Evidently it does not matter how plainly I speak, or write. There are those who simply refuse to hear, or read. I truly know how Doug Wilson must feel…daily. Let’s try this again. The issue is the exegesis of a particular text of Scripture that is very difficult. Do we say its intended meaning, both as the author wrote it, […]
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While going over Calvin’s rebuttal of Sadoleto’s letter from 1539, I read a paragraph where Calvin held Sadoleto’s argument to a biblical standard. Calvin was a scholar of the early church. He cites from patristic sources regularly. He read widely in what was available to him in his day. And yet he gave us an example of what it means […]
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Evidently our Great Tradition Baptist thought leaders have decided to stay far, far away from actually telling us how we can define the GT in light of the Second Nicene Council, as per Monday’s Dividing Line. Fully understandable! The reality is, these men have no *consistent* way of disambiguating the traditions in theology proper they wish to demand of us […]
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צְדָקָ֥ה תְרֽוֹמֵֽם־גּ֑וֹי וְחֶ֖סֶד לְאֻמִּ֣ים חַטָּֽאת δικαιοσύνη ὑψοῖ ἔθνος, ἐλασσονοῦσι δὲ φυλὰς ἁμαρτίαι. Proverbs 14:34. The LXX provides a good translation here. Righteousness lifts up, exalts, a people, a nation. But sin is a reproach to any people, nation. LXX: lessens any people. [Note the Hebrew form for “reproach” is chesed, which some assume comes from an Aramaic root, hence, shame, but […]
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Ask yourself a question: have you seriously engaged the study of Scripture, so that you have basic, foundational hermeneutical principles clearly in your thinking? Are you considering the original context, author, audience, and the genre of what you are reading (didactic, poetry, etc.)? Are you looking to the entire argument of the book or epistle, and then, finally, to the […]
The post Do You Really Believe and Practice Sola Scriptura? appeared first on Alpha and Omega Ministries.
The importance of sola scriptura can be seen when men who thought they held to it begin moving away from it, and express their newfound objections. Of course, which road they are traveling will say a lot about the consistency of their arguments. So, let’s say you are headed down the road for Rome, or Constantinople, or, if you lack […]
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So I was finishing up my 21st conference at Covenant of Grace Church in St. Charles when I heard people talking about “the coming storm.” So I started looking at the weather and my travel plans. Let’s just say I am thankful that I invested an extra four hours of travel today and have managed to get myself out of […]
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I would like to briefly respond to an argument presented by Dr. Tim Stratton which he styles the Omni Argument Against Calvinism: 1- If Calvinism is true, whomever God provides “irresistible grace” to will go to heaven and not suffer eternal hell. 2- If God is omnibenevolent, He would not desire to, nor would He, send anyone to suffer eternal […]
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I preached a message at a funeral last evening. One of the dear, dear women of our fellowship passed away last week, leaving her wonderful husband and children to deal with all the proper realities of Christian grieving (anyone old enough to love is old enough to grieve), which is always grief in the presence of hope, and yes, even […]
The post What Does Supernatural Look Like? appeared first on Alpha and Omega Ministries.
I really hate to waste Christmas Eve on this kind of stuff, I really do. It is honestly depressing that folks who *should* be willing to read and listen fairly are unwilling to do so. I do not know what is behind all of this, but maybe someday I will figure it out. I have used pretty much all of […]
The post Person, Subsistence, and Debating Roger Perkins appeared first on Alpha and Omega Ministries.
Just a note to announce I intend to interact with the presentation in Dr. James Dolezal’s books, God without Parts: Divine Simplicity and the Metaphysics of God’s Absoluteness (2011) and All That Is in God: Evangelical Theology and the Challenge of Classical Christian Theism (2017), especially by using the audio from his presentations on these topics to the Southern California […]
The post On Divine Simplicity and Natural Theology appeared first on Alpha and Omega Ministries.
I just saw that Dr. Stratton just posted a further video in the “we won’t listen to the other side but will accuse the other side of not listening” saga that, personally, I’m finished with. But I wanted to note the description which, I assume, comes from Dr. Stratton directly: First, there was nothing in the structure of my discussion […]
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Just a quick thought. I have always liked tech. OK, I was NOT in the tiny little group of nerds who did the Tandy computer thing in high school with the cassette tape recorder as the “drive,” but I wasn’t too far behind. I wear Garmin watches that connect to my iPhone and I am typing this on an incredibly […]
I recently saw a comment on Facebook by someone named John Cranman. I will be honest: the name did not ring any bells with me until I did a search and discovered that the gentleman I discussed Romans 9 with on Unbelievable in London was named John Cranman. Assuming we are dealing with the same individual, this sort of makes […]
Someone asked me a question yesterday that basically said, “Don’t you think Bahnsen would have done better than you against Craig?” I actually smile at such questions, though there is a tinge of sadness, too. We all miss Greg, and most of us wonder what he could have accomplished had God given him a much longer life. And I am […]
The following is a Twitter thread (hence the “choppiness” and brevity required in that context). The fact that the structures of the SBC seem to be intent upon defending Litton and making his plagiarism just “go away” tells us much about the future value of continuing to support those entities without any real chance of effecting change within them (as […]
One of the things I really enjoyed about our initial jaunt into roadtripping was getting to meet new folks in smaller churches. I met with the elders of a church in Las Vegas, Redeemer Community Church and had dinner with them. I aged 1000 years when I realized that their oldest elder is just a bit younger than my youngest […]
Two new books to point you to this morning! Jason Lisle has finally released his book on Fractals, which he told me he was going to write years ago. I love fractal art, and have been using various fractal generation programs since the late 1990s. I’ve ordered my copy! Jeffrey Johnson has written a work appraising the theology of Thomas […]
Two new books to point you to this morning! Jason Lisle has finally released his book on Fractals, which he told me he was going to write years ago. I love fractal art, and have been using various fractal generation programs since the late 1990s. I’ve ordered my copy! Jeffrey Johnson has written a work appraising the theology of Thomas […]
Recently a graphic appeared that gave quotes from Tim Keller (2011), JD Greear (2019), and Ed Litton (2020). The last two are parroting Keller, and Litton, as seems to be the norm, is parroting, directly, Greear. Now, my point is not the plagiarism scandal that is showing just how corrupt the SBC leadership his right now. My point is the […]
By now everyone has seen the original statement of faith from Redemption Church where Ed Litton pastors, and most have at least had the opportunity to watch his appearance on CNN talking about Critical Race Theory. The problem we face with the new President of the SBC (who has tremendous power in assigning people to committees which, as we saw […]
My dear friends in Frankfurt are doing their own webcast (they say they were encouraged by the DL to do so), so if you are a German speaker, make sure to give them a listen and a thumbs up!
Woke up this morning with a tune from my youth stuck in my mind. A song I haven’t sung in at least 40 years I’d say. Yet there it was, the whole chorus, clear as day: Count your blessings, name them one by one; Count your blessings, see what God hath done. Count your blessings, name them one by one, […]
Emotional manipulation is a powerful weapon, and it has been used to fundamentally end the experiment in liberty begun in the 18th century in what became the United States. A lot of things had to be accomplished to bring about this end, to be sure. For example, you had to fundamentally change how the population viewed mankind, moving from a […]
The story is told that as Luther was arriving in the town of Worms, five hundred years ago this week, the wagon he was riding in turned a corner near the wall of the city. There, someone, knowing that Luther would probably approach the city from that direction, had scrawled on the wall, “Luther: the Saxon Hus.” Now for most […]
When Paul explained the glory of the body of Christ to the Corinthians, he used many analogies to try to communicate a supernatural truth, that God is forming that body sovereignly through the progress of the Gospel in the world. Now consider what that meant at that time. Though surely there was not the level of travel that is possible […]
Allow me to start with a little historical fiction. I think most historians of American history in the 19th century would agree with me here. If Jackson had not been killed by friendly fire in early May at Chancellorsville, and had been present to lead his troops the first day at Gettysburg, the battle would have been very different. Historians […]
Consider: The one in whom all things “hold together” (συνέστηκεν, Col 1:17) Became flesh (σὰρξ ἐγένετο, Jn 1:14). The eternal acted in time. This validated the importance of the temporal, without transforming the eternal *into* the temporal, or thereby limiting it. Human language is necessarily temporal in nature, as is our thought process. Because of this, the temptation of our […]
So a couple of days ago over on Twitter, where I continue to fly just underneath the radar, I broke the Internet. Of course, I made the fatal mistake of thinking, “Folks will think before reacting” (duh), “Folks will look up the terms and see what I’m talking about” (duh), “People will realize there is a background to what I’m […]
One of the strongest admonitions of the Mosaic law to the nation of Israel was straightforward: idolatry will bring destruction to the people. Even if your very wife should secretly entice you to worship other gods, you are to expose her and be the first to cast the stone to end her life (Deu. 13:6-11). Such detestation of idolatry requires […]
