I am not going to spend a great of time today answering this — it is Thanksgiving after all — but I thought I should let you know about it, and make two quick observations. First, our FV critics are so bent on pursuing their particular “defense of the gospel” that they are willing to …
A Whole Lot Creepier Than I Remember It
Okay, I want to go up the stairs one at a time here. Discussion of the ins and outs of this is continuing over here, for those who are interested. Let’s begin with first principles — the basic one being the presumption of innocence for the accused. This is not some secular American ideal that …
Bartimaeus, Son of Faith
We come now to the last healing miracle recorded by Mark. We are on the threshold of the Lord’s suffering at Jerusalem. He has set His face to go there, knowing what will occur when He arrives. And He has come now to Jericho, which is about eighteen miles away from His abandonment by the …
Calvinism Inside the Temple
George Herbert “is devoted to the visible church — its ritual, architecture, sacraments — but his theology is Calvinist: he affirms the double predestination (in ‘The Water-course’) and he struggles hard throughout the volume to relinquish any claim to any good thing as emanating from himself” (Lewalski, Protestant Poetics, p. 25).
Pious for Pay
“There are more secret snares than these, from which we can less easily escape; and of these the worst is the temptation to ministerialism — the tendency to read our Bibles as ministers, to pray as ministers, to get into doing the whole of our religion as not ourselves personally, but only relatively, concerned in …
Our Very Own Massive Contradiction
“No doubt future social historians will find the contradiction between our concern about sexual abuse, on the one hand, and our connivance at and indifference to precocious sexual activity, on the other, as curious as we find the contrast between Victorian sexual prudery and the vast size of the Victorian demimonde” (Theodore Dalrymple, Life at …
Men at Church
“Too often the picture of men at church is that of the hapless drone, maneuvered through the doors by a pious wife. He is not exactly spiritual, but he is docile, and that is reckoned to be close enough” (Mother Kirk, p. 236).
Christ Hidden in Your Calling
INTRODUCTION: First we must begin with a statement of our problem. Many glorious truths were recovered in the Reformation, and one of them was the doctrine of vocation. Unfortunately, this is part of our Protestant heritage that we have shamefully neglected, and have almost lost. One of the principal indications that we have lost this …
Let Me Think About It, No
A couple notes. First, please allow me to review what is actually being done to Louisiana Presbytery, all for the sake of getting at Steve Wilkins. And second, I want to explain what I am doing about it here and why. In doing this I am not giving anything away, because for those with a …
Gorgonzola Cheese
Bill Lyle, a member of the Standing Judicial Commission, has posted a comment over at Green Bagginses. Go here, and read comment #8. I read through this comment with great interest. While he doesn’t put the thing quite as starkly as Bob Mattes does, the result is still judicially outrageous. He says: “It will be …