By R. Albert Mohler Jr. | R. Albert Mohler, Jr., is President of The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville, KY.
Mark D. Roberts, until recently, senior pastor of Irvine Presbyterian Church in California, offers a defense of the gospels in Can We Trust the Gospels?: Investigating the Reliability of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John (Crossway). As Roberts argues, “My basic point in this book is that if you look squarely at the facts as they are widely understood, and if you do not color them with pejorative bias or atheistic presuppositions, then you’ll find it’s reasonable to trust the Gospels.”
Another helpful volume is Dethroning Jesus: Exposing Popular Culture’s Quest to Unseat the Biblical Christ (Thomas Nelson) by Darrell Bock of Dallas Theological Seminary. Bock directly addresses the challenges presented by recent controversies in the media and offers an apologetic defense that will be helpful to pastors who are confronted by questions and troubled Christians who do not understand the controversy and are looking for reassurance about the trustworthiness and historicity of the gospels. Pastors should also take note of Misquoting Truth (InterVarsity Press) by Timothy Paul Jones. Jones exposes the fallacious arguments of scholars who claim the manuscript traditions of the New Testament cannot be trusted.
Other recent titles in biblical studies that will be helpful to preachers include Reading the Old Testament with the Ancient Church by Ronald E. Heine (Baker), The Testimony of the Beloved Disciple: Narrative, History, and Theology in the Gospel of John by Richard Bauckham (Baker), Central Themes in Biblical Theology: Mapping Unity in Diversity (Baker) edited by Scott J. Hafemann and Paul R. House, The Messiah in the Old and New Testaments (Eerdmans) edited by Stanley E. Porter, Reading the Bible with the Dead (Eerdmans) edited by John L. Thompson and Paul, the Pastoral Epistles, and the Early Church (Hendrickson) edited by James W. Aageson.
A rich harvest of biblical commentaries also appeared over the last year, with some representing editions to existing commentary series and others standing alone. G.K. Beale and D.A. Carson have edited a most helpful and innovative commentary in Commentary on the New Testament Use on the Old Testament (Baker).
Three major commentaries on Isaiah have appeared. Gary V. Smith has produced Isaiah 1-39 (Broadman and Holman) in “The New American Commentary” series. Preachers will welcome the release of this volume. As Smith notes, the message of Isaiah and his words “still have a ring that should reverberate a warning and a hope in the ears of every present day disciple who is willing to listen to God’s voice.” We look forward to the release of the second volume of this study.
Robert Louis Wilken has produced the volume on Isaiah released in the “The Church’s Bible” series (Eerdmans). This series, along with the “Ancient Christian Commentary on Scripture” mentioned below, brings together a wealth of material from the early church and ancient sources. Preachers will be able to see how the church fathers dealt with these texts in preaching. Mark W. Elliott has produced Isaiah 40-66 (InterVarsity Press) in the “Ancient Christian Commentary on Scripture” series. “One of the main contributions the church fathers have provided the church in its reading of Isaiah is enabling the people of the church to receive the message of Isaiah in the light of its fulfillment,” he asserts. “The Fathers help us to see the nature of the trinitarian God reflected in the verses of the Old Testament.”
