Security companies enjoy a kind of odd gratitude for criminals. After all, without the threat of crime, security companies would have little in the way of business. It’s thanks to the attempted and successful acts of crime that security companies develop their walls, fences, locks, and alarms. Christians, too, should have a similar kind of… Continue Reading
In our last post, we showed that all Christians implicitly or explicitly accept the idea of election: that God controls (directly or permissively) the destinies of His creatures. A philosophical defence goes only so far, however. We wish now to review nine biblical truths regarding the doctrine of election. 1. God does not wish anyone… Continue Reading
The idea that God chooses or “elects” people is taught in many Scriptures (Rom 8:29-30; Eph 1:4; 2 Thes 2:13; 1 Pet 1:2). People struggle with this concept. Doesn’t that make the whole thing unfair? Isn’t it unjust to choose people for salvation? Surely salvation is then all a stacked-deck, with people nothing more than… Continue Reading
I do not think that equality is one of those things (like wisdom or happiness) which are good simply in themselves and for their own sakes. I think it is in the same class as medicine, which is good because we are ill, or clothes which are good because we are no longer innocent. I… Continue Reading
A great king had two sons, who were come to the age where one should be named as the crown prince. The custom of that country was that the king would choose his heir directly, without weight given to birth-order. He was hard-pressed at the choice, for they both loved him and had noble and… Continue Reading
Our study of elders in New Testament churches has suggested that the concept of lay elders is not as self-evident as some of its advocates propose. Our argument consists of four premises. First, Scripture describes plural elders in first-century New Testament churches, but does not prescribe this plurality, removing the need to find and appoint… Continue Reading
In considering the question of lay elders, we have seen that the New Testament describes but never prescribes a plurality of elders in a New Testament church. It does, however, prescribe the remuneration of elders that rule well. In part 2, we saw that ruling well is likely best understood as equivalent to laboring in the… Continue Reading
In some cases, “lay” elders are introduced into Baptist churches because those doing so believe that a plurality of elders is an explicit or implicit requirement of the New Testament. Many believe a church with only one pastor has a sub-standard or sub-biblical ecclesiology, and the pragmatic solution to achieving this supposed requirement of multiple… Continue Reading
I’ll sometimes hear the claim from some men that a plurality of elders, made up of “staff elders” and “lay elders” in a local church, represents orthodox, biblical ecclesiology and that any church (such as mine) with only one paid elder, several deacons and no lay elders represents a deviation from biblical church polity, or… Continue Reading
Those who believe in cosmic justice are actually at war with nature. If you desire to have all people have absolutely equal opportunities (as in our sprint race example) by manipulating all kinds of variables, you are actually fighting against the created order. You are fighting biology, genetics, and indeed, providence. If you’re a Cosmic… Continue Reading
One of the ways you make your mark in the online discernment ministry world is by “outing” a popular and generally reliable pastor or Bible teacher. This promotes you in the eyes of discernment devotees, because you are supposedly spotting error in a teacher that “everyone else unquestioningly follows”, and are willing to be the… Continue Reading
Reading Spurgeon is a sheer delight to the heart. At the same time, it is often faintly discouraging to the preacher. How could a preacher manage such eloquence? His sentences are positively dripping with imagery, his prose saturated with trope and metaphor. It seems impossible for such poetic gold to have flowed from a preacher… Continue Reading
I find it quite amusing these days to be classified by some as “Reformed”, when I’d barely heard the term for most of my Christian life. I grew up in Baptist circles that didn’t use the term “Reformed”. In fact, the first time I heard it used of my church was when a student attending… Continue Reading
Below are two works of Christian imagination. Both attempt to depict what it means for Christ to invite sinners to Himself, and how sinners should understand themselves. On closer examination, however, they are nearly opposite in meaning. We do not see the same Christ, the same Gospel and the same dilemma of the sinner in… Continue Reading
Equality is one of those ideas whose basic meaning is understood, but whose presence is demanded where it cannot possibly be expected. After all, equality is a fairly simply concept: when two amounts are equal, neither is greater or lesser than the other. But while equality in mathematics is a simple matter, equality in human… Continue Reading
Of the little pilot-fish words that swim alongside the more commonly mangled word, culture, two of the more frequently heard are multicultural and diversity. In fact, these have become unquestioned, and probably unassailable holy-words in modern culture. A competitive company will have somewhere on its Vision and Mission statement, “Our core-values include a commitment to… Continue Reading
In discussions of evangelizing the post-modern West, something is often forgotten. Those cultures which were formed by Christianity and have since abandoned it are not reverting to paganism. They are not pagan cultures. They are apostate cultures, and an apostate culture is a much scarier animal than a pagan one. C.S. Lewis wrote on how… Continue Reading
Missionaries do their work in a perilous environment. Such has been the rise of ideas such as “multi-culturalism”, that many missionaries now go by a different title: aid–workers, social-workers, educators, or even consultants. Opting for different titles is understandable. In the popular imagination, missionary is increasingly synonymous with colonialist, imperialist, or patronizing religious types “forcing” their… Continue Reading
In Africa, particularly where black nationalist sentiments arise, it is not uncommon to hear the title of this post thrown around in conversation. Similarly, half-formed sentiments are uttered about missionaries who replaced the harmonious earth-religion of the peaceful indigenous people with their foreign religion, so as to steal their land and subjugate them. The saddest… Continue Reading
A common error in the study of church history is to seek to find a version of one’s present branch of Christianity in the past. Since Christian doctrine and practice develop over the centuries, trying to find oneself in church history is like trying to find out how people in Shakespeare’s era texted one another,… Continue Reading