A world without music would be a world in black and white. With all the color removed, it just wouldn’t be as beautiful as it was meant to be. Music is so much a part of this season of the year that I thought it would be worth a few posts to talk about the music that my family listens to most at Christmas time. I’m certain you’ll find some items here that you are already well-acquainted with. Perhaps there will be some other items that are new to you or that you had forgotten about and are glad to be reminded of. So for what it’s worth, here it…
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Apple Pulls Manhattan Declaration App
Well this is really annoying. Apple has removed the Manhattan Declaration app from iTunes App Store in response to claims that the app was anti-gay. I’m not kidding. Read about it here (HT: James Kushiner). Chuck Colson, Robert George and Timothy George have written a letter to Steve Jobs about the removal of the MD app from the iTunes store. They promise to write an update when they receive a response. Here’s the statement that they released to supporters of the Declaration.
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Enter Rob Plummer
My friend and colleague Rob Plummer has just entered the blogosphere. Besides being a professor of New Testament at Southern Seminary, Rob is an elder at Sojourn Community Church and the author of the blockbuster book 40 Questions about Interpreting the Bible. One of his first posts is an excerpt from his recent ETS paper, and it’s titled “Taco Bell and Biblical Interpretation.” See, you’re already hooked!
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Doug Wilson on N. T. Wright at ETS
Doug Wilson has a brief commentary today on N.T. Wright’s recent ETS appearance (HT: Trevin Wax). In short, Wilson argues that Wright’s clarification of “on the basis of” language is good but that there are still other problems with Wright’s views on justification. He writes: “He consistently has set his views over against the ‘traditional’ Reformation view, and adherents of that view may be pardoned for thinking that he knew what he was talking about which, as it turns out, he didn’t. His area of expertise is not historical theology of the Reformation era, and it shows. And he managed to write an entire book responding to John Piper without…
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Blindly Partisan and the Worse for It
Ross Douthat has an insightful word in today’s New York Times about the brain-stultifying effects of hyper-partisanship. He writes: “Up to a point, American politics reflects abiding philosophical divisions. But people who follow politics closely — whether voters, activists or pundits — are often partisans first and ideologues second. Instead of assessing every policy on the merits, we tend to reverse-engineer the arguments required to justify whatever our own side happens to be doing. Our ideological convictions may be real enough, but our deepest conviction is often that the other guys can’t be trusted.” Douthat argues that the controversy over TSA searches would have gone differently had a Republican been…
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Yoga Redux
Last month, I posted a brief note about an article by Albert Mohler arguing that the practice of Yoga is incompatible with the Christian faith. The Associated Press covered Mohler’s article and subsequently set-off a tempest of controversy with Yoga practitioners across the country. Many Christian Yoga devotees objected to Mohler’s piece and contended that their practice of Yoga had no religious dimension to it at all. For them, Yoga offered no contradiction at all to their Christian convictions. Mohler’s response to that argument was simple. If there’s no religious dimension to your Yoga, then it’s not Yoga. It’s just stretching. According to today’s New York Times, a group of…
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The Battle of Ineptitude
LSU really laid and egg tonight against Arkansas. But it was an ugly game for both teams. I’m a little bit astonished at the headlines (here and here) suggesting that Arkansas has now made its case for a BCS bowl. Did these reporters watch this game? It was just one mistake after another. Mallet threw I don’t know how many interceptions. Arkansas’s punter fumbled a punt deep in their own territory. They looked terrible. Fortunately for the Hogs, they were only slightly less terrible than LSU. Neither of these teams looked BCS worthy. I guess we’ll see how things shake-out next week. P.S. Jim Hamilton is a sorry dog (or…
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Review of “Who’s Tampering with the Trinity”
Stephen Wellum has written a major review of Millard Erickson’s book Who’s Tampering with the Trinity?: An Assessment of the Subordination Debate (Kregel, 2009). In Erickson’s book, he argues against the idea of an eternal, functional subordination of the Son to the Father. In Wellum’s review, he gives a host of reasons why Erickson’s argument will not stand. The review appears in the most recent issue of JBMW, and it is a must-read for anyone who has been following the “subordination debate” among Trinitarians. Here’s a snippet from Wellum’s critique:
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Happy Thanksgiving!
Here’s the Psalm that we read in family worship last night. Happy Thanksgiving!
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HCSB Study Bible
I’m grateful to Broadman & Holman for sending me a gratis copy of the new HCSB Study Bible. If you haven’t taken a look at the HCSB Study Bible, now would be a good time to check it out. The English translation is the Holman Christian Standard Version, and it is set within 2,270 pages of commentary, notes, essays, maps, and much more. Contributors to this volume include Tremper Longman, Walt Kaiser, Andreas Köstenberger, Stanley Porter, David Dockery, Ray Van Neste, Murray Harris, Robert Yarbrough, George Guthrie, Robert Stein, Mark Dever, Craig Evans, Craig Blaising, Bruce Ware, Danny Akin, Daniel Wallace, Mary Kassian, Paige Patterson, Craig Blomberg and many, many…