What Is the Chief End of Man?
What did the authors of the Westminster Catechism mean by "enjoy" in their first question? Did they mean what we mean by the word—"to take delight in"? Or did they in fact mean something different, "to give joy to"? Is man's chief end "to glorify God and give joy to God forever"? I've seen people argue both ways, and I was curious to know who was right. So I went to the best authorities in the field. I checked the OED, and I went to the original source, the Westminster Catechism. Here are the...
Periodic Reminder
I’m the semi-official Logos Bible Software representative for BJU. Honestly, I’d rather your money go through the Campus Store, but there are some details which haven’t fallen into place there yet. Here is the discount link for BJU faculty, staff, and students: http://www.logos.com/academic/bju/2010 I recently heard my pastor say that if he were training for ministry today he would go electronic. I highly recommend the Platinum package to anyone who can work up to it or buy it outright. You...
The Enlightenment Needs Religion like Fish Needs a Bicycle
Enlightenment rationalism has failed as a worldview. There’s just something missing. And some of the Enlightenment’s most redoubtable defenders are willing to admit it. Sort of. That’s the theme of Stanley Fish’s latest blog-column. He tells the sad story of Jürgen Habermas, a German philosopher who has admitted that the “humanist self-confidence of a philosophical reason which thinks that it is capable of determining what is true and false” has been “shaken” by “the catastrophes of the...
Lovest Thou Me More than These?
Are agapao and phileo really different in the New Testament? How about in John 21:15-17, Jesus' famous conversation with Peter? What does the evidence say? I just read a great little book which genuinely helped me understand my Bible better, Roy F. Butler's little known The Meaning of Agapao and Phileo in the Greek New Testament (Lawrence, KS: Coronado Press, 1977). I wrote an Amazon review of it: This short, punchy work takes aim at the very common view that ἀγαπάω (agapao) and φιλέω (phileo)...
Forward this Blog Post to 8 Friends and I will Prove that Your Worldview Is Right
Neil Postman has pointed out that when the flow of information in a society has become a flood, information filters become increasingly important. We need mechanisms to distinguish good information from bad, useful from worthless. Postman’s prescience amazes me, because he wrote Technopoly before the advent of the Internet—before the flood became a worldwide inundation that extends 15 cubits above the mountaintops. We’re drowning in information, and we’re inhaling good, bad, useful, and...