The Auburn Avenue Pastors’ Conference 2005 just concluded this last Wednesday, and I just got back from Louisiana last night. I’d like to briefly review the conference in three posts. Here in the first one I would like to thank the conference organizers and the participants for a very helpful conference, both in terms of …
An Applied Bible
Andrew’s Sandlin’s recent response to me helpfully pin-pointed the one area where I think we genuinely differ, which is in the area of scriptural applications. First, he began by thanking me for not employing satire, invective, and so on, in my response to him. He noted that such tactics in Scripture are to be employed …
Stage Directions
This morning you will notice a few alterations in our liturgy that we wanted to go over with you beforehand. First, we will no longer be announcing any of the hymns or psalms beforehand. We will try to give you a moment to locate where we are in the bulletin, but are trying to keep …
As It Is In Heaven
Minister: Lift up your hearts! Congregation: We lift them up to the Lord! Glorious Father, we assemble before You now in the kindness of Jesus Christ our Savior. We praise Your infinite wisdom and knowledge, for You alone were able to bring creatures like us into Your presence. We assemble before You now in the …
Partaking
As we have considered in the course of the message, there is no such thing as a nature/grace dichotomy. Nature is grace, and grace, rooted as it is in the very nature of God, is entirely natural. When we come to this table, we are certainly partaking of Christ. But we are not doing this …
Knowledge and Blood
I mentioned a few days ago that we have to avoid all forms of unbelief, whether in modernist or postmodernist guise. This requires a distinctive Trinitarian epistemology. Consider this some preliminary doodling. One of the problems with this kind of discussion is that it tends to be limited to academics, and epistemic certainty becomes something …
Casual Creeds
“To use a phrase from Matthew Arnold, we are ‘light half-believers in our casual creeds.’ In a mad pursuit of cisterns that will hold no water, we have come to love the dust on the inside of our empty jars” (Angels in the Architecture, p. 97).
Foundations of Marriage VII
Introduction When God created the world, He immediately set about fashioning the world by means of division. He separated man into male and female, and pronounced it all very good. But He divides for the sake of richer union, and not for the sake of division itself. But what is the principle of this kind …
Me and Andrew
As much as we agree, I periodically find myself in these debates with Andrew Sandlin. The occasion for this one is that he has taken issue with a recent post of mine on seeping postmodernism. Just a few comments now, which I may follow up on later. The first thing is that Andrew simply assumes …
Social Good
Morning, visionaries Jon also inquires: “Perhaps we could agree that equal opportunity to access social goods is a fundamental principle of this society . . .” This sounds grand as a slogan. But is a private club, members only, a social good? Is a restaurant owner’s desire to manage a place that maintains a certain …