A few months back I made mention of a new magazine, Credo, which is reformed, credobaptistic, and focused on theology and history. The first issue was published yesterday and it is a humdinger. Click here to go to the main page of the magazine. Credo is an online production, and you can read it either as a PDF or as a digital publication. You’ll find stimulating resources like an interview with Bruce Ware, another with John Frame, an interview on... Read more
What is the value of church history? I attempt to answer this very important question here in a video interview with Christianity.com conducted at the 2011 national conference of The Gospel Coalition. I reference the doctrine of the Trinity–currently a hot-button issue due to the matter of modalism raised in light of the Elephant Room video series–to show that while historical theology does not create truth, it certainly allows Christians to put together biblical insights, to systematize doctrine for the... Read more
This week and next, the Carl F. H. Henry Center for Theological Understanding at Trinity Evangelical Divinity School is featuring Bruce McCormack of Princeton Theological Seminary for the Kantzer Lectures in Revealed Theology. The series title is “The God Who Graciously Elects,” and you can watch the live-stream of the final four lectures by clicking here. This is a high-level academic lecture series aimed at scholars and other interested parties. The language will be technical and the conversation theological and... Read more
It’s been uncomfortably quiet at this humble little blog. This is due in large part to a friend of mine who goes by the name “dissertation.” He’s very needy; I’m hoping soon to part company with him. At any rate, I thought I’d share a bit about some upcoming events that you may be interested in. The first is the annual gathering of the Jonathan Edwards Society in Northampton, Massachusetts. Some of you out there don’t care about Edwards. That’s... Read more
Trevin Wax has just reviewed Scot McKnight’s The King Jesus Gospel and has offered a thorough interaction with this creative book (with a great cover-design, I must say). After registering a number of agreements with McKnight, Trevin suggests several shortcomings. One of these involves the way McKnight conceives the story of Scripture. I’ll quote Wax at length, as this section is excellent. The heart of my differences with Scot’s proposal is not in defining the word “gospel.” It’s not in... Read more
Was Francis Schaeffer significant? Was he significant for you? He was for me. I’ve got a piece up at the Gospel Coalition entitled “Everything But the Knickers: The Enduring Influence of Francis Schaeffer” that offers a brief apologetic for his importance. Here’s a snatch from it: In a news cycle driven by the latest quotes from Rick Perry, Barack Obama, and Mitt Romney, you would not expect to see Francis Schaeffer popping up on the daily ticker. The American expatriate,... Read more
Christians differ on economic and political matters. Many are likely unified in these days, though, in a recognition that our national economy continues to struggle (to say nothing of the global economy). Matthew Continetti of the Weekly Standard has written a tough-minded piece worth reading on our present economic state. Here’s a bit: [F]or almost four years, a prolonged and brutal economic slump has coincided with sustained government efforts to bring demand forward and get consumers spending as they did... Read more
We have heard their stories often in the previous decade. The fire fighters of New York City who streamed into the two towers of the World Trade Center to rescue the hundreds of people who were trapped in them. The names are available on nondescript web pages: Joseph Agnello, Sean Hanley, Robert Parro, William Wren. With many other rescue workers, they placed themselves in imminent danger–impossible to estimate on the morning of September 11–in order to fulfill their duties. It... Read more
If you enjoy puzzling over what makes for effective education, this story from Smithsonian magazine, entitled “Why Are Finland’s Schools Successful?,” will strike your fancy. As past stories referenced on this blog have shown, there is a major debate in America over what makes for good teaching. Is it having bright minds teach children? Small classroom sizes? Individualized instruction? Not having standardized tests? Having standardized tests? Same-sex classrooms? This article by LynNell Hancock does not definitively answer all of these... Read more
Over at the Gospel Coalition, A. Donald MacLeod, an eminent Christian historian, has penned a piece entitled “The Joys and Frustrations of a Christian Biographer.” The piece is a slightly edited version of the commencement message he delivered at Westminster East in the spring of 2011. I read it then and have read it again and find it a highly profitable essay. In my doctoral work on the re-enchantment of the evangelical mind, I have used MacLeod’s text on C.... Read more
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