A couple of very reasonable posters have urged me to spend my time on more fruitful endeavors than trying to persuade Dr. Clark of my orthodoxy. While I have no intention of conducting a debate like this ad infinitum, I do believe it is fruitful now. While it would be wonderful to persuade Dr. Clark, …
Soup to Nuts
My conversation with Dr. Clark goes on. I asked him to cite some examples of where I have said that God considers the moral quality of my faith (as having been formed by love) as the basis or foundation for justifying me. I deny teaching this. To his credit, Dr. Clark acknowledges that I am …
Glorify It Yet Again
Father and gracious Lord, we praise and glorify Your name, and ask You to glorify it yet again in our celebration here. We pray that You would bless the labor that put this meal together, and bless our enjoyment of it. We ask that You would use this food to strengthen us, and prepare us …
Worth Knowing
“At least 40 millions Muslim youth in the Muslim world’s religious schools, called madrasas, are avidly memorizing the entire Koran plus a generally extremist body of related traditions—the hadiths” (Don Richardson, Secrets of the Koran, p. 69).
Sometimes They Argue
“The Reformers did not dredge Scripture for prooftexts. The Bible’s light and clarity were not so much a doctrinal source or a blueprint for structural change. Rather, when we read their sermons and pamphlets we find biblical personalities and images swimming up to the surface of their minds. An irruption, explosion, eruption of the biblical …
Pietism and Art
“In contrast, from the Middle Ages through the time of the Reformation up to around 1800 when spiritualistic pietism began to drive beauty out of the church (as if one can have inward beauty without the outward signs of it), there may have been simplicity but always beauty in the things Christians did. That was …
High Preaching
“Any reformation of the church depends upon a high view of preaching. But a high view of preaching by itself, apart from a scriptural basis for that high view, will lead only to puffed-up and conceited preachers. Personal bombast and dogmatism are not the need of the hour. But neither do we need preachers who …
Don’t Be Righteous Over Much
“Though justice were to be managed by the most holy, wise, self-denying, and meek men upon the earth, yet there would be much danger in winding it up to the highest. For it is administered by men full of infirmities; there God will not have it strained too high. He will rather have charity to …
More Stuff on Clark
I just posted this as a comment on Scott Clark’s blog. Dr. Clark, Late Wednesday night, you posted this on your blog. “Mr Wilson’s doctrine of justification through “living” or “obedient” faith is the very doctrine that we rejected in the Reformation” (emphasis mine). After saying I follow the Romanist ordo, you also say, “Mr …
A Second Battle of Tours (3)
Introduction: One of the things we must learn how to do is make careful distinctions. Islam arose in a world that was far more similar to the world in which Christ was born than either of those worlds is to our own. It therefore easy for us to react to certain “outlandish” things in both …