One of the more frequent mistakes I see in email and online is confusion between role and roll. These are homophones. They usually make the same sounds in English but they are different words with distinct meanings. One plays a role on . . . Continue reading →
In Acts 17 Luke tells the story of Paul’s encounter with the Athenian Philosophical Society. Luke mentions two philosophical schools, the Epicureans and the Stoics. The latter were looking for the universal rational principle, for the way to align themselves with the . . . Continue reading →
For more here’s a recent Office Hours interview with Mika Edmondson on Dr King’s legacy.
New listeners are joining us daily and the new season of Office Hours: “New Life in the Shadow of Death,” is just around the corner (Sep 9, 2013), so it seems like a good time to mention that Westminster Seminary California has . . . Continue reading →
Kim Riddlebarger spent his summer sabbatical profitably and one of the things he did was to write a series of fascinating posts on evangelicalism in Orange County, California during the 1970s—2013. It’s not an exhaustive account but it does illustrate well the . . . Continue reading →
Carl Trueman has waded into the swamp that is the current discussion of transformationalism. In today’s post at Ref21 he clarifies his earlier post. He’s been raising some of the same questions that Darryl Hart and others have been raising for some . . . Continue reading →
Charles Telfer, Westminster’s soft-spoken language prof, is widely traveled both geographically and theologically. He began his spiritual journey as in the American mainline. From there, like a lot of other people, he moved on to Buddhism and thence to neo-Pentecostalism and finally arriving . . . Continue reading →
Since the wizards of education theory gave up on Latin as a “dead language” English grammar has declined. It doesn’t have to be that way. Learning Latin (or Greek) does improve English grammar but you can improve your English usage without learning . . . Continue reading →
It is common now to regard the old rule against splitting infinitives as outdated and stuffy. That might be so but there are still some reasons for observing the rule. Here is one example: Newly declassified documents, obtained by George Washington University’s National . . . Continue reading →
Distraction is a problem. It’s only anecdotal evidence but I’m seeing more distracted drivers. Their heads drop while they check their phones at the stop light. The light changes and they don’t move. No one honks because everyone else is checking their . . . Continue reading →
William Evans has responded to my critique. In reply I want to ponder what he means by “extrinsic covenantalism” and to try to achieve a measure of clarity by defining our terms. “extrinsic covenantalism” is is new terminology for me. His paradigm . . . Continue reading →
Noun —a member of a small independent group taking part in irregular fighting, typically against larger regular forces: this small town fell to the guerrillas | [ as modifier ] : guerrilla warfare. ORIGIN early 19th cent. (introduced during the Peninsular War . . . Continue reading →
[Orwell’s original 1945 preface to Animal Farm. It was discovered by Ian Angus and published by Bernard Crick in the TLS in 1972]. This book was first thought of, so far as the central idea goes, in 1937, but was not written . . . Continue reading →
As the newspaper business enters its final stage of life and newsrooms with clattering typewriters, copy boys, and ink-stained editors with green eye shades become a distant memory so copy editing and grammar seem to be disappearing with them. The sports pages . . . Continue reading →
Over the years we have recorded Office Hours episodes in different ways. For the last two seasons we’ve experimented by using a technique that was used in the early 70s, putting one voice predominantly in one speaker and another voice predominantly in . . . Continue reading →
Over at more than 95 theses they have been discussing Wikipedia. We’ve all been given reasons not to trust WP, most notably the so-called “vanity edits” made by staffers on capital hill.I’ve been troubled by the entries on covenant theology and most . . . Continue reading →
For most of 2,000 years the Christian church was universally agreed that there is one way of salvation, that the history of redemption was essentially unified. In the post-apostolic church this consensus began to develop very early in the 2nd century in . . . Continue reading →
