INTRODUCTION: Baptism in water can be a complicated subject—and yet the author of Hebrews treats it as one of the Christian “basics.” This should make us wary because the evangelical Christian world doesn’t have this sorted out yet, and yet it should also make us eager to sort it out—to grow up into maturity as …
Just Like Alice’s Restaurant
“We build temples to the gods of commerce, and this is why the modern church looks like a shopping mall, sprawling and flat, plenty of parking, Visa and MasterCard accepted. In one city, a church mailed out hundreds of thousands of brochures hawking their wares. Come to our church, they said, and we’ll give you …
Machen and Wilkins
Darryl’s next chapter, on the rise of a democratized Protestant faith in America is quite good, and very helpful. Toward the end of the chapter, his doubts about democracy start come to the fore. “Rather than learning about democracy from Christianity, more often than not American Protestants have felt compelled to defend democracy under a …
Rampaging Christian Wowserism
Darryl Hart concludes his next chapter with the correct observation that “the phrase ‘under God’ raises more questions than it apparently answers” (p. 123). This not only is a fair challenge, but it is one we need to take up. If I might, I would like to borrow a metaphor from Warfield, and apply it …
Mary and Miriam
“Surah 19:29 . . . claims that Mary, the Mother of Jesus, was a sister of Aaron. Because Surah 66:12 describes Mary as the daughter of Imram (the Amram of Exodus 6:20), it would seem that Muhammad was again confused about the facts. He had evidently mistaken Mary (the mother of Jesus) for Miriam (Moses’ …
Jupiterian Amillennialism
Darryl Hart is easy to read, but, in another sense, he is very hard to read. His second chapter “Whose Freedom, Which Liberty?” is a treasure trove of historical information, but his discussion also includes, it must be said, an astonishing oversight. I don’t know what — other than an amillennialism that appears to have …
A Good Thing
Busy couple weeks. Our ministerial conference was last week, and the meeting of Anselm Presbytery is this coming week. But during the ministerial conference, I was delighted to find Tim and David Bayly in attendance. Thursday night they came to our place for dinner, and on the way home I took them by to see …
City on a Hill
This post ought to be fairly straightforward, because this next chapter by Darryl was, taking one thing with another, outstanding. Of course I am suspicious of where he is placing it, but still the historical review he gives is very, very good. He begins with a discussion of the famous American trope, “a city on …
Liturgical Dualism
INTRODUCTION: There are great dangers facing a congregation engaged in trying to restore a more honestly liturgical and reformed pattern of worship, problems that arise because of good old-fashioned sin. Call it the human factor. THE TEXTS: “Thus saith the LORD of hosts, the God of Israel, Amend your ways and your doings, and I …
That Faithy Feel
Someone of Darryl Hart’s intelligence and learning is incapable of writing a book without offering many penetrating insights, and this book promises to be no exception. He starts out by observing the “tsunami of faith-based politics” (p. 3). He objects to this, as he should, because government sponsorship of a generic faith, or groups that …