Weddings are a wonderful way of proclaiming the gospel. Many aspects of the gospel are on display in weddings, and can be seen there in their true glory. Sometimes, when we merely talk about the gospel, we can get tangled up in definitions. When that happens, some people react away from those definitions as though …
A New Grad Program
We are really excited about this new grad program, partly because it enables Peter Leithart to show off a portion of his library. If you ever see the whole collection, you would agree with me that it just isn’t right for one man to have all those books. Excuse me . . . got derailed …
Next to Godliness
“Woks and iron skillets should be rinsed and wiped, never washed. If someone comes along and tells you cleanliness is next to godliness, the proper answer is, ‘Yes — next. Right now I’m working on godliness'” (Robert Farrar Capon, The Supper of the Lamb, p. 142).
Tedious Argument
The word apaideutos means unlearned, which is how it is rendered in 2 Timothy 2:23. “But foolish and unlearned questions avoid, knowing that they do gender strifes.” In Prufrock, T.S. Eliot warns us against “tedious arguments.” The apostle Paul was aware of them also. The servant of the Lord must not get dragged into stupid …
Why Some Sermons Are Half-Baked
“Heart fire is true fire. A housewife, who perseveres in the old method of making her own bread, does not want a great blaze at the mouth of the oven. ‘Oh, no!’ she says, ‘I want to get my faggots far back, and get all the heat into the oven itself, and then it becomes …
The Word vs. Special Effects
“While the Renaissance careened after the image, the Reformation became a predominately word-based movement . . . the real religious fervor and intellectual power pulled to the north, so that England, Scandinavia, and Germany became the realm of the word, and the south returned to spectacle” (Arthur Hunt, The Vanishing Word, p. 78).
What Is Marriage?
“A common error among Christians holds that if the sexual act is completed, then the couple are married ‘in God’s sight.’ Many destructive complications occur in contemporary culture because we have adopted the idea that people can be married in God’s sight without being married. It is hard to say where this idea originated, but …
An Epistemological Pileup
All right. As far as I can make out, our debate over Sarah Palin revolves around three distinct issues, all three of which have merged in a highly entertaining and jumbled fashion — a sort of epistemological pile-up. The first is the propriety of voting for a Republican. A large number of us (myself included) …
Speaking in London
Lord willing, I will be speaking at a conference in London this coming February. More information can be gathered here at the conference web site.
Secret Love Child of a Hot Dog Vendor
Let me start with the obvious negative. Sarah Palin thinks a whole lot more of John McCain than I do. So there’s that. And let me leave aside (but just for the moment) all the questions about a Christian mother’s roles and responsibilities. We will get to more of that in future posts. The discussion …