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I detest the notion of a new dawn in which Homo sapiens would live in harmony. The hope this utopia engenders justified the bloodiest exterminations in history.   François Bizot[1] In his brief but weighty tract Communism: A History,[2] Harvard historian Richard Pipes observes what others before him[3] have noted — the driving force behind… Continue reading

My Christology will never be the same. In his God Crucified: Monotheism & Christology in the New Testament, Richard Bauckham argues that: The deity of Jesus as an aspect of orthodox Christology did not develop in the patristic church but was already a tenet of the first (Jewish) church that had sufficient categories to identify… Continue reading

On Being Honestly Wrong Jason Stellman was correct to relinquish his Protestant ministerial credentials when he became no longer convinced of the distinctive Protestant dicta of sola Scriptura (Scripture alone) and sola fide (faith alone). Jason was confessionally bound (Westminster Confession of Faith) to both distinctives in the Presbyterian Church in America (PCA), and the… Continue reading

Excerpted from Obedient Faith: A Festschrift for Norman Shepherd, edited by P. Andrew Sandlin and John Barach (Mount Hermon, California; Kerygma Press, forthcoming). Sola fide … cannot denote an exclusion of persevering obedience and good works as in a consequent sense conditions of eternal life.[1] Just as Lordship Salvation creates an apparent conflict with sola fide,… Continue reading

It’s utterly erroneous to assume that the gospel is failing in modern culture.  The gospel is more pervasive than ever.  The problem is that it’s a false gospel. The Atlantic’s recent article “Lady Gaga’s Guilt-Free Gospel” raises the specter of Lady Gaga, apparently reared a “repressed” Catholic but whose musical lyrics now exalt sadomasochism and… Continue reading

“[I]f the data is overwhelmingly in favor of evolution, to deny that reality will make us a cult … some odd group that is not really interacting with the world. And rightly so, because we are not using our gifts and trusting God’s Providence that brought us to this point of our awareness.” Bruce Waltke… Continue reading

In recent times, we have heard a lot about “The Last Days.” A large number of non-mainline conservative Christians in this country (“evangelicals”) believe that we are living in the last few years (or even months, or days, or hours) before the “rapture” of the church, which will precede a seven-year tribulation period dominated by… Continue reading

Baptism in much of the modern church has degenerated into an effete and perfunctory ordinance, practiced more for traditional than for substantial reasons. Where it is not treated as divine white magic in sacerdotal churches, it is frequently in more evangelical churches treated in a mindless and mechanical way. The error is not merely the… Continue reading

“For by grace are ye saved through faith; and that not of yourselves: it is the gift of God; Not of works, lest any man should boast. For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus unto good works, which God hath before ordained that we should walk in them” (Ephesians 2:8-10). INTRODUCTION One should… Continue reading

It does seem to me that evangelical leaders, and every evangelical Christian, have a very special responsibility not to just go along with the “blue-jean syndrome” of not noticing that their attempts to be “with it” so often take the same forms as those who deny the existence or holiness of the living God. Accommodation… Continue reading

The Last Word: Beyond the Bible Wars to a New Understanding of the Authority of Scripture N. T. Wright New York: HarperCollins Publishers, 2005 146 pages, cloth, $19.95 US N. T. Wright is arguably the most popular New Testament scholar in the English-speaking world today.  His manner is winsome, his writing is incisive, his speech… Continue reading

Message Delivered at  San Lorenzo Valley Good Friday Service  First Baptist Church, San Lorenzo Valley April 10, 2009   There are numerous and momentous implications of our Lord’s death that we celebrate today.  I draw attention this afternoon to just one of them: Christus Victor.  This view emerged very early in the church, and with… Continue reading

The fundamental premise of our [C]hristian faith is the lordship of Jesus Christ.  It stands at the heart and core of Christianity.  Everything in the Christian faith — becoming a Christian, living the Christian life, and the ultimate outcome of being a Christian — stands or falls on the lordship of Jesus Christ. Charles T.… Continue reading

In The Courage to be Protestant, David Wells observes that (post)modern “post-conservative” evangelicals (like Roger Olsen) really aren’t that different theologically from the old Protestant liberals (also called “modernists” at the time).  In an extended CCL interview published in “Christian Culture,” I posed this question to John M. Frame, and his answer, in essence, is… Continue reading

Somewhere between sectarianism and latitudinarianism lay the Biblical approach to dividing good from evil. The sectarians see their own secondary denominational distinctives as critical for faith and fellowship, and excommunicate — literally or metaphorically — almost everybody who doesn’t toe the party line.  The sectarians divide the Faith and faithful over such ancillary issues as… Continue reading

In the current dispute between Professor John M. Frame (see Review of Michael Horton, Christless Christianity: The Alternative Gospel of the American Church) and the Westminster Seminary California (WSC) Establishment, notably Mike Horton, Scott Clark, and Darryl Hart, relating to Horton’s book Christless Christianity: The Alternative Gospel of the American Church, one vital issue is… Continue reading

Fuller Seminary’s young evangelical scholar Daniel Kirk, reviewing the book Gay Conversations with God by James Alexander Langteaux, speaks of “grow[ing] in [his] understanding of the place of homosexual Christians in the body of Christ.” There can be no doubt that homosexuals (like all other sinners) can be — and should be — converted to… Continue reading

This Sunday is Easter. Easter is the Christian celebration of the resurrection of Jesus Christ. The Bible makes very clear that on the third day after Christ’s death, He rose bodily from the tomb and showed Himself to His disciples. To those who affirm the authority of the Bible, this is not a matter of… Continue reading

by Oswald Chambers   “Now Jesus loved Martha, and her sister, and Lazarus. When He had heard therefore that he was sick, He abode two days still in the same place where He was.” John 11:5-6. Jesus stayed two days where He was without sending a word. We are apt to say—’I know why God… Continue reading