“If I can only believe what is propositionally revealed in the Bible, and if my name is not propositionally revealed in the Bible as one who believes the promises of salvation rightly, then how can I believe the promise? How can I believe any promise there? Do I have direct warrant? No, not at all. I can, however, believe indirectly, but I must supply one of the missing ingredients (which I cannot do apart from grace) . . . The thing that closes the circle is always faith. This particular faith cannot be based on propositional warrant from Scripture, because Scripture says nothing about my prayers, nothing about my children, nothing about whether I am elect. I close the circle by faith. God gives the general enscripturated promise. He then works in me specifically through the person of the Holy Spirit to bring me to the conviction that these general promises are mine, and so that I may enter into rest. Not only do I have reason to believe the promises, I am commanded to believe them”
Content Cluster Muster [08-17-23]
That’s How You Do It: Open Road: And more here. A Song I Really Like for Some Reason: Yeah, Not Like That: HT: Samuel Cherubin: Palmaerts Roland And Another Podcast Also: Featured Product: A Review of Johnny Cash and the Great American Contradiction:Rodney Clapp did us all the favor of viewing certain American challenges through …
What Kind of Holster?
“And when we heard their qualifications, we would believe them as brothers in Christ, and put our doctrinal revolvers back in the presbyterial holster. But when we say things like this (and we do, honestly), our qualifications after the fact do not matter. To extend the metaphor, the doctrinal bullets continue to whistle through our heretical hair. Oh, well.”
The Case Against Conscription
Introduction: When Samuel was warning the people of Israel about what would happen if they obtained a king "like the other nations," one of the central problems he said would arise was the fact ...
Seems Reasonable
“The same with Calvin. I don’t agree with Calvin on everything. But what I reserve to myself is the right to agree with Calvin and not have that agreement be used as the reason for denying that I am a Calvinist.”
Letters for the Dog Days of August
Letter to the Editor: At the church I attend, we recently had a baptism of the daughter in a family. The daughter was somewhere around age fourteen. The pastor asked the head of household ...
Evangelical Obedience as the Lifeblood of Faith
“But believing God is no work, and not believing God is not faith.”
Sly Dog Teachers
Introduction: In a very interesting development, those of us who are calling Americans to come back to Christ, and to do so as Americans who are guilty of very American sins, are somehow being ...
Forgetting What Lies Behind
Philippians (12): Sermon Video Introduction: One of the great things I learned from my father is that “God takes you from where you are, and not from where you should have been.” All of ...
All Gone Now
“Sometimes the new wine can’t get into the old wineskin, not because of the old wine, but because the skin is stuffed full of learned scribes, writing treatises on what it was like back in the glory days, back before we drank all the old wine.”