Dear visionaries, Mary responded to me with: “So, you evangelize the Palouse your way, and I’ll evangelize it mine.” Deal. And this brings us back to the original point of our discussion. Our schools, both private and at home, are filling and overflowing and yours are emptying out. Your ardent defense of reproductive rights amounts to the …
Cultural Trajectory
Growing Dominion, Part 9 Dominion will never be understood through worry. The natural tendency of those who are able to identify trajectories is to assume that what they currently see will go on forever and ever. Herman Melville thought that civilization would end as soon as we ran out of whale oil. After a week …
Yelling At My Windshield, Part Four
At the conclusion of his talk, Dr. Baugh offered some salient comments on the first verses of Galatians 5, over against various forms of covenant nomism. And shoot, I AGREED WITH HIM (the “all caps” are so that theological scholars might pick up on this particular nuance) in his critique of the idea that we …
Swallowing the Reductio
Dear visionaries, It goes without saying that people who do not understand their own worldview, or, in some cases, don’t even know that they have one, or they assume it to be a straw man invented by others, and all this in a university town, are ill-equipped to understand the worldviews of others. But this …
Yelling At My Windshield, Part Three
In his talk on “Justification Under Fire,” Dr. Baugh works through three positions. First he takes on the New Perspective. Then he moves on to Norman Shepherd. And third he addresses the Federal Vision, which he regards as having adopted and advanced the positions of Shepherd. When he gets to (as the Victorians would have …
Auburn Avenue Hubbub (AAH) Cool Quote #8
“Through the outpouring of water is meant that the one on whom the water is sprinkled belongs to the Church and the people of God, that just as water washes away the smudges and stains of our bodies, so also the one upon whom there is this outpouring, being received by grace, is washed with …
Break Their Evil Arms/Psalm 10
As with so many of the psalms, this psalm shows one of God’s saints in great turmoil over the condition of the fat and sassy attitude of those who rebel against heaven. “Why standest thou afar off, O LORD? why hidest thou thyself in times of trouble? . . .” (Ps. 10:1-18). In a world …
Prerequisites
Once there was a man whose eye was always on the horizon. He cared very much about international and foreign affairs, and was constantly writing his congressman about national issues. He viewed the evening news every night, usually with alarm, and he did whatever he could to involve his friends in this sort of thing. …
Out of a Clear Blue Sky
True story. My wife and I earlier today were driving back home from the airport in Spokane, and about a second before it hit, I saw a cloud of what looked like pellets coming down out of the sky toward us. A bunch of them hit the windshield, and a moment later revealed their true …
Owning the Curse
We are starting to get thoughtful disagreements to our latest edition of Credenda, particularly on the issue of “owning the curse.” There is much to clarify and discuss, and after that, to debate, but allow me to head off one misunderstanding that I see developing right now. “Owning the curse” does not mean capitulation to …