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…
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Theological Interpretation of Scripture
The Theological Interpretation of Scripture has turned in to quite the hot topic these days among Bible scholars and theologians. As a way of reading the scripture, this approach tends to be either loved or hated. On one side, people see it as a way to correct the excesses of historical critical scholarship and as a way to reclaim the Bible as the church’s book. On the other side, some people feel that the approach removes the text from its historical location and obscures authorial intent. This is an important discussion, and I don’t intend to resolve the issues here. But I do want to pass along some recent items…
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Wrong about Wright?
Tom Wright has written-in to clarify that he in fact did not intend his ETS plenary address to signal a change in his position on justification. He writes, “I haven’t retracted anything that I meant in my many, many earlier statements on this subject.” His step back from “on the basis of” language was only a change in terminology, not a change in substance. In short, he says that his current views on the matter are what they have always been. There are at least three items that I want to respond to from the two comments that Wright contributed under my earlier post (his comments are here and here).…
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Patted Down in Atlanta
I travelled to and from Atlanta last week with my good friend Jim Hamilton. When we arrived back in Louisville yesterday, there was a reporter waiting at the security check-point. He wanted to interview us about our experience with the new TSA security procedures (video above, text version here). In short, he wanted to know if we had been through a full body scanner or had been patted down. Neither of us went through a scanner, but I did get patted down in Atlanta. For some reason, the reporter missed that detail and reported that none of the travelers he interviewed had been patted down. That was incorrect. I was.…
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N.T. Wright on Justification at ETS
I have been in Atlanta this week attending a series of professional meetings for theologians and Bible scholars. The first meeting was the annual gathering of the Evangelical Theological Society (ETS). This year, the theme of ETS was “justification,” and our special guest in one of the plenary sessions was N.T. Wright. Tom Schreiner gave an excellent critique of Wright’s views on justification and actually teased out of him a rather remarkable concession. In fact, I would say that this concession was the most significant thing that happened this week at ETS on the topic of justification. Schreiner critiqued Wright’s published view that justification occurs “on the basis of the…