A relative recently informed me that my baby, now that he is 6 months old, can understand 75% of what I say. This has gotten me thinking. Does that mean that when I say, “Hey, baby!” he starts to lose the thread at about ba-? Or does he just lose interest? Or is it...
Mark Ward
Two Sides of Legalism
A reporter goes up to smokers in a New York City park and asks them to put out their cigarettes. It’s an experiment, because smoking in such public places could possibly become illegal there. A few smokers approached in parks were courteous, or cowed, enough to put...
Seductive Etymologies
Etymological studies have long been an alluring seductress to students of the Bible. .... Etymological studies, through no fault of their own, have become a menace to sound interpretation. Those who sometimes maintain only the slightest grasp of the Bible's original...
Stanley Fish’s NYTimes.com Columns Are Usually Interesting
There are a few themes that have developed on this blog. Usage Determines Meaning. Technology gives and technology takes away. Think carefully about your Bible software purchases. The standard view of ἀγάπη love out there is suspect. Stanley Fish’s NYTimes.com columns...
Paper-Writing Tech Tip
I’m writing a dissertation in Turabian format, which means double-spaced lines (except in footnotes). That, in turn, means I can’t see very much of my work at once: By Word’s count, I can see 299 words on that screen. But my writing style involves a lot of re-reading,...
Edwards Quote Success!
John Piper’s foundational sermon for his philosophy of Christian Hedonism is entitled “Let Your Passion Be Single.” In it he quotes Jonathan Edwards as saying this (I’ll include Piper’s two interpolations): I should think myself in the way of my duty, to raise the...
The Degradation Of Language And Why We Should, Such As, Care
A teacher of mine heard me expounding my Usage Determines Meaning doctrines and sent me a courteous e-mail in which he offered one rejoinder to my laissez-faire attitude toward usage. He pointed to a sentence he had just read in a student paper: At the extreme were...
Modern Pilgrim
I just got to write a fun article for a brand new BJU Press online publication, Modern Pilgrim. Feel free to check it out!
Beckwith Back With Rome
Frances Beckwith, former president of the Evangelical Theological Society, has converted back to the Roman Catholicism of his youth. That’s old news as the blogosphere counts slackness. It’s becoming old news, too, that Dinesh D’Souza, who a lot of people thought was...
How to Get Married
Every few months I take a detailed look at my blog stats, and for several years I have had one unexpectedly popular post: “How to Get Married.” The post was actually a joke. My advice was to get Parallels Desktop for Mac software; pretty soon you’ll be married (worked...