Letter to the Editor: Okay, you said baptism doesn’t work ex opere operato, is this consistent with Romans 6 and the instrumental language regarding water baptism? “By baptism”? Is ...
Letters That Shed Light, for Which We Are Grateful
The Natural Use of the Woman
Dear Dawson, Up to this point, I have perhaps said a number of unusual things, and in our day controversial things, but we are still just assembling pieces on the workbench. We are now approaching the point where we will begin the assembly. I am talking about constructing a biblical view of how a man …
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Damnation and Proportions
“Hell is not the result of God losing all sense of proportion, condemning someone to eternal flames because they used to cheat at pinochle. Rather, the judgment of God falls on someone because of their complete loss of all sense of proportion. The damnation is eternal because the lack of repentance is eternal.”
The Light From Behind the Sun, p. 177
Makes Sense Though
The Hellish Thought Is the Center
“The damned could be sent anywhere and they would bring the Hell with them. Hell is the kind of place that wraps around the hellish thought.”
The Light From Behind the Sun, p. 176
The Hellfire Preacher
“When it comes to lurid descriptions of the damned, no one in the New Testament rivals an eloquent Dublin Jesuit from 1878, but there are moments when Jesus comes close. And only Jesus.”
The Light From Behind the Sun, p. 169
Aaron Renn and the Negative World
Introduction: In a recent article at First Things, in a piece entitled The Three Worlds of Evangelicalism, Aaron Renn does an admirable job hunting for the black box that will explain for us what happened ...
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Which Is a Surprise to Some
“The hellfire preacher of the New Testament is Jesus, not the apostles. Not Paul.”
The Light From Behind the Sun, p. 169
Some Mid-January Letters, and Why Not?
What are friends for? Letter to the Editor: Forgive my presumption and/or "cheekiness", but in your "Normal and Jesus" book snippet ("Light from Behind the Sun") on January 11, the ...
On Not Kidding Ourselves
“But whenever we are dealing with symbolic language, we must remember that the symbol is always less than the reality. The wedding ring is less than the marriage. The flag is less than the country it represents. This means that if the lake of fire is a literal lake of fire, then it must be really bad. But if the lake of fire is merely symbolic, then that means that the reality it represents is far worse . . . Saying that the fire and brimstone are symbolic does not fix our dilemma. Symbolic of what?”
The Light From Behind the Sun, p. 166