Theological liberalism narrowly considered is identified with a movement in Europe and America in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, but its theological impulse — to conform the Faith to the spirit of the age — has been around since the Garden of Eden. (In this sense, the ancient Jews, when they syncretized their Continue reading

The U. S. Supreme Court has paved the way for wholesale cultural routinization of same-sex “marriage.” By “routinization” I mean the blithe acceptance of homosexuality as no more odd than relatively rare human phenomena like red-headedness or left-handedness. We wouldn’t say redheaded or left-handed people shouldn’t marry, would we? This is routinization. It has been Continue reading

Commencement address delivered Friday, June 14, 2013 at Trinity Episcopal Church in Pharr, Texas, Edinburg Theological Seminary  Introduction I congratulate you graduates on your accomplishment. Seminary isn’t easy, but nothing in life worth having is easy. What you have learned at ETS will shape your entire life and ministry. I am grateful to President Vallencia and Continue reading

“Consider the cost of taking this radically scriptural Christianity seriously. Ask yourself which side you must join in the tense spiritual battle of our times. Compromise is not an option. A middle-of-the-road stance is not possible. Either the ground motive of the christian religion works radically in our lives or we serve other gods. If the antithesis is Continue reading

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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