I love Stanley Fish for his willingness and ability to see the bankruptcy of his employers. He regularly stands on the foundation which supports him and whacks at it with his prodigious intellectual sledgehammer. I admit I haven't read enough to see if he ever tries...
Theology
From the New Bible Truths F, the 12th Grade BJU Press Bible Textbook Due Out in 2011
It is helpful, even essential, to keep the storyline of Scripture in mind at all times as you read the Bible. If the Bible is about what God is doing to glorify Himself by redeeming His fallen creation, then you’d expect Scripture to point out over and over how God...
Linguistics, Homosexuality, and Friendship
Back in 2005, I wrote the following for the monthly newsletter I’m charged with producing: Touchstone recently dedicated its cover story to the disintegration of male friendships in American society. In the article, perceptive cultural observer Anthony Esolen noted...
A Good Warning for Bloggers and Dissertation Writers
John Frame in “Machen’s Warrior Children,” regarding theological polemics in his community (and, let’s face it, ours): Overall, the quality of thought displayed in these polemics has not been a credit to the Reformed tradition. Writers have gone to great lengths to...
Frame Summarizes Van Til
I really do not have a very good understanding of the Van Til/Clark debates or the Frame/Ligonier debates, but I hope to grow in that understanding. These are all serious men worth taking seriously. For what it’s worth, here’s how Frame summarizes Van Til’s...
Star Trek and Richard Dawkins
It was a beautiful fall day for a seven-year-old kid to be playing outside, but when I came back into the house my dad was watching people in weird pajamas striding around on a spaceship. That was 1990, I believe, and my first episode of Star Trek: The Next...
The Courage to Be Catholic
At the behest of a flashing sign on Wade Hampton, I’ve been listening to EWTN (Eternal World Television Network) radio. EWTN was founded in 1981 by a nun in full habit, Mother Angelica, and now broadcasts over both TV and radio. As you listen to their many radio...
Frame on Helm on Providence
John Frame in a review of Paul Helm’s The Providence of God (Leicester, U. K.: Inter-Varsity Press, 1993. 241pp.) Doesn't Scripture sometimes represent God as "taking risks," being ignorant, changing his mind, giving people the power to resist his will?...
God’s Will
Kevin DeYoung argues in the best-titled book of 2009 that God has a sovereign will and a moral will, but He does not have what is typically thought of as an individual will of direction. He has an individual will only in the sense of those two other wills: He has in...
Just Do Something: How to Make a Decision without Cabbage-Reading
By [Jonathan] Edwards' time witchcraft and the preternatural had almost disappeared from clerical attention. In 1690 Cotton Mather could preach about a prodigious cabbage root he had seen that had one branch shaped like a cutlass, another like a rapier, and another...
The Most Influential Conservative Christian Thinker in America
Robert P. George was recently christened by the New York Times as “this country’s most influential conservative Christian thinker”—and Richard John Neuhaus’ heir. But take a look at the foundation of his ethics: In the American culture wars, George wants to redraw the...
NY Times and Total Depravity
Yesterday I opened up the New York Times home page and the main article struck me: Science has now proclaimed that total depravity and original sin are untenable. Science, in fact, provides a better answer than Christianity to all of life's questions, according to...