David Howard of Bethel University has penned and excellent opinion piece in today’s Wall Street Journal titled “Triumph From Tragedy: Five missionaries’ murders were not the end of the story.” It’s the kind of essay that will pique interest in the faith that led these five men to die martyr’s deaths. Go read it. Tell others.
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Fighting the Good Fight against Abortion
Dr. William Cutrer is the medical director of a crisis pregnancy center that is featured in today’s New York Times. The article is titled “Some Abortion Foes Forgo Politics for Quiet Talk.” Dr. Cutrer is an OB-GYN who also serves as a Professor of Christian Ministry at the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary. He is also a special friend who ministered to my wife and me while we were living in Louisville, KY. This article puts to the lie the notion that pro-life people do not care about women. A Woman’s Choice Resource Center where Dr. Cutrer works not only counsels women against abortion, but also provides material and financial resources…
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Review of Bart Ehrman’s ‘Misquoting Jesus’
Bart D. Ehrman. Misquoting Jesus: The Story behind Who Changed the Bible and Why. HarperSanFrancisco, 2005. 242pp. $24.95. UPDATE! (January 15, 2007) Touchstone magazine recently published my review, and it is now available in their December 2006 issue. They also have made available an online version which can be accessed here.
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Please Pat, We Don’t Need Anymore Help (part 2)
Photo: Jamie-Andrea Yanak/Associated Press Pat Robertson has stepped in it all over again this week with his pronouncement that Ariel Sharon’s illness is a judgment from God. The Washington Post reports:
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Need Christ? Not if you are Jewish.
Today’s Washington Post observes the widespread support for Israel and for Jews among evangelical Christians. The piece is titled, “Among Evangelicals, A Kinship With Jews.” The paper quotes excerpts from an interview with Mark Noll that should raise the eyebrows of anyone who cares about the gospel. Mark A. Noll, a professor of Christian thought at Wheaton College, a center of evangelical scholarship in Illinois, said evangelicals are beginning to move away from supersessionism — the centuries-old belief that with the coming of Jesus, God ended his covenant with the Jews and transferred it to the Christian church. Since the 1960s, the Roman Catholic Church and some Protestant denominations have…
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N. T. Wright’s “Paul: In Fresh Perspective”
N. T. Wright. Paul: In Fresh Perspective. Minneapolis: Fortress, 2005. 195pp. $25.00. In many ways, there is not much that is “fresh” about N. T. Wright’s Paul: In Fresh Perspective. The book consists largely of a rehashing of material that he has already written about elsewhere.
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John Piper and Cancer
John Piper has written a letter announcing that he has prostate cancer. The letter is available here on the Desiring God website. Those of you who read my blog know how much I love Dr. Piper and how important his ministry has been in my life. I hope you might be willing to join me in praying for him, his church, and his family.
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Who’s Dodging a Judicial Philosophy?
Stephen L. Carter of Christianity Today expresses a bit of cynicism concerning evangelicals who hold to Originalism as a judicial philosophy (see “The ‘Judicial Philosophy’ Dodge“). He thinks the very notion of having a judicial philosophy is a “slippery” business at best. All the talk about opposing judges who “legislate from the bench” and supporting judges who interpret the Constitution according to “original intent” is just code for one’s position on abortion. For Carter, the popular distinction between Originalism and the “Living Constitution” approach is nonsense—”not merely nonsense, but nonsense on stilts.” Carter may be correct that some evangelicals support justices based on outcomes and not based on actual judicial…
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Bethlehem Withdraws the Motion to Accept Unbaptized Persons as Members
For those of you who read my blog, you may remember my two previous posts on the elders at John Piper’s church who were proposing that certain unbaptized persons be accepted into their fellowship as members (read them here and here). You may also remember my post in December in which I disagreed with this decision on the part of the elders (read it here). I am happy to learn that the elders have withdrawn the motion (click here to read the notice on the church’s website). Bethlehem still needs our prayers, however, as the issue is still not resolved. This is evident in the statement posted on the church’s…
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The Incoherence of Darwinism on Display
Olivia Judson, an evolutionary biologist at Imperial College in London, writes an interesting Op-Ed in today’s New York Times titled, “Why I’m Happy I Evolved.” The essay is interesting because it puts on plain display the incoherence of atheistic Darwinism. She writes: Some people want to think of humans as the product of a special creation, separate from other living things. I am not among them; I am glad it is not so. I am proud to be part of the riot of nature, to know that the same forces that produced me also produced bees, giant ferns and microbes that live at the bottom of the sea. It is…