Theological Education and the Christian Life
In the previous essay I explained three areas in which nineteenth-century Baptist theologian Alvah Hovey provided some help in thinking through the nature and place of theological education. One of these was the idea that theology itself is the master and those who...
Theological Education in a Complex World
Debates over theological education are nothing new. Why do we have seminary theological education? What are seminaries meant to do? What about theological education for the non-pastor? Fortunately, we do not stand alone in trying to answer these questions. Mining the...
Tried with Fire: A City That Hath Foundations
Abraham entered the Promised Land as a foreigner. Although he spent virtually the rest of his life in the land, he never lost his status as an alien. Rather than ceding rights to the surrounding kings, settling down, and establishing a home, Abraham continued to live...
Tried with Fire: That Ye Faint Not
The apostle Paul knew how to write with exceptional clarity. Sometimes, however, he chose to express himself in ambiguous ways. A clear example of Pauline obscurity can be found in Ephesians 3:13. Paul writes, “Wherefore I desire that ye faint not at my...
Tried with Fire: I’ve Got This!
Is self-reliance a virtue or a vice? The Bible includes passages that appear to answer this question with a yes. It also includes passages that appear to answer it with a no. In favor of self-reliance, the book of Proverbs counsels industry as a way of avoiding...
Submitting to Each Other: A Response to Denny Burk
Denny Burk is one of the leading voices for biblical complementarianism, a perspective that claims that, according to Scripture, men and women can be genuinely equal while nevertheless existing in certain structured relationships (such as the home and the church) that...
Tried with Fire: Lest I Should Be Exalted
The apostle Paul was not given to self-aggrandizement. He understood himself to be the chief of sinners, rescued only by God’s grace. Only when forced to defend his ministry and apostleship was he willing to talk about his gifts and attainments—and even then he...
Thoughts on Baptists and Independence
[This essay was originally published on September 25, 2015.] Sometimes things that look alike are actually quite different. One mushroom cooks up into a delectable repast, while another that appears almost identical can kill. A gold nugget will buy a new car, but a...
Vocation and Vocations
[This essay was originally published on February 5, 2016.] The Reformers erected the doctrine of calling in reaction to the Romanist distinction between clergy and laity. At the time, Catholics recognized only two vocations: the calling to consecration (which...
Tried with Fire: Suffering and Glory
How perplexing! Christians are supposed to be children of God, heirs and joint heirs with Christ. We are no longer under condemnation—God’s wrath has been cancelled for all our sins. We have received unimaginable privileges in Christ. Yet we ache when we get up...
Tried with Fire: The Things On the Earth
Our greatest temptation is not to treat evil things as if they were good. Our greatest temptation is to treat good things as if they were God. We were created to worship. We can’t help ourselves. The most earthbound among us are compelled to look upwards toward...
Tried with Fire: The God of All Comfort
To all appearances the apostle Paul was less than average. He was probably so short that he couldn’t see over the heads of a crowd. He was no golden-tongued orator—in fact, his preaching was known to put people to sleep. Many believe that he had an ocular...
Tried with Fire: Want Wisdom?
On our first Thanksgiving in Denver, my wife and I wanted to drive to Iowa to see her family, then to Wisconsin for my parents’ silver wedding anniversary. The problem was that a snow storm was blowing in from the Rockies. Snow swirled the whole night before we...
Tried with Fire: Consider It All Joy
The temperature hovered in the nineties as the August sun beat down on the practice field. We had been running through a combination of calisthenics and drills in full gear for nearly two hours. This was our first two-a-day of the season. I’d thought I was in...
Rolland D. McCune (1934–2019): Gathered to His People
Monday night, June 17th, in the presence of his family, Dr. Rolland McCune entered into his eternal rest. He had recently turned 85. After having survived two previous bouts with cancer, he was diagnosed with inoperable pancreatic cancer several weeks ago. The end...
Elders Rule! But Congregations Decide
[This essay was originally published on February 7, 2014.] Those who think that churches should be governed by a self-perpetuating boards of elders have two main arguments. The first is that the sheep (i.e., ordinary believers under the care of shepherds or elders)...
Tried with Fire: Teaching a Lesson
It was the best day of his life. He had been blind from birth. One day as he sat begging he heard himself being discussed. Men were asking a rabbi whether the blindness was because of his sins or his parents’ sin. The teacher replied that it was neither:...
Tried with Fire: Those Who Cannot Believe
The missionary was well stricken in years and ready to see her Lord. She didn’t regret the decades that she and her husband had spent pushing into the jungle to bring the gospel to unreached peoples. She didn’t resent the bouts of disease or the other...
Tried with Fire: Why Us?
The early chapters of Genesis trace death to Adam’s sin. Along with death came an entire brood of calamities. Alienation from God, suspicion of and hostility toward other people, grinding labor, sorrow, and physical pain all began with the sentence of death. At...
Tried with Fire: Death and Its Brood
God did not create human beings to suffer or die. Nothing in the Bible teaches that pain had any place in the world God made. God fashioned humanity, both male and female, as part of His good creation. He gave them His blessing. He put them in a place of shelter and...
About In the Nick of Time
Occasional Essays and Other Stuff for Christian Students Presented by the Research Professor of Systematic Theology of Central Baptist Theological Seminary of Minneapolis.
American Christianity needs Christian leaders. Christian leaders explain the Scriptures, bringing them to bear upon life’s urgent questions. Christian leaders exemplify the life of faith, finding their ultimate satisfaction in God alone. They unite intellectual discipline with ordinate affection, turning their entire being toward the love of God. These essays are dedicated to the task of inviting Christian students to become tomorrow’s Christian leaders.
—Kevin T. Bauder
“Be instant in season, out of season; reprove, rebuke, exhort with all longsuffering and doctrine.”