Category: Evangelical Calvinist

I work the graveyard shift at work. I have a work vehicle I drive around in all night. And so, I often will listen to Christian radio. The lineup of pastors they have preaching throughout the night includes John MacArthur’s Grace To You broadcast. The broadcast for January 6th, 2023 was a sermon MacArthur originally delivered back in 1989. The sermon title is: Spiritual Stability, Part 3: Humility and Faith—Phil. 4:5-6a. So, he’s clearly going to be discussing anxiety, and its cure by trusting and resting in Christ. And absolutely, the Lord, as we humbly and boldly come to His…

“The secret things belong to the Lord our God, but the things revealed belong to us and to our sons forever, that we may observe all the words of this law. -Deuteronomy 29:29 No one has seen God at any time; the only begotten God who is in the bosom of the Father, He has explained Him. -John 1:18 For I would have you know, brethren, that the gospel which was preached by me is not according to man. 12 For I neither received it from man, nor was I taught it, but I received it through a revelation of Jesus Christ. -Galatians 1:11-12 16 For we did not follow cleverly devised tales when we made known…

The Eunomians, following the Arians (and Arius) maintained that there was a time when the Son was not. In other words, they maintained that the Logos of God was a creature; an exalted creature, but a creature nonetheless. So, when we see Jesus, we don’t actually see the Father in the face of the Son, we only see an exalted emissary of the singular (monadic) God of pure being. In a similar line of heresy, known as adoptionism, the Ebionites maintained that Jesus was just a man, already existent, that God adopted for His purposes to be His prophet. TF…

18 I also say to you that you are Peter, and upon this rock I will build My church; and the gates of Hades will not overpower it. 19 I will give you the keys of the kingdom of heaven; and whatever you bind on earth shall have been bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth shall have been loosed in heaven.” 20 Then He warned the disciples that they should tell no one that He was the Christ. -Matthew 16:18-20   The Church of Jesus Christ is Christ’s, it is not our possession. It is a continuous event of God’s grace for the world. Its being is not generated by an…

I was just re-reading the following post which I originally posted on September 13, 2021. I was looking for a post that got into the role that natural theology and no-natural theology plays in regard to Christian praxis vis-à-vis the state. This particular post has to do with BigMedicine, and what I call, along with Agamben, a new religion. Really it isn’t new at all though. Hitler rationalized that what he was doing, in pushing forward his third reich, was being done in the name of medical and scientific advancement (thus cultural advancement ushering in a new millennium where he would be…

I wrote the following four years ago. This locus remains my primary point of theological interest. That is, how the Christian claims to know God, under what pressures, has the greatest theological, political, sociological, and ethical implications we could fathom. As you will see, beyond the programmatic entailments engaged with in the following, natural theology, and adherence to it, has clear and present impact on the daily lives of real-life people; whether personally or collectively (as a society). If it is maintained that God and His ways can be known in an abstract ground latent in human reason, consciousness, or brute…

I just came across a Tweet from some random person that stated (my paraphrase): “I no longer believe in an eternal unending hell.” He said: “I understand why some still do, but why do so many who do act is if they are excited about it; as if it’s a sign that they were right, and those who rejected Christ were wrong and now will pay for it in an eternity of unending, hopeless torment?” So, of course, we are referring now to Christian universalism (CU). CU has been growing some serious legs over the last two decades, and even…

Dr. Craig Carter continues to promote the Christian Aristotelian/Thomist theologies of the Westminster Confession of Faith and the London Baptist Confession of Faith, with particular focus on their respective doctrines of God. He just tweeted the following: If someone tells you that God has passions, remember that to say that is to go against the teaching of our reformed confessions. Presbyterians & Reformed Baptists cannot go there. “There is but one only living & true God, a most pure spirit, invisible without body, parts, or passions, immutable, immense, eternal, incomprehensible, almighty, most wise, most holy, most free, most absolute, working…

Here is John Calvin commenting on Colossians 1:15: The sum is this — that God in himself, that is, in his naked majesty, is invisible, and that not to the eyes of the body merely, but also to the understandings of men, and that he is revealed to us in Christ alone, that we may behold him as in a mirror. For in Christ he shews us his righteousness, goodness, wisdom, power, in short, his entire self. We must, therefore, beware of seeking him elsewhere, for everything that would set itself off as a representation of God, apart from Christ,…

I am still a doctrinal (fundamentalist) evangelical in many ways. On a doctrine of biblical inerrancy: I am so committed to the intent that “inerrancy” intends to communicate that I’m beyond an inerrantist. My view of Scripture is “contexted” Christologically and thus soteriologically such that any type of abstract philosophical frame for a doctrine of inerrancy simply will not do. My view is confessional and even via antiqua, as I see an ontology of Holy Scripture funded protologically by God’s free election to be for the world in Jesus Christ. In a theological taxis then, my doctrine of Scripture has…