De-Cisions, De-Cisions
In is excellent book Leading with a Limp, Dan Allender points out the isolating nature of decision making. To decide requires a death, a dying to a thousand options, the putting aside of a legion of possibilities in order to…
Blog
Read MoreDe-Cisions, De-Cisions
Just Add Water (1 of 4)
Well, I was going to go on a bit more about the necessity of the local church in the posts headed to this space, but our dear brother in Christ Dr. Mark Jones has done what Presbyterians are prone to…
Ordinary Isn’t Mediocre
Okay, so I don’t know many people who aspire to be ordinary. We grow up being told we are special. What would our parents think if we just turn out to be regular people? So if you write a book…
Fallen: A Theology of Sin
Fallen: A Theology of Sin. Theology in Community. Edited by Christopher W. Morgan and Robert A. Peterson. Wheaton: Crossway, 2013. 320 pp. $19.99 One might not expect to walk away from a book on the theology of sin feeling very…
The Cure for Shame
“Shame. Boatloads of shame. Day after day. More of the same. Blame. Please lift it off. Please take it off. Please make it stop.” Those words are not just the lyrics to a famous Avett Brothers’ song, they are also…
“A Plea For Realism”: Are Presbyterians Christians?
Presbyterian ecclesiology has some advantages. For example, we try to refrain from being sectarian. There is a healthy catholicity to our ecclesiology, which is seen in our communion practice (section 7; see also PCA, BOCO 57-5). In relation to our healthy…
The Joys (and Sorrows) of Parenting: Calvin on Gen. 4.1-26
By virtue of his sin Adam “was banished from that royal palace of which he had been the lord.” Yet God did not leave Adam homeless; “he obtained elsewhere” — somewhere east of Eden — “a place in which he…
“Long Hair Freaky People Need Not Apply”*
For some reason I woke up with the song “Signs” stuck in my head. So I thought I’d go ahead an repost an article I wrote two years ago that stole a line from it for the title. Some church…
Turretin’s treasure
About fifteen years ago at one of the annual meetings of the Evangelical Theological Society, Allan Fisher gave me, a poor doctoral student at the time, one of the best gifts that an aspiring student of theology could ever receive:…
See It Publicly
When I made arrangements to start blogging here, I told the fellows in charge that it was unlikely that I would blog more than twice a month at Ref21, but I’m about to only have posted once in my premiere…