Colin Gunton on Frameworks of Belief
All interpretation is shaped by the frameworks of belief which we bring to it; the hope is that the text—or rather the Holy Spirit’s opening up of the text—will enable us both to use and to transcend those frameworks with ever new insights into the truth of the gospel. —Colin Gunton, Christ and Creation Right on. The postmodern insight that everyone, by definition, sees through his own eyes and from his own location must not forget the fact that in reading the Bible we are not merely dealing...
Grace Her Fears Relieved: My Wife’s Salvation Testimony
Today my wife and I are joining Cornerstone Baptist Church of Anacortes, Washington—if the people will have us. As I proofread my wife's testimony of salvation through Christ, I knew I had to share it on the blog. I do so by permission. I was not born into a believing family. My parents were successful people, but very far from God. God used their personal struggles to humble them, though they sought first for moral reform through the Mormon church. But God pursued them still, and when I was 7...
“There’s no God in Transformers!”
My wife and I do allow our children to watch some TV, but we often feel vaguely guilty about it, even though we’re super careful in what and how much they watch. Here’s one reason why we feel that guilt: my five-year-old son was watching his then favorite cartoon, a preschool version of Transformers, a set of rescue robots who live on Griffin Rock, an island town, and most nights he would request that his bedtime story for the evening feature a certain subset of those characters. He would...
My New Job
My new job has mostly jelled: I am paid to put more words on the Internet. I write three to four pieces of content for Faithlife each week and provide sundry other consulting services inside and (a tiny bit, so far) outside the company as a part of a team called the "Logos Pros." The Pros have academic training and ministry experience, so we know what our customers need. We serve the mission of Faithlife, which in turn is to serve the church by helping Bible students grow in the light of God's...
Review: J. I. Packer: An Evangelical Life
J. I. Packer: An Evangelical Life by Leland Ryken My rating: 4 of 5 stars One of my favorite evangelical jokes showed up in a Christianity Today a number of years ago. It was an ad for a (fake) new book called The Collected Blurbs of J. I. Packer. The joke, if you don’t already get it, is funny on two counts: Packer is always blurbing books, and he’s always having his occasional works collected by editors. Because Packer is so ubiquitous in evangelical literature, he's one of those figures you...