A friend once commented to me, echoing Wolterstorff, that there are three currents in the Reformed river. First, there are the pietists, to whom personal conversion and resultant personal devotion is everything. And then there are the doctrinalists, to whom precise doctrinal conformity to the Canons of Whatsitburg are everything. The third group is the Kuyperian, …
A Constant God
This post does not need to be an extended response to Green Baggins. He largely agreed with the chapter in RINE on assurance of salvation, and had just a couple questions or concerns. The first was his response to my statement that we should not try to “peer into the secret counsels of God, or …
No Covenant Children
Just a brief comment here, building off the discussion of my Frank Turk post. Frank said this: “But Dr. Clark baptizes babies for the sake of adding them to the church. Just because he doesn’t add them to the church in practice doesn’t mean he’s not doing it in theory, does it?” There is a …
Cerinthus the Antichrist
All passages of Scripture must be understood in context, but some by their nature require more contextualization than others. First John is one such book. Without an understanding of the errors it was written to refute, the necessary result will always be more error, or at the very least, more confusion. That which was from …
Literary Calvinism
“Many surrendered to, all were influenced by, the dazzling figure of Calvin . . . The fierce young don, the learned lady, the courtier with intellectual leanings, were likely to be Calvinists. When hard rocks of Predestination outcrop in the flowery of the Arcadia or the Faerie Queen, we are apt to think them anomalous, …
And No Fudging
“Well. obviously, the first thing you have to do is to deal with meaning of your text. At this point there is one golden rule, one absolute demand — honesty.” (Lloyd-Jones, Preachers and Preaching, p. 199).
River of Blood
“Islam is full of discrimination—against women, against non-Muslims, against Christians and most especially against Jews. Hatred is built into the religion. The history of Islam, which was my special area of study, could only be characterized as a river of blood” (Mark Gabriel, Islam and Terrorism, p. 5).
Sex as Metaphysical Greed
“Since sex for the homosexual is essentially an attempt to appropriate the masculinity that he feels lacking in himself from someone who seems to embody it, sex with girls has no purpose, since girls do not have what he lacks. Once construed in this way, sex becomes, essentially, vampirism” (E. Michael Jones, Monsters from the …
Rabbis in Trousers
“Now of course, Christ was not requiring rabbis to wear trousers (everyone wore robes) any more than He was requiring them to be cranky and sullen in the marketplaces, refusing to return greetings. As mentioned above, the point of His warning was the common temptation to have an undue love of such things. But He …
Scrawny Little Olives
After something of a lull, I am picking up my conversation with Green Baggins over my book “Reformed” Is Not Enough. Chapter 13 is on church unity, and Lane and I actually have a healthy bit of agreement here. For example, he agrees with me on the legitimacy of receiving Roman Catholic baptisms “in order …