[Speaking of Albert Barnes’ exegesis of the 2nd psalm] “The Bible tells us that God’s displeasure will be great. The literal expression refers to heat or burning, as when one is inflamed with anger. The Openness theologians would say that this is an expression of God’s anger and then haul it down to interpret it …
Trying to Keep the Bible Current
“When folks, even learned folks, actually, especially learned folks, start discovering that what the Bible has been saying all along is reawlly what we here in our own day have only just recently discovered, they are just half a step away from saying that it does not really matter what the Bible has been saying …
The Table Set Before Time Began
“So the way of salvation can be found not in affirming the truths of orthodoxy with a long face, but rather by coming to see and know that the words of God are life itself. They are refined gold, they are honey to the lips, they are aged wine, they summon us to a banquet …
Orthodoxy As Habit of the Body
“Orthodoxy requires all our faculties, our reason, our imagination, our bodily habits, our affections. Straight thinking is inconsistent with crooked lives. Faith without works is dead; stories without dragons are boring; worship is a matter of sound doctrine and well-cooked meat on the grill; and a god chained to earth, however noble the portrayal, is …
How False Teachers See Themselves
[Speaking of 2 Pet. 3:15-16] “The word translated as wrest here is streblao, which refers to putting something on the rack and twisting it out of all recognition. Of course, those who are occupied in this activity do not themselves describe it this way. They do not advertise their seminars as being taught by ignorant …
My Doxy Is Orthodoxy
“And thus, orthodoxy means straight belief or correct opinion. Who could be against this, one wonders. As it turns out, no one is against it — every man affirms that what he maintains is the truth. Every person in the world, all day long, every day, thinks he’s right. Even those hapless relativists and nihilists …
Jerusalem and Athens
“Disobedience to God’s law blurs the antithsis between white and off-white. We must not resist anything because of what we see following it — the post hoc ergo propter hoc fallacy. At the same time, the Bible tells us the world is filled with consequences for evil actions and bad ideas. What is our protection? …
Folks Who Don”t Get Out Much
“The spirit of pragmatic modernity, which likes to flaunt a sophisticated and cosmopolitan air, is really carrying on like a provincialist chronological hayseed. We are entirely taken with ourselves, and outside the village we all grew up in, everything is unknown; we are entirely lost — chronological rubes trying to pretend that the end of …
Rivers, Not Ponds
“In other words, the young are always educated by their elders. God has placed them in this particular cultural river; our children have no ability to flow in a different stream. This principle is recognized clearly when we are talking about parents and their children — just one generation. But it applies, just as clearly, …
Intellectual Schizophrenia
“By distorting sphere sovereignty, these authors have embraced intellectual schizophrenia. What one believes to be true in one location (church), one must forget when entering the other church he attends (the lab). At the risk of sounding revolutionary, if something is false we should reject it, regardless of the source. And if it is true, …