How Happiness Studies Lets Us Down
We cannot help longing for something that is not to be found in the created realm.
Perhaps the happiness studies crowd should not be blamed for their blind spots about God, because their concern is so exclusively with the present world. Or perhaps they should be blamed, since they study this world so carefully, and yet they fail to see even this world clearly. Demand elicits supply. The demand I... Continue Reading
How to Normalize an Erroneous Innovation in Doctrine or Ecclesiastical Practice: A Guide for Heretics and Less Egregious Reformers-Errant in Presbyterian Churches
Lessons that might be drawn for how best to achieve the desired result based on the PCA’s recent experience and that of other denominations on similar questions like women’s ordination.
An apparent victory in the short run may conceal a defeat in the long run, especially if it failed to uproot the poisonous roots that the ‘losing side’ planted. Already I am told that presbyteries are arguing that the recent BCO additions which many of us thought were meant to prohibit men who are tempted... Continue Reading
It’s Time to Cancel “Common Sense”
There is no universal validity to common sense
If you want a point of contact with others in the evangelical world or even with unbelievers who are still living off of the Christian capital of the past, the next time they say that this executive order (or other similar issues) is just a matter of common sense, then just say, “No, it’s not... Continue Reading
The Coherence of J. Gresham Machen’s Libertarianism with his Presbyterianism
Examining Machen’s various writings how we may synthesize his libertarian and Presbyterian sensibilities instead of settling for contradictions in his thinking.
For the scope of our present essay, we’ll examine Machen’s libertarianism in terms of voluntarism, the principle of relying on voluntary action and freedom of choice, particularly when associating with ecclesiastical structures. This voluntarism was worked out in many of Machen’s letters about church and civil politics, and ultimately was forced in Machen’s deposition from... Continue Reading
The Holocaust and the Reality of Evil
It is a profound and dangerous mistake to deny this evil or to assume it is a matter of the past, as if our “enlightened age” is incapable of doing what our ancestors did.
The Holocaust perpetrated by the Nazi regime is the most well-known horror of a horror-filled twentieth century. At Auschwitz, Buchenwald, and Bergen-Belsen, the world confronts the realities of evil in this world and the human condition. Whatever it takes, we must never forget. Eighty years ago, on January 27, 1945, Soviet forces overran a section of German-occupied Poland. The Nazis had... Continue Reading
Neil Gaiman and the Failure of Modern Sexual Ethics
The garish allegations against Gaiman are, if true, the consequences of the logic of the sexual revolution.
“May you live to see your children’s children” reflects a wish for a particular blessing, the blessing of being reminded of one’s true humanity through the grateful acceptance of duties toward others. That is a blessing that those who see others simply as objects or tools for their own pleasure, sexual and otherwise, will never... Continue Reading
The Church After Assisted Suicide
That we would take vulnerable people and, rather than giving them what dignity is possible in death, would allow them to end themselves (with assistance) is vile.
The widespread adoption of abortion in the past sixty years has changed us, it’s been a notable feature in the triumph of personal autonomy as the highest good and has changed our understanding of sex in very significant ways. I anticipate similar shifts stemming from assisted suicide and the moral philosophy that underpins it over... Continue Reading
Probing Pastor Sexton’s Presuppositions
A Response to “The Success of the Great Commission: Probing a Postmillennial Presupposition”
My picture in the GC is the success of the gospel in which the power of God would convert entire nations with a common boundary, ethnicity, and language from worshipping a false god to worshipping the Triune God of the Bible. This does not mean every person in each nation will be a Christian, but... Continue Reading
Pastoral Sexual Orientation and the EPC
Many Evangelical Presbyterian Church members are stunned about why it would take so long for the shepherds of Christ’s flock to deliberate on the subject of sexual identity for church officers.
Church officers have a responsibility to protect church members by shepherding them in all areas, including the area of biblical sexual ethics. Church members know the emphasis of God’s Word places on purity; they need church leaders to be clear on this expectation. This means that receiving a minister who self-identifies with a homosexual-orientation should... Continue Reading
Further Reflections on Catholicity as Currently Conceived by Reformed and Other Protestant Theologians
Some questions confronting the effort to advance the concept of catholicity’s recognition in Reformed and evangelical churches.
Reviewing what is probably the most significant manifesto on it, Swain and Allen’s Reformed Catholicity: The Promise of Retrieval for Theology and Biblical Interpretation, I notice that the most they will purport is “that there are Reformed theological and ecclesiological warrants for pursuing a program of retrieval,” “numerous examples of thoughtful appropriation of the catholic... Continue Reading
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