Bible Faculty Summit 2018 papers

Many thanks to Bob Jones University and their faculty and staff for hosting this year's Bible Faculty Summit, and to Drs. Mark Ward Jr. and Jeff Straub for generally directing the summit. This year, I believe, had a record number of papers, and for the first time ever we had to offer "split tracks" where in a couple cases one had to choose which paper to attend.
In addition, Mark Ward, Brian Collins, and myself formed a "publishing committee" whose purpose was to offer assistance and encouragement to paper presenters (especially the younger ones) who were looking to do something more with their papers.

 The papers were:
1. Ted Miller on "Idolatry and the Church: Towards an Old Paradigm for Describing How Christians Relate to Pagan Culture," which included a definition of "culture" and an in-depth discussion of 1 Corinthians  8-10 and its relevance for this theological topic.
2. Greg Stiekes on "No Peace without Victory: J. Gresham Machen's Non-Calvinistic Epistemology in Christianity and Liberalism," which included a discussion of where Machen fit on the spectrum of "fundamentalist," "evangelical," and "modernist."
3. Christopher Cone on "The Sufficiency of Scripture and the Role of Extra-Biblical Resources in Transformational Learning," which discussed various perspectives in Christianity towards tradition, etc.
4. Ryan Martin on "Jonathan Edward's Early Psychology." For the record, Martin's revised doctoral dissertation is being published with a tier-1 publisher (T&T Clark) as Understanding Affections in the Theology of Jonathan Edwards: "The High Exercise of Love."
5. Phil Brown's balanced review, "A Biblical-Theological Critique of Michael Allen's Sanctification."
6. Andrew Minnick on "Sonship and Resurrection," where he notes how Jesus' resurrection is the "culmination" of "Christ's reclamation of Adamic sonship."
7. Layton Talbert on "Interpreting the New Covenant in Light of its Multiplexity, Multitextuality, and Ethnospecificity."
8. Joey McCollum on "The Solid Rock Greek New Testament" (more on this one in a future post, b/c I'm excited about the possibilities).
9. Mark Sidwell on "The Riddle of Seventh-day Adventism" (specifically whether they should be considered a denomination, a cult, or something in between; while suggesting that they should probably not be labored a "cult" per se, Sidwell does express some serious reservations about the implications of their theology, especially the more traditional aspects of their doctrine and links to Ellen White's work. Interestingly, if I recall a couple decades ago the Evangelical Theological Society had commissioned a study on this very topic).
10. Timothy Hughes on the "Fallacy of the Excluded Middle: Reassessing the Category of 'Deponency' to Reclaim the Middle Voice in NT Greek" (the paper and subsequent discussion dealt with pedagogical aspects of this topic, as well).
11. Richard Winston, "'Love Your Neighbor as Yourself': Paul's Appeal to the Moral Law in Galatians" (Winston grapples with a Pauline theology of the Law, including Paul's perspective on a "moral Law").
12. Troy Manning on "What Languages Did Jesus Speak?"
13. Paul Himes (that's me!) on "Grafting in the Original Branches: Rethinking the Purpose of a Pretribulational Rapture in Light of a Biblical Theology of Israel" (I argue that rather than seeing the rapture as simply the means that the church escaping divine wrath, or as some sort of reward (as some argue from Rev 3:10), it makes more sense to see the Rapture as removing the church out of the way so that God can utilize Israel to complete her original vocation, reaching the nations).
14. Scott Aniol, "'That They May Be One': Conservatism, Cooperation, and the Center of Christian Unity" (includes a discussion of the theological implications of culture).
15. Jeff Straub on "Thomas Todhunter Shields (1873-1955): 'The Canadian Spurgeon'" (examines why, exactly, T. T. Shields was often compared to C. H. Spurgeon, and how valid the comparison was. Dr. Straub has specialized on the life and work of Shields and has often had the opportunity to research the Shields archives in Canada).
16. Stephen J. Hankins, "Matters of Conscience: Exegetical and Hermeneutical Observations on the Use of Syneidesis in the Greek New Testament and Some Ministry Implications" (a fairly in-depth study that includes a discussion of the Greek term syneidesis).
17. Mark Bruffey, "The Influence of Universalism on Finney's View of the Atonement" (interestingly, Bruffey points out how Finney rejected the doctrine of imputation in dialogue with universalism; to me, this indicates how sometimes bad theology can occasionally come about in response to bad theology!)
18. Brian Wagner, "The Perspicuity of Scripture: Rehearing the Testimony from Christian History of Those Who Held to the View as Foundational to Their Evangelical Hermeneutic."