Thank you, Dr. Lillbeck. Let me pray with you as we begin. Father in Heaven, we all are desperately

needy of your help because we're fragile and we're finite and we're fallible

and we're fallible and were sinful and proud and fearful.

And so I ask Father for you to subdue my corruption and for you to fill me mercifully with your

Holy Spirit so that I may speak truth and that you would guard me from error and that you would give

ears to hear and a voice to articulate your word concerning your truth.

I ask for your help now in Jesus name.

Amen.

Well among the reasons for my honor to deliver the Gaffin lecture on theology,

culture and mission is the fact that Dr. Gaffin's

confrontation with Inti Wright at the Auburn Avenue

pastor's Conference and his book 2006 by faith not by sight arrived in my life those two events the book and the conference at a time

when I was wrestling mightily with justification by faith and particularly the new perspective on Paul and with

NT Wright in particular.

Not many books are worthy of a slow and meticulous reading.

This one is, and if you want to look

at how I do that afterwards,

with the markings in here from cover to cover not a page unmarked as far as I can

see flipping through it you can see it afterwards.

What he says there in response to N. T. Right, in particular, will become the launching pad into my topic which is the new Calvinism and the new

community the doctrines of grace and the meaning of race.

But first, before we launch from there

...