On Evangelical Babble and Accepting Jesus Into Your Heart
This is the inaugural post in a series on evangelical-babble and pop-theology. These will be short posts on evangelical phrases that need to go, with the primary yardstick being sola scriptura: if the phrase is absent from scripture and its employment disproportionately outweighs the benefit of any good and necessary inference from scripture, it needs to be culled from Christian vocabulary. The grammar we use matters, and the language we use shapes how people think and act.
The first phrase is “Accept Jesus into your heart” and its variants. It should be said up front that no expression like this exists in scripture…
On Idolatry and the Greatest Consequence for National Life
Much has been made of Vice President Mike Pence’s comments yesterday to a pastors conference in D.C. The fact that the Vice President publicly endorsed preaching the gospel or that the conference was put on by an organization labeled a hate group have occupied most of the commentary. But what has been missed is his characterization of gospel ministry in the life of the nation…
On the Needful Duty of Improving Our Baptism
The Westminster Theological Society is a group a ministers in the EPC who are striving to keep the denominational discussions and priorities centered around scripture. In 2017 they began publishing the Westminster Society Journal, which is aimed at EPC ministers, ruling elders, and interested lay people. I contributed an essay to the 2018 volume, ‘The Needful Duty of Improving Our Baptism’. A copy of the journal can be found here. The opening paragraphs of my essay are below.
On the Imitation of Christ as Key to Pastoral Discipleship
I have found myself thinking of my own graduation from seminary in the midst of this commencement season, as well as the charge that was given to me and my fellow graduates by our professor of New Testament Interpretation, Dr. Dan McCartney.
Dr. McCartney delivered a charge based on 2 Timothy 2:23-26, and I still return to and ponder his counsel from that night. Imitation of Christ is the foundation of ministry. To be a disiscpler, I must be an imitator of the one who is discipling me…
On Anselm and the Conscious, Creative Word
The Monologion presents one of the best (if not the best) examples of the ontological differences between Christianity and other faiths, particularly the static monotheism of Islam and the pan(en)theism of Hinduism.
§29-31 begin to show this forth. The supreme essence of reality creates by verbalization. There is a nonmaterial manner by which the supreme essence makes all things. that is an expression of the essence that is neither created by it, but is one with, and yet distinct from it. This expression, or Word, is simple, not composed of other elements, but is a single Word of the supreme essence This Word is one with, coming from the supreme essence, without being subsumed by it…
