Gallio said that if Paul had been brought up on charges for some “matter of wrong” (Acts 18:14), then he would have been willing to hear the case. But as it was, he threw the thing out of his courtroom — showing incidentally that a shrewd pagan had a better grasp of justice than many …
Rumble Tumble Sermons
“Never suffer truths to fall from you pell-mell. Do not let your thoughts rush as a mob, but make them march as a troop of soldiery. Order, which is heaven’t first law, must not be neglected by heaven’s ambassadors” (Charles Spurgeon, Lectures to My Students, p. 77).
Stodgies and Planners
“Our new awareness of how dynamic the world really is has united two types of stasists who would have once been bitter enemies: reactionaries, whose central value is stability, and technocrats, who central value is control” (Virginia Postrel, The Future and Its Enemies, p. 7).
White Grass
I am not quite sure how many times I have read 100 Cupboards in its various incarnations. Originally the entire trilogy was one big monster manuscript, which Random House decided to break into three separate books. And as the editorial process has gone forward, I have been privileged to read the story in its various …
Stick Man Fights Back
This was a lot of fun. You’ll need to watch it a couple times. HT: Dale Courtney
The Discipline of Joy and Gladness
As mentioned in the last installment, we have finished the first section of the book of Zechariah. Two great oracles occupy the latter half of the book. The first is contained in chapters 9-11, and the second is in chapters 12-14. But before we come to these oracles, we need to cover the didactic portion …
Another Angle On Culpable Ignorance
The New Testament contains two other words that are rendered as ignorance — agnoia and agnosia. The former is used to describe the sinful condition of the people when they went along with their leaders in the crucifixion of Jesus (Acts 3:17). Idolatry was a condition of spiritual ignorance that God winked at (Acts 17:30), …
Preaching Inside a Theology Bubble
“He is great upon the ten toes of the beast, the four faces of the cherubim, the mystical meaning of badgers’ skins, and the typical bearings of the staves of the ark, and the windows of Solomon’s temple: but the sins of business men, the temptations of the times, and the needs of the age, …
Stasis or Dynamism?
“How we feel about the evolving future tells us who we are as individuals and as a civilization: Do we search for stasis—a regulated, engineered world? Or do we embrace dynamism—a world of constant creation, discovery, and competition?” (Virginia Postrel, The Future and Its Enemies, p. xiv).
All Systems Are Go
The first official chapter in Piper’s book is a caution against a facile adoption of biblical theology over systematic theology as though it were necessarily more “biblical.” A systematic theology can be biblical or unbiblical, depending. And biblical theology can also be biblical or unbiblical, depending. “Most scholars are aware that methods and categories of …