The New Perspective on Paul “is thrown in to add a little stickiness to the doctrinal taffy pull that we have going on here.”
They Can Always Fix That
Swimming in Syrup
“I do want to say one thing about how they answered the most glaring problem with the study committee—that being the stacked nature of the committee. To put it in terms that the average layman can follow, that committee was as stacked as a double order of golden-brown buttermilks.”
Memes From the Archives (2016)
Comments open. As always, try to behave.
Not on the Mantle
“Now that a person is converted, can we make distinctions in the text? Certainly we can distinguish imperatives from indicatives, laws from promises, and so on. But now that I saved, everything is contextualized within that grace. That grace surrounds everything, making it lovely. It is in that grace that we now stand. I can tell grammatically when God issues a requirement for His people. This is the vase of demand, on the mantelpiece of law, situated in the middle of the house of grace. And I live in the house, not on the mantle.”
Blunt Force Systematics
“Systematic theology is nothing more or less than remembering what the Bible says everywhere else when you come to study what it is saying here . . . No one systematic theology covers everything, and many of them get key features positively wrong—like a guy putting a jigsaw puzzle of a sailboat together, when he is working from the wrong box top, a picture of a lighthouse. By the end, he will be putting the pieces in with a mallet.”
Last Chance to Say Good Riddance to 2023
Letter to the Editor: I was wondering if you would comment on the Pope essentially establishing moral equivalence between blessing same sex relationships and what are called "irregular situations" ...
The Divide Is Elsewhere
“So I affirm the three uses of the law, but I deny that the law should be used as a hermeneutical principle, whether conjoined with the gospel or not. What the text is saying can be determined apart from a law/gospel hermeneutic. What the text means for me cannot be determined apart from law/gospel considerations.”
Two Bedside Manners
Best Kept in the History Books
“The curators of the Reformation Museum want everyone to stay behind the velvet ropes, to leave the old books on their shelves, and coo over the wax reproduction of John Knox confronting Mary Queen of Scots. Then everyone is given a brochure reminding everyone to not try this at home.”