Dear Joel, Once we get past our agreement that perseverance in the faith should be considered a good thing, the doctrine of perseverance creates a large number of questions. Some of the disagreements that arise out of this are extremely subtle, so it is important to define our terms very carefully at the outset. According …
Love the One You”re With
Dear Joel, I have a little time free, so on to my next installment. This one will be less doctrinal than the others, but there are obviously doctrinal underpinnings. I want to address obedience and the affections. Another way to speak of this is in terms of covenant loyalty. I was recently in a conversation …
Some Ping Pong
When I was in junior high school, I used to play a lot of ping pong. Occasionally, in the course of these bouts, one of my friends would hit a lofter — a slow ball about three feet above the table, just on my side of the net. I confess that when this happened it …
A Protestant Vision for Unity
Dear Joel, What I would like to do in this letter is sketch a Protestant vision for the unity of the Church. It is important to emphasize from the start that I am not addressed how unified the Church ought to be, but rather how unified the Church will be. The vexed question of church …
Doing It Right
Dr. Bryan Chapell of Covenant Seminary has written a very reasonable treatment of the New Perspective on Paul, which can be found here. He distinguishes things that need to be distinguished, he knows what central issues of the faith need to be defended and preserved, he criticizes without hysterics, and his admonitions to all parties …
Our Heretical Hair
A friend pointed me to a new Master’s program at Knox Seminary, which actually looks pretty good. Click here. But that Auburn Avenue heresy stuff is like an insidious gas that permeates everything, up to and including this new Master’s program at Knox. In bold-face type (no less), they say the following: “We need to …
The Laws of Thought
I mentioned in the last post that I had co-written a logic text. The following is a draft of something that will be going into the next revision. Here tis: In order to reason well, we have to assume certain things that never show up as particular items in our argument. They are simply (and …
Except For Prisms
Been a while since I wrote anything about the Auburn Avenue stuff. So why not? says I. A gentleman named Paul Manata has written a detailed and very fine refutation of Cal Beisner’s claim that the root of the Auburn Avenun teaching was our embrace of Van Til’s apologetic. Manata’s post is called “The Root …
Authority and Clarity
Dear Joel, Thanks for your prompt reply. Let me suggest a format for our letters, if you don’t mind. I would like to respond to your letter in this one. After I do so, the ball is still in my court to move on to the next issue. If you respond to this response, then …
Timeless Truths?
In his essay on how the Bible can be authoritative, N.T. Wright takes issue with the concept of “timeless truths.” He allows that there is a sense in which the Bible is a repository of timeless truths, but he is generally at war with the concept. “All three methods I have outlined involve a certain …