LINK ‘JOURNEY TOWARD JESUS’
Shortly before our new website was “turned on,” we featured a free on-line book of letters by Bruce Edwards and myself titled A Journey Toward Jesus, with a link to the still-active old website.
Several gracEmail subscribers told us the link did not work and they wanted to read the book. So for the convenience of all you who enjoy gospel truth made plain in real life, you can read A Journey Toward Jesus here.
IT’S FULLER IN JUNE
The second Rethinking Hell conference will be held on June 18-20, 2015 on the campus of Fuller Theological Seminary in Pasadena, California. The theme will be Conditional Immortality and the Challenge of Universal Salvation. For full details, click here.
Presenters include OLIVER CRISP (University of London PhD), Professor of Systematic Theology at Fuller Theological Seminary; CHRIS DATE, steward for the Rethinking Hell project, software engineer, and able teacher and debater (recently debated Dr. Albert Mohler on Premier Christian Radio UK); DAVID INSTONE- BREWER (Cardiff BD hons, Cantab. DPhil) is Senior Research Fellow in Rabbinics and New Testament at Tyndale House in Cambridge UK.
ROBIN PARRY (University of Gloucestershire DPhil) lives in Worcester UK, is a theological Editor for Wipf and Stock Publishers, and is author of The Evangelical Universalist and other books. JAMES S. SPIEGEL (Michigan State University PhD) is Professor of Philosophy and Religion at Taylor University in Upland, Indiana. JERRY WALLS (Notre Dame PhD) is Professor of Philosophy and Scholar-in- Residence at Houston Baptist University. Among the dozen books he haa authored are a trilogy on Hell, Heaven, and Purgatory.
EARLY-BIRD SPECIAL — gracEmail readers can enjoy a special limited-time discount of $20 off the standard admission until the end of February. Just click on “Enter promotional code” at the bottom of the conference registration page, enter “GRACEMAIL” in the text box, and click the “Apply” button. The cost of a regular registration will drop from $75 to $55 per ticket. This special offer ends March 1st, so don’t delay.
P.T. FORSYTH: THE MAN . . . THEOLOGIAN . . . PROPHET
A gracEmail special feature, by Edward Fudge.
Several years ago, the gifted Irish evangelist and gracEmail subscriber Jim McGuiggan commended to me the work of P. T. Forsyth. Jim’s comments came to mind when I recently saw a publisher’s announcement of a reprint of a book about Forsyth who, like McGuiggan, was not only a Celtic Jesus-man, but a right free-thinking one as well.
What follows is a book notice, not a review, of the 1981 title, P. T. Forsyth: The Man, The Preachers’ Theologian, Prophet for the 20th Century, by Donald G. Miller, Browne Barr, and Robert S. Paul. (No. 36 in The Pittsburgh Theological Monograph Series, Dikran Y. Hadidian, General Editor.) Pickwick Publications: An Imprint of Wipf and Stock Publishers). Forsyth’s productivity was prodigious–the list of Forsyth’s own writings and writings of others about him fills 37 pages in the present book.
Some men and women are too big for their own denomination or spiritual heritage, too expansive for a label or a single cause. They speak or write and Christians across the board listen with ready ear. Such folk often call the church to account, for, endued with spiritual senses finely tuned, they see what others find invisible and say what others do not know or fear to say. And though they live in and speak to their own generation, because their message is timeless, these messengers often continue to speak long after they are gone. Peter Taylor Forsyth (1848-1921) was such a man.
A Scottish theologian and Congregational minister who served as a parish church pastor and as a Bible college Principal, Forsyth believed that theology was for all Christians and that it was best worked out in an ordinary church and in everyday life. Raised in poverty, he won entrance to Aberdeen University in an essay contest.
He later studied under Albrecht Ritschl in Germany, forever making him suspect by some. But Forsyth’s faith did not depend on issues of higher criticism. He craved peace with God and a clean conscience, and he discovered both treasures in the cross of Jesus Christ and in the atonement that Jesus accomplished there.
Like Karl Barth a generation later, Forsyth was fed the empty husks of theology provided by old Protestant Liberalism–and both men suffered spiritual dyspepsia and malnutrition until they correctly diagnosed and treated the problem they shared. Barth once commented that Great Britain did not need his work because they had P.T. Forsyth.
Both theologians concluded that in the face of two World Wars, and a host of smaller daily evils, liberal Christianity was unable to justify God’s goodness and power unless it recovered the message of Jesus and him crucified. God must justify Himself, Forsyth insisted, and he did that in the Cross of His Son.
“I should count it a life well spent,” said Forsyth, “and the world well lost, if, after testing all its experiences, and facing all its problems, I had no more to show at its close, or carry with me to another life, than the acquisition of a real, pure, humble, and grateful faith in the Eternal and Incarnate Son of God. That would be a life worth living, would it not?”
YOU SAID THIS ABOUT THE NEW WEBSITE . . .
‘BEYOND EXCITING’ — The new website is beyond exciting. It has captured the true value of “white space” which is so needed in web design. It is characterized by intuitiveness and simplicity. You are correct that Jeremy had done an excellent job in his original design. — Blessings, David Crook, USA