“The New Jerusalem is not a figure of Heaven, the final eternal state, but is rather a glorious image of the Christian Church. This is explicit in a number of places. The Jerusalem above, Paul says, is the mother of us all (Gal. 4:26). When we come to worship God on the Lord’s Day, we …
Really Scary
He Sees You When You’re Sleeping
One use of the title has reference, of course to the omniscience of God watching over us while we sleep (Ps. 3:5). This is the only sense of the phrase that is not creepy. The phrase comes from the song Santa Claus is Coming to Town, and refers of course to the purported knowledge of …
Gospel for Snowflakes
The irony is this. The only way for us to declare a gospel for snowflakes is by seeing that there is no way for the gospel to be preached by snowflakes. This requires unpacking, and so please allow me. In Scripture, the gospel is the objective good news of salvation. It is the message of …
Open Thread Tuesday. Not Troll Tuesday at All.
Alabama Senate Race: Re: Hot take on the Alabama Senate election of Dec. 12. You are making the child molestation allegations against Roy Moore the center of the issue. They are nothing of the kind. The allegations should have played exactly the same role in this election as the Access Hollywood tape played in the …
A Brief Statement for the Organizers of the Next Big Women’s March
Introduction: Many years ago, when I was still in college, I was taking some class or other and a debate arose in class, and in that discussion I was maintaining a biblical position about whatever it was. In response, a young woman wheeled on me and said, “You Christians are just like the Nazis. You …
Decorating Camels
[Speaking of Greg Boyd’s view of cultural engagement] “In other words, the kingdoms of this world are an ugly camel, and will always be an ugly camel. Moreover, this dichotomy flattens the world outside the Church, meaning that all camels are more or less camels, and are more or less equally ugly. But Boyd allows …
As In, You Can’t Handle The
Most Calvinists are Only Halfway There
“If you are Calvinist in your soteriology and historically Reformed in your ecclesiology, then you need to think Christendom is a good thing . . . If anabaptist assumptions had not carried the day, affecting virtually everybody who looks at Church-state issues, we would recognize this move [denying Christendom] as being as anachronistic as a …
Preferably Made out of Titanium
“Someone really does need to tell secularist America that her gods are genuinely pathetic. And currently, the Muslims are doing this because the Christians won’t. And the Christians who won’t do this are not so much in need of a different kind of theology as they are in need of a different kind of spine” …