Biographer Andrew Hoffecker describing Charles Hodge's time in graduate school: He eventually came to the conclusions that graduate students must make for surviving. First, one cannot master everything…. Second, he came to the realization that a fundamental feature of...
Theology
Simple Carson Quote
I worry about ministries that focus just on correcting everyone. What I hope to do in all my writing is to promote the truth and proclaim it positively. When we correct, we do it because we think that the glory of God is being diminished. Part of a positive...
Esther’s Story, Our Story, and God’s: A Meditation
The book of Esther never mentions God. It doesn’t discuss temple services or sanctification or justification. And yet without these biblical ideas providing context, the story will make little sense—or the wrong sense! The teaching of Esther is all the more profound...
A Quote Worth Saving
The writer [of NT epistles] does not announce a succession of revelations, or arrest the inquiries which he encounters in men’s hearts by the unanswerable formula, “Thus saith the Lord.” He arouses, he animates, he goes along with the working of men’s minds, by...
Calvinism vs. Arminianism Among Baptists of Two Stripes
I’m neither a prophet nor the son of a prophet, and I work for a non-profit organization (sort of). Plus, I’ve already used that joke before, and it’s not even mine. But I still think what I’m about to predict will come true.Wait for it… Calvinism and Arminianism will...
What the Bible Actually Says
If we are really Bible people, then we won’t let our rhetoric about the dangers of moralism (or antinomianism!) get out of kilter with what the Bible actually says. I tried to point that out in an article about to be published in mercilessly-cut-to-950-words-form on...
An Illustration I Hope to Use Often to Elucidate Redemptive-Historical/Biblical-Theological Reading of Scripture
In the summer of 2006 I went on a mission team with a choir of 25 other young people (one of whom I decided to keep). We went to numerous cities in Germany, Switzerland, Italy, Poland, and Lithuania. I often drove one of the four vehicles in our caravan, but I was...
Flavel on the Christian Duty to Observe God’s Providence
My good pastor read this whole chapter from John Flavel's The Mystery of Providence to our congregation last night. I have never heard him read something to lengthy to us; he obviously felt it was important. You'll see why if you click! Flavel knows his Bible. It's...
Iain Provan on Higher Critics
From Iain Provan's excellent 1 & 2 Kings commentary: It is not entirely clear why we should dig the great ditch between biblical Israel and historical Israel that the newer historians demand. It is, after all, the case that all historiography, whether ancient or...
[Elegant and Humorous Piscine Pun Here]
It's like Long John Silver's. Fish is on a roll. He even tells us who wrote Hebrews! Thanks, Dr. Fish! Really, you're missing out on the most remarkable writing at nytimes.com if you fail to click on my Stanley Fish links.
Dale Ralph Davis on Micro-Salvation
Every time God lifts you out of the miry bog and sets your feet upon a rock is a sample of the coming of the kingdom of God, a down payment of the full deliverance, the macro-salvation that will be yours at last. 1 Samuel: Looking on the Heart, 25.
Dempster on Samson
A perceptive observation from a book full of such insights into the Old Testament: Stephen Dempster: The structure of Judges shows that Israel gradually descends into a moral and political quagmire, and this is mirrored in the sequence of judges themselves, most of...