Wednesday, July 02, 2008

Jewish stuff in this month's Evangelicals Now

Alec Motyer reviews Torrance and Taylor's Israel, God's Servant, here. I guess it was as positive a review the book was ever going to get in EN, which is, after all, supersessionist at heart.

There was also an artticle on the recent burning of New Testaments at Yehuda Or, but this article has not been reproduced on EN's website.

2 comments:

Matt said...

I haven't yet had the chance to read Torrance and Taylor's book, but I found it intriguing that the review was entitled, "Darby Rides Again". The reviewer also closes with the comment, "The great and unique J.N. Darby rides again — though his dispensational baggage has been lost in transit." I would have been rather surprised to see a dispensational argument from a Reformed theologian like Torrance, but it seems like a knock against dispensationalism is perhaps so crucial to a supersessionist attack on anything reasonably pro-Israel that a crack about Darby had to be thrown in somewhere. Perhaps the expected straw man having been found missing from the book under review necessitated bringing him in anyway. Feh.

James said...

You're probably right there, Matt. I think a lot of reformed evangelicals - certainly British ones - are embarrassed about the fact that many of their illustrious forebears (Spurgeon, M'Cheyne, Ryle) believed strongly in a literal return to the land and so want to lump all non-supersessionists together as "dispensationalists". This certainly seems to be the approach Sizer takes in his latest book.

BUt more concerning is Alec Motyer's comment that he "cannot find any 'Jews' in the OT" - whom does he find, Eskimoes? - see my letter in response to this, I've posted it on the blog today.