“And when we heard their qualifications, we would believe them as brothers in Christ, and put our doctrinal revolvers back in the presbyterial holster. But when we say things like this (and we do, honestly), our qualifications after the fact do not matter. To extend the metaphor, the doctrinal bullets continue to whistle through our heretical hair. Oh, well.”
The Case Against Conscription
Introduction: When Samuel was warning the people of Israel about what would happen if they obtained a king "like the other nations," one of the central problems he said would arise was the fact ...
Seems Reasonable
“The same with Calvin. I don’t agree with Calvin on everything. But what I reserve to myself is the right to agree with Calvin and not have that agreement be used as the reason for denying that I am a Calvinist.”
Letters for the Dog Days of August
Letter to the Editor: At the church I attend, we recently had a baptism of the daughter in a family. The daughter was somewhere around age fourteen. The pastor asked the head of household ...
Evangelical Obedience as the Lifeblood of Faith
“But believing God is no work, and not believing God is not faith.”
Sly Dog Teachers
Introduction: In a very interesting development, those of us who are calling Americans to come back to Christ, and to do so as Americans who are guilty of very American sins, are somehow being ...
All Gone Now
“Sometimes the new wine can’t get into the old wineskin, not because of the old wine, but because the skin is stuffed full of learned scribes, writing treatises on what it was like back in the glory days, back before we drank all the old wine.”
Now That’s Love Right There
No Dead Faith
“The fact that someone who believes that saving faith is nothing more or less than mental assent to propositions has somehow come to be regarded as a defender of the Reformed faith is a remarkable phenomenon, and worthy of study.”
Stipulated Vocabularies
“I recognize that James and Paul have differing stipulated vocabularies. ‘Works’ is a word that does not refer to the same thing for the two men. Paul is at war with dead works, and James is at war with dead faith. We are the heirs of both men, and ought to be at war with both dead works and dead faith. The enemy is death, not faith or works. Works for James is fruit for Paul. But within the clear usage that James gives us, it is indisputable that works is the animating principle of faith.”