A prospective student at Telos Institute asked me a good question about my view on Law versus the Gospel. As part of my reply I sent him the text of a letter I’d written to someone who had criticized a lecture of mine on the Decalogue. This individual had claimed that Christians were sanctified solely by faith plus nothing else, and that the law did not even provide a normative standard for ethics. Here is my reply (changed in a few …
Category: Personal Stuff
C.S. Lewis once said that if a book is worth reading it is worth reading slowly. Since coming upon his observation I have tried to follow his advice. Formerly, I tried to rush through books; commentaries, histories, theologies. And although I certainly learned a lot that way (speed-reading does work. One often can take in more than one thinks one can) I have to say that I am a true believer in the “Lewis method.” Sir Francis Bacon advised, “Read …
I have just finished reading an interesting autobiography by a major Bible teacher of the first part of the 20th Century named Arno C. Gaebelein. The book is titled A Half Century: The Autobiography of a Servant. The book is beautifully bound and signed by the author, August 10th 1944. Gaebelein died a year later. I found several items of interest in the book that I thought I would like to share. I should first say something about the subject. …
Congratulations President Obama on winning the Nobel Peace Prize for….well whatever! I’m sure no one could think of anybody more deserving. Honestly, is there any sanity left in the world? …
I don’t spend a lot of time reading other people’s blogs. There are some good bloggers out there, but I suppose I am not that stirred by what I read. But I have happened to hear about the kerfuffle surrounding Don Sweatt’s sermon at a recent Fundamentalist conference. Such luminaries as John Piper and Phil Johnson have been taking time to write about it. Fingers have been tapping everywhere! So I thought I would give the message a listen and …
Our world is certainly troubled. There is so much hostility, so much greed, so much unfairness. For many people today, the way through the hardness of day to day life is through “spirituality.” Indeed, “spirituality” is on the rise in our society. Whatever the growling New Atheists say, it is a fact that the majority of people yearn to find some sense of meaning in a form of spirituality. Even Christians may have leanings this way too. For example, in …
C.S. Lewis once said that if a book is worth reading it is worth reading slowly. Since coming upon his observation I have tried to follow his advice. Formerly, I tried to rush through books; commentaries, histories, theologies. And although I certainly learned a lot that way (speed-reading does work. One often can take in more than one thinks one can) I have to say that I am a true believer in the “Lewis method.” Sir Francis Bacon advised, “Read …
Cornelius Van Til was one of the truly great thinkers that the LORD gave to the Church. His books, as I am well aware, abound in unusual phrases and difficult combinations of words, but the depth of his insight and the implications of his theological-philosophical thought are, I believe, revolutionary. I think John Frame is correct to call Van Til “the most important Christian thinker since Calvin.” Van Til taught that God has flooded the creation with clear revelation of …
Last time I stated that I am a dispensationalist because I believe that God says what He means and means what He says. If God makes specific promises to people (e.g. the Jews) and they go away believing the content of those promises, then proper communication has taken place. They have simply believed what they have been told (like children do). Now there may be things that many Jews have not believed which they should have. For instance, they should …
I’m an Englishman. An English Christian. I came to Christ through the reading of the Bible after a sojourn through the history of Art (where I also read about people like Savonarola, and his ‘negative’ impact on the likes of Botticelli), and through fruitless meanderings in the writings of Sophocles, Plato, Aristophanes, Cicero, Machiavelli, Bertrand Russell and the like. I have always felt it important to try to take authors at “face value” (although one must recall the famous dictum …
