Are you aware of just how many orphanages there are in China? There are many… What a kind providence that God would allow us (1) to serve these children at the Fuzhou Welfare Institute and (2) to hear first hand that several of them have been adopted by Christian (I had the opportunity of spending a considerable time with the girl, Anna, who is being adopted by this family). I am amazed and thankful.

In a follow-up e-mail I received last evening I learned that another one of these young ladies that was adopted by a different Christian family. We were able to spend significant time with her as well. You can even find her pictured in the film strips below.

As I’ve mentioned several times before, T.F. Torrance’s trinitarian and incarnational theology has influenced me significantly over the past few years. He’s one of the few theologians whose books I always keep nearby. Recently, Ben Myers of Faith and Theology has been posting (here and here) some of Torrance’s lectures from a series he did in the early 1980’s. I’m grateful that Ben as made these audio lectures available. He will be adding a few more over the next couple weeks.

Lecture 1
Lecture 2
Lecture 3

One of the most important things (if not the most important thing) I have learned since becoming a Christian is how desperately I need the gospel each day. My default mode, even now, is to listen to myself—to my self-justifying or self-condemning or self-affirming thoughts—rather than preach the Good News of Christ’s redemptive accomplishment to myself . If I don’t preach to myself the good news of God making Christ to be my righteousness, sanctification, and redemption—the totality of my identity (1 Corinthians 1:30), I will listen to one of my many “self” voices. So, it is my daily practice (and many times a day!) to confront myself with the transforming news of the gospel.

Justin Buzzard wrote a post several weeks ago listing key texts he uses to practice the discipline of preaching the gospel to himself (read it here). It is an excellent and, I am convinced, absolutely necessary spiritual discipline for the Christian. If, indeed, the gospel is the power of God to justify, sanctify, and ultimately glorify us (Romans 1:16), then we would do well to cultivate this practice of preaching the gospel to ourselves. Unfortunately, it is my experience that few Christians really know how to do this, or if they do, they aren’t very good at it. So, I thought it might be helpful to write a series of brief posts about using Scripture to preach the gospel to ourselves each day (Food for Thought: It has become my conviction that the better Christians become at preaching the gospel to themselves the better they’ll become at preaching it to unbelievers. One reason we Christians might be weak at preaching the gospel to unbelievers is that we are not very good at doing it to ourselves.).

I have found that those who do practice this spiritual discipline do so almost exclusively from the New Testament. It’s really not that difficult to discern why, though, since the New Testament is explicitly Christ-centered. It contains a wealth (understatement) of texts that clearly speak of his great redemptive achievement. But if Jesus preached the gospel to his disciples from the Law of Moses, the Prophets, and the Psalms (Luke 24:27, 44), that is, from the Old Testament, we would do well to learn to do the same. I will quickly admit that it requires more work on our part to do so, but I believe that it will ultimately deepen our understanding of and appreciation for the gospel. So, I plan to use the Old Testament exclusively, beginning with the Psalms, in this series of preaching the gospel to ourselves.

If you are interested in understanding more about the discipline of preaching the gospel to yourself, here is an excellent resource that a pastor wrote for his congregation. It was written to be a “guide designed to help Christians experience the gospel more fully by preaching it to themselves every day.” Download it here: A Gospel Primer for Christians (pdf document).

Galatians 1:4 Who [referring to Jesus] gave himself for our sins, that he might deliver us [that he might rescue us] from this present evil world

There is a great scene toward the beginning of the extended version of The Fellowship of the Ring. A table of hobbits are sitting together enjoying each others company when one of them says, “There’s been some strange folk crossing the shire I heard. Dwarves and others of a less than savory nature. War is brewing. The mountains are fair teeming with Goblins.” One of the other hobbits not pleased with what was just said replies, “Far-off tales and childrens stories, that’s all that is. Your beginning to sound like that old Bilbo Baggins. Cracked, he was.” Then a negative comment is made about Frodo being cracked as well to which Frodo responds, “And proud of it!” And then the hobbit that originally called Bilbo cracked makes a very significant statement as it relates to the soon coming struggle of Middle-Earth. “Well its none of our concern what goes on beyond our borders. Keep your nose out of trouble and no trouble will come to you.”

That is in my mind one of the most significant statements in giving us insight into the people of the Shire. They are a peace-loving, comfort-enjoying people who care very little at all about the outside world. They enjoy their simple life and see no reason to be concerned with what happens in the land of the “big folk.” What they didn’t realize was that Trouble with a capital “T” was coming to them and the Shire and their happy culture would perish unless there was decisive intervention. What they failed to see was that they were in dire need of decisive rescue from the growing evil shadow of the East. The hobbits were completely ignorant of their impending doom and their desperate need for rescue.

Christianity is the only religion that recognizes our hobbit-like peril. Founders of other religions came primarily to teach. They came with a set of doctrines and an example to be followed. Though Jesus was a great teacher (the greatest teacher mankind has ever known) Paul makes no mention of this when he gives us this nutshell version of the Gospel in Galatians 1:4. What we see here is what is at the very heart of the Gospel, namely, that mankind was in desperate need of rescue. Jesus came to rescue first and then to be an example second.

The uniqueness of Christianity is that it comes to us and informs us of our absolutely helpless and perilous state. The Gospel does not first reveal Christ to us as a guide and example. No, it first reveals Christ as our Deliverer, our Rescuer, the one who came to rescue us from our sins. Christ came to earth and before most people knew what was really happening He had already accomplished the very thing needed for the deliverance of his hobbit-like people. He accomplished our redemption before we even knew we were perishing and unable to recover ourselves. This is Good News.

*First posted November 5, 2005

I discovered what looks to be a number of helpful resource links on biblical theology over at God is Better than All.

An introductory lecture (mp3) on biblical theology by one of the men whose thinking on gospel-centeredness and biblical theology has influenced me most, Graeme Goldsworthy. His Preaching the Whole Bible as Christian Scripture is always nearby when I’m studying Scripture. Its pages are well worn. So, I think you’ll find this introductory lecture worth your time (especially if you are not quite sure what biblical theology is). If you listen to it, let me encourage you to share your thoughts about it in the comment section of this post.

A lecture on biblical theology (mp3) by Dr. Peter Jensen, a former colleague of Graeme Goldsworthy at Moore Theological College, Sydney, Australia.

A relatively short article on interpreting texts in the context of the whole Bible by Dr. David Baker.

Trueman-Goldsworthy Debate on biblical theology. Carl Trueman: A Revolutionary Balancing Act. Graeme Goldsworthy: A response to Carl Trueman’s “A Revolutionary Balancing Act”

This week is missions conference here at BBC. As a result, I’ve found myself thinking a lot about orphans in China, particularly about the ones we visited last summer in Fuzhou, Jingxi. Here are a few video memories from our trip to China this past June. If you would like to read a brief biblical theology of the mission of adoption (i.e. visiting orphans in their affliction), check out this article: Orphans, Adoption, and Fuling, China: James 1:27.

Video One: Waterballoon Toss (I was undefeated in this event)

Videos Two and Three: Clips from our birthday party celebration. The children sang a number of songs for us.

Video Four: One of our many trips through the city of Fuzhou.

In an interview by R.D. Kernohan, former editor of Life and Work, T.F. Torrance said:

I would claim that it [the heart of my theology] is deeply Nicene and doxological (theology and worship going inextricably together), with its immediate focus on Jesus Christ as Mediator, and its ultimate focus on the Holy Trinity (from How To Read T.F. Torrance, 15).