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“Creed,” by Steve Turner
We believe in Marxfreudanddarwin. We believe everything is OK as long as you don’t hurt anyone, to the best of your definition of hurt, and to the best of your knowledge. We believe in sex before during and after marriage. We believe in the therapy of sin. We believe that adultery is fun. We believe… Continue reading
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How I Learned to Be Very, Very Un-Cool
I learned a long time ago as a Christian minister that I can’t hope to out-cool our apostate culture, and if I try, I’ll gradually create followers who crave coolness and will gravitate to a “community” cooler than mine. I learned also, however, that while I can’t hope to compete with our cool culture, that… Continue reading
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Fuller Seminary Professor Exalts Jesus by Denying Inerrancy
In explicitly disposing of the full truthfulness of the Bible, Fuller Seminary professor Daniel Kirk marshals the frequent, and if I may say so, tiresome and worn-out, argument that the Bible must be read Christologically. G. C. Berkouwer and many others have made this argument long ago, but repetition of assertion is not equivalent to… Continue reading
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Our Propositional Bible
The question over Scripture is not in the final analysis a question concerning the Bible, but rather concerning God. If one believes in a sovereign divine mind and will, in God who personally speaks and conveys information and instruction, then the presuppositions of scriptural inspiration lie near at hand.[1] No writer in the 20th century… Continue reading
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The Right Not to be Offended
My wife Sharon drew my attention to this article by a single Christian woman who was traumatized in church on Mother’s Day when her pastor had all the mothers present stand to be honored and she didn’t because she wasn’t a mother and, therefore, “felt dehumanized, gutted as a woman.” “Here’s the thing,” she opined,… Continue reading
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The Tranzies
In his The Servile Mind: How Democracy Erodes the Moral Life, Kenneth Minogue refers to “transnational progressives,” or “tranzies” for short. These are political Leftists who hold in contempt ordinary patriotism and patriots and local and national laws and customs and instead champion “global” justice and jurisprudence, which always, just coincidentally, seem to fill out the… Continue reading
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Boy Scout Religion
The New York Times’ openly homosexual columnist Frank Bruni is scandalized that the Boy Scouts would consider maintaining on grounds favorable to “the religious right” their long-held policy that scout leaders be heterosexual only, though the Scouts do intend, it seems, to change their policy of prohibiting homosexual scouts. Bruni writes: But what about the… Continue reading
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Called to be Holy (Part 2)
In an earlier post I hailed John N. Oswalt’s riveting Called to be Holy: A Biblical Perspective. Here are my takeaways from the final half of his book, which has forced me to rethink a number of theological issues: God’s stamps his image on us; he doesn’t simply justify us (107) Romans 6–8 is a… Continue reading
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Books That Have Most Influenced Me
Single volumes: Christopher Dawson, The Historic Reality of Christian Culture Gerhard Ebeling: The Problem of Historicity Daniel P. Fuller: Gospel And Law: Contrast or Continuum? Peter Gay: Modernism: The Lure of Heresy Leon Morris, The Apostolic Preaching of the Cross Francis A. Schaeffer, The Great Evangelical Disaster Thomas Sowell, A Conflict of Visions Richard Tarnas,… Continue reading
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After Racism, After Nature?
Reniqua Allen laments that legal force hasn’t eliminated racial segregation. The problem, you see, is self-segregation. It turns out (and only the highly educated reader will be shocked at the revelation) that even when subject to laws forbidding formal discrimination, people often prefer to associate most closely with people who look and act like them.… Continue reading
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Easter as God’s Power Play
What are Christians celebrating on Easter? Not, surely, colored eggs and furry rabbits, appealing though each may be to the lush, sunny season of fertility and renewal. Nor are Christians celebrating the rebirth of human goodness (one is reminded of the aphorism that original sin is the only Christian doctrine that can be verified by… Continue reading
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Called to Be Holy (Part 1)
One of the most theologically riveting — and convicting — books I’ve read in a long time is Old Testament scholar John N. Oswalt’s Called to be Holy: A Biblical Perspective. The book is non-technical but thorough in its treatment of the Biblical conception of holiness. Oswalt is Wesleyan, but every Bible-believing Christian must account… Continue reading
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Easter is About Bodily Resurrection, Not Soul Immortality
But we preach Christ crucified, unto the Jews a stumblingblock, and unto the Greeks foolishness (1 Corinthians 1:23) And when they [the Greeks] heard of the resurrection of the dead, some mocked (Acts 17:32a) In late November 2001, the Arts and Entertainment Television Network carried a special by popular rock singer Billy Joel. Among other inane… Continue reading
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Sectarian Culture Warriors Trump Ecumenical Culture Wimps
In electing the Argentinean Jorge Mario Bergoglio (Pope Francis), the Roman cardinals signaled that they were not one whit impressed or cowed by modern (read: American and northern European) Catholics. Francis, a philosophical theologian anchored in the conservative wing of the church, is pro-life, anti-homosexual, anti-liberation (i.e., Marxist) theology and reliably conservative on every other… Continue reading
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On Giving the 60’s a Break
Thomas Frank’s best-selling revisionist retelling The Conquest of Cool counters the prevailing sociological interpretation of the 60’s, according to which the fresh, revolutionary “young culture” broke free of the hierarchical conformities of the 50’s — the business, political, artistic, educational, and moral conformities of their parents and grandparents — and established a fresh new egalitarian… Continue reading
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Emancipation for Same-Sex Marriage, Pedophilia and Rape
CNN’s Howard Kurtz states that same-sex marriage is a civil rights issue and favorably cites a fellow reporter that homosexual marriage is “the great civil rights issue of our time.” Homosexuals, in fact, are simply the latest mascots in the Left’s perennial emancipation crusade, the war against all possible oppression in the world, wherever it… Continue reading
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Lordship Salvation Is Not Enough: A Response to John MacArthur
John MacArthur has registered his protest against the widely circulated The Manhattan Declaration (MD), a document championing explicitly Christian ethics in the face of political correctness and hammered out by conservative Christian leaders Robert George, Timothy George and the late Chuck Colson. MacArthur doesn’t dispute the ethical truths the MD is defending, but he charges… Continue reading
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Sancificatio Sola Fide
Justification is the act in which God declares believing sinners righteous on the basis of Jesus’ death and resurrection (Rom. 5:9–10). Sanctification is both the act by which God sets apart believing sinners to be his holy people in thought, word and deed (1 Cor. 1:30), called definitive sanctification, as well as the process by… Continue reading
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7000 Straight-Legs at the Knee-Benders’ Convention
In a recent article in Faith for All of Life, a publication of the Chalcedon Foundation,[1] an article by the late founder, R. J. Rushdoony appeared. We read, among a number of valuable assertions about the Old Testament prophecy of Zechariah, this head-turner: Today those who represent the cause of Christ are a handful. Virtually… Continue reading

