Guy Waters’ Introduction has three main sections. In the first, he summarizes the doctrine of sola fide. That section was quite good in many respects, actually. I can say this because I affirm, believe, and teach the doctrine of sola fide. The only place I would quibble with Waters here is that I would want …
Palm Sunday 2007
Introduction: This is a message about three crowds. In the grip of individualism, we have too often neglected to heed what the Bible teaches about group behavior, and the results of this neglect are often tragic. The Text: “And a very great multitude spread their garments in the way; others cut down branches from the …
Just Do the Math
“Demographic decline and the unsustainability of the social-democratic state are closely related. In America, politicians upset about the federal deficit like to complain that we’re piling up debts our children and grandchildren will have to pay off. But in Europe the unaffordable entitlements are in even worse shape: there are no kids or grandkids to …
Chestertonian Puritanism, God Bless It
“But there is no understanding the period of the Reformation in England until we have grasped the fact that the quarrel between the Puritans and the Papists was not primarily a quarrel between rigorism and indulgence, and that, in so far as it was, the rigorism was on the Roman side. On many questions, and …
An Abandoned Battlefield
“If poets are the unacknowledged legislators of the world as Shelley says, then Christians dare not surrender poetry’s influence on the whole mind to the rock musicians or to avant garde nihilists” (Gene Edward Veith, Reading Between the Lines, p. 97).
When God Has Low Standards
“Should ‘Calvinists’ seek unity of fellowship with Christians who differ with them on this issue? Absolutely. Why? Because election depends upon the good pleasure of the Father. And if he has bestowed His unmerited pleasure upon ‘Arminians’ (which He most certainly does), then it makes no sense for a ‘Calvinist’ to magnify the prerogatives of …
On Implicit Faith
“Such as are truly godly and wise rather account it their honor to carry a loving respect to those who differ from them than desire that men should follow them blindly before they see the grounds for doing so” (Burroughs, Irenicum, p. 131).
Sins and Crimes
Before I go on to the next chapter of Crunchy Cons, let me address a question that has been implicit in what I have written thus far, and which has come up in the comments. One of my fundamental assumptions when it comes to public policy issues is the profound difference between a sin and …
The Hell You Say
The original Auburn Avenue conference, the font of all the trouble, occurred in 2002. The ruckus proper began the following summer, and since then, we have had another Auburn Avenue conference, a Fort Lauderdale colloquium, a book that resulted from that, a book published by Athanasius Press (The Federal Vision), a book by me (“Reformed” …
Us Dwarfs
Full disclosure right at the outset. The Foreword to Faith Alone was written by David Wells, and if that man’s books were orange juice concentrate, I could still eat them right out of the can with a spoon. When he is on his message (which is the exposition of the soul destroying nature of relativistic …