The video below is not new, but it is relevant. Among the profitable things in it, these men remind us how the ninth commandment must inform theological polemics. “You shall not bear false witness” means that you must represent your opponent’s view accurately. It also means that you must not confuse your opponent’s view with an alleged entailment of his view. You can warn about a potential entailment of his view, but you cannot legitimately accuse your opponent of holding the alleged entailment if he explicitly rejects it.

Russell Moore recently said that Fred Sanders is a gift to the church. I couldn’t agree more. Sanders wrote a review last year of a collection of essays on the Trinity edited by Bruce Ware and John Starke. He closes his review with a brilliant summary of the obedience of the eternal Son. He writes: What’s eternal, and essential to the divine being, is Sonship, which means eternal generation and the filial generatedness that it entails. Is the obedience of the Son’s will to the Father’s commanding authority also eternal? That seems to me to be a fairly small question, and also one that needs an answer so nuanced it’s…

Over the weekend, a friend sent me a copy of the 2013 article “The Obedience of the Eternal Son” by Scott Swain and Michael Allen. I want to commend this essay to anyone who has been following the recent debate about intratrinitarian relations. I also want to warn you that this is not light reading, and I may lose all but the specialists in what follows. Having said that, this article is worth your time to ponder and understand for the current discussion. I’m not going to summarize the whole article, but I will give you its thesis and highlight a handful of other passages. Here’s the thesis:

At my church this morning, Pastor Jim Hamilton preached an excellent message from Psalms 56-57. If you have a chance to listen, I commend it to you. You can download it here or listen below. I also recommend a version of Psalm 57 that a band called The Critics put to music. I actually love this song. It’s called “Do Not Destroy,” which is a line from the superscription of the Psalm: “To the choirmaster: according to Do Not Destroy. A Miktam of David, when he fled from Saul, in the cave.” You can listen to the song above or download it here.

Andrew Wilson recently preached a message at King’s Church Eastbourne on “Transgender and Intersex.” His text is Matthew 19:1-12, and he does a faithful job with it. He is a really fantastic communicator, and he clearly sets forth the teaching of scripture and how it applies to our thinking about transgender and intersex. This message is not mainly polemical but pastoral. I like his line about how we ought to communicate with those wrestling with gender identity issues: “God loves you. We love you. Tell us what it’s like to be you.” Of course there’s more to say than that, but we certainly shouldn’t be saying less than that, right?…

Heath Lambert and I did a series of interviews with Family Life Today about our book Transforming Homosexuality. For many of you readers, the content of our book is no mystery. Still, in these recent discussions we do go into a little more depth. Dennis Rainey and Bob Lepine are great interviewers, and they are pros at teasing-out the practical implications of things. One of the things that comes out in these interviews is how much this book applies to all people. Yes, we are trying to ask and answer pressing questions about homosexuality. But in doing so, we are really just talking about the way sin and desire work…

National Geographic has an interesting article on the doctrine of Hell. Chris Date, Preston Sprinkle, Clark Pinnock, and Edward Fudge are all quoted in the piece. The gist of it is that evangelical belief in the traditional doctrine of hell is in decline. Over the last 20 years, the number of Americans who believe in the fiery down under has dropped from 71 percent to 58 percent. Heaven, by contrast, fares much better and, among Christians, remains an almost universally accepted concept… Annihilationsists believe they have already made significant inroads within the evangelical community. “My prediction is that, even within conservative evangelical circles, the annihilation view of hell will be…

I was just reading Joe Carter’s explainer on the Justice Department’s recent warning to North Carolina concerning their “bathroom law.” (By the way, Carter’s explainers are always excellent and helpful. Don’t miss them.) He shows that the Justice Department’s redefinition of “sex” is unprecedented and actually will do harm to real women. In his conclusion, Carter makes an observation worth noting: This is why complementarianism is not merely about “submission” within the family. It’s also about protecting women from a culture that worships male power and disdains femininity, and has no qualms about using the LGBTQIA movement to codify advantages for men into the law. I think Joe is right…

Last night I watched Pastor Pete Briscoe give his rationale for leading his church to welcome female elders to their leadership structure (see above). Briscoe pastors Bent Tree Bible Fellowship, a large congregation in the metro area of Dallas, Texas. His sermon amounts to a recitation of long-standing egalitarian readings of scripture. I admire that Briscoe and the elders made a public presentation of the decision and their justification for it. They have laid their cards on the table, and that is a good thing. But I still think their reasoning is flawed on many points. I am not going to give a point-by-point rebuttal. That would go beyond what…