In these days of rising pomosexuality, the latest move is to challenge the very idea of a sexual identity in the first place. But this notion does not get laughed to scorn (in the way, say, that a fundamentalist would if he told a homosexual activist that all he needed to do was “find a …
The Puritan Five
The day before our fall conference, we have ourselves a little prefunk going. (I really need an editor to tell me how to spell things like prefunk. The way it is there seems a tad misleading.) Anyhow, this pre-conference is for ministers, and here is our description of it. In order for ministry to engage …
Which Way the Application Goes
“We must not come to the text of Scripture with our modern debates in the forefront of our mind. Our modern debates should be settled by Scripture, but this does not mean they are found in Scripture. The issue for us should be to learn what their debates were. And as the history of the …
Which Can Explain Quite a Bit
“The preacher’s whole life, his whole experience is, in a way, a preparation for the sermon, even though it may be an unconscious one” (Macartney, Preaching Without Notes, p. 108).
He Doesn’t Call Them Episcopalian Bishops
What are we to make of the invisibility of regeneration? Jesus teaches us that the moment of regeneration is beyond our power to manipulate (John 3:8), but He also teaches, equally clearly, that the effects of regeneration are entirely visible (John 3:8). The theological problem is this. At the eschaton, everything will be completely visible …
Sexual Sanity
I would like to drive as much traffic as I can to this review of the new IVP book, The End of Sexual Identity. The book is by Jenell Paris, and is reviewed by Peter Jones. The sooner we understand that every worldview has a sexual expression, and that every sexual act is a disrobed …
Quite a Few Words to Look Up
“Many Christians have come to baptistic conclusions because they simply took a Bible and a concordance, and then looked up every incident of baptism in the New Testament. This is objectionable, not because they studied they pasages concerned with baptism, but because they did not look up all the passages that addressed parents, children, generations, …
Brain Snakes
And the Frankish magi and sayers of sooth approached the emperor, and said not to be afraid of this serpent of YHWH. For the word and rod of the wise man had become a great serpent before the emperor. “Lo,” they said, “do we not have brain snakes every bit as large as this one?” …
Three Camels and the Needle
In Luke 11, Jesus gives us a truly odd juxtaposition — until we learn to think of generational bloodguilt more biblically than we usually do. Jesus says that one generation killed the prophets, and a subsequent generation builds a tomb for that same prophet (Luke 11:47). According to carnal calculus, building a tomb of honor …
Thanks for the Thanks
The most appropriate way to begin a review of a book like this is by giving thanks for it. The Gift of Thanks is more a collection of micro-arguments and discursive observations on various aspects of gratitude than it is a sustained argument from front to back, and yet the end result is extremely satisfying. …