The scientific community is abuzz this week with the announcement that liquid water has been confirmed on Mars. Of course scientists have long known that water is abundant in our universe (including on Mars), but specific evidence of a stable supply of liquid water...
What is religion? Most of us think we know what it is, but when we actually try to define it we run into some difficulty. Perhaps the most common definitions focus on beliefs—a religion is belief in God or spiritual beings. But several systems typically considered...
A couple of weeks ago Union University made news by practicing secondary separation (or at least what fundamentalists have been pummeled over the last 70 years for practicing under that label): they broke fellowship with an organization of professing believers—the...
I’ve recently noted our society’s increasing loss of true tolerance, as well as the dangers of the current orthodoxy working to suppress other ideas. But what I have not yet considered is whether tolerance is even a good thing. To simplify things, let’s simply focus...
“Love is love.” That slogan has popped up countless times in our nation’s dialogue in recent days. It’s part of an effort to shape the hearts and minds of Americans on social issues. It’s simple, succinct, and catchy. It has some appeal, especially to people who value...
Having laid out in the previous several posts what I believe may be commended as “received laws of language,” I would like to close this series with a practical look at a pair of difficult passages that stretch the limits of the discussion: Matthew’s use of...
Having discussed two seminal axioms of language that seem to qualify as “received laws of language” (the Univocal Nature of Language and the Jurisdiction of Authorial Intent) and offering a qualification concerning the dual authorship of Scripture often raised by...
Having established two axiomatic principles of language that govern the intelligible use of words (the Univocal Nature of Language and the Jurisdiction of Authorial Intent), we need to pause, I think, to make an important qualification—not so much a third axiom of...
A second received law of language that may be deduced from common usage is the Jurisdiction of Authorial Intent. I proposed last week that a text can have but one signification in any given context; this week I suggest further that the sole arbiter of that...
We come now to the heart of this series, viz., a discovery of the “received laws of language” that we as humans unconsciously use every day as we engage in ordinary communication with one another. The material here is not new with me, but rather is a distillation...
When evaluating the truth or error of any proposed theological statement or system, there are two primary questions that the theologian asks: the question of correspondence and the question of coherence. In using these two terms, I am using two recognized...
For decades it was assumed, by both sides of the debate between dispensational and Reformed theology, that the primary distinction between the two models (there were really no other viable evangelical options in the early days) was hermeneutical—dispensationalists...
This week the Gospel Coalition’s annual meeting features a panel discussion with panelists who reject the Gospel. On the face of things this seems to be out of step with TGC’s founding principles, which exalt commitment to the Gospel as the singularly non-negotiable...
Another week of blogs, another contribution to the relentless stream of warnings to all Christians everywhere never to let music preference be a factor in deciding where to go to church, and above all never, ever to leave a church for this reason. This unremitting...
In our last post we appealed to John 17 to show that a properly ordered witness for Christ must avoid the two poles of (1) being both in the world and of the world, hoping the gospel will advance wordlessly through personal intimacy alone (Christ of culture) and (2)...
I work in an almost exclusively Christian environment. With the exception of a few brief encounters with folks delivering packages, reading the gas meter, and such, my whole workday is spent with believers. I’m not the best person, I admit, to speak of sharing Christ...
A couple of weeks ago I wrote a post about the myth of unchurched Christians. Unfortunately the reality is that there are a good number of professing Christians who either shy away from church membership or avoid church attendance altogether. The problem of professing...
Last week, Pope Francis made headlines by announcing in his weekly address that we will be able to see our pets in heaven. Specifically, he pontificated, “Paradise is open to all of God’s creatures.” Since this statement is sure to set the theological world abuzz, I...
Students sometimes ask me the difference between the hermeneutics employed by Covenant, New Covenant, Progressive Dispensational, and Traditional Dispensational theologian/exegetes. Perhaps the easiest way to answer is to offer an example of one of the most heavily...
With the election hard upon us, it is a good time to be reminded that nothing we do can rightly be divorced from the sufficient governance of Christian Scripture. No pockets of neutrality exist in any sphere of life, including our politics. While the battery of issues...
In the midst of Paul’s argument for the bodily resurrection of believers, he offers a proverb: “Do not be deceived: ‘Bad company ruins good morals.’” (1 Cor 15:33). At first it seems a bit out of place—why would Paul be concerned about who the Corinthians are hanging...
Among the many promises of John 14–17 are several that anticipate heightened activity by the Holy Spirit in the apostolic era. These have long been a source of both comfort and confusion to NT believers. Assurances that the Spirit would assume new functions of...
I’m working up a paper on ‘The Story of Israel in Hebrews 11’ and one of the preliminary matters I’m trying to get a handle on is the point of the chapter. That is, before I can say anything about how Hebrews tells Israel’s story, I need to figure out what the...
When I was a boy I grew up in a traditional American home. My father taught me the value of hard work, integrity, courtesy, and the disciplines of standing alone for right, offering a firm handshake, and looking people square in the eye. He had learned these things...
Normally when book reviews appear on this website, they’re for new books: cutting edge books that add some new piece of information or fresh analysis to our ever-growing bank of theological information. But we also need to reflect on historical gems—classic treatments...
And Adam was not the one deceived; it was the woman who was deceived and became sinner.—1 Timothy 2:14 Does 1 Tim 2:14 suggest women are more easily deceived than men? Here I want to answer this question by saying something (1) about the function of 1 Tim 2:14 and,...
Last week I read a curious piece that purported to identify the exact point at which Pilgrim was saved in John Bunyan’s Pilgrim’s Progress: was it at the wicket gate, at the foot of the cross, or perhaps even at some other point? I confess a measure of confusion on...
If you think Paul wrote Hebrews, you’re in good company (see, e.g., here). One problem with this conclusion, however, is that what Paul says in Gal 1:11–12 seems to contradict what Paul says in Heb 2:3, presuming Paul wrote Heb 2:3. That is, in Gal 1:11–12 Paul...
Just yesterday I came across a brief op-ed piece with that title (see here), written by New York Times columnist David Brooks. If you don’t yet follow Brooks’ work, you really should. His work is not only well-written and informed, but consistently fair. In any case,...
During Christmas season each year, we read the accounts of Jesus’ birth in the Gospels (Matt 1:18–25; Luke 1:26–38), and we are reminded once more of our Savior’s Virgin Birth. What exactly do we mean by the Virgin Birth of Christ? Maybe that’s obvious, but let’s...
One of the more troubling mis-translations in the history of English Bible translation (at least in terms of its popular acceptance and impact) is the King James rendering of Luke 2:14 as "Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace, good will toward men." Despite...
For some reason it seems to have started earlier than usual this year. Naïvely perhaps, I’ve always thought “Black Friday” referred to the day after Thanksgiving (i.e., Friday). The reality is that we’ve all been receiving emails and seeing print ads about Black...
As often happens with discussions of worldliness among Christians, Pearson’s post yesterday sparked a bit of disagreement (much of which confirmed the first paragraph of the post). As Pearson noted beforehand, the debate typically includes what it means to love the...
We live in a hyper-sexualized and semi-pornographic culture. The problem dominates popular advertising, pervades our entertainment choices, and even weasels its way into our churches. The concept of modesty is no longer a legitimate standard for censure, but an object...
C. S. Lewis once remarked that the biblical “accounts of the ‘miracles’ in first-century Palestine are either lies, or legends, or history. And if all, or the most important, of them are lies or legends then the claim which Christianity has been making for the last...
In an extended discussion of prayer, John Calvin suggested six reasons why believers should pray to God. Those reasons tell us a lot about what Calvin saw prayer accomplishing. However, over and above these six reasons, Calvin saw one overarching reason by Christians...
If you interact with those among the New Atheism crowd, whether personally or through writing, it won’t take you long to pick up on their intellectual arrogance. Phrases like “I like to use my mind” or “I don’t need the crutch of belief in God” and words like “moron”...
Sharia is Islamic law. However, it is not limited to the areas that Americans believe should be regulated by law but extends to the minute details of life. Sharia has two sources: (1) the Qur’an, which Muslims believe is divine revelation delivered by Muhammad, and...
In this post my goal is to utilize the issue of homosexuality as a case study to demonstrate that the “Jesus + Nothing = Everything” approach to sanctification is not merely an academic wrinkle, but an error of such prodigious import that it threatens the very essence...
“[A]n understanding of the Exodus is...essential for understanding and probing the theology of the Bible as it unfolds historically.” Stephen Dempster makes this point in a recent article on the role of Exodus in biblical theology titled “Exodus and Biblical Theology:...
For those of you who have attempted to get a handle on the theologically difficult topic of Middle Knowledge or Molinism, there is a nice introduction by Paul Helm over at Ligonier Ministries blog.
From time to time, people assert that if a person believes God has predestined all things then that person will necessarily tend to downplay the importance of prayer. But is that really true? Granted, we all pray less than we ought, but does belief in divine...
One of the tensions of pan-denominational evangelicalism that fixates entirely on Gospel essentials is the eclipse of the bookends of biblical theology: creation and new creation. Details about the doctrines of creation and eschatology are interesting, we are told,...
A few months ago I expressed some fairly strong reservations about a nefarious variation of “Gospel-Centered” sanctification that has captured the attention of a number of conservative evangelical luminaries—a preach-the-Gospel-to-yourself,...
Last week a respondent to one of my earlier posts chastised me for addressing matters of sin and sanctification because in doing so, I was ignoring the elephantine issues of “poverty, homelessness, abuse, ignorance, and injustice”—in brief, I was violating the spirit...
There, I've said it. OK, maybe (and I mean MAYBE) a case could be made that a mature believer could justify watching portions of the show as a means of cultural analysis and critique, but if a professing believer watched its totality as a means of entertainment or...
One of my goals each semester is to try to convince students that writers of the past are not only worth reading but are also much more enjoyable and more valuable to read than they may have imagined. With this in mind, I occasionally reread what C. S. Lewis had to...
We’d just finished up another night at Christianity Explored when I stumbled upon a discussion my friend Lisa was having with a guest she’d brought to the study. Seeing me approach, Lisa said something to her guest about the fact that I taught the Bible for a living...
MACP Roundtable 2012: Dave Doran, Michael Vlach (The Master's Seminary), and Neal Cushman (Northland International University) explain why eschatology is important for an individual believer and for church life. Check out the other topics covered in the MACP...