Year: 2008
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MeowsyLand Chronicles: Snow Monday
Once upon a time in Meowsyland, the cat a-meows-ment park known as “The Meowiest Place on Earth,” the cats members were all getting ready for a very busy day. Stripey was the Mayor of Meowsyland, with a big office on Meown Street. He was also the Sheriff and the President. He was also the Boss…
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Trinitarian Soteriology and Assurance
To have a proper confidence in salvation, believers don’t need to muster up greater and great conviction. Instead, we need deeper insight into what salvation is. When we understand our salvation thoroughly enough, conviction and assurance take care of themselves. An adequate doctrine of salvation —a soteriology— needs to be located first of all in…
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White Lab Coat Syndrome
“Have you ever heard of the ‘white lab coat syndrome,’ Dave? It’s what happens when people like you step outside their area of expertise. You’re a scientist, so you have authority only when you speak as a scientist. But when you speak as a sociologist or a political psychologist, you have no more authority than…
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Assurance of Election and Justification
Read Part One here. You can’t get assurance of salvation just by insisting ever more loudly that you are assured, or that the church or the Bible or God’s promise or God’s character assure you. All those appeals to authorities as objective grounds of assurance fail to establish a point of contact with the person…
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How Assurance of Salvation Works
The doctrine of assurance can be slippery. Even among those Protestant evangelical traditions that have recognized the necessity of formulating a doctrine of assurance that answers to the biblical witness about faith’s confidence, there has long been a candid acknowledgement that the doctrine must simultaneously face two opposite directions. It must assure me that I,…
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Creation from Dust: A Dialogue
A dialogue overheard between two school children, earlier this year. It is slightly abbreviated, especially around the singing part, but otherwise verbatim. Only one of the children is mine. Girl: You are made of dust. Boy: No I’m not. Girl: You don’t believe the Bible! Adam was made of dust. Boy: But Eve was made…
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A Fight to the Death with His Own Conscience: Nietzsche
“I can write in letters which make even the blind see,” wrote Friedrich Nietzsche (1844-1900), the influential German philosopher who interpreted modern life as the murder of God. Nietzsche worried that the very people who had spent the nineteenth century driving God out of their worldviews were failing to draw the necessary conclusions. “If God…
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Sermon: The Trinity in Romans
A couple of weeks ago I preached at my home church, Grace Evangelical Free Church in La Mirada. We had just completed a months-long series that had taken us through the whole book of Romans, and were finishing up with a few sermons on big topics in Romans that required us to look at the…
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Barth’s “Almost Hypnotic Elegance”
In chapter 3 of his helpful 1996 book Truth & Power: The Place of Scripture in the Christian Life, J. I. Packer takes a few paragraphs to evaluate the effect of Karl Barth’s theology on biblical interpretation in the twentieth century. “Barth’s work over half a century has certainly renewed in some quarters a sense…
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Why Professors Blog
Professors are people with full-time jobs teaching students, researching subjects, and publishing their findings. Why would they add to this schedule something that is not a part of their job description: blogging? The question is not merely, ahem, academic. There are plenty of professors who have been blogging for as long as there have been…
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The Prodigal Holiday
I will be bringing (among other things) dessert number four to our Thanksgiving feast. I may make a pear tart. It’s strategic, making a light and fruity dessert number four. How else should I expect it to be eaten, after the turkey, stuffing, potatoes, and a big fat et cetera, in competition with whatever chocolate…
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Rousing Your Priorities
As of right now (November 16, 2008) my house is permeated by the smell of smoke. With all of the windows closed and the air filter running it is still impossible to filter out the smoke smell. Smoke is one of those smells that you never get used to. It continually sets off alarms in…