Month: April 2009
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3 Pithy Remarks on Handling the Doctrine of the Trinity
Not very helpful: The Trinity: Try to Understand It and You’ll Lose Your Mind. Try to Deny It and You’ll LOSE YOUR SOUL! –mercifully anonymous but sadly widespread Much better: Nowhere else is a mistake more dangerous, or the search more laborious, or discovery more advantageous. –Augustine Sweeeeet: It is rashness to search too far…
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A Smattering of Greek is Worse than None at All
Do you think it is wise for a man who is a pastor in charge of a church to study Greek? Do you think the practical help that would be derived from it would compensate for the valuable time spent upon it when there are so many other important things to do? I most certainly…
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Who Told You God is Love?
How is it that an all-wise and all-loving God could create mankind with a foreknowledge that so many would be doomed to eternal punishment? Finite beings are always getting on perilous ground when they begin to ask how an infinite God could do this or that. An infinitely wise God may have a thousand good…
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Gifted or Determined?
People in general are not born with amazing intellectual or physical giftedness. I continually have to remind myself of this. Most individuals have to work very hard to attain the level of excellence that we admire. Our culture reinforces this belief about natural abilities with language of giftedness–as if some “talent fairy” is throwing around…
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Nothing Happened in April
Actually, lots of interesting anniversaries are coming up in the next couple of weeks: Brainerd was born, Moody was converted, Kant was born, William Miller’s predicted date for Christ’s return came and went, Augustine was baptized, Charles Fuller was born, Luther had his disputation at Heidelberg, and Peter Bohler died. But I’m not going to…
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The End of the World: Why Christians are Culturally Defensive
“If your child wants bread, give them bread and not stone.” Why is most of the Christian subculture perceived as ‘cheesy,’ derivative, and defensive? Why are few Christians, especially youth, convinced of Christianity’s meaningfulness, cultural force, and complexity? Join John Mark Reynolds from the Torrey Honors Institute, Rebecca Fort of Wheatstone Academy, and Keith Buhler,…
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Corrie ten Boom was Born and Died Today
Cornelia ten Boom was born on April 15, 1892, and died on her ninety-first birthday, April 15, 1983. Corrie was from a remarkable family of pious Dutch Christians who constructed a secret room in their home and housed a number of Jews there, hidden from the Nazis. When their secret activities were discovered, the whole…
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What Sanctification Is
What is sanctification? How is it obtained? What does it do for you? Here we have three questions in one and pretty large questions to answer briefly. The questions are answered at length and fully in my book. WHAT THE BIBLE TEACHES in the chapter on Sanctification. To answer briefly, to sanctify means to separate…
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Karl Barth Sinks With The Titanic
On April 14, 1912, the Titanic struck an iceberg. In the early hours of the next morning the great ship sank, and everybody was talking about it. Pastors were talking about it. One pastor, in Safenwil, Switzerland, said to his congregation, “I would like to encourage you to reflect on it.” He was the 26-year…
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Tweets and Possibility Junkies: The Online "Conversation"
Since human communication is only 15% verbal, what are the benefits and deficiencies of online communication? Is it a conversation? Or merely information distribution? Does it promote discussion and deep thinking or is it just “aphoristic” and “attention-getting?” Join John Mark Reynolds and Paul Spears of the Torrey Honors Institute as they discuss the nature…
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He is Risen!
Christ is risen! This is the day for which we’ve been waiting these long Lenten weeks. We have been fasting and praying and lamenting, thinking so much–many of us would say far too much–about our sin and suffering and death. We entered into Lent with a certain somber joy, but that often lapsed into boredom…
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The Living One, Alive with Divine Life
John Webster on the meaning of the resurrection: “Jesus Christ lives. Whatever further claims may be made about the resurrection of Jesus, and whatever consequences it may be necessary to draw from the primitive Christian confession that ‘God raised him from the dead’ (Rom. 10:9), they can only be a repetition, expansion or confirmation of…