The problem with the doctrine of inerrancy, as many hold to it, is that it is too weak. The question, as it is usually posed, is whether or not the Bible contains errors. The liberal says that it does and the conservative says that it does not. On one level, the conservative answer is of …
Arrogance and Certainty
Andrew Sandlin asks why, if I do not believe my observations and pronouncements to be on a par with Scripture, I speak as confidently as I do. In this confidence, Andrew sees the hallmarks of religious arrogance. My answer to this (in brief) is that the Bible teaches that when the bugle blows indistinctly, no …
An Applied Bible
Andrew’s Sandlin’s recent response to me helpfully pin-pointed the one area where I think we genuinely differ, which is in the area of scriptural applications. First, he began by thanking me for not employing satire, invective, and so on, in my response to him. He noted that such tactics in Scripture are to be employed …
Knowledge and Blood
I mentioned a few days ago that we have to avoid all forms of unbelief, whether in modernist or postmodernist guise. This requires a distinctive Trinitarian epistemology. Consider this some preliminary doodling. One of the problems with this kind of discussion is that it tends to be limited to academics, and epistemic certainty becomes something …
Me and Andrew
As much as we agree, I periodically find myself in these debates with Andrew Sandlin. The occasion for this one is that he has taken issue with a recent post of mine on seeping postmodernism. Just a few comments now, which I may follow up on later. The first thing is that Andrew simply assumes …
Social Good
Morning, visionaries Jon also inquires: “Perhaps we could agree that equal opportunity to access social goods is a fundamental principle of this society . . .” This sounds grand as a slogan. But is a private club, members only, a social good? Is a restaurant owner’s desire to manage a place that maintains a certain …
Free Enterprise
Visionaries, Jon argues for the propriety of restraining the biases of business owners by referring to: “A fundamental principle of the social contract to which we are all parties . . .” In this, he has begun to address the question we have been asking since the beginning of this meandering debate, back when we …
Seeping Postmodernism
For many reasons, none of them intellectually compelling, postmodern thinking proper, along with postmodern assumptions unacknowledged, are making great headway in the “post-conservative” evangelical world. One lesson that we can take from the postmodernist playbook in this reqard is that is that fooling around with language is actually a disguised power grab. While denying their …
The Night Before Whatsit
‘Twas the night before Christmas and all through the land, We still mark the birth of the One who is banned From public discussion or public display. “Get rid of the Christ child–but still keep the day!” So public school children must practice with stealth Those carols which threaten our strange commonwealth, And now and …
Delight in Other Tastes
“At thy right hand there are pleasures for evermore” (Ps. 16: 11) Growing Dominion, Part 28 Part of cultural maturity is the art of learning to delight in the fact that other people delight in things that leave you cold. Of course, we must exclude from this anything that God flatly prohibits, but we must …