Theology

The Distinction Between Legal and Moral

The god of [any given] system is the fountainhead of [its] morality. This is why Christians have an easy distinction in their minds between “legal” and “moral.” But for those who believe that there is no intelligence beyond our corporate and collective intelligence,...

Never Knowing Where We’re Going We Can Never Go Astray

Read this while poking around the Internet for philosopher Richard Rorty's obituary: Michael Williams, philosophy department chairman at Johns Hopkins University, said Dr. Rorty, one of his mentors, "taught the lesson there are no fixed and permanent foundations for...

Climate Change and Epistemology

Global climate change is probably my favorite current illustration for the role authority plays in epistemology, and this EconTalk discussion with Matt Ridley explores this very interplay in an interesting and accessible way. Ridley is a "lukewarmer," not a full...

Great Insight on Love

A great insight on love from my friend, and fellow Jonathan Edwards dissertator, Ryan Martin: Love in popular culture could never be cultivated, or else it would be inauthentic. Inauthenticity is adding any kind of layer to what is most natural and “free” (cf. 2 Pet...

Augustine on Inerrancy

I searched for probably two hours for a fantastic Augustine quote I simply cannot believe I didn't save or blog already. I could not find it anywhere, and I'm pretty OCD with my notes and files. So I resorted to Quora. Thank you, Quora! I asked, St. Augustine once...

CFR

Walsh and Middleton make a good point about the Creation-Fall-Redemption story of Scripture: Christians may tend to think of the Bible as all about sin (fall) and salvation (redemption). But without creation, neither of these concepts makes sense. What is sin but the...

New Kevin DeYoung Book

Kevin DeYoung, What Does the Bible Really Teach about Homosexuality? (Wheaton, IL: Crossway, 2015), 158 pp. Here's a PDF sample, and here’s a study guide. DeYoung is using his gifts to serve the church; as I've said before, he's a gifted popularizer. But that doesn't...

Kurt Aland Says “Nein” to Textual Errors in the New Testament

Interesting video featuring legendary New Testament textual critic Kurt Aland: At the very end of the video there is an interview with Aland, and from it I took the following stills. First the interviewer (in German, of course) asks Aland whether there might be any...

A Real-Life Heather on Her Two Mommies

An important insight from a real-life Heather with two mommies, who writes with empathy and respect for her mother, but who grew up needing a dad: Gay marriage doesn’t just redefine marriage, but also parenting. It promotes and normalizes a family structure that...

Three Good Reasons to Resist Making Relativism Our Latest Bogeyman

Merold Westphal on hermeneutics and relativism: We are easily frightened by the specter of "anything goes," and there is no shortage of those willing to play on this fear in order to imply their own absoluteness. But there are three good reasons to resist this fear:...

This is What We Pay Andrée Seu For

Excellent, from Andrée Seu Peterson: Sometimes I wonder if the inventors of the other LGBT brand are a tad embarrassed. They keep having to add new letters to their acronym, and the more they tack on the weaker their case looks. In simpler days when it was merely an...