Update: Here’s a follow-up: ”BOASTING: ‘I deserve praise because I’ve achieved so much.’ SELF-PITY: ‘I deserve praise because I’ve endured so much.’”

Related: If you’re not on Twitter, you can follow John Piper on Twitter in your blog reader via his RSS feed.

Here’s a chronological list of most of Moo’s publications on Romans, which I’ve ranked as introductory, intermediate, and advanced. The most valuable are the NICNT and NIVAC volumes.

1. “Exegetical Notes: Romans 6:1–14.” Trinity Journal 3 (1982): 215–20. [advanced]

2. “Israel and Paul in Romans 7.7–12.” New Testament Studies 32 (1986): 122–35. [advanced]

3. Romans 1-8. Wycliffe Exegetical Commentary. Chicago: Moody, 1991. [advanced]

4. “Romans 2: Saved Apart from the Gospel?” Pages 137–45 in Through No Fault of Their Own: The Fate of Those Who Have Never Heard. Edited by William V. Crockett and James G. Sigountos. Grand Rapids: Baker, 1991. [intermediate] Amazon

5. “Romans.” Pages 1115–60 in New Bible Commentary: 21st Century Edition. Edited by D. A. Carson, R. T. France, J. A. Motyer, and G. J. Wenham. Downers Grove: IVP, 1994. [introductory] Amazon | WTS Books

6. “The Theology of Romans 9–11: A Response to E. Elizabeth Johnson.” Pages 240–58 in Romans. Vol. 3 of Pauline Theology. Edited by David M. Hay and E. Elizabeth Johnson. Minneapolis: Fortress, 1995. [advanced] Amazon

7. The Epistle to the Romans. New International Commentary on the New Testament. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1996. [advanced] Amazon | WTS Books

8. Romans. NIV Application Commentary. Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2000. [intermediate] Amazon | WTS Books

9. “Romans.” Pages 291–97 in New Dictionary of Biblical Theology. Edited by T. Desmond Alexander and Brian S. Rosner. Downers Grove: IVP, 2000. [introductory] Amazon | WTS Books

10. Encountering the Book of Romans: A Theological Survey. Encountering Biblical Studies. Grand Rapids: Baker, 2002. [introductory] Amazon | WTS Books

11. “Romans.” Pages 2–99 in Illustrated Bible Backgrounds Commentary, Vol. 3: Romans to Philemon. Edited by Clinton E. Arnold. Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2002. [introductory] Amazon | WTS Books

12. “‘Flesh’ in Romans: A Problem for the Translator.” Page 365–79 in The Challenge of Bible Translation: Communicating God’s Word to the World. Essays in Honor of Ronald F. Youngblood. Edited by Glen S. Scorgie, Mark L. Strauss, and Steven M. Voth. Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2003. [intermediate] Amazon

13. “Israel and the Law in Romans 5–11: Interaction with the New Perspective.” Pages 185–216 in The Paradoxes of Paul. Vol. 2 of Justification and Variegated Nomism. Edited by D. A. Carson, Peter T. O’Brien, and Mark A. Seifrid. Wissenschaftliche Untersuchungen zum Neuen Testament 181. Grand Rapids: Baker, 2004. [advanced] Amazon | WTS Books

14. ”Romans” (with D. A. Carson). Pages 391–414 in An Introduction to the New Testament. 2nd ed. Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2005. [intermediate] Amazon | WTS Books

15. “Paul’s Universalizing Hermeneutic in Romans.” The Southern Baptist Journal of Theology 11:3 (2007): 62–90. [advanced]

16. “Paul’s Letter to the Romans.” In New Living Translation Study Bible. Carol Stream, IL: Tyndale House, 2008. [introductory] Amazon

17. Romans: Celebrating the Good News (with Karen Lee-Thorp). Bringing the Bible to Life. Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2008. [introductory] Amazon | WTS Books

Related: About thirty of Moo’s articles are available as PDFs from his website.

Update: See Justin Taylor’s “Olasky on Writing Clearly.”

Sex Is Not the Problem (Lust Is): Sexual Purity in a Lust-Saturated World. Colorado Springs, CO: Multnomah, 2003. 187 pp. Amazon | WTSBooks.

In Chapter 5, entitled “Guys and Girls: How Are We Different, and How Can We Help Each Other?”, Josh writes this in answer to the question “How Are We Different?” (pp. 84–85):

Though we have a lot in common, God made men and women gloriously different. We were made to complement each other. We have different strengths. We are “wired” differently sexually.

When it comes to the differences between men and women, the following statements are generally accurate and may be helpful to consider:

• A man’s sexual desire is often more physical, while a woman’s desire is more often rooted in emotional longings.
• A man is generally wired to be the sexual initiator and is stimulated visually; a woman is generally wired to be the sexual responder and is stimulated by touch.
• A man is created to pursue and finds even the pursuit stimulating; a woman is made to want to be pursued and finds even being pursued stimulating.

Isn’t it wonderful how God has made men and women to interact with each other? He made men visually oriented, then made women beautiful. He made men initiators, and then designed women to enjoy being pursued. In the heart of each man is an innate desire to romance and win the affection of a woman. God plants a longing in a girl’s heart from a young age to make herself attractive. All this is part of God’s wonderful design.

Understanding God’s plan helps us to see where lustful desires will seek to sabotage the original purpose. Lust always starts with something good—like a mirror at a carnival, it takes God’s design and then distorts it.

Josh continues in a section titled “Pleasure and Power” (pp. 85–87),

Lust blurs and bends true masculinity and femininity in harmful ways. It makes a man’s good desire to pursue all about “capturing” and “using,” and a woman’s good desire to be beautiful all about “seduction” and “manipulation.” In general it seems that men and women are tempted by lust in two unique ways: men are tempted by the pleasure lust offers, while women are tempted by the power lust promises. . . .

Lust offers men the pleasure of sex devoid of the hard work of intimacy. Lust offers women the power to get what they want relationally if they use their sexuality to seduce. Dr. Al Mohler once made a shocking yet accurate statement: “Men are tempted to give themselves to pornography–women are tempted to commit pornography.” If you’re a woman, you don’t have to pose for a picture or star in a pornographic movie to commit pornography. When you dress and behave in a way that is designed primarily to arouse sexual desire in men, you’re committing pronography with your life.

So Josh suggests five general ways that guys and girls “wired” differently sexually with the result that their sexual temptations are fundamentally different:

In the midst of many reasons for rejoicing in the positive advances made in the convention this year, one event stands out as confusing to Protestant fundamentalists: SBTS dedicated a building (cf. audio and video) to former president Duke McCall, a theological moderate who tolerated theological liberalism and opposed the Conservative Resurgence.

Doran’s Objection

Dave Doran (a graduate of TEDS, senior pastor of Inter-City Baptist Church, and president of Detroit Baptist Theological Seminary) reflects on this in these short articles:

1. “Honor to Whom Dishonor Is Due” (He concludes, “I just don’t get it.”)
2. “Is This an Application of Loving Your Enemies?“
3. “We Report, You Decide” (a response to Greg Gilbert’s post)
4. “Some (Final, I hope) Thoughts on the McCall Pavilion and Objections to My Questioning It” (a response to Mark Rogers’s post)
5. “Missions, Pavilions, and Wives” (paragraph two responds to Owen Strachan’s post)

Reponses to Doran

1. Greg Gilbert (a graduate of SBTS, former assistant to Al Mohler, and assistant pastor at Capitol Hill Baptist Church) respectfully responds to Doran’s first article: “Mohler, McCall, Truth, and History.”
2. Mark Rogers (a graduate of SBTS, son of a pastor in the SBC, current PhD student in historical theology at TEDS, and D. A. Carson’s administrative assistant) also respectfully responds to Doran’s first article: “Southern Seminary’s Anniversary and a Question of Honor.”
3. Owen Strachan (a graduate of SBTS, former research assistant to Al Mohler, current PhD student in historical theology at TEDS, and managing director of the Henry Center) also respectfully responds to Doran: “At SBTS, Fidelity Matters: A Friendly Response to Dave Doran.”

“Well it just so happens that your friend here is only mostly dead. There’s a big difference between mostly dead and all dead. . . . Now mostly dead is slightly alive. All dead—well, with all dead, there’s only usually one thing that you can do.”

“What’s that?”

“Go through his clothes and look for loose change.”

Recommended resources:

1. William W. Combs, “Does the Bible Teach Prevenient Grace?” Detroit Baptist Seminary Journal 10 (2005): 3–18.
2. John Piper, “Total Depravity,” in “TULIP” (a nine-part seminar available in audio and video), 2008.
3. Thomas R. Schreiner, “Does Scripture Teach Prevenient Grace in the Wesleyan Sense?” in Still Sovereign: Contemporary Perspectives on Election, Foreknowledge, and Grace (ed. Thomas R. Schreiner and Bruce A. Ware; Grand Rapids: Baker, 2000), 229–46.

1. John Piper and Bethlehem Baptist Church have Children Desiring God.

2. The Fundamental Baptist Fellowship International national conference this week has “When I grow up, I want to be a fundamentalist.”

He lists ten main points:

1. Bible college and seminary weren’t enough.
2. Good sermon preparation takes time.
3. His family is important too.
4. Be kind if you have a criticism.
5. Give your pastor time to grow.
6. Your pastor probably views you differently than you view him.
7. Pastors sometimes find it difficult to have friendships.
8. Your pastor may well be different out of the pulpit than when he’s in the pulpit and that doesn’t necessarily make him a hypocrite.
9. Your pastor has bills too.
10. Your pastor loves the work of the ministry.

Matt Perman’s “How to Get Your Email Inbox to Zero Every Day” is exceptionally helpful for redeeming the time. It’s a simple method (though it might not seem simple at first!) to help you manage your emails rather than let them mangage you. (My wife suggested that I add a disclaimer that everyone’s brain doesn’t organize in exactly the same way!)

I process my email in Gmail, so I’ve tweaked Perman’s superb article in at least two places:

1. Archiving

Problem: Perman recommends deleting everything but never emptying your deleted items, but this advice does not apply to Gmail since Gmail automatically and permanently deletes 30-day-old items in your Trash.

Solution: Archive items that you think you may want to search on or read at any time in the future. (Gmail offers 5+ GB of free storage for messages and attachments.) Delete everything else.

2. Labels

Problem: Perman recommends using only three folders or labels: ”Answer,” “Hold,” and “Read.”  But shrewdly using multiple “Labels” is more efficient. For example, I frequently search emails that are tagged with a particlar label rather than searching all my emails.

Solution: Use more than the three labels “Answer,” “Hold,” and “Read.”  (I currently use over thirty labels.)

• Create “Filters” that automatically tag emails (e.g., ones from certain people or from email addresses with certain domain names) with specific labels.
• Color-code your labels. This can be visually helpful for processing emails efficiently. (For example, every email I receive from my wife is labled “Jenni” and colored pink with black font.)
• Add numbers in front of the first three labels so that they appear on top:  ”1. Answer,” “2. Hold,” and “3. Read.”

Related:

1. The latest post on the Gmail blog gives yet another reason to process your email in Gmail: “Tip: Check and reply from multiple email addresses in Gmail.”
2. Gmail Tips

She proceeds to discsuss “three powerful lies communicated to and believed by women through this genre of ‘chick-flicks’ as well as ‘chick-lit’ (literature)”:

• Lie #1: Men think of romance and relational intimacy exactly like women do!
• Lie #2: If I marry the right man, all will be right in my life.
• Lie #3: I will know that a man is right for me by feelings I get when I’m with him.

She closes by sharing her own courting experience.

Das ist gut, ja?

HT: Russell Moore and Carolyn McCulley

His conclusion:

Justification: God’s Plan and Paul’s Vision is the most comprehensive and current statement of N. T. Wright on justification to date. Justification is largely a restatement of Wright’s views, with some amplification and rhetorical refinement. It is not a detailed textual and theological interaction with his Reformational readers’ concerns and objections. To the degree that Justification summarizes and synthesizes nearly three decades of Wright’s publications on justification, the book is useful to the student of Wright’s work. To the degree that Justification has failed to engage criticisms of Wright’s formulations on justification in such a way as to advance the discussion, the work is a missed opportunity. What is clear from Justification is that the fundamental concern of Wright’s Reformational readers remains unallayed and firmly in place: Wright’s views on justification have parted company with the teaching of the apostle Paul.

See the NSBT page hosted by The Gospel Coalition for the following:

1. more information on how to use the master Scripture index (i.e., a massive Excel spreadsheet)
2. Carson’s two-paragraph introduction to the NSBT series
3. Carson’s introduction to each voulme in the NSBT series

Below are the volumes in the series thus far:

1. David Peterson, Possessed by God: A New Testament Theology of Sanctification and Holiness (1995).

[Amazon | WTSBooks]

2. Raymond C. Ortlund, God’s Unfaithful Wife: A Biblical Theology of Spiritual Adultery (1996).

[Amazon | WTSBooks]

3. Paul W. Barnett, Jesus and the Logic of History (1997).

[Amazon | WTSBooks]

4. Daniel J. Estes, Hear, My Son: Teaching and Learning in Proverbs 1-9 (1997).

[Amazon | WTSBooks]

5. Henri Blocher, Original Sin: Illuminating the Riddle (1997).

[Amazon | WTSBooks]

6. J. Gary Millar, Now Choose Life: Theology and Ethics in Deuteronomy (1998).

[Amazon | WTSBooks]

7. Craig L. Blomberg, Neither Poverty nor Riches: A Biblical Theology of Possessions (1999).

[Amazon | WTSBooks]

8. Murray J. Harris, Slave of Christ: A New Testament Metaphor for Total Devotion to Christ (1999).

[Amazon | WTSBooks]

9. Mark A. Seifrid, Christ, Our Righteousness: Paul’s Theology of Justification (2000).

[Amazon | WTSBooks]

10. Barry G. Webb, Five Festal Garments: Christian Reflections on the Song of Songs, Ruth, Lamentations, Ecclesiastes and Esther (2000).

[Amazon | WTSBooks]

11. Andreas J. Köstenberger and Peter T. O’Brien, Salvation to the Ends of the Earth: A Biblical Theology of Mission (2001).

[Amazon | WTSBooks]

12. Robert Fyall, Now My Eyes Have Seen You: Images of Creation and Evil in the Book of Job (2002).

[Amazon | WTSBooks]

13. David W. Pao, Thanksgiving: An Investigation of a Pauline Theme (2002).

[Amazon | WTSBooks]

14. J. Daniel Hays, From Every People and Nation: A Biblical Theology of Race (2003).

[Amazon | WTSBooks]

15. Stephen G. Dempster, Dominion and Dynasty: A Biblical Theology of the Hebrew Bible (2003).

[Amazon | WTSBooks]

16. Peter Adam, Hearing God’s Words: Exploring Biblical Spirituality (2004).

[Amazon | WTSBooks]

17. G. K. Beale, The Temple and the Church’s Mission: A Biblical Theology of the Dwelling Place of God (2004).

[Amazon | WTSBooks]

18. Peter G. Bolt, The Cross from a Distance: Atonement in Mark’s Gospel (2004).

[Amazon | WTSBooks]

19. Craig L. Blomberg, Contagious Holiness: Jesus’ Meals with Sinners (2005).

[Amazon | WTSBooks]

20. Timothy Laniak, Shepherds After My Own Heart: Pastoral Traditions and Leadership in the Bible (2006).

[Amazon |WTSBooks]

21. Mark D. Thompson, A Clear and Present Word: The Clarity of Scripture (2006).

[Amazon | WTSBooks]

22. Trevor J. Burke, Adopted into God’s Family: Exploring a Pauline Metaphor (2006).

[Amazon | WTSBooks]

23. Paul R. Williamson, Sealed with an Oath: Covenant in God’s Unfolding Plan (2007).

[Amazon | WTSBooks]

24. Andreas J. Köstenberger and Scott R. Swain, Father, Son and Spirit: The Trinity and John’s Gospel (2008).

[Amazon | WTSBooks]

-Tim Keller, quoted in Tim Stafford, “How Tim Keller Found Manhattan,” Christianity Today cover story

HT: Together for the Gospel’s Facebook page

What’s sad is that we can be just as proud and haughty in other arenas, can’t we?

(RSS subscribers may need to click on the title of the post to see the 55-second video.)

HT: Chris Anderson

How the Bibliography Is Organized

The publications are listed chronologically under five categories by the date they were first published:

1. Books (currently 50 listed)
2. Articles (currently 237 listed)
3. Reviews (currently 112 listed)
4. Lyrics
5. Edited Series

Some of the books and articles are linked to Amazon.com, and others are linked to PDFs available for free on TGC site. Further, most of the articles and reviews are also linked to PDFs.

Note: (1) The PDFs may not be uploaded to other sites without written permission from the copyright holders. (2) I plan to continue updating the bibliography, so please let me know if you spot any errors such as typos or omissions.

Benefits of the Carson PDFs hosted by TGC

1. Number: The bibliography of Carson’s publications currently links to about 350 PDFs hosted on TGC site. The vast majority of them have not been available online previously.
2. Price: All the PDFs are free. (A few dozen of them were previously sold for $0.99 each at ChristWay Media.) This includes over 300 articles and reviews as well as the following seven books:
   • Letters Along the Way: A Novel of the Christian Life (Crossway, 1993)
   • Holy Sonnets of the Twentieth Century (Baker, 1994)
   • For the Love of God: A Daily Companion for Discovering the Riches of God’s Word, Vol. 1. (Crossway, 1998)
   • For the Love of God: A Daily Companion for Discovering the Riches of God’s Word, Vol. 2. (Crossway, 1999)
   • The Difficult Doctrine of the Love of God (Crossway, 2000)
   • Love in Hard Places (Crossway, 2002)
   • Memoirs of an Ordinary Pastor: The Life and Reflections of Tom Carson (Crossway, 2008)
3. Format: The PDFs preserve exact pagination, which is valuable for citations. Also, I’ve systematically formatted each PDF by cropping, enabling OCR (i.e., so one can search them, copy and paste, etc.), and making other general improvements  (whiting out advertisements in magazine articles, whiting out other books reviews from journals, whiting out printing smudges, etc.).
4. Convenience: Never before have so many PDFs of Carson’s publications been available online at a single website, and no user name or password is needed to download them. I would suggest using a tool such as the Firefox extension “DownThemAll!” to download all the PDFs most efficiently (i.e., by selecting to download all items on the webpage with a .pdf extension).
5. Labels: The PDFs are uniformly tagged (e.g., title, topic, date), and the format of the names of the PDFs themselves are also consistent (e.g., “2009_scholar_as_pastor.pdf″).
6. Content: When it comes to evaluating the content of Carson’s publications, I’m probably not as objective as others would be since I’m his full-time research assistant and he’s my doctoral mentor, but I don’t think it’s hagiographic to say that Carson is one of the finest NT scholars alive. When I arrived at Trinity in summer 2006, Willem VanGemeren, the director of the PhD program for theological studies at TEDS, advised me to get to know the professor whom I would like to be my mentor for the PhD program. One important way to do that, he suggested, is to read that professor’s works and become very familiar with them. So I did. It took a long time, but not a moment of that was wasted. I’d highly recommend that you redeem the time by systematically reading Carson’s books, articles, and reviews. They’re articulate, informed, thoughtful, engaging, and edifying. He exalts Christ by exegeting his words, tracing themes through the Bible’s salvation-historical storyline, addressing hot topics with clarity and nuance, and engaging and confronting bad theology as well as the culture.

Discouraged or Grateful to God?

Some people, especially pastors and professors, may look at the list of Carson’s publications and be tempted to get discouraged.  ”How can one man do all that? I’m such a failure.” If that’s how you’re tempted to feel, let me encourage you by sharing an insight I learned from Peter T. O’Brien, one of Carson’s best friends. When O’Brien was at TEDS in September 2006 to teach a block course, he shared his narrative with a group of PhD students, and I’ve not forgotten his valuable counsel that led me to this conclusion: by God’s grace I will serve him with the gifts he has given me and not feel inferior for the childish reason that I am not as gifted as someone else; rather, I will thank God for gracing me with gifts to the church like D. A. Carson.

Update: Justin Taylor writes,

Dr. Carson’s sheer productivity is nothing less than astonishing. One could become tired just working through the latest numbers: he has written 50 books; 235 articles; 112 book reviews; and 46 edited books in the various series he edits. Average it out and it comes to about one book written or edited every four months, with one article and two reviews written every six weeks—for three decades.

Related: D. A. Carson MP3s Now Hosted by TGC

“The Rich Man and Lazarus” (Luke 16:19-31) | MP3 | preached on May 17, 2009 at College Church in Wheaton, IL

Particuarly convicting:

The struggle to make much of Christ rather than self is a struggle for every preacher; we’re all prone to say “Behold me telling you to behold the Lamb of God.”

Update: Cf. Dave Doran’s “A Few More Pennies on Mark Driscoll.”

Cf. my post in September 2007: “A Future Church Plant Worth Supporting.”

It’s a wicked world, and when a clever man turns his brains to crime it is the worst of all.

-Sherlock Holmes in “The Adventure of the Speckled Band” by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, an agnostic

This part hurts the most:

We are all proud. Because I’m proud I get hurt when people disagree with me strongly. Because I’m proud I feel the need to give thirteen qualifications before I make an argument, not usually because I’m a swell guy but because I love for people to love me and loathe for them to dislike or misunderstand me. Because I’m proud I hedge my criticisms so that I won’t have to publicly repent and recant when I go too far and get something wrong. Because we’re proud, protectors of self more than lovers of truth, we often don’t discuss things with candor or with verve.

Read the whole thing—esp. the last four paragraphs.