In Case You Missed It, I Got an Award

Much has been happening here around the seminary. My semester is speeding right up to the end. Last week though, I was awarded the Rollin Thomas Chafer Award in Apologetics for the best paper submitted in that field. I was a bit surprised since I haven’t submitted any papers on that recently (nor have I taken that class here at DTS) but did some digging and found out it was an award in advance for my yet to be completed thesis. Apparently the first two chapters trumped any other contenders. Hopefully the rest will live up to the hype.

In a slight twist of irony the award comes with a nice cash prize funded by Norman Geisler and his wife. (You might find that slightly ironic considering I relied on Van Til and Bahnsen for my apologetics approach). I am very grateful to the Geislers’ generosity and split the prize money with my wife. I reinvested mine in some books from Westminster and Monergism:

• Herman Bavinck: Pastor, Churchman, Statesman, Theologian
• Church Planter
• The Gospel Commission
• A Gracious and Compassionate God: Mission, Salvation, and Spirituality in the Book of Jonah
• Psychology and Christianity: Five Views (2nd Edition)
• Living in God’s Two Kingdoms: A Biblical Vision for Christianity and Culture

The Westminster books came today, but I have no time to read them, though I thumbed through and am looking forward to this time next week when I’ll be down for the semester, and really for good, minus finishing that thesis and some book reviews over the summer. Although, we’re going to Austin for the weekend next weekend, so I won’t be bringing books along. So next Monday it is then.

Kind of bittersweet, but I’ll say some more on that later.

I managed to post a couple of times this week:

• Short Review: The Gospel and The Mind
• The Christian Faith 5:17
• Book Review: Rediscovering the Church Fathers

As you can see, everything was more or less a book review. Once school is done, I’ll start thinking about things other than papers, promise.

Elsewhere, Daniel Kirk has a series going on the church and the academy:

• Gap Between the Lectern and the Pulpit
• The Bible Reader Divide
• Church and Academy Need Each Other
• Reading the Bible With Academy and Church

And here’s a good roundup of some other interesting posts:

• Tim Challies posted earlier in the week about hell.
• An interesting arugment between Catholic and Presbyterian church marquis signs.
• William F. Buckley and Hugh Hefner discuss Judeo-Christian ethics.
• A little Jedi girl joins the dark side at Disneyland.
• Snoopy’s first book on theology
• Tim Keller on why we love stories.
• 8 logos of major brands redesigned to be more accurate.
• Some thoughts on why Christian movies tend to be awful
• Karl Giberson wrote an article explaining why Jesus would believe in evolution.
• Doug Wilson responds, and so does Frank Turk
• Two more posts are up in the Resurgence Biblical Theology series: Marriage in God’s Story and Reclaim Biblical Intimacy