Theology That Bites Back
The main category for book reviews and cultural interaction.
So let us review where we are. For my entire adult life (and I understand the pattern started earlier than that), the received wisdom has been for Republican candidates to run to the right and govern to the middle. Virtually everyone did this, whether because that was where their heart actually was, or because they …
“Ezekiel was told to preach to the bones, not to line up all the femurs in a tidy confessional row. As Lloyd-Jones said about some ecumenical endeavor or other, ‘Putting all the ecclesiastical corpses into one graveyard will not bring about a resurrection” (Empires of Dirt, p. 199).
“What happens when the fire goes out a generation or two later, and the altar is still there? The natural response is to try to fix things by decorating the altar, bringing in embellishments and bronze gewgaws galore. But without the fire, a decorated altar is still a cold one” (Empires of Dirt, p. 198).
One of the things I try to keep my hands involved with—in order to keep my brain from freezing up—is the practice of setting portions of Scripture into various verse forms. This is a good way of noticing what the text is actually saying, and is also a good way of restating Scripture for yourself …
“What are we doing? We are besieging strongholds, and the citadels of unbelief will fall. Every sermon is another swing of the battering ram, every baptism is an engine deployed to overthrow the devil, and every administration of the Supper is an inexorable offer of wine for the forgiveness of the world and bread for …
The book I have selected for this month’s review is Crisis of Responsibility by David Bahnsen. I was briefly tempted to make this an extremely short review, saying simply that Greg Bahnsen, his father, would have been very proud. That really would have been sufficient, but there were a few other things I wanted to …
“All the nations of the earth will stream to Christ. It is unbelief to place the fulfillment outside the course of history, to hold that the promises to the nations will only come to fruition when the nations are no more . . . What I am trying to do is persuade Christians that we …
Apparently being woke is a thing now. I heard yesterday that there were even some woke Calvinists out there, and the seventh angel sounded his trumpet. After that some plaster fell off the ceiling. Let us define our terms. Being woke means that you have grokked to your complicity. Let me start over. Being woke …
“As noted, the American form of the Westminster Confession redrew the boundary, not requiring establishment, but requiring that the state recognize and protect ‘the church of our common Lord.’ The fact that the American revisers urged us to see that Baptists, Presbyterians, Congregationalists, and Episcopalians all served a common Lord, and were entitled to civil …
