In the next chapter, Boyd’s tendency to hydroplane on various evangelical cliches catches up with him. His central argument is that evangelical Christians have the beam in their eye, and hence are in no position to be “moral guardians” for the rest of the country. There’s a lot to that argument, actually, but the problem …
Not a General Requirement
“Headship in marriage does not mean that women submit to men; it means one woman submits to one man. Her submission to her husband protects her from having to submit to other men. Prior to marriage, her submission to her father protects her from having to submit to other men. There is no overall biblical …
The Bronzed Nerve
Chapter Five is “Taking America Back for God,” and Boyd begins by describing a worship service that he attended around the time of the First Gulf War, one that sounds every bit as appalling as Boyd describes. “The video closed with a scene of a silhouette of three crosses on a hill with an American …
Smiting the Saracen
My engagement with Boyd’s next chapter — “From Resident Aliens to Conquering Warlords” — rests on the criticisms offered thus far, and consists of two basic points. In this chapter, Boyd’s commitment to “Christianity” in Leithart’s sense becomes highly visible. His criticism of the compromise the Church has fallen into consists of his rejection of …
Jody and Nancy
The Lord Jesus is the great bridegroom, the model for all bridegrooms. But He has become a bridegroom in a broken and fallen world, and this has implications for His marriage to the Church, and for our marriages as we imitate Him. When Adam and Eve fell into sin and rebellion, this not only introduced …
Gerrit DeBoer, R.I.P.
One of the last times I visited with Gary, if not the last time, he was showing me a model of his “more efficient” wind generator. He was an industrious and hardworking man his entire life, and he was seeking to be fruitful to the very end of his life. God gave him that great …
Children in Worship
The topic of children in the worship service is, in some respects, a very mundane one. What does the Bible say about nursery, children’s church or Sunday School, or keeping your children with you during the service? This is something which we all deal with every week; what light if any does the Bible shed …
All Three of the Flying Bambino Brothers
This is archived under “Book Review” but it is not really a book review proper. It is more of a statement. Last April I finished reading a short book by David Bentley Hart called The Doors of the Sea, a theological reaction to the Asian tsunami. In my short book log review, I just said …
Two Kinds of Light/Amos 10
INTRODUCTION: We have finished working through the book of Amos passage by passage, and we need to take a week to look at the structure and message of the book as a whole. Next week, Lord willing, we will come to some detailed applications. THE TEXT: “Hear ye this word which I take up against …
Pikestaff Texts
The global Anglican communion is blowing apart, as we speak. N.T. Wright is unhappy about it, as he ought to be, but unfortunately he analyzes the situation wrongly, almost from top to bottom. I wrote about this some years ago, as one who appreciates much of Wright’s scholarship. But I noted then that his anti-gnostic …