It’s now been two weeks since the big debate between Ken Ham and Bill Nye. Everyone who watched has an opinion about who won and why. And most all of them, it seems, have blogged about it. Everyone who didn’t watch the debate also has an opinion about who won and why,...
This morning I scanned through an interesting book put out by Georgetown University that analyzes the value of 171 common college majors available today. By “value” the authors mean almost entirely fiscal value, or how much money a graduate can expect to make after...
I just finished Scott Oliphint's generally excellent book on apologetics, Covenantal Apologetics (P&R, 2013) and was fixing to write a review when I stumbled upon an insightful review by Paul Henebury to which I had very little to add. In short, I would agree with...
The Duck Dynasty controversy has finally slipped into the periphery, and most are glad to leave it that way. Franklin Graham, however, recently fired a parting shot—and one that crossed a key line of demarcation. Specifically, he expressed “amazement at how many...
The hymn “Joy to the World,” published by Isaac Watts in 1719, is one of my favorites. But it’s not my favorite Christmas song—because it is not a Christmas song at all. The hymn is instead based on Psalm 98 and conceived by Watts as a proleptic anticipation of the...
Last week I made my annual pilgrimage to the meeting of the Evangelical Theological Society, this year in Baltimore, MD. The ETS is a professional society made up of several thousand professors, students, academically-minded pastors, and other thrill seekers who...
Billy Graham just preached his final sermon (well, sort of—it was more a few sentences inside of a state-of-the-art video presentation). We’ve not seen a lot from him lately, so we instinctively tuned in to hear America’s pastor one last time. Everybody liked it. It...
I just finished reading Samuel Miller’s book Thoughts on Public Prayer. As the title suggests, the book does not offer a cohesive treatise on the topic, but a governing thesis nonetheless emerges: since prayer rivals preaching as the most important of a pastor’s...
Why a Commitment to Inerrancy Does Not Demand a Strictly 6000-Year-Old Earth - SnoebergerDownload
A pair of articles on the question of whether to send one’s child to a secular or to a Christian college here and here and discussed further here has recently captured my attention. My eldest son is a high school senior and this decision is imminent for him, so I’m...
Last week I had the distinct pleasure of teaching the presuppositional approach to apologetics to a group of believers in Tanzania, most of whom had no more than an elementary education. More challenging to my goal than any deficiency of education, however, was a...
One of the more interesting discoveries I made when researching Baptist polity a few years ago was the lost practice of “recognition councils.” Most Baptists are familiar with ordination councils, in which a local church calls together a group of elders and messengers...
I am not a handy person. The tool chest in my basement contains only a few basic tools, many of which were given to me by my dad when I left home. Next to my tool chest is a 1995 edition of Home Depot’s very useful book Home Improvement 1–2–3, also given to me by my...
I just finished a helpful book by Thomas E. Bergler, The Juvenilization of American Christianity (Eerdmans, 2012). Those of you who know me know that books on youth ministry are not my typical cuisine, but this was no typical book on youth ministry. Instead, it was a...
In Reformed life, one commonly hears reference made to the “ordinary means of grace,” a category that typically includes the reading of Scripture, prayer, the “ordered” ministry of the Word, and other rites/functions of the gathered church. In my previous post, a...
I just finished reading a marvelous little tome by Carl Trueman, The Creedal Imperative, and cannot help but exclaim its merits. It is, in a word, an apologetic for the discipline of systematic theology, but more than this, an apologetic for publicly chronicled and...
We are conditioned at times to think that grace and theology are confined to the spiritual realm—to believers and the church. Outside of the church independent forces like politics dominate. But when President Obama uttered the words “These tragedies must end” in the...
One of the commonest errors about law relative to Christian conduct is that God no longer uses fear or laws to promote Christian conduct. I was born and raised in a fundamentalist milieu that was at times excessive in its proliferation of rules and regulations. I...
On 12 October 2012 the Roman Catholic Church inducted a new class of saints, including a 17th-century Mohawk woman named Kateri Tekakwitha. Hope for the canonization of this patroness of Montreal has been in the works for nearly 130 years, but her sainthood was...
In my last post, I suggested that the role of the pulpit in preparing a congregation for the upcoming presidential election is more complex than simply identifying relevant biblical values at stake in the election and offering corroborating textual support. Instead,...
As an interim pastor charged in part with exposing the Scriptures so as to inform the moral and ethical decision-making of a congregation, I have been forced to consider the role that the pulpit should play in the upcoming presidential election. The simplest model,...
Kingdom through Covenant Review Article - SnoebergerDownload
Distinctive Contributions of Alva J McClain and GTS - SnoebergerDownload
The intersection of common grace with special grace is on my mind today, but not for a particularly "spiritual" reason. Bow season has begun here in Michigan and I'm anticipating the pleasure of taking one of my boys out this afternoon to see if one of us can woo a...
I was just informed that iTunes is offering an electronic version of Coming to Grips with Genesis for the special low price of $2.99. This special is good for the month of August only. This collection includes a number of scholarly essays on the book of Genesis from...
You Mean I Don't Have to TitheDownload
OK, so I am finally getting through the stack of reading that accumulated during the school year, and finally read a book that was all the buzz about five months ago. The good news is that you can finally get it at your local library, and the price is already dropping...
Since the Bible's sufficiency means that the Bible speaks to (though not necessarily about) everything, then it follows that our theology speaks to (though not necessarily about) healthcare. Please note that this is not an analysis of the theological rightness or...
Baptist churches are by definition autonomous in their polity. It's one of the "distinctives" by which they are known. This does not mean, however, that they are obliged to eschew all confessional, conciliar, or associational relationships with other churches. The...
Recently much of the country was captivated by a six-year-old girl who became the youngest speller to aspire to the Scripps National Spelling Bee. Of course, not everyone was impressed. Some predictably rolled their eyes. Most of these did so because they can't spell...
An argument often raised against the regular practice of church discipline detailed in Matthew 18:15–18 is Peter's comment in 1 Peter 4:8 that "love covers a multitude of sins." In so opining, Peter seems to be suggesting that church members should prefer covering to...
Some time ago I was asked in a conversation whether I ever drank beverage alcohol and I replied “No.” Upon hearing my answer, my interlocutor quickly and harshly reprimanded me for being a legalist. Then, after I pressed him for an explanation, he made a calculated...
Here we go again. A new sensational archaeological announcement that proves that there were first century Jews who embraced Christ and the hope of the resurrection! Or not. This new discovery, made rather suspiciously by the same folks who made the last sensational...
It's flu and virus season, and if you're a public speaker, you probably worry at least occasionally about the possibility of losing your voice. Many years ago, I read some advice from Charles Spurgeon in pages 203-4 of his Lectures to My Students, and in a moment of...
Every three years the DBTS faculty collaborate to produce a Basic Library Booklist for pastors. Of course, books come out more frequently than every three years, so I thought it might be helpful to reflect publicly on the "must haves" in systematic theology from...
Natural Law and the Two KingdomsDownload
Tongues-Are They for Today - SnoebergerDownload
He Who Gives LifeDownload
D A Carsons Christ and Culture Revisited A Reflection and a Response - SnoebergerDownload
Engaging the Enemy But on Whose Terms - SnoebergerDownload
The Logical Priority of Regeneration to Saving Faith - SnoebergerDownload
The Pre-Mosaic Tithe - SnoebergerDownload
A New Systematic Theology of the Christian FaithDownload
A Bible Handbook to the Acts of the ApostlesDownload
We are pleased to announce the release of the 2020 issue of the Detroit Baptist Seminary Journal, now in its 25thyear of publication. This year’s issue features the following articles: Kyle Dunham, “The Role of Biblical Creationism in Presuppositional Apologetics”...
As we muddle through our Coronacrisis together, the Christian has a level of hopefulness that the unbeliever does not have. This is true on a great many levels: We know that if we die, we have a place prepared for us with Christ (Phil 1:23; John 14:1ff). We know that...
No doubt the readers of this blog have reached the saturation point on articles about the Coronavirus. Still, some angles of the issue are getting less attention, and I am hopeful that the following points, in no particular order, may be of some value. When the...
Singing has evolved dramatically throughout Church history. And like many other cultural phenomena, it is evolving more quickly today. This gives our generation a unique opportunity to study that evolution as it happens. I’m not writing today about organs and pianos...
Dr. John Whitcomb, grand patriarch of biblical creationism and flood geology and long-time professor at Grace Theological Seminary, has passed from this life and into the presence of our Lord Christ. Dr. Whitcomb never taught a course at DBTS (though he did speak in...