“Restorationists of all stripes have no foundation for their appeal, and hence their appeals are consistently parasitic. They get their Bible from the historic church, and then use it to attack the historic church. Another name for this is sawing off the limb you are sitting on. And so before we let them appeal to …
Which Explains a Lot, Actually
“In short, those who oppose sola Scriptura to the ancient creeds have not yet recognized that sola Scriptura is itself an ancient creed. Take away creedal authority, and you may for a time have just ‘me and my Bible.’ But the definition of Scripture is itself a creedal issue, and if one is consistent in …
Kenneth or Hobart
“In American Christianity, it is commonplace to think that ‘pure’ Christianity disappeared from the globe with the death of the last apostle, not to reappear again until a revelation of some kind came to Hobart Jonhe in a cornfield in southeastern Nebraska. There are many versions of this faith, but the broad outlines are the …
The Actual Point
“If someone were to maintain that God did not know the location of a particular town in South Dakota, and we were to debate with him, the resultant debate would not be over geography” (“Sola Scriptura, Creeds, and Ecclesiastical Authority” in When Shall These Things Be? p. 256).
Glib Simplicity
“Someone, and it may have been Gibbon, made merry over the fact that the church at the time of Athanasius was all roiled up over one little iota: the difference between homoousion and homoiousion. Of course, this is like saying that the debate between atheism and theism is really a debate over the letter a. …
A Form of Shallowness
“Imagine a competent physician, a general practitioner, well trained in medicine. He does well in his practice, but occasionally he comes up against a patient who knows very little about medicine, but knows an enormous amount about the particular ailment that troubles him. In other words, before coming to see the doctor, the patient has …
Wisdom is not Mechanical
“In other words, when the elders of a church are determining whether or not a new candidate is qualified for the office, they must be the type of men who are mature in judgment. They are discerning character, not counting rocks” (Fidelity, p. 159).
The Horizon is Really Quite Interesting
“If a man can’t go to the beach without sinning, then he should quit going to the beach. But if he has the self-discipline to spend a lot of time looking at the clouds, or gazing out to sea like the ancient mariner, then he can do that” (Fidelity, p. 150).
Striving to Lose
“The harm is that men are not faithful to hookers. Why should a Christian woman want to look like one? Why on earth would she want to resemble the kind of woman who is easy to use and easier to leave?” (Fidelity, pp. 142-143).
More Than Just Male
“In order to be sexually responsive, a wife needs to respect, on a fundamental level, the comprehensive masculinity of her husband. He must be a man, and not just a male. If he is aroused in the bedroom, that arousal must not make her resentment boil over — ‘Why can he not be aroused to …