Just finished reading Born Fighting by James Webb, a book with tremendous explanatory power. It is a history of the Scots and Scots/Irish from their early conflict with the Romans, to the times of William Wallace, to the settlement of Protestants in Ireland, and then to the great migration to America. The latter half of …
The Heart of Lust
As Jesus applies the law of God in this sermon, He continues the same pattern. Obedience to the law is not merely a matter of external conformity; it is a question of heart loyalty. Put another way, the well-respected and pious tend to think about sins. The godly are constrained by the teaching of Christ …
True Harvest
Our Father in heaven, we thank You for this weekly day of Pentecost, the ancient Jewish festival of harvest, and our festival of the evangelistic harvest-the time when You began bringing into your barns the countless souls that have been saved since that first Pentecost Sunday. We thank You for establishing Your new covenant Church …
Exegesis As Escape Route
“But all is not bliss in our new Arcadia. As the metanarrative emerges from our reading of the canonical literature, we find more than a few stones from the driveway in our narratival Cream of Wheat. The Bible, alas, contains some uncooperative, “angular” texts. Try as we might, we cannot get those puppies to fit …
Relativism Rules!
Dear visionaries, Ted’s correction is accepted, and his caveat noted. Our elected officials could be replaced if we wanted to do it. But we don’t — which is why I wanted to say we have met the enemy and he is us. We don’t want the Constitution to be read right side up anymore than …
First Century Newspapers
21. It seems that the history of the first century is very important in the study of this debate. That is certainly correct. 22. What are some of the more important historical details? Obviously, this is simply a brief answer. But the purpose of this is to enable us to see that there is at …
Election by the Father
In Whom? We must begin with the understanding that election cannot be understood apart from Christ. Christ is the Elect One, and all those whom God choose to give to Him are therefore elect in Him. Behold! My Servant whom I uphold, My Elect One in whom My soul delights! I have put My Spirit …
Fat Postevangelical Babies
“We consequently gotta do something about historic male oppression, while fully recognizing that, having denied historical objectivism, for all we know, women may have ruled the world from the beginning . . . But remember the central abstract lesson that there are no central abstract lessons, and no problem so objectively real that we simply …
Gendered Grace
“One can picture them [IVP] at their editorial meeting, wrestling with the contours of their stupid meeting, and the issue of whether they ought to call the Spirit “she” in print. “Oh, hell, why not?” one imagines them saying. “We’re postevangelicals. We’re not under law, whatever that is. We’re under grace, whatever that is” (Contours …
Come Again?
“Because women have historically been oppressed (although this must not be confused with any naive claim to historical correspondence between our knowledge and what actually happened to women back then) we must come to allow the text of Scripture to speak to us feminitudinously, painted up an objectivst masculine tree as we have been, and …