When God moves in reformation, it always causes a stir, and it always causes controversy. Take care that you do not give way to the flesh in either circumstance. Receive what God is doing in our midst with gladness and simplicity. But know that Americans have a two-hundred year history of mangling a right understanding …
Publishing Is Warfare
Some of you may have noticed that over the weekend the Canon Press images on my bookrack off to the right went blank. This little glitch on my blog was the result of a major renovation, overhaul and upgrade of the Canon Press web site. I would strongly encourage all of you (and your sisters …
Remembering Your Day
Our Father in heaven, we thank and praise You in the name of Jesus for all Your kindness to us. That kindness includes Sabbath kindness, and so we rejoice before You now. We thank You for the food, for the wine, for the fellowship, and for the opportunity to proclaim Your gospel in this joyful …
Neck Kissing
This morning I received a really fine set of questions about my posts on Brian McLaren and the emergent church from a graduate of NSA, one who really grasps what we are seeking to do here, and who wondered at the similarity between McLaren’s critique of modern evangelicalism and our own critique of it. The …
True Certainty
Absolutism is a two-edged sword, and yet we would prefer to have it be a more comfortable one-edged sword. Epistemic certainty is an Enlightenment idol — men who want to know absolutely have fallen to the ancient temptation offered in Eden, which is, ye shall be as God. Only God knows absolutely. But the fact …
Old Friends On The Road
Minister: Lift up your hearts! Congregation: We lift them up to the Lord! Lord, You have favored this land, You have brought back the captivity of Jacob, Restoring the exiles. You forgave the iniquity of Your people, And You have covered up all their sin. Think for a moment. You took away all Your wrath, …
Why Didn’t Jesus Stay?
We cannot be reminded too often that the very center of our faith is a grotesque murder. Not only was Jesus murdered, but He was murdered in a miscarriage of justice—the murder was perpetrated by the very authorities assigned by God to prevent that kind of thing. We must not be permitted to gloss over …
Trying to Twist Away
When children are spanked, even in love and affection, they often twist and turn to get away from the point of pain. In the long run, they only make their situation far more difficult. We are trying to worship the Lord in such a way as to deal with our various sins and follies. The …
Digory and the Postmodern Witch
When Digory refused to listen to the witch, it was because he had promised. He had learned certain things that little boys always ought to learn, and this includes little emergent boys. Not only had he learned that you should keep your promises, he had also learned not to steal, which had come in handy …
One Other Thing
I should have said one other thing about the two-fold authority of Scripture. It is not the case that the raw propositional truth has the two-fold authority (both rerum and verborum), but rather that only Scripture in the original languages had that two-fold authority. To translate a Scriptural passage into “pure” propositional notation would result …