This quote has been bouncing around in my head a lot since I read it a few weeks ago. It's John Frame, presuppositionalist apologist, responding to Gary Habermas, evidentialist apologist: The attitude of many [non-Christian] people today is that, whatever Habermas and...
Theology
After Virtue
This week I've been plowing through Alasdair MacIntyre's landmark 1981 book After Virtue: A Study in Moral Theory. MacIntyre's destructive argument is very important, I think. His constructive argument I'm still reading through, but he's given enough indication of...
Review: Stop Asking Jesus Into Your Heart: How to Know for Sure You Are Saved
Stop Asking Jesus Into Your Heart: How to Know for Sure You Are Saved by J.D. Greear My rating: 4 of 5 stars Stop Asking Jesus Into Your Heart is pretty standard conservative evangelical Reformed Baptist material covering aspects of soteriology related to assurance....
Racism and Homophobia
Alarmists have been warning about coming American persecution of Christians—or exaggerating existing persecution—for a long time. It's a staple of those (supposedly type-written) fundraising letters sent out by parachurch groups. I've always been impatient and...
The Parable of the Soils and the (Now Dead?) Lordship Salvation Debate
Isn't Luke 8 decisive on the question of Lordship salvation? As I understand it (and I had a little difficulty nailing it down in my research), those who oppose "Lordship salvation"—the Zane Hodges, Charles Ryrie, Grace Evangelical Society side—says that whoever...
A Podcast Worth Listening To
I haven't been able to get into podcasts much; I just don't have much opportunity to listen to stuff. But to my tech life I recently added a bluetooth headset and a (finally) working smartphone (T-Mobile no-contract $30/mo. plan and a used Craigslist phone), and...
Benjamin B. Warfield, The Right of Systematic Theology (Edinburgh: T. & T. Clark, 1897), 83-84.
We not only have no desire to deny, we rather wish to proclaim, the great truth involved in the watchword of the greatest of the fathers and schoolmen, Credo ut intelligam ["I believe in order to understand"], and adopted by the Reformers in the maxim of Fides...
Natural Law
A growing (?) number of conservative evangelicals are becoming aware of natural law arguments in the public square. These arguments are attractive because We know from experience that bringing up the Bible directly in public debates won't likely get us anywhere. The...
How to Work Christianly
My esteemed coworker, Rachel Santopietro, is one of the three "stars" of this edifying video. And what she describes is what I do: I help Christian textbook authors integrate the Bible naturally and powerfully (at least that's the ideal!) into subjects from which...
Kevin Bauder on Fundamentalism and Scholarship
I often use my blog as a handy way for me to remember something—and the links below are something I want to have easy access to. They are the 12 short essays on Fundamentalism and Scholarship produced by Kevin Bauder of Central Seminary a few years back. Kevin has...
Review: The Abolition of Man
The Abolition of Man by C.S. Lewis My rating: 4 of 5 stars In The Abolition of Man Lewis argues for the "Tao"—his ad hoc technical term for natural law. Several people recommended this to me as the best case for natural law. I'm not ready to say that, because it...
Moisés Silva on the Hermeneutical Spiral
Moisés Silva's essay in Revelation and Reason: New Essays in Reformed Apologetics offers a somewhat startling thesis: "My theological system should tell me how to exegete." (86) Many exegetes profess to come to the text sans system, but Silva argues that because this...