My friend Toby Sumpter has been doing some good work on the issues related to the divisions between Protestants and our separated brothers outside Protestantism, and then another friend Peter Leithart added significantly to the discussion here, here, and here. I am very comfortable with what they are saying, and would only tweak a few …
Three Cheers for “Moralistic” Applications of the OT
In recent years, it has become de rigeur to say that the stories of the Bible ought not to be read in ways that reduce the message to simple little Sunday School lessons. And of course, as with all such things, there is a sense in which this is perfectly acceptable, and in certain ways …
Break, Blow, Burn
Let us try to forget the word evangelical as a demographic description. Let us try to forget the word liturgy as a description of the boring church you grew up in. Let us try to forget the word doctrine as it was handled by the 19th century divine, the Rev. Dr. Snodgood, in three volumes. …
Missing Heaven By Eighteen Inches
Okay, I am saying this as a preacher, but I still want to maintain that sin is bad. But what kind of bad? We often know that something is bad, but don’t spend enough time thinking about why it is bad. Here in Moscow, we spend a lot of time attacking dualism, which is certainly …
Our Doctrinal and Liturgical Bramble Bushes
I am fond of saying that grace has a backbone, but I think it is time to explain what I mean by that. The context of these remarks is the general and current ongoing discussion about the worrisome trajectories of all those incipient legalists and antinomians out there. The incipient legalists are the ones the …
Ten Theses on Icons of Jesus
1. Those who object to portraits of Jesus should not have various Christological heresies assigned to them. It is as if a ham-fisted painter tried a portrait of my best friend, and I complained the painting had no soul. The painter could not reply that I was saying my friend had no soul. But we …
Let’s Call It Knostic, Shall We?
I recently finished Mark Galli’s book, Beyond Smells and Bells, a book I enjoyed quite a bit. Given the title, I didn’t expect to enjoy it as much as I did, and I found myself agreeing with virtually everything Galli wrote. He writes engagingly, and with a great deal of practical wisdom. He is clearly …
A Cistern for the Water
My friend Toby Sumpter, no enemy of robust liturgy, recently posted the following on Facebook. “When people come to our church ‘for the liturgy’ I think I will begin asking how frequently they use porn, yell at their wife, or tell lies.” On a related note, Mark Galli, author of Beyond Smells and Bells, noted …
An F5 Revival
I often tell our people that they must come to the sacrament of the Lord’s Table in “evangelical faith.” But what is that? Men love rituals. Man is a liturgy-making creature. Nothing whatever can be done about it — the only thing that distinguishes one tribe from another is the respective shape of their rituals. …
John Frame Went and Escondidit
John Frame’s new book, The Escondido Theology, is finally out and available. I commend it to you. After you have read it, you may then google up responses/reviews to it, clamber into your canoe of irencism, and paddle all over a small mountain lake of snark.