The first issue of Vol. 11 of the Global Journal will feature a most important article by our frequent contributor Dr Donald T. Williams: “Lacking, Ludicrous, or Logical? The Validity of Lewis’s ‘Trilemma'”: a defense of C. S. Lewis’s argument that since Jesus was neither lunatic nor liar, his claim to be Lord God Incarnate needs to be accepted as factually true. Pastor J. A. Stewart contributes a related article: a trenchant critique of Hume’s classic argument against the miraculous. Finally, Michael Parsons of Paternoster Press and Spurgeon’s College, London, offers “Luther’s Insights into Grief: His Pastoral Letters”–a clear testimony to the deep spirituality of Protestantism’s founder and a solid help to Christians today suffering the pangs of grief and loss.

The Global Journal’s Associate Editor, Dr Edward N. Martin—doubtless out of humility—rarely offers his scholarly articles to us. (Readers must go back to archived issue Vol. 1, No. 1 and Vol. 4., No. 1 for previous contributions—followed over the years by several valuable reviews.) But issue 10/3 will feature his important apologetic contribution to the philosophical Problem of Evil: “On the Impossibility of Omnimalevolence: Plantinga on Tooley’s New Evidential Argument from Evil.” This article is especially timely–treating, as it does, a recent scholarly interchange between secularist Michael Tooley and Reformed epistemologist Alvin Plantinga. Two other papers of apologetic significance will also appear in the next issue: Nicole Frazer’s critique of Marcus Borg’s “Jesus Seminar” approach to the Gospels and James Barta’s analysis of Paul Kurtz’s secular humanism.

Vol. 10, No. 2 will feature two technical but powerful articles. Prof. Dr Thomas Schirrmacher, one of the foremost living European evangelical theologians, will treat “Violence against Abortion Clinics” in light of the philosophy of right-to-life as espoused by evangelicals and by conservative Roman Catholics. And Rick Brannan of Logos Bible Software will offer a powerful argument for the eyewitness nature of Acts 18:19—a passage frequently held to be non-historical by the higher critics of the New Testament. Prepare thyself, O reader, for serious study when the next issue of the Global Journal is posted!

Our next issue marks the tenth anniversary of the Global Journal: tempus doth indeed fugit!

The lead article, by Dr Daniel R. Heimbach — a distinguished previous contributor — is titled, “The Problem with Assessing Torture.” By a careful study of this paper, readers will be able to wrestle with a contemporary ethical issue of great importance vis-à-vis the war against terrorism. Your editor will have some remarks on the subject as well in his introductory “Note” to the next issue.

Vol. 10, No. 1 will also feature Willie Honeycutt’s “Analysis and Appraisal of the Exclusivist Claims of Hinduism, Buddhism and Christianity” — refuting the commonly-held fallacy that Hinduism and Buddhism are “open” religions in contrast to exclusivist biblical Christianity. Finally, Daniel Janosik will provide an historical essay on one of the most fundamental distinctions between Christian doctrine and Muslim beliefs: “John of Damascus’ Response to the Islamic View of Justification by Works.”

Raise a glass when the next issue goes to press (even though, if you are Baptist, your glass may contain only grape juice . . .).

— John Warwick Montgomery

The Global Journal manifests diversity—not politically-correct diversity (we stand for the historic biblical gospel, once for all delivered to the saints!) but diversity of theme in our articles. Vol. 9, No. 3 will particularly illustrate our catholic—small “c”—tastes.

John D. Laing, who provides a trenchant article on Plantinga’s “Reformed epistemology” in the present issue, is a distinguished military chaplain; though we do not ordinarily publish an author in two consecutive issues of the Global Journal, his paper “Evangelical Chaplains, Ceremonial Deism, and the Establishment Clause” is too important not to reach our readers right away, touching, as it does, the fundamental issue of the degree of separation of church and state in America.

Then, on the philosophical side of things, Kevin Smith treats a viewpoint, panentheism, which has had much influence in liberal (especially process theology) circles: “The Rise of the Eighth-Day Man: The Advent of Modern Panentheism and Its Impact on the Doctrine of Biblical Sufficiency.”

Finally, we return to the first generation of the Protestant Reformation with a paper by Aaron T. O’Kelley: “Luther and Melanchthon on Justification: Continuity or Discontinuity.” Even if one disagrees with the author at certain points (e.g., Luther’s supposed non-acceptance of the Third Use of the Law), the reader will be transported by this essay to the heart of biblical teaching: the doctrine of justification, “on which the church stands or falls.”

Readers of the Global Journal will recall, in Vol. 8, No. 1, an article on Alvin Plantinga and the so-called “Reformed epistemology.” This apologetic approach—derived from the thought of Plantinga, Nicholas Wolterstorff, and George Mavrodes—warrants (note the term!) further treatment, receiving, as it does, uncritical acceptance in some evangelical quarters. Our lead article in Vol. 9, No. 2, will take issue with the effectiveness of the method: “Plantinga’s Reformed Epistemology, Evidentialism, and Evangelical Apologetics” by John D. Laing of Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary. And, moving back to Reformation times, Jeff Fisher will offer an analysis of “The Justification of John Oecolampadius: His Teaching on the Doctrine and a Revision of McGrath’s Portrayal of the Swiss Reformer.” Finally, the question of Jesus’ very existence will be discussed by Tim Snyder—over against the German higher critical views of sceptic G. A. Wells—in his essay, “The Heart of Christianity: An Apologetic Critiquing the Jesus Myth Theory.”

One of our favourite—and especially faithful—contributors to the Global Journal is Dr Donald T. Williams. In our next issue, he will be gracing us with an article whose subject could not be more valuable or interesting: “The Praise of Christ in English Devotional Poetry.” At the other end of the theological spectrum are, of course, the new atheists and the modernists (with considerably less distance between them than one might imagine). Treating “The New Atheist’s Anti-Yahvistic Argument” will be Jordan W. Jones; and Stephanie D. Monk will offer a trenchant critique of the views of Bishop John Shelby Spong.

Issue 8/3 will feature three areas of scholarly importance which are not usually found together: patristics, ethics, and psychoanalysis! Dr Ashish Naidu of Biola University will analyze John Chrysostom’s christology; Dr Daniel Heimbach of Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary will offer a paper titled, “Toward Defining Christian Ethics: An Evaluation of Contrasting Views”; and practicing psychiatrist Dr Samuel Goldberg will use the symbolism of Groundhog Day to provide an original analysis of certain relationships between Christianity and psychoanalysis. And thus does the Global Journal personify the Renaissance uomo universale!

We promised the editor’s paper from the 2009 Beijing Congress of the Philosophy of Law and Social Policy. This was actually a follow-up essay to the one presented at the previous Congress of that body, held in Kraków, Poland, in 2007. These papers have just appeared in a volume published by the International Association for Philosophy of Law and Social Philosophy (IVR), under the editorship of Dr Friedrich Toepel of Bonn, Germany, a fine Christian lawyer. * But since the subject matter of both papers is heavily theological (the nature of freewill) and since readers of the Global Journal are unlikely to obtain such a specialized publication, we shall be including both essays in our next issue.

Volume 8, No. 2, will also feature a paper capable of setting the children’s teeth on edge: Dr John D. Wilsey’s “Critique of the Historiographical Construal of America As a Christian Nation.” This essay produced an appropriate stir at the November, 2009, sessions of the Evangelical Theological Society’s national meeting in New Orleans. We are most fortunate to be publishing it, and we trust that readers who make the grave error of thinking that the United States is the Christian replacement of the Israel of the Old Testament—or is by definition at the top of the Almighty’s “most favoured nation” classification—will be helped by it to a more mature theological view of nationhood.

In September, 2009, your editor co-chaired a session at the 24th World Congress of the Philosophy of Law and Social Philosophy, held in Beijing, China, and delivered a paper which will be included in a later issue of the Global Journal. At another session of the Congress, a remarkable essay was presented by Vaidotas A. Vaièaitis, Associate Professor in the Department of Public Law at Vilnius University, Lithuania. It dealt with “The Concept of Law in Biblical Narrative,” and we are particularly fortunate to have obtained the author’s permission to publish it in our next issue, particularly since virtually all of Professor Vaièaitis’s writings are otherwise available only in Lithuanian. We would have introduced into the discussion Genesis 3:15 as protoevangelion, and we worry a bit about seeing the serpent in that chapter as modeling what lawyers and judges would do in subsequent history! But the Professor’s essay covers important ground not treated elsewhere and readers will find it fascinating.

The Global Journal provides, from time to time, the opportunity for student contributions–when they are in every sense on the level of the professional scholarly article. Vol. 8, No. 1 will contain two such papers: one dealing with the thought of deconstructionist philosopher Jacques Derrida and the other with the apologetic of “Reformed epistemologist” Alvin Plantinga. The latter paper will identify problems in Plantinga’s thought of a considerably different nature from those discussed from a presuppositionalist standpoint in K. Scott Oliphint’s review essay, “Epistemology and Christian Belief,” Westminster Theological Journal, Spring, 2001.