“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 …
Lost, But Making Good Time!
“This is a portent of great promise indeed. We don’t need to adopt postmodern relativism, because we know that we are on the road to wherever it is we are going. We simply do not understand why someone has not figured out this angle before” (Contours of Post Maturity, p. 19).
Wrestling the Contours
“So we must do what all theologians do in this fix, at least when repentance is out of the question. We turn on the fog machine, and we wrestle with the contours of something or other” (Contours of Post Maturity, p. 18).
Marriage As Manifest Glory XIII
Introduction: In looking at the differences between masculine and feminine, and in considering the respective duties of husbands and wives, we have been assuming that differences between the sexes exist. But what are those differences, and how can they be understood together with what the Scriptures teach us about our equality in Christ? The Text: …
Bell Bottom Blues
Just finished McLaren’s book A New Kind of Christian. All in all, taking one thing with another, the book is an almost perfect jumble of cant, cliche, and bad trouble. A number of very true points are made throughout the book, but the problem is that they are offered as part of a breathless discovery …
Big and Little
“At thy right hand there are pleasures for evermore” (Ps. 16: 11) Growing Dominion, Part 34 Radical individualism wants to believe that those who are faithfully living together in community are actually sowing seeds of discord in community. But life together does not mean overlooking everything. One of the basic principles of life together in …
The Condition of Man
Introduction: The nature of the problem dictates whether or not there will be a solution, and if so, what that solution will be. Among evangelical Christians, the nature of the “problem” of salvation can be described in two basic ways. Either man is sick in his sin, needing to take the medicine, or he is …
Circling the Drain
“Now wait. They lost us again. Are we to have a total war against totalizing readings? All of them? But when we do, are we not guilty of totalizing against totalizing? No wait . . . this is an additional subtlety perhaps? What better way to inveigh against totalizing than to totalize against it, thus …
The Aroma of Burnt Marshwiggle
In a world gone mad, it can be difficult to keep your bearings. When everyone around you appears to have lost their grip, it is hard to keep believing that the rest of the army is out of step. Athanasius was probably tempted, more than once, while packing his luggage for yet another exile, to …