Theodore Gioia in the L.A. Review of Books: In the mass-media era, the general public primarily experiences classical music through detached snippets of larger pieces extracted to lend their symbolic power to a commercial agenda. Artists and advertisers dissect...
Theology
Where Should I Train for Ministry?
I just posted the following in a Facebook group composed largely by pastors who graduated from KJV-Only institutions. One asked which schools group members would recommend for a youth pastor. I jotted out some thoughts I’ve been wanting to send to the KJV-Only...
Alastair Roberts on Fundamentalism, the Graham-Pence Rule, and Purity as Avoidance
I'm becoming an Alastair Roberts fanboy. I can't wait for his Crossway book on a theology of gender—except that the guy can write 4,000 intellectually rich and biblically sound words a minute, and I actually want to get through the book so I'm hoping the editors can...
Edifying Words on Gender and on Civility
Edifying words from theologian Alastair Roberts: Much of the discourse on gender issues in all quarters has pitted men and women against each other, treating men and women chiefly as competitors or opponents, rather than as loving collaborators. Our differences, I am...
A Great Pro-Protestant Argument against Sacred Tradition from Ross Douthat
Matthew Lee Anderson and Derek Rishmawy just spoke on their Mere Fidelity podcast to my favorite New York Times columnist, the conservative Catholic Ross Douthat, about his new book To Change the Church: Pope Francis and the Future of Catholicism, a work critiquing...
A Must-Read Must-Read
I'm really liking Jonathan Leeman. He humbly lets his gifts be sublimated to those of Mark Dever when the two chat on 9Marks Pastors Talk episodes, but when I read The Church and the Surprising Offense of God's Love and then went and heard his paper at the 2016 ETS—I...
The Preserved Word of God for English-Speaking Peoples
“Preserved” is the key word in KJV-Onlyism these days. Just about every KJV-Only doctrinal statement I see uses that word “preserved.” But I’ve been thinking for a long time along with famous systematic theologian Inigo Montoya, I do not think it means what they think...
Wise Words from Lesslie Newbigin on Pluralism and Secularism
I'm listening to Lesslie Newbigin's Foolishness to the Greeks (Eerdmans, 1988). My local library had it among their digital audio loans, and I thought it was high time I went through a Newbigin book. The book comes from lectures he delivered in Princeton's Warfield...
Pervasive Interpretive Pluralism and Recent Trinitarian Controversies
Just a short reflection on the argument among Reformed theologians about theology proper (read, for example, Frame’s review of James Dolezal here and here). I think some of my brothers and sisters in Christ are looking to confessions and scholastic categories and...
Former Fundie on Genesis 1
"Former Fundie" Ben Corey notes that extraterrestrial life may be discovered on what Trekkies would call a likely "Class M" planet—a planet that has the conditions for supporting life. Does this shoot the literal reading of Genesis 1? Corey summarizes two responses to...
Should I Sign A Reforming Catholic Confession?
A friend writes: I am confused and maybe I have jumped to conclusions about the Catholic Confession of Faith issue. But, it sounds like we, as conservatives, are tying to come together with Catholics. Is that the way I am to take it? Or, am I wrong? I certainly hope...
Final Lecture for Asia Center for Advanced Christian Studies
In which I take students through How to Think about Others' Exegetical Fallacies and then talk through some portions of my dissertation that focused on ἀγάπη (agape) and what it "really" means. No, like, for real this time.