Best pneumatology books according to redditors
We found 49 Reddit comments discussing the best pneumatology books. We ranked the 32 resulting products by number of redditors who mentioned them. Here are the top 20.
We found 49 Reddit comments discussing the best pneumatology books. We ranked the 32 resulting products by number of redditors who mentioned them. Here are the top 20.
Beginner: Who Is the Holy Spirit? (Sproul)
Intermediate: The Holy Spirit (Contours of Christian Theology) (Ferguson)
Advanced: The Holy Spirit (Owen)
Extra Credit: [Images of the Spirit]
(https://www.amazon.com/Images-Spirit-Meredith-G-Kline/dp/1579102050/ref=sr_1_fkmr0_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1504720226&sr=1-1-fkmr0&keywords=kline+holy+spirit) (Kline)
Obligatory Vos: The Eschatological Aspect of the Pauline Conception of the Spirit
These are some of the better books I've accumulated in school:
I've already given an explanation. I've got links as well, among the most well known is "She Who Is" by catholic theologian Elizabeth Johnson. "Models of God" by Sallie McFague. Link to a podcast that discusses how "El Shaddai" was wrongly translated as "Almighty God" and that El Shaddai can indicate God as a mother at the 46 minute mark. Here's a link to the wikipedia page on it. You can google "Jerome Almighty God translation" with google scholar and see the academic work for yourself. The burden of proof is on you. You can't sweep it under the rug to maintain male dominated imagery of God that you prefer.
EDIT for link.
It came to pass. Agabus did not get it wrong. For a really good read on the subject (one that refutes Storms), pick up this book.
There's a difficult part in Hosea 2:16-17. Here is the ESV:
> 16 “And in that day, declares the Lord, you will call me ‘My Husband,’ and no longer will you call me ‘My Baal.’ 17 For I will remove the names of the Baals from her mouth, and they shall be remembered by name no more.
The idea here is the Hebrew word Baal means husband/master, but was also the name of a pagan god. Thus people who prayed to that name, could claim to be praying to the Lord, because the Lord is their master. It must have made relations smoother with all the Baal worshipers they interacted with, and it would have allowed them to get more wisdom and teachings, because oftentimes the Bible seems so short, and there are so many things it doesn't mention. Yet God rejected this practice and admonished them to not use that name for him anymore.
On the other hand, in Acts 17, Paul comes across one of the altars to "an unknown god" that was common in the Graeco-Roman empire. They used these altars because oftentimes disaster would be associated with worshiping the wrong god and so it was better to hedge if you weren't sure. Paul does not admonish them, but compliments their religiosity:
> Acts 17:22 Paul then stood up in the meeting of the Areopagus and said: “People of Athens! I see that in every way you are very religious.
Then Paul proclaims to them the real object of their worship, the Lord:
> 23 For as I walked around and looked carefully at your objects of worship, I even found an altar with this inscription: to an unknown god. So you are ignorant of the very thing you worship—and this is what I am going to proclaim to you.
> 24 “The God who made the world and everything in it is the Lord of heaven and earth and does not live in temples built by human hands. 25 And he is not served by human hands, as if he needed anything. Rather, he himself gives everyone life and breath and everything else. 26 From one man he made all the nations, that they should inhabit the whole earth; and he marked out their appointed times in history and the boundaries of their lands. 27 God did this so that they would seek him and perhaps reach out for him and find him, though he is not far from any one of us. 28 ‘For in him we live and move and have our being.’[a] As some of your own poets have said, ‘We are his offspring.’[b]
>29 “Therefore since we are God’s offspring, we should not think that the divine being is like gold or silver or stone—an image made by human design and skill. 30 In the past God overlooked such ignorance, but now he commands all people everywhere to repent. 31 For he has set a day when he will judge the world with justice by the man he has appointed. He has given proof of this to everyone by raising him from the dead.”
Amos Yong is one of the most interesting writers on pluralism in Christianity today. His writing might interest you:
https://www.amazon.com/Gospel-Pluralism-Today-Reassessing-Missiological-ebook/dp/B017J89YVQ
https://www.amazon.com/Religious-Pluralism-Commission-Theological-Christian/dp/0981958281
https://www.amazon.com/Beyond-Impasse-Pneumatological-Theology-Religion/dp/1498204651
https://www.amazon.com/Spirit-Poured-Out-Flesh-Pentecostalism-ebook/dp/B005OYUIIG
I find that Christianity is difficult for people to accept who reject the doctrine of original sin / total depravity / brokenness. This is part of why Christianity has made so little progress in Japan. I will be interested in whatever answers you find in your journey.
For me, I see glimpses of my brokenness restored in my new creation (2 Corinthians 5:17), yet even as sanctification continues, I don't see how it will ever be complete until Christ comes again and fully restores the New Kingdom. Furthermore I don't see how this new creation would be possible without God's grace.
Yet all of these concepts and words are packed with theological baggage and centuries of western philosophy and culture. Could satori (悟) be another way of saying born again? Could our earthly passions (煩悩) be another way of recognizing original sin? To me the gospel of LOVE and MERCY and GRACE makes this difficult to accept, but might there be a path there for someone else? I sure hope so. Because I want all to come to share in the wondrous gift of salvation. And antagonizing -- instead of attempting to understand and converse with -- other belief structures has caused a lot of historical problems and may not be the most righteous path.
However, my personal conviction is it is still only a path to God. Christ is the destination. After finding him, accepting his grace, and having a personal relationship with him--I believe that is more than enough. At that point the other things seem like distractions and tests, and their merits few.
Read his book to learn more about the heretical theology behind the so called New Apostolic Reformation:
Defining Deception: Freeing the Church from the Mystical-Miracle Movement https://www.amazon.com/dp/0986444243/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_api_sy7QAbC64W1RC
In addition to everyone else's answers, I found the Strange Fire book and Defining Deception to be helpful. Also the documentary American Gospel: Christ Alone is helpful but it is more on the prosperity gospel though than of the gifts discussion but they do talk about it a little bit.
Nope. I mean the type of Sophiology that's summarized in this book. It's a movement in 19th and 20th century Russian Orthodox thought that was focused on developing a fuller account of the relationship between God and the world than had previously been worked out in the Christian tradition.
The "both" answer is the mainstream answer for the Christian tradition, because the Incarnation--God entering into the life of the world--is the central doctrine of our faith. But it's also a very common position in other forms in Judaism, and it's even present in Islam (especially Sufism), despite Islam's generally strong emphasis on transcendence.
Hope it's okay for me to post here!
You might be interested in reading what the Church Fathers had to say:
EDIT: Popular Patristics is a modern translation of these works, but you can also find huge anthologies (and I mean huge) of stuff like that for a few bucks. Just FYI :)
>Being omniscient, he foreknows everything that will happen. If he already knows what will happen in the future, is it possible that there is more than one sequence of events that could occur? For him to foreknow what will happen, does the future not have to be predetermined? If the future is predetermined, is free will possible? My conclusion was that free will is incompatible with the existence of an omniscient being.
I recommended this elsewhere, but I would suggest you read The Invisible Hand by R.C. Sproul. In one chapter, he does an excellent job of explaining this issue. There are other resources on the topic as well, if you really want the question answered.
I will just say that because we're creatures, we see the world (and particularly the future) as existing in contingencies. If I sleep in tomorrow, I will be late. If I skip lunch, I will be hungry. We consider contingencies in our mind and make an appropriate decision. We do this not only because we don't know the future but also because we ourselves are contingent beings. If our parents had never met, we wouldn't exist. If our parents had neglected us, we would have died. It is firmly imbedded in our worldview to think this way.
God, on the other hand, is not a contingent being. His existence doesn't depend on any other thing, and he existed before anything else did. This provides him with a unique perspective, since he is the creator of all there is, including time. Just because he knows what will happen doesn't restrain the free will of the people involved. Rather, it indicates that because he exists outside of time, he can see the whole spectrum events without contingencies. We aren't fated to choose this thing or another, but we will choose this thing or another, and God knows about it.
I agree with HawkieEyes:
>God knowing what actions we will choose does not diminish the fact that we had the free will to make those decisions.
10 words. Same as the number of horns of the beast?!
But really, when I think of dispensational charts. The first thing I think of is [THE GREATEST BOOK ON DISPENSATIONAL TRUTH IN THE WORLD* by Clarence Larkin](https://www.amazon.com/Greatest-Book-Dispensational-Truth-World/dp/B000OSX9N8) which I was once gifted.
In chronological order of my reading them:
And for good measure, The Tao Te Ching (started reading it in high school...still reading it 37 years later), and The Open Society and It's Enemies.
We do, however, have to be critical of the type of witness Scripture gives us. The high Christological formulas we find in the gospels are the result of some development over the first decades after Christ's death. I say this to simply point out that statements like Thomas' shouldn't be misunderstood as implying the historical 12 disciples saw Jesus as 'homoousios' with the Father. The development of Christological and Trinitarian doctrines is a fascinating question that needs to take the historically mediated nature of revelation into account. The book I cited above is a great intro. Also, this book and this book are wonderful texts for further examination.
First of all, I want to say that I do not believe that logic is superior to emotion. They are equal from my point of view, and I think God endowed humans with both of them so that we can use them together to better discern our world. One of the most powerful verses in the Bible is John 11:35 - "Jesus wept." Even though Jesus logically knew that He could heal Lazarus, He was still overcome with emotion with the humanity in the grief of Lazarus' friends. If Jesus cries and gets emotional, then we sure can too.
Moving on, I should say that I'm a feminist, and while I can appreciate and respect other theologies that have different roles for women, I oftentimes find them to be incompatible with my personal beliefs.
I believe that women and men are spiritually equivalent. In our physical reality, there are differences in what we can do. Men tend to be stronger, and women can give birth. But our spiritual souls transcend our physical reality, and our souls are equal in the eyes of the Lord. We are spiritually equivalent. Rebecca Groothuis has a great discussion of this in her book, found here: https://www.amazon.com/Good-News-Women-Biblical-Equality/dp/0801057205
Some Christians will disagree with the following, but I believe that because women are spiritually equal to men, we are also equal in our capabilities of spiritual leadership. (The Apostle Paul seems to disagree with this notion... not sure if this is the place to get into that, but I can discuss it if needed).
Another interesting discussion of women in Christianity can be found in Sally McFague's book here: https://www.amazon.com/Models-God-Sallie-McFague/dp/0800620518/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1521686251&sr=1-1&keywords=models+of+god
Basically, being a woman is just as fine and dandy as being a man from my point of view.
Here are a few of my favorite theologians, Bible scholars, and books
For Biblical exegesis
Inductive Bible Study by Robert Traina and David Bauer
For Systematic Theology
Classic Christianity: A Systematic Theology by Thomas C. Oden (Almost anything by Oden is good really)
For Pauline Studies
Paul and the Faithfulness of God by NT Wright
The Theology of Paul by James D. G. Dunn
For Cultural Background in New Testament
Craig S. Keener (his commentary on John's Gospel is phenomenal, as is the IVP Background commentary by him)
Ben Witherington III (his commentaries are generally good)
For Christian ethics
Moral Vision of the New Testament by Richard B. Hays
For Old Testament
Walter Brueggeman (pretty much anything by this guy)
Terrence Fretheim (I especially like his commentary on Exodus)
Sandra Richter (Epic of Eden, a good primer on ancient Israelite and Canaanite culture and how it shaped the OT)
Philosophy of Religion
Soren Kierkegaard (my absolute favorite philosopher, I especially recommend Fear and Trembling)
Thomas Aquinas
St. Augustine
Alvin Plantiga (I personally dislike Plantiga's philosophy, but he's become a big name in philosophy of Religion so not someone to be ignorant of)
William Hasker
William Abraham
Omnipotence and other Theological Mistakes by Charles Hartshorne (I'm not a process theologian, but this book in particular is highly important in modern theology, definitely worth a read)
Edit:
If you wanted a broad, general sweep of theology, I'd recommend The Modern Theologians by David F. Ford. It's a good overview of various theological movements since the start of the 20th century and covers theology from many different perspectives.
For a pretty comprehensive book on the how the Holy Spirit is taught throughout the Bible and has been viewed throughout the history of Church, your one-stop-shop is Anthony Thiselton's The Holy Spirit: In Biblical Teaching, through the Centuries, and Today. One comment has already addressed Dr. Gordon Fee, and he is another go to scholar for doctrine related to the Spirit. Any of his books or commentaries would be good.
For more accessible material, Billy Graham actually wrote a little book on the Holy Spirit serval years ago that is pretty straightforward and helpful. Also, Francis Chan and J.D. Greear have written more recent books on the Holy Spirit.
To better understand the spiritual gifts I would recommend the works of Wayne Grudem or Sam Storms, as well as D.A. Carson's exposition of 1 Corinthians 12 -14.
If you would like a sermon series to listen to, I found this podcast helpful.
I hope that helps!
The Christological Controversy, an anthology of both orthodox and heretical primary sources. (There is another volume on The Trinitarian Controversy.)
The Kingdom and the Power
The only other one St. Vlad's prints that I know of is "Works on the Spirit." I own that as well, but I've never gotten around to reading it, so I can't tell you much about it.
There is a diversity amongst Christians, even conservative evangelical Christians, about what is possible when it comes to God's revelation of Himself to modern mankind. I am firmly of the position, and convinced of it by Scripture and tradition, that God no longer communicates to us directly, but rather, that He has given us a fully sufficient Scripture, good and able in every facet of life and doctrine. I know of Christians, of whom I am in doubt of their salvation, that have a different understanding, and even experience of this.
Basically, there's a world of presupposition behind a phrase like 'you can hear the Voice of God', and your understanding of how theology works is going to have a huge impact on that. You're not going to get to the bottom of how to discern God's will in a reddit post or two.
I encourage you to talk with your elders about this. Read a bit on the cessationist and continuationist arguments. It's worth reading both camps and working it through in your own church. John MacArthur has a book called Strange Fire that is cessationist. Mike Brown has a response called Authentic Fire that is continuationist. Finally, DeYoung and Harris have a good book, Just Do Something that I think goes a long way to helping equip people to answer questions like the one you are experiencing.
edit ze spelink
I read a book called Defining Deception abouta year ago which seemed to have some similar content.
That is a great book BTW. They go after Bethel again and again and show how they are unbiblical in many aspects.
Defining Deception
> Correct me if I'm wrong, but you hold the B-theory of time: time, as a whole, is static. The past, present and future are all equally "real". There is no real "coming to be" of events. Events exist alongside each other, but do not actually "occur" in the way they seem to from our point of view.
That sounds strange to me.
> The strength of my view is that it allows for an actual state of affairs in which God exists without creation.
The idea of God changing states is a problem.
> He is a temporal being.
I'm pretty sure I don't understand you properly but this seems like blasphemy.
> I still cannot understand a sense of the word "exist" in which God does not "exist". It seems to me that whatever "is" must also "exist".
I think we can deal with that, though maybe not right this minute.
> it seems pantheistic to say that God is all of reality.
Yes! I hope to never say such a thing. What I do say is that reality has its being in God, not vice versa. He contains it--it does not contain him, though of course he fills it. He is its environment or habitat. The ground of its being. He does not have an environment or habitat.
It's easier to think of it in terms of space, probably because we're more used to thinking of divine omnipresence. God created space. It has its being in him, not vice versa. It does not contain him yet he fills it. Same with time and every other created thing. And every other thing apart from God himself is created.
I just re-listened to this lecture from the author I recommended earlier. Great stuff. He defends the classical doctrine of divine eternity against Craig's and several related views. Highly recommended!
I got this book a week or two ago. I don't know whether I'll ever read it but Craig is one of the contributors and it might interest you.
Blessings!
Welcome to the dark side ;)
Actually though, this is the question that got me interested in theology as a nonreligious person. And it's partner question can God make a square circle?
The argument I find most persuasive comes from C.S. Lewis's essay "Divine Omnipotence," and though it is not without faults, I'll present it briefly here: The reality is, what is "good" for one person is simultaneously "bad" for another. If God were to run around making everything good for everyone, we would live in a meaningless universe, constantly in flux, with no set rules or principles by which we could understand our surroundings. In order for our life to make sense, there have to be constant, set, principles by which the world is ordered. It's not a question of must evil exist, it is a question of how could it not, particularly in a world where humans have free will.
Might I suggest the book Omnipotence and Other Theological Mistakes
Did you not know Carson believes in prophecy? I think he's one of those who believes, but doesn't practice it.
He wrote an outstanding commentary on 1 Corinthians 12-14.
Provide evidence for experiencing the Holy spirit. Theese things are in the context of the Christian faith and tradition, and are therefore explored as a Christian from that world view. Not all things within faith, especially mystic elements such as the spirit, spiritual realm etc are within the scope of empericly research, hence it is instead up to theology scholars, yet there has been many studies. I can recommend the litterature review in book form Speaking in Tongues: Multi-Disciplinary Perspectives is a starting point for a scientific, theological and cultural perspective where both some empericlal research is discussed but also theological schools and traditions. But the field is very rich, and can't be covered by one book or a handful of studies.
I disagree that the only way to resolve that paradox is to place God in another temporal dimension. In fact, I think you could make a convincing case that God exists within time, not outside of time. Take pearl of great price as an example--1 year of god's time is X year's of our time. It's clear that it is not a different time dimension, but that he experiences time differently. This is perfectly consistent with our observable universe, as shown by Einstein's special and general theories of relativity. You don't have to be in a different dimension to experience time differently.
But more to the point, Blake Ostler has a very rigorous approach to this very question (of what it means to be omniscient, doesn't God know what we pray for, do we really have free will).
The formal theological term that proposes a solution to this apparent paradox is called libertarian freewill.
But the paradox gets at the very nature of God. Is God the greatest possible being--anything that we could imagine or state within an English sentence he could do? Or is God the greatest being actually possible? If God's omniscience and omnipotence is the first type, you run into problems with other paradoxes like this trite one: Can God build a rock so big he couldn't move it? You can construct thoughts that are illogical and impossible.
If on the other hand, God is the greatest being that is actually possible, then free agency and omniscience are compatible. God knows all things that can actually be known. Does God know what color shoes I will wear exactly 25 years from this second? No, b/c that is unknowable.
Anyway, I am writing too much. But look at all the examples of God's omniscience in the scriptures. How many of those examples are indicative of what, exactly, God knows other people will do and which are examples of God telling us what he plans to do (which he is in complete control of). The only real outlier I see is Christ telling Peter he will deny him thrice before the cock crows--and that is a fairly near-term prediction that could be explained by Christ's own knowledge of Peter and the situation.
> So I gather. The only recent stuff I've read is Brian Greene's, but he seems to think there being a first moment of time isn't decisively supported by the data, and that there's good evidence for eternal inflation. This was a 2010 book. When was the Vilenkin talk?
The Vilenkin talk was in 2012. I'm about 98% sure he's since made a stronger statement, but I can't for the life of me find it lol. I haven't read Greene's book, so I can't say anything to it, but James Sinclair analyzes string models in his and Craig's essay on the Kalam in The Blackwell Companion to Natural Theology.
> I don't know. I don't know how controversial it is among scientists; all I have are (e.g.) the Wikipedia page, which is perfectly friendly to beginningless universes, and admits that a Big Bang singularity is impossible according to our well-supported physics.
I think you might find this article stimulating.
> It's also inconceivable that time have a sufficiently explained first moment, which is some evidence against it, if the normal pro-PSR considerations are evidence.
Well that's now to move past physics and into philosophy, particularly the intersection of phil of time and phil of religion. There are various ways theists attempt to hash out this perplexing issue. Craig himself grapples with this in his book on the Kalam, in the Blackwell essay, and in his book Time & Eternity. There is a solid Four Views book on this too. I think it must also be said that it is, at the very least, just as inconceivable that there is an infinite amount of time before this very moment than of time beginning.
> And there are many beginningless models; I'm not sure why we should think the disjunction of them has a probability below 0.5.
Yes, of course there are many beginningless models, but that's not to say they are the best-supported or even well-supported for that matter. In philosophy, for example, as I'm sure you're aware, there are dozens of models for the mind-body problem, but that alone doesn't thereby validate any of these models. From my understanding of the current state of the field, which, admittedly, is rather shallow, physicists pushing past-eternal models do so knowing that the current evidence we have is in favor of models with an absolute beginning of the universe. In other words, they are knowingly going against the grain of the evidence.
> In any case, the point of my original comment was to say that I don't know whether principles such as PSR apply to cosmogonic questions. I don't have any intuition in that direction, and it seems possible that PSR is a metaphysically contingent consequence of the physical laws we happened to arrive at, laws that themselves would be metaphysically contingent.
I suppose we just have different intuitions, and thus reach an impasse here lol. However, I'm not sure how PSR could be a metaphysical consequence of physical law. Could you explain that more (or differently)? I can understand it being contingent given it being birthed by contingent physical law, but I'm not sure how physical law can birth a metaphysical PSR. If it's a strictly physical principle, then why say there is a metaphysical PSR? Or am I misunderstanding you?
> But that's precisely what physicists do with physics itself: apply it to everything in the universe but toss it out when we get to the Big Bang singularity. And the beginning of the universe is radically different from everything else in the universe in interesting ways, for example (allegedly) that it's unbounded by time on one side.
Well you're conflating the KCA with the contingency argument. The KCA operates on a causal principle from beginnings ("everything that begins to exist has an efficient cause"), whereas contingency arguments operate on broader explanatory principles, typically focusing on contingent concrete particulars ("everything that exists (concretely) has an explanation for its existence"). With that said, physics only goes so far until we reach metaphysics, of course, and I'm not familiar with any relation between the PSR and cosmogony, let alone it being standard practice of physicists to throw it out completely. In fact, the entire project of cosmology seems completely founded on the PSR.
> But in my experience (I'm not an expert), those religion still (e.g.) anthropomorphize this creative agent or describe its act as will. And I certainly wouldn't want to call these views theistic either.
Well, they would, haha, but I suppose this is now just categorical. But would you consider the existence of a single, impersonal, immaterial, eternal, transcendent cause of the universe closer to theism or atheism? Where would you put this on the spectrum of conceptual schemes?
I've been reading this:
https://www.amazon.com/Does-Have-Nature-Aquinas-Lecture/dp/0874621453
I would not dare to presume to think I could adequately codify it, but the criticism as I understand it is that if there is no differentiation between the divine properties, and God's essence is identical with his existence, then it reduces to the absurdity that God is a property.
Besides that, I have yet to read a coherent account of how we can reconcile metaphysical simplicity with Trinitarianism. If it is a true fact that the Father is not the Son nor the Spirit, that fact is eternally dependent on the divine nature and stands as an eternal differentiation within the nature. If it is a true fact that the Father uniquely knows he is not the Son nor the Spirit, then there exists an eternal differentiation within the divine knowledge, dependant upon the divine nature, standing as an eternal differentiation within the nature.
The entire enterprise appears to be a theological exercise in having your cake and eating it, too.
https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/divine-simplicity/
And buy this; I side with Plantinga.
Resources:
Douglas Wilson (The most identifiable of the proponents of Federal Vision, but I'd say actually not so representative of it).
> Reformed is not Enough
> To a Thousand Generations
> Back to Basics
> A Study Guide to Calvin's Institutes
James Jordan
> Primeval Saints
> The Law of the Covenant
> The Glory of Kings (Not Jordan himself, but his Festschrift)
P. Andrew Sandlin
> A Faith that is Never Alone (He edited this volume)
> Backbone of the Bible (He edited this as well, which includes John Frame)
Rich Lusk
> Paedofaith
Tim Gallant
> These are Two Covenants
Peter Leithart
> A House for My Name
> The Baptized Body
> Commentary on 1&2 Kings
> The Kingdom and the Power
> Christology Ancient and Modern (He has an essay in here)
> Priesthood of the Plebs (This is his dissertation. Just read it. It's basically wonderful)
Internet Resources
> http://www.federal-vision.com/
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Federal_Vision
> http://www.firstthings.com/blogs/leithart/
> http://dougwils.com/
Books on Federal Vision
Pro:
> The Federal Vision
Neutral:
> The Auburn Avenue Theology
Against:
> The Federal Vision and Covenant Theology
> Federal Vision
> Calvin and the Federal Vision
At the core of the whole controversy is a man named Norman Shepherd. He is not typically thrown in with the Federal Vision proper, but they all use his insights. Here are his two books:
> The Call of Grace
> The Way of Righteousness
Norman Shepherd was a tenured professor at Westminster Theological Seminary (in Philadelphia) and they fired him for "doctrinal reasons." Or at least, that's what those who slander him would like to believe. The Justification controversy has been awash in haziness and misinformation. There are two main accounts, taking opposite perspectives.
> The Current Justification Controversy
> Trust and Obey
I would also suggest the Festschrift for Norman Shepherd.
> Obedient Faith (Difficult to find)
The basic gist is this:
John Murray, Norman Shepherd, and Meredith Kline are on a continuum.
Meredith Kline----------John Murray-----------Norman Shepherd.
Most people tend to side with Kline, but they insist on calling Shepherd a heretic.