Explore our collection of theological essays, biblical studies, and reflections on faith and culture.
During one of my AAPC lectures I read a portion of Richard Mitchell’s provocative little book The Underground Grammarian . Here’s the portion I read: The mind is a rudderless wanderer blown here or there by any puff of breeze. If I mention watermelons, you must think of watermelons; if…
This is the donation thank-you essay for January 2008. Our studies in the Psalms go out month by month in response to donations. I’m putting this one up here as an example, and also because the version I actually mailed out contained several egregious arithmetical errors! So, here is the…
Part 1: Introduction The collapse of the Western tradition in the United States, seen in the hostility to Christianity in government and education, and the elimination of “traditional” or “canon” learning from our institutions of middle and higher learning, provides a crisis and an opportunity for serious believers at the…
While “forgiving oneself” is widely accepted in the secular world as a legitimate and needful thing to do, Christians are rightly suspicious. After all, God is the one who forgives. When we sin against other people, we need to seek their forgiveness, not our own. Nevertheless after looking at Vine’s…
This was originally published as HIStory in the column, “A Pastor’s Perspective” in Ligonier Ministrie’s Tabletalk Magazine . I am not sure of the date but it was probably published in 1999 or 2000. Quick! What’s the basic message of the Bible? Summarize it in as few words as possible…
A Brief Explanation of What a Presbytery Is & Why Pastors in Presbyterian Denominations are Members of Them A belief in the primacy of the local congregation of the Church, I think, reflects the gut feeling of most North American Evangelicals. As a result, the form of Church government universally…
Showing page 219 of 309
Showing page 1 of 43
Reader Chris Jones rebuked me, rightly, for putting up Dana Milbank’s version of an Obama quote and accusing him of a Messiah complex. Here’s a fuller version of the quotation, which makes it clear that Obama was actually saying the enthusiasm was about America’s importance and not his own: “It…
Alvin Plantinga has great fun skewering HBC - “historical biblical criticism” - in an essay in Behind the Text . He notes that critics lament that Christians go on as if HBC never happened, and asks if the advocates of HBC have given Christians reason to do otherwise. He concludes…
Dana Milbank reports that Obama told a House delegation yesterday: “This is the moment . . . that the world is waiting for,” adding: “I have become a symbol of the possibility of America returning to our best traditions.” Yes, indeed, a return to American tradition, particularly the American tradition…
Rivers (volume 1 of Reason, Grace, and Sentiment ) gives a sympathetic portrayal of the post-Restoration latitudinarians. She cites Gilbert Burnet’s history several times. According to Burnet, the latitude-men “and those who were formed under them, studied to examine farther into the nature of things than had been done formerly.…
In Berkeley, the freethinkers had an opponent at least as smart and witty. In an essay in the Guardian , Berkeley’s character, Ulysses Cosmopolita sees a vision: “I saw a great castle with a fortification cast round it, and a tower adjoining to it that through the windows appeared to…
Isabel Rivers (Volume 2 of Reason, Grace, and Sentiment ) has a superb summary of the freethinkers’ account of the corruption of religion. In its origins, religion was “plain, easy, true” and was rooted in and expressed “nature.” But this was diverted “by priests, who, motivated by greed and playing…
Showing page 1488 of 2212
Your weekly digest for all things Theopolis.
