Let me take, as a fixed point of evangelical orthodoxy, the penal, substitutionary atonement of Christ. Let me also take, as a point of personal privilege, the knowledge that Rene Girard has offered some stunning and cogent observations about human nature, the process of scapegoating, triangular desire, and all the rest of it. How are …
Still Shunning the Centurions
In his second chapter, Boyd discusses the Kingdom of the Cross, setting it in stark contrast to the Kingdom of the Sword, which he addressed in the first chapter. If I were to critique his argument in a phrase, it would be with the phrase false alternatives. Quoting Rosser and Yoder, Boyd says that the …
Next Chapter Online
I put the next chapter of Evangellyfish up a few days early for reasons related to my next announcement. Blog posting this next week will likely be sparse to non-existent. This is because I am going to be staring at the Pacific Ocean in a semi-vegetative state. In the background I will hear the plaintive …
Leaving Out Normandy
Boyd’s first chapter, “The Kingdom of the Sword,” actually had quite a few good observations in it. He was very good in describing the way vengeance escalates, and how a particular civil order can confuse itself with the kingdom of God, and how Jesus told His followers that they were not supposed to function the …
Let Us Kneel Before the Lord our Maker
As you know, next Lord’s Day, we will be moving to two services. The first will be at 8:00 am and the second at 10:30. We will try that out for a few weeks, and it is possible that we will move them both back to 8:30 am and 11:00. Let us know what you …
Stones for Bread?
When we ask God for bread, will He give us a stone? No, of course not. And when He has promised us bread, and we asked because of that promise, will that change anything? Still less. And when He has promised the bread of Christ, offered to every sinner who understands he needs salvation from …
Gerrit DeBoer, R.I.P.
One of the last times I visited with Gary, if not the last time, he was showing me a model of his “more efficient” wind generator. He was an industrious and hardworking man his entire life, and he was seeking to be fruitful to the very end of his life. God gave him that great …
Decorating Camels
I have begun to work my way through Gregory Boyd’s book, The Myth of a Christian Nation. This is not something I would ordinarily do unless I had some higher, selfless, and altruistic reason for it, that reason being an opportunity to fisk it here. So, here we go. The Introduction tells how the book …
John Wesley’s Hatband
In the second section of his first chapter, Hart takes “emotional and rhetorical opportunism” to task, and does so ably. He is not fond of the “triumphalistic atheist” who declares immediately that the “materialist creed has been vindicated” (p. 7) by natural disasters such as the Asian tsunami. “But the alacrity with which some seize …
So Don’t Be a Food Fusser
“The feet-on-the-stove stance of this book is a deliberate attempt to cure myself, and anyone else who will listen, of the nasty habit of worrying the world to pieces like a terrier with a rag . . . If some true believer in the gospel of haste comes along and asks us why we are …