“You may not institute homosexual marriage because __________________________” Your pastor is being interviewed by a reporter and he has just been asked to fill in this particular blank. There are different ways he can go. 1. He can decline to answer the question for manifestly craven reasons.2. He can decline to answer the question for …
You Know How It Is
Hey, everybody. Sorry about the hiatus in blogging. This was a function of being on the road in a hotel room with a soggy connection and trying to do everything with a new laptop which is crippling me with all this Windows 8 stuff. You know how it is.
When We All Say Whooosh Together
I appreciate the discussion of natural law going on under the previous post. I’d like to respond to a few of the points made, and develop everything just a tad further. First, when I say the teaching of Scripture “trumps” natural law, I was doing nothing more than applying a standard rule of hermeneutics within …
Eleven Theses on Natural Law
1. At the foundational level, natural law needs to refer what nature teaches us, and not to what any particular men have said about it. Natural law theorists are commentators on the text, and commentaries on a great text always differ among themselves. We should not make the mistake of rejecting the text because we …
Grace and Culture Building II
INTRODUCTION:Last week we considered the important distinction between the qualifications for fellowship (sheer grace) and the qualifications for the various forms that leadership takes (grace manifested in and through performance). Not surprisingly, it is a topic that takes a good bit of careful thought, and hence another message on it. THE TEXT:“Let nothing be done …
Lawn Darts on the Sun
ExhortationWhen we worship Jesus Christ, we are coming to the Father. When we come to the Father, we are coming to the source of all things. As we do this, we discover we are not able to come unless His Holy Spirit equips and moves us. The God of Heaven is our fear. Now in …
And We All Qualify
We serve a merciful God, but one who does not trifle with sin. When we come before Him, forgetful of our sins, in that self-serving and convenient way we have, He remembers them. In Hos. 8:13, when the worshipers came to offer their sacrifices, there God promised to remember their iniquity. But this is the …
Elliot and Jill
One of the things that married couples do, in the pleasure of God, is feed one another. Now there are two kinds of feeding, both of them pertinent to marriage. There is food at rest—what we might call sabbath food, or celebratory food. But there is also food for the journey, nourishment on the way, …
Natural Law in a Gel Cap
Try to set aside (for the nonce, as we say) the various systematic formulations of natural law that you may have encountered. As I have stated before, for various reasons I prefer to talk about natural revelation, over against natural law. Those interested in more can listen to this exchange I had with Dr. J. …
Dry Bones Born Again
My friend Peter Leithart tags to an argument by Alan Kerr on the Spirit in John 3. Kerr’s argument, in sum, is that in the gospel of John, the Spirit is not given until later in the gospel (John 20:22). This means, on this reading, that whatever Jesus was talking about with Nicodemus could only …