Speaking the Truth in Love: The Theology of John M. Frame (Hardcover)

Speaking the Truth in Love: The Theology of John M. Frame puts the “giant” in “gigantic” since this festschrift honoring Professor Frame is over 1200 pages – Amazing! Subsequently if you’ve only a cursory acquaintance of Dr. Frame, scholar/academician/philosopher/worship leader who has been called Van Til’s second most significant advocate, you may be surprised to learn what a forbearing apologist he is.

Speaking the Truth in Love is teeming with outstanding essays by a variety of erudite apologists, ministers, and theologians. Herein are chapters touching an array of fascinating and diverse topics. For the Presuppositional devotee there are three essential chapters that offer fresh and potent analysis and application of Frame’s employment of Cornelius Van Til’s apologetic commencing with James Anderson, Don Collect and pressed further by Steve R. Scrivener.

Additional chapters (editor is John J. Hughes) have a mix of superb, splendid, captivating, ordinary, tedious, and lackluster writing from first-class scholars such as:

• Wayne Grudem
• Richard Pratt
• Paul Helm
• Vern Poythress
• Bruce Waltke (resigned from RTS due to his defence of “scientific evolution.”)
• William Davis
• William Edgar
• Peter Jones
• Reggie Kidd
• Don Collett (his chapter is his third published revision of his essay on Van Til’s TAG)
* Frame’s most recent reply to Collect’s defense of the Transcendental Argument for God’s Existence (TAG). See my analysis of Reiter’s update on TAG: http://thelordgodexists.com/2012/01/concerning-david-reiter%E2%80%99s-modal-transcendental-argument-for-the-existence-of-god/

• And more mostly fine essays.

An extraordinary chapter includes Steve R. Scrivener’s cogent essay contrasting and intermingling of Frame’s and Van Til’s apologetic while utilizing insights from Greg Bahnsen: fresh, perceptive, remarkable, stupendous, and profoundly contemplative. Scrivener makes use of the work of Frame, Van Til, and Bahnsen as he issues a powerful defense of TAG. He then reformulates the classical arguments in a TA formulation. One may not affirm all of Scrivener’s innovations and amalgamations, but all readers will be challenged and encouraged in the employment of TAG. Scrivener discusses the work of Craig and other non-presuppositionalists as he presses the need of presenting the Gospel as the center of one’s apologetic approach.

Another superb essay comes from the pen of Esther L. Meek on Frame’s epistemology in comparison with Michael Polanyi’s (1891-1976, a European chemist who became a groundbreaking philosopher and epistemologist) epistemic insights. Polanyi asserted that epistemic rights are obtained by central and subsidiary aspects of awareness while fixing on the article at hand while focusing on less important derivative things as epistemic backdrops. Meeks notes that for Polanyi “normative structures such as interpretive frameworks, or even languages, work like hammers… I indwell them, I pour myself into them, to attend beyond me a further focus or project. All knowing involves integrative orientation from subsidiary to focal, from `from’ to `to’ and beyond” (p. 619). Meek’s work in this volume is captivating, enthralling, instructive, and enlightening. A must read for Christians interested in epistemology.

Classical apologist R. C. Sproul acknowledged that “John Frame … has distinguished himself in the fields of theology, apologetics, philosophy, and Christian ethics.”

This massive volume offers several convincing assessments of Frame’s academic efforts regarding the following issues:

• Theology
• Van Til’s apologetic
• Ethics
• Worship
• Ecclesiology
• Classical apologetics
• Evidential apologetics
• Law and government
• Moral absolutes.

A chapter that is well-fitted for a pastor is Bruce K. Waltke’s explication of “Psalm 19: A Royal Sage Praises and Petitions I AM.” Waltke delivers an exegetical gem infused with precision and hearty application. His exposition is laden with exceptional scholarship that makes for a stirring devotional read and will drive many men of letters to their knees in humble thanksgiving (note: Professor Waltke resently resigned from RTS due to his defence of “scientific evolution,” but not “philosophical evolution”).

Two other noteworthy chapters discuss “The Attributes of God Within Frame’s Theology” (Derek Thomas) and Paul Helm on “Frame’s Doctrine of God.”

The price of this admirable book is nearly cut in half since its publication; moreover I would heartily recommend this volume for Christian apologists, philosophers, epistemologists, and ministers of all apologetic schools and disciplines.

See my two of my Books: Truth, Knowledge and the Reason for God: The Defense of the Rational Assurance of Christianity
And One Way to God: Christian Philosophy and Presuppositional Apologetics Examine World Religions http://thelordgodexists.com/books/

and my Apologetic E-books HERE

The Master’s Seminary Here