Yazan: ayong | 31 July 2010 | No Comments
Categories: Theology
Paul declares in Romans 14:23 that “whatever is not from faith is sin.” Here’s the dilemma: An unbeliever sees a child drowning in the river. In response, he dives in and saves her. Was this a good act? Consider Paul’s teaching regarding obedience to the civil government in the previous chapter: 1) Let every soul [...]
Yazan: ayong | 31 July 2010 | No Comments
Categories: Theology
According to legend, it was a spider, even more than Braveheart, who inspired Robert the Bruce to succeed in his battle for Scottish independence. As Sir Walter Scott tells the story in Tales of a Grandfather, pp. 27-28: The news of the taking of Kildrummie, the captivity of his wife, and the execution of his [...]
Yazan: ayong | 31 July 2010 | No Comments
Categories: Theology
Charles E. Hambrick-Stowe, The Practice of Piety: Puritan Devotional Disciplines in Seventeenth-Century New England, pp. 60-63: Thomas Shepard brought together all these usages of the pilgrim metaphor in one of his most famous sermon series, The Sound Beleever. After elaborating on what saints might look for in the life to come, Shepard assured his auditors [...]
Yazan: ayong | 30 July 2010 | No Comments
Categories: Theology
On July 30, 1917, Edmund Clowney was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. After studies at Wheaton College and Westminster Seminary, Clowney was ordained by the Presbytery of New York and New England in 1942. He pastored Orthodox Presbyterian churches in Connecticut, Illinois, and New Jersey before joining the practical theology faculty at Westminster Seminary in Philadelphia. [...]
Yazan: ayong | 30 July 2010 | No Comments
Categories: Theology
Recently I’ve been listening to Matthew Smith’s new CD Watch the Rising Day. Matthew has been contributing to the contemporary hymn-based music of Indelible Grace for years, but has also produced a few of his own albums. He asked me to preview his new CD which I was more than happy to do. Like Indelible Grace, [...]
Yazan: ayong | 29 July 2010 | No Comments
Categories: Theology
As many know, C.S. Lewis, author of a space trilogy known as the Ransom series, speculated on the possibility of life on other planets in his essay “Religion and Rocketry,” published in The World’s Last Night: And Other Essays. Moreover, the Vatican in the last few years has an expressed an openness to the possibility [...]
Yazan: ayong | 29 July 2010 | No Comments
Categories: Theology
As a follow up to what I posted on Monday, here’s an example of focusing on the content without ignoring the container. This is a video from the WorshipGod08 conference, where Ryan Ferguson is reciting Psalm 25, using the English Standard Version (ESV) translation. It’s about 4 minutes and very moving. If you want to [...]
Yazan: ayong | 29 July 2010 | No Comments
Categories: Theology
Retiring Netherlands bishop Tiny Muskens (not to be confused with any inhabitants of Middle Earth) offered the following proposal to the religious world: “Allah is a very beautiful word for God. Shouldn’t we all say that from now on we will name God Allah? … What does God care what we call him? It is [...]
Yazan: ayong | 29 July 2010 | No Comments
Categories: Theology
Jonathan Mitchell, “A Letter…to His Friend” (1649), quoted in Charles E. Hambrick-Stowe, The Practice of Piety: Puritan Devotional Disciplines in Seventeenth-Century New England, p. 91: And truly when I am most near God,I have no greater request than thisfor my self and you, that God would useany means to make us see things really as [...]
Yazan: ayong | 28 July 2010 | No Comments
Categories: Theology
On July 28, 1881, J. Gresham Machen was born in Baltimore, Maryland. The second of three sons born to Arthur Webster Machen and Mary Gresham Machen, Gresham was raised in an affluent Southern Presbyterian home, and his family attended Franklin Street Presbyterian Church, an influential Old School congregation. His upbringing nurtured him less in the [...]