It is worth knowing whether candidates have minds open to intelligence that doesn’t fit neatly into their preconceptions. My difference with Bill Keller is that I don’t think that religious folks have a monopoly on either preconceptions or close-mindedness. My friends at the invaluable Mirror of Justice blog have noted and commented on New York... Continue Reading

Conclusion: there is no good reason to abandon—or to qualify by ingenious means so as to water down or weaken—the straight-forward confession of the Westminster divines who said in the Westminster Confession of Faith 4:1, Larger Catechism Q/A 15, and Shorter Catechism Q/A 9, that God “created all things of nothing, in the space of... Continue Reading

Their obituaries may have been published side by side, but — in the truest sense — Gordon Kaufman and John Stott were never on the same page. The Christian Century, the venerable voice of liberal Protestantism, juxtaposed two significant obituaries in its August 23, 2011 edition — and both on the same page. The magazine... Continue Reading

In refusing to deal with Kaseman’s failure of faith, the court limited its focus to procedure. It matters not what we believe, so long as some official Presbyterian body says that what we say we believe is okay. The General Assembly Permanent Judicial Commission (GAPJC), often described as the Presbyterian Church’s Supreme Court, did nothing... Continue Reading

When your point of view originates from so far out in the leftosphere that it takes the Hubble Space Telescope to spot the center of our political universe, Mom, God and apple pie tend to look like fiery comets hurling toward your bugged-out, bohemian planetoid. To the modern Democratic National Committee, the mainstream media and... Continue Reading

In the 1970s and 1980s, pro-choice activists ridiculed what they claimed were illegitimate “slippery slope” arguments made by pro-lifers about what moral horrors might be generated by an absolute right to abortion. We were told that Roe v. Wade would mainly allow freedom for the “hard choices” of desperate women; those hard choices would become... Continue Reading

When the law is read, sins are confessed, and forgiveness declared, we are all involved because we are all included under the words of condemnation and the words of promise and mercy. Some years ago I was asked what I thought of those whose teaching undermined the Reformation position on justification by grace through faith.... Continue Reading

But the differences on how we emphasize indicatives and imperatives are not simply matters of emphasis rooted in legitimately different theological emphasis in the same confessional tradition. The differences also represent different contextualized pastoral realities. I had actually thought about writing a further contribution to this entire conversation on sanctification and the Gospel prior to... Continue Reading

The denial of an historical Adam and Eve as the first parents of all humanity and the solitary first human pair severs the link between Adam and Christ which is so crucial to the Gospel. Each generation of Christians faces its own set of theological challenges. For this generation of Evangelicals, the question of beginnings... Continue Reading

In 1975 some of (Norman Shepherd’s) former students were being questioned for ordination, and when the question “How is a sinner justified?” was asked, they answered, “By faith and works.” Shocked questioners traced their answer back to their professor, Norman Shepherd. This is re-posted from October 30, 2009. I want to add an important point:... Continue Reading