There is a certain kind of dogmatic personality that is incapable of admitting error. Most all of us have an acquaintance or relative or two that fits the category. Everything is spun, everything is fashioned, everything turns out in such a way as to confirm what he was saying all along. In biblical terms, the …
More on the Shroud
The Shroud stuff continues to chug along on merrily. Response from all over has certainly been noteworthy. The web site now has a new FAQ feature, where folks can satisfy their curiosity about medieval glass manufacturing capacity and such like. Look at the bottom of the “About” column.
Divorce and Remarriage
It is not a coincidence that Christ teaches on divorce in the passage immediately following His instruction on lust. And although Christ taught in this section that we should be willing to remove any member which stumbles us, He teaches here that there is one member which is not to be removed. “”Furthermore it has …
Catholicity or Mush?
All Christians are called to preserve the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace. But before we charge off to do this, we need to distinguish between catholicity and mush. A catholic or ecumenical spirit is not an optional add-on extra. But there is a vast difference between Christians who love each other …
Keeping Up
“This ‘open view’ is modern progressive theology; it is not supposed to make sense. The point is to go with the postmodernist flow, paddling the postevangelical canoe as hard as a respectable scholar may, trying to keep abreast of the latest developments in unbelieving theology” (Contours of Post Maturity, p. 32).
Resurrection Life
Minister: Lift up your hearts! Congregation: We lift them up to the Lord! Great God of wonders, God of our risen Lord Jesus, God of the new creation, we worship You now in the powerful name of Jesus Christ. You gave the breath of life to our father Adam, and You gave new life and …
Rejoicing in Lent
Every Lord’s Day, we mark the resurrection of Christ from the dead. Every Lord’s Day we mark the glory of the resurrection. We do this on a grand scale annually, with our celebration of Easter, but we must not forget that each Lord’s Day does the same thing. (And let us leave aside for the …
Treachery
As God writes the story of His covenant people in the world, with this Table at the center, we see that traitors and treachery are an important element in the story. All four gospels have the story of Judas, which is certainly one indication of its importance. When Jesus talks about the Table of the …
Bureaucratic Poetry
“The subject is worthwhile, because our authors are capable of changing rhetorical gears quite rapidly. Sometimes they write a turgid and purple sort of bureaucratic poetry, flowing across the page like rapidly cooling magma” (Contours of Post Maturity, p. 28).
Against Philosophy
As I have been pursuing this little postmodern jag of mine, reading folks I wouldn’t ordinarily read, I have been struck with how much postmodernists share in common with the modernity they think they are rejecting. Shared assumptions leap off the page, invisible both to them and their modernist targets. Here are some obvious shared …