We call this day Good Friday, and it is good that we do. This was a day of darkness foreordained by the good pleasure of God, the day on which He determined to do whatever it might take to secure the salvation of the world. But the fact that it was good and holy in …
Going on a Worship Strike
I come now to my second installment in replying to Roger Olson’s recent diatribe against Calvinism. Here is how these things usually go, and I want to suggest another way for them to go. A Calvinist explains the doctrines he holds, at the end of which explanation, his Arminian friend exclaims, “I could never worship …
Virtue as Team Sport
“At thy right hand there are pleasures for evermore” (Ps. 16: 11) The Basket Case Chronicles #187 “Be not deceived: evil communications corrupt good manners. Awake to righteousness, and sin not; for some have not the knowledge of God: I speak this to your shame” (1 Cor. 15:33–34). The word rendered here as communications is …
The Crowds of Palm Sunday
Introduction: A commonplace in Christian circles understands the events surrounding the first Palm Sunday to be a clear demonstration of the “fickleness of crowds.” But there are good reasons for questioning this common assumption. The Text: On the next day much people that were come to the feast, when they heard that Jesus was coming …
True Nonetheless
As a proclamation of the gospel, this meal represents the great exchange. We were dead in our sins, and in Christ God exchanges us His life for our death. We were in abject poverty, and so in Christ God exchanges us His riches for our rags. We were slaves, chained to the dungeon walls of …
A Choice Triangle
One of the things our elders learned from our architect is what might be called a choice triangle. For any new construction, there are three basic elements to the project. Take the square footage, take the quality of design and materials, and take the dollar amount to be spent. Those are the three corners of …
Predestination in a Cheap Tux
A friend pointed me to this article by Roger Olson on the monster God of Calvinism, which, if logical demonstration were a verdant jungle in the Amazon, would be as bare as hell’s back yard. There are enough non sequiturs here to roll out to an appropriate thickness, in order to cut them up to …
Christ or Cocaine
“At thy right hand there are pleasures for evermore” (Ps. 16: 11) The Basket Case Chronicles #186 “And why stand we in jeopardy every hour? I protest by your rejoicing which I have in Christ Jesus our Lord, I die daily. If after the manner of men I have fought with beasts at Ephesus, what …
An Excessively Pious Mud Turtle
So admittedly I am a Calvinist yahoo, something of an Augustinian yob. If Calvinism were coffee, not only would I not take cream and sugar, or other foo-fooeries, but I would endeavor to make it a form of cowboy espresso, only without any steam. You take a tin can, put a horseshoe on the bottom …
Surveying the Text: 2 Corinthians
Introduction: We are called to great glory, but we are called to great glory out of a great mess. God is in the process of restoring a remarkable ruin—say of a cathedral—and the greatness of this undertaking is seen when we consider how great the ruin is. Man was created as the image bearer of …