By this answer Christ declared that he did not deliver any other rule of life than that which had formerly been delivered in the law of the Lord. Thus he both bore testimony to the divine law, that it was a doctrine . . . Continue reading →
HeidelQuotes
Don’t Ignore The Conditions of Omar
A jihadi group occupying the Syrian town of Raqqa recently gave Christian minorities living there three choices: 1) convert to Islam, 2) remain but pay tribute and accept third-class subject status, or 3) die by the sword. According to the BBC, the . . . Continue reading →
The Most Destructive Problem At Present: Confounding Law And Gospel
Many are the mistakes at present about religious matters; but none are more destructive than those which concern the law and the gospel. The generality of our people confound them, and put one in the place of the other. Some suppose they . . . Continue reading →
Submitting To Scripture
Being a complementarian woman in an egalitarian world is wildly unpopular; it can also be perceived as decidedly ignorant. Some readers may sympathize with my hope for reprieve. And while the word has fallen out of favor with some, I know no . . . Continue reading →
The Sermon On The Mount In The First Use
So it is with the whole of the discourse. The new law of the Sermon on the Mount, in itself, can only produce despair. Strange indeed is the complacency with which modern men can say that the Golden Rule and the high . . . Continue reading →
Secularization Interrupted
it was becoming increasingly clear that at least on the street, the veneer of Christianity was peeling away to reveal a canvas of various native (pre-Christian) folk paganisms. As Cambridge historian Patrick Collinson concludes, the Reformation was an “episode of re-Christianization or . . . Continue reading →
Maturing The Sinner’s Prayer
If potential converts (children or adults) are so unfamiliar with basic Bible doctrine that they can understand nothing more than “asking Jesus into their heart,” they probably should wait to make a commitment, until they understand the gravity of sin, and Christ’s . . . Continue reading →
The Irony Of Denying Divine Impassibility: A Greek God
This is why most of theologians who espouse a suffering God intentionally advocate a panentheistic notion of God”that is, that while God is potentially more than the cosmos, the cosmos is constitutive of His very being. (Those theologians who espouse a suffering . . . Continue reading →
A Conspiracy Of Silence
Yet the leaders of the “young, restless, and reformed” have not typically allowed that concern to curtail their comments in the past. Many of them have been outspoken about the teaching of Joel Osteen, for example. In their early days, when the . . . Continue reading →
What The Prophets Knew
In taking the comfort of the prophetic promises to our hearts we do not, perhaps, always realize what after the tempests and tumults, in the brief seasons of clear shining which God interposed, such relief must have meant to the prophets themselves. . . . Continue reading →
Missed It By That Much
That depiction in the new Cosmos matches the standard textbook story of Bruno, but it is misleading and in some ways downright wrong. For starters, Bruno was not the first to link the idea of infinite space with the infinite glory of . . . Continue reading →
The Reformation Of Worship In Geneva
The reformers did not hold back in their assault on the physical and sensory elements of traditional worship: all sacred objects such as crucifixes, statues of saints, and holy relics were removed from the temples.1 Most were systematically destroyed; a few were . . . Continue reading →
The Difference Between Reformed And Revived
So the “reformed” and the “revived” make two different kinds of determination when they look for Reformation and revival. Proponents of revival make claims that should be reserved for God, that is, whether a soul has truly come to new life in . . . Continue reading →
Of Psalms, Hymns, And Spiritual Songs And The RPW
The Regulative Principle of worship is a principle based on the sufficiency of Scripture which teaches that everything we do in the worship of God must have positive warrant in His Word. Every part of worship must be expressly commanded by God . . . Continue reading →
Niceness: The Eddie Haskell Of Evangelicalism
I’ve recently said on a Mortification of Spin podcast that niceness is the Eddie Haskell of evangelicalism. It’s haskellmanipulating, but not really loving, manners without truth. Have we become more concerned with our expectations of politeness at the expense of truth? I . . . Continue reading →
The Pope’s Magic Beads
Pope Francis confessed Thursday that he took the rosary cross of his late confessor from his casket and wears it to this day in a fabric pouch under his cassock. He said he did so telling the late priest, “Give me half . . . Continue reading →
Of King Cakes And Christian Liberty
Lost amid the ashes and sausages, King cakes and shrove pancakes — can’t forget about the pancakes — is Zwingli’s deeper concern about the nature of Christian sanctification. As a cradle Catholic who’s done the ashes, and a former evangelical whose fasted . . . Continue reading →
Michael Crichton On Climate “Science”
It’s 1991, I am flying home from Germany, sitting next to a man who is almost in tears, he is so upset. He’s a physician involved in an FDA study of a new drug. It’s a double-blind study involving four separate teamsone . . . Continue reading →
The Mormon Denial Of The Christian Doctrine Of The Trinity
Latter-day Saints also believe strongly in the fundamental unity of the divine. They believe that God the Father, Jesus Christ the Son, and the Holy Ghost, though distinct beings, are unified in purpose and doctrine. It is in this light that Latter-day . . . Continue reading →
Christian Doctrinal Interpretations Vs. Joseph Smith’s Revelations
These passages can be interpreted in different ways. Yet by viewing them through the clarifying lens of revelations received by Joseph Smith, Latter-day Saints see these scriptures as straightforward expressions of humanity’s divine nature and potential. Many other Christians read the same . . . Continue reading →