The other day, when I responded to N.T. Wright’s foray into extreme Pauline makeovers, a friend sent me a link to a longer and more scholarly defense of Wright’s posish. That link I now pass on to you. And being a good Christian, and a fair-minded soul, I read it. All the way to the …
Squeezing Harder Than That
The Church of England just recently said no to women bishops. There were howls of outrage from all the predictable quarters, for whom such a troglodyte move is just smack-the-forehead baffling. Now I can understand a vote against women bishops as a preliminary move to try to undo the ordination of women priests. And I …
No Christ Anywhere
When God judges the heart, He does so because sinners love the kind of dualism that gives their sin a place to hide. “You are near in their mouth but far from their mind” (Jer. 12:2b, NKJV). But when someone is unconverted, that condition is not a mystic invisibility, seen only by God. No, it …
When Looking to Abraham Isn’t
“Hearken to me, ye that follow after righteousness, ye that seek the Lord: Look unto the rock whence ye are hewn, And to the hole of the pit whence ye are digged. Look unto Abraham your father, And unto Sarah that bare you: For I called him alone, And blessed him, and increased him” (Is. …
Like Good Episcopalians
In the first chapter of Isaiah, we find all the necessary foundation stones for a true and robust evangelicalism. The Lord has called a people to Himself, having brought up children to Himself (Is. 1:2). So they have a formal connection to Him, like good Episcopalians and Presbyterians, but those children have rebelled against Him. …
Morbid Marvin
So here comes a brief post straight atcha to respond to a couple of comments in my previous post on regeneration. The first issue has to do with a question about my comment that an Augustinian view of regeneration leads to fatalism. An extreme form of the kind of fatalism I have in mind can …
A Sublime Kind of Disrespect
I have written a great deal on regeneration as it relates to the Holy Spirit’s sovereignty. The wind blows where He wishes, and is not bottled up by anything whatever that we can do — whether we are talking about decision cards or baptismal fonts. Understanding this is a function of basic piety, and we …
A Stuffed Regeneration Bird
This morning I tweeted the following: “Some men display their copy of the Westminster Confession upon their shelves proudly, the highest achievement of the taxidermist’s art.” A friend wrote to ask what I meant by it. Would I say the same about the Heidelberg (I would), and what do I see as the solution? Do …
An Evangelical Center
Life is right at the center of God’s purposes for this dead world of ours. But the way into this new world He is fashioning is quite similar to the way we got into the old world — we have to be born into it. A new world, a new creation, requires, of necessity, a …
The Expulsive Power of a New Affection
I need to confess that I have kind of a crock pot brain. I throw things in there and hope that applied heat for an extended period of time will result in an acceptable stew. Occasionally something will just float to the surface and surprise me, something that happened to me just last week. I …