I’ve always had a soft spot for people who were so insightful and influential that they end up being credited with witty statements they never said. G. K. Chesterton is a great example of that phenomenon. Perhaps the most well-known apocryphal account is that...
A few weeks ago I discussed the pro-life position in the DBTS chapel, including the biblical perspective of when human life begins—at conception. I found it interesting to see John Calvin promoting the view that human life begins at conception in an article he wrote...
It is not unusual to find arguments, both from atheists and Christians, that Christmas was started as an attempt by Christians to try to usurp/replace pagan festivals with a Christian one. Atheists make this argument out of an attempt to mock Christians and undermine...
What is the most common religion among teenagers and young adults today (and probably a large percentage if not a majority of adults)? Moralistic Therapeutic Deism (MTD). This was a suggestion first made by Christian Smith (and Melinda Denton) in 2005 in their book...
The Detroit 10/40 Conference is being held this Thursday and Friday in Hamtramck, MI. I had a chance during the pre-conference this week to give a talk addressing the importance of recognizing and evaluating worldviews when sharing the gospel and offering some...
A few weeks back I posted a piece on being conservative. In it I suggested that in every sphere of life there are foundational absolutes to be conserved. This is so because God is the immutable source and standard of all that is good and true and beautiful. There is...
Are science and religion/faith incompatible? The leading lights of the atheism revolution certainly believe they are: Christopher Hitchens: “All attempts to reconcile faith with science and reason are consigned to failure and ridicule.” Richard Dawkins: “I am hostile...
It’s no secret that I have an abiding interest in the place and function of sanctification in the life of believers. The journey that began for me as a doctoral dissertation answering the Keswick model of sanctification that has historically punished dispensational...
Since its introduction last year, the 2011 update of the New International Version has been, to say the least, the subject of quite a bit of controversy. Many folks were surprised at the recent announcement that the MacArthur Study Bible with its 20,000 notes will be...
If you have been following, or trying to follow, all the discussion and controversy surrounding James MacDonald and T. D. Jakes at Elephant Room 2, Mike Riccardi over at the Cripplegate has provided us with an excellent historical survey. Justin Taylor hints that...
According to the latest sales figures from the CBA, three of the best-selling Bibles in the USA are the NIV (New International Version), ESV (English Standard Version), and the HCSB (Holman Christian Standard Bible). Back in September, Liberty University Biblical...
I was in the midst of working through some of Tom Nettles’s comments on a chapter of my dissertation when a small box arrived from Founders Press. It was with great anticipation that I paused to open the package. Inside was the newly released Festschrift for Tom...
Travis B. Williams and David G. Horrell have recently produced an expansive two-volume commentary on 1 Peter. Both volumes together stretch to just over 1,600 pages, covering 105 verses. The introduction alone is over 300 pages. It is one of the most well-researched...
Christian Platonism. Friend or Foe? The Christian system has long been dogged by the question of philosophical grounding and the ancient comparison between Aristotle and Plato. Which (if either) of these philosophical models best sustains Christian...
For those of you who knew about and prayed for my recent open-heart surgery, I want to offer my deepest thanks. The discovery and repair of two long-term heart issues has freshly tuned my heart, metaphorically speaking, to the doctrine of divine providence, easily one...
Eastern church father John Chrysostom (c. 347–407) is best known for his eloquent sermons (more than 700 are extant), wherein he worked verse-by-verse through books of the Bible. In fact, “Chrysostom” is neither a patronymic nor a demonym but rather an appellation...
Read Part 1 of this series here. Christ descended in the incarnation on the first Christmas. He came to earth as a man forever binding himself to humanity. This much is certain. But did Christ descend into Sheol (ᾅδης/hades/inferos/inferna) after his death? I argue...
There are more reasons for pastors to visit the mission field than I’ve listed so far, but I’ll stop my list with the three I’ve given: understanding missions better, improving your leadership of the church’s missions efforts, and being a blessing to God’s servants on...
So far, I have suggested that visiting the mission field does wonderful things for a pastor’s knowledge about missions and his zeal for missions, and both of these help him be a better leader in the local church’s missionary efforts. Learning and leadership are great...
In 1999, I had the privilege of accompanying a missionary on his survey trip to Tanzania. I had been overseas before, but never for this kind of missions trip. It was incredible. It was life-changing. Since then, I’ve traveled many times to foreign fields, and I’d...
Halloween, as many of us have probably noticed, seems to have taken a darker turn in recent years. It's a stark contrast to our childhood memories, characterized by innocence, candy, and dressing up as our favorite characters. Now, we may find ourselves averting our...
I love productivity. So, you can imagine my excitement when I heard about the 2023 E3 Pastor’s conference. This year’s theme is “Focused and Faithful: Dealing with Distractions and Demands in Ministry.” One of our guest speakers is Reagan Rose. He is working hard to...
I was privileged last week to officiate my younger son’s marriage. It was a beautiful event held in a chapel at the Christian university from which he had just graduated. It was not a church wedding, per se. I did use a (modified) version of the Anglican marriage...
I have not engaged substantially in the study of Dietrich Bonhoeffer. Most of the celebrity that Bonhoeffer has earned is in the spheres of ethics, piety, and courage (and he rightly merits our admiration on those counts); still, I have been concerned that unqualified...
This will not be a long post. I am simply commenting on how the blue check marks (“important” Twitter users) think.[1] Notice the screenshot below. A few comments: Fridman’s initial comment is an exposition of the truth of Ecclesiastes 3:11; namely, God has set...
The Incarnation of the Son of God is the centerpiece of our celebration during the Christmas season. The eternal Son of God took on flesh and manifested in visible form the image of the (ordinarily) invisible God (Col 1:15) such that in him all the fullness of...
The abortion debate in the public square often goes awry by delving into details that are irrelevant to the debate, bypassing the assumptions upon which both sides of the debate rest. The following represent the two seminal questions that are at stake. First, we...
Having suggested in my previous post that there was nothing magical or supernatural about the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, we turn now to the other tree: the tree of life. Was this tree of a character fundamentally different from the first tree? Let us...
Among the many trees in the Garden of Eden, Scripture tells us, stood two trees of great significance: the tree of the knowledge of good and evil and the tree of life. This pair of posts is an attempt to understand the nature, effects, and relationship of these two...
As a professor and occasional interim pastor, I routinely hear a question (or something like it): “Is __________ (fill in the blank with any popular author, radio/TV preacher, apologist, musician) a good guy or a bad guy?” Often the question is asked in passing with...
Theological diversity should not exist. But it does. I disagree with people who have the same background as I do, went to the same schools, and go to the same type of churches. How can this happen and what should be done about it? These are the questions that are...
Readers of our blog might be interested in a recent article I wrote for the latest edition of Themelios on a difficult passage and its relation to preaching: Text Criticism and the Pulpit: Should one Preach on the Woman Caught in Adultery?
If you have not yet seen Dr. Mark Snoeberger’s recent article about the death of God in the death of Christ, I encourage you to consider it. Snoeberger’s argument there helps to refine and safeguard the way we think and discuss the death of Christ so that we are...
Analogies are powerful things, for they take something less known and put it beside something better known. The power of the analogy is that it allows the knowledge in the one realm to pass into the other, providing a "lightbulb" moment in many cases. But analogies...
Occasionally you may hear an objection to believing in Christianity because it is simply myth. Those who make this objection are largely behind the times (the scholarly consensus moved past the idea that Jesus could be explained by Greek myth almost 100 years...
One of the benefits of being in Detroit is our proximity to Canada (you can get to Canada from our seminary in about 20 minutes). That allows Canadians to attend our seminary more easily (and allows us easier access to Canadian delicacies like poutine!) Today is...
Choosing Hats (an apologetics site) has a lengthy article pointing out the fallacies of four common arguments given in support of Planned Parenthood and some suggestions for how you can push back against these arguments. I thought I’d provide a brief summary of the...
Over the past decade it has been popular to distinguish between “cultural fundamentalism” and “historic fundamentalism.” Cultural fundamentalism is regarded by its critics as very, very bad. It consists of folksy/outdated traditionalism that has drifted from its...
This past Wednesday, Peter Hubbard, author of Love into Light: The Gospel, the Homosexual, and the Church, delivered the annual William R. Rice lectures at DBTS. In his three lectures, Hubbard talked about how to understand and how to show biblical love to those who...
I teach a seminary class entitled Biblical Creationism. One of the textbooks is Refuting Evolution (2nd ed., 2008) by Jonathan Sarfati of Creation Ministries International. This book is the largest-selling creation book of all time. Because of the importance of this...
Were Old Testament believers, as a necessary part of their sanctification, permanently indwelt by the Holy Spirit? In this post I will respond to this question by initially providing a few resources that treat this subject and then provide a brief theological argument...
Many people do not believe so. Bruce K. Waltke says, “no clear passage [of Scripture] teaches the restoration of national Israel” because “the Jewish nation no longer has a place as the special people of God.” Matt Waymeyer believes that Waltke is wrong and explains...
According to common lore, Henry David Thoreau, the American philosopher, poet, and naturalist, was asked on his deathbed if he had made his peace with God. Thoreau supposedly replied, "I did not know we ever quarreled." Most people, however, are probably not so...
In previous posts (here, here, and here), I have argued that the beginning of the KJV-only movement can be traced to the publication of the 1881 revision of the KJV, the Revised Version (RV), and the opposition to it by Dean Burgon, which was set forth in his 1883...
The King James-only movement believes that only the KJV is the Word of God. All other English versions are corrupt since no modern Bible version (except the New King James Version) is translated from the Textus Receptus (TR) Greek NT, which is considered to be without...
In a recent post, I suggested that the beginning of the King James-only movement can be traced to the publication of the Revised Version NT in 1881. The KJV had been the standard English version of the Bible for over 200 years, when the Church of England decided that...
Dan Wallace, in reporting on his recent debate with Bart Ehrman, says that a papyrus fragment of the Gospel of Mark that preliminarily dates from the 1st century A.D. has recently been discovered. This would make it the earliest copy of the New Testament known to...
There is a legitimate question whether the Promised Land includes territory on the east side of the Jordan River or not. Clearly God promised to give the land of Canaan on the west side of the Jordan River to Abraham and his descendants, but should the land given to...
I am a pastor who wants to preach God’s Word faithfully. I also happen to teach preaching to seminary students who also want to preach God’s Word faithfully. I want, by God’s grace, to teach them well and help them “rightly divide the Word of truth” for God’s glory. I...