QCNT
If you aren't meticulous in your note-taking, always using quotation marks and saving your full citation, you might accidentally do this: One of the distinguishing marks of the child of God is love, a love that originates in God, displays itself in actions of self-sacrifice, and is evidence of eternal life. Daniel L. Akin, 1, 2, 3 John, The New American Commentary, (Nashville: Broadman & Holman, 2001), 161. What's wrong with this 2001 commentary on 1 John? Well, read John Stott's 1988...
Blog-o-morph-o-sphere
I’ve watched the blogosphere morph and grow over time; I think I became a regular blog-reader in 2001 or 2002. (I had a blog then, too, but it didn’t last—mainly because I did not think I had anything worth saying publicly; I wanted to get some education.) You know people’s (only) criticism of Twitter? “I don’t care what someone had for breakfast this morning!” That used to be a not-uncommon attitude toward blogs. “Why would I want to read someone’s journal?” But I don’t remember that attitude...
The F-Word on a Family-Safe Blog, Or Why Ken Myers Was Right in 1989
The New York Times' Jon Pareles today in a perceptive article: It’s some kind of milestone: Three of the Top 10 hits on last week’s pop music chart have choruses that can’t be played uncensored on the radio and won’t have their original lyrics quoted in this family newspaper. All three use variations on a familiar, emphatic, percussive four-letter word. The offending syllable is right in the titles of two of the songs, deployed as an imperative by Cee Lo Green and as an adverbial participle by...
John Newton’s Words of Wisdom on Controversy
A minister, about to write an article criticizing a fellow minister for his lack of orthodoxy, wrote to John Newton of his intention. Newton replied as follows (the text has been edited by IIIM Magazine for archaisms). Dear Sir, As you are likely to be engaged in controversy, and your love of truth is joined with natural warmth of temper, my friendship makes me solicitous on your behalf. You are of the strongest side; for truth is great, and must prevail; so that a person of abilities...
I Get By with a Little Help from My Friends
I need your help. If not now, when? If not you, who else? The other reader of this blog?! But you kind of have to know a little Greek—or at least know the letters and basic ideas about conjugation. Here's my problem: BDAG, the standard Κοίνη Greek lexicon, is telling me that someone used the word ἀγάπη in an inscription a long time ago, and a transcription of that inscription is in an 1885 book, Inscriptiones antiquae orae septentrionalis Ponti Euxini Graecae et Latinae, edited by B. Latyschev...