Partaking of the bread and wine is a privilege that our children grow up with. It is our practice to come to this Table with our little ones. This is of course a debate matter in the broader Christian world, and one of the things we should do because of this is guard ourselves at …
Prayer of the Fatherless
Our Father and God, You have established Your Church as a royal priesthood in this world, and so we intercede for the nations of men now, confessing on their behalf so that the grace of Your forgiveness will soon be extended to them all. Father, we kneel before You now, the one who searches every …
The Great Luge Run to Perdition
If you read through the linked article on homosexuals in ministry, you will find yet another example of what happens when professing Christians try to reconcile the plain teaching of Scripture with what their lusts are demanding of them. What to do? What to do? Why you “wrestle with the issues.” You grapple with them. …
Blessed and Damned
Book 3/Chapter 25 Eternal blessedness (section 10) 1. How did the prophets describe our eternal state? 2. What must we not be titillated by? 3. Does Calvin believe that everyone will have equal measures of glory in heaven? Superfluous questions (section 11) 1. Who inquires into the different glory rankings between apostle and prophet, apostle …
Free Markets and Free Grace
In Rodney Stark’s very fine book, The Victory of Reason, he notes a problem with using the word “capitalism” in discussions of economics. He says capitalism “is very difficult to define, having originated not as an economic concept but as a pejorative term first used by nineteenth century leftists to condemn wealth and privilege. Adapting …
Ten Anglos Every Bit As Clueless
In the national liberal chatter over what could possibly have gotten into the American people over this health care business, the talk eventually turned, as you may have guessed, to race. The narrative is that Americans have not yet made their peace with the fact that Obama is black. This causes that kind of deep …
This Same Body
Book 3/Chapter 25 This same body (section 7) 1. What does Calvin do with the idea that God gives us a completely new body, made from scratch? 2. Why is the promised “change of quality” important in this? 3. What is Calvin’s argument from headship on this? Burial rites (section 8) 1. What is the …
More Bread
I linked to a picture of the Palouse wheat fields yesterday. Here is a pic taken by a friend, with the wheat the color it is now (HT: Rob Sentz). That’s still a lot of bread.
God’s Great Power to Raise
Book 3/Chapter 25 God’s power (section 4) 1. Why does Calvin argue that faith in the resurrection depends on faith in God’s omnipotence? Burial rites (section 5) 1. How does Calvin answer pagan unbelievers who deny the resurrection? Intermediate state (section 6) 1. What does Calvin teach about the intermediate state? These are the questions …
That’s a Lot of Bread
As I continue to labor manfully away with my machete in the jungles of foodism, a former student has written me a thoughtful set of questions that I thought would be good to address here. First, he agrees that idols need to be rejected, period. “So I agree with the necessity in honoring God as …