Category Archives: Contra

We agree with out opponents that the New Testament has far more manuscripts and far more complete manuscripts attesting to it than any other book of antiquity. We are told that it is an “embarrassment of riches.” The conclusion our interlocutors often draw from this truth looks something like, “If we trust that we haveContinue reading “Paul vs. Socrates”

I came across this tweet before I came across the one from yesterday’s post. Let me give the tweet and then we’ll makes come comments. So of course we have a kind of retweet here. Elisabeth Elliot, wife of martyred missionary Jim Elliot, is being quoted by Pastor Castleberry. And is my want to doContinue reading “Old Hymns and Old Bibles”

I came across this tweet a couple days ago and I thought that there is an interesting comparison to be made between the current academic authorities behind what counts as the New Testament and the current academic authorities behind public school curriculum. The latter is mentioned in the tweet below and the former follows. ForContinue reading “Non-Textual Critic = Layperson”

Continuing our examination of Expressive Individualism and its particular manifestation in the Multiple Version Only Movement, we pick up again with Pastor Ben Wright’s post that we discussed yesterday. Pastor Wright observes, “As Jonathan Leeman puts it in One Assembly, there are unintended consequences to our churches’ expressions both of our members’ individual preferences and ourContinue reading “The Unintended Consequences of Multiple Version Only-ism’s Expressive Individualism (Part 4)”

In this article written by Ben Wright, pastor of Cedar Point Baptist Church in Cedar Park, TX explains what the attractional church methodology [i.e., do whatever it takes to make Church appealing] is, ” We’re offering the experience of worship that you’re looking for.” https://www.9marks.org/article/do-9marks-churches-foster-expressive-individualism/ Let’s make a minor adjustment to the above to seeContinue reading “Does the American Church at Large Foster Expressive Individualism? (Part 3)”

If you’ve spent more than five minutes on the internet over the last couple days you probably ran across this exchange between SCOTUS nominee Ketanji Brown Jackson and Senator Marsha Blackburn, Senator Blackburn: “Can you provide a definition for the word ‘woman’?” Judge Jackson: “I can’t…not in this context. I’m not a biologist.” In continuationContinue reading “Expressive Individualism, A SCOTUS Nominee, and the Textual Issue (Part 2)”

I am about half way through Carl Trueman’s brilliant work, The Rise and Triumph of the Modern Self. Trueman weaves together a beautiful intellectual tapestry by tying together the ideas of men like Charles Taylor, Jean-Joques Rousseau, Percy Bysshe Shelly, Fredrick Nietzsche, Karl Marx, and Sigmund Freud. Trueman’s aim in gathering such a distinguished groupContinue reading “Expressive Individualism and Multiple Version Only-ism (Part 1)”

“Entities are not to be multiplied without necessity.” William of Ockham Ockham’s famous dictum gives us another occasion to demonstrate how Multiple Version Onlyism is not only out of touch with historic Christian doctrine but it is also out of touch with reasonable argumentation in general. As we have pointed out time and again, MVO’sContinue reading “Yet Another Place Where MVOism Fails: Ockham’s Razor”

Generally speaking the doctrines of the Christian faith can be sorted into ten main categories: Theology Proper, Christology, Pneumatology, Bibliology, Anthropology, Hamartiology, Soteriology, Ecclesiology, Angelology, and Eschatology. It seems from these ten doctrines that the case for a standard sacred text is evidently and substantively manifest. Given the advent of the tower of Babel weContinue reading “The Arc of Christian Theology Is Long and Bends Toward a Standard Sacred Text”

As Christians we are citizens of another kingdom, a heavenly Kingdom. This Kingdom is the greatest of all kingdoms and it ruled but the greatest of all Kings. So as we walk this earth we should be giving the world around us a foretaste of that Kingdom and what it will be like when ChristContinue reading “A Standard Sacred Text and the Eschaton”