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On April 23, 2014 By In Books, Scribblings

The Inklings of Oxford

inklings of oxford

Review by Marc Hays

I am not familiar with how many books like this may exist. I am sure that personalities such as C. S. Lewis and J. R. R. Tolkien have attracted many a biographer and beauties such as Oxford have inspired many a photographer, but this book accomplishes both with stunning success. It is as much a coffee table picture book as it is a sweeping biography of “Lewis, Tolkien and Their Friends” as the subtitle reads. I don’t know if I’ll ever make it to Oxford. The photos in this volume make one want to travel there today, but if I never get to go in person, I will always be thankful for the journey I was able to make through the pages of this beautiful book.

As for the prose, this book is history, biography, geography, literary analysis, and a little bit of philosophical meandering to boot. It is a pleasant read. Never dull. There are fewer words than you might expect, as the pages are filled with gorgeous photography, but perhaps more is said here than has been said with a far greater number of words elsewhere. The book costs about $20 on Amazon which is not cheap, but not expensive either. If you are a Lewis or Tolkien fan, you will not regret the purchase. If you are not a fan yet, you would do well to be, and this sweeping overview of “the Inklings of Oxford” is a great place to start. (Actually you should start by reading their books, but after a few of those…once you’re hooked, check out this book.)

Order it here.<>управление имиджем в поисковых системах

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On April 22, 2014 By In Scribblings

God and the Gay Christian Reviews

Recently a book came out saying that Christians have a  moral and Biblical obligation to accept same sex relationships. No longer does the Bible just tolerate homosexuality, but now it demands that the Church accept it and smile upon it. Here are some responses to the foolishness if you are interested.

Here is a free e-book that includes short chapters by Al Mohler, Denny Burk, and Owen Strachan. I read it this morning and found it helpful in cutting through the fog that these types of books like to put in our minds.

Here is a list by James Hamilton of some of the logical fallacies in the book.

Here James Hamilton calls upon the author to repent and turn from his sins.

Here is a review by Andrew Walker over at Canon and Culture.

These reviews are excellent to remind Christians of what the Bible actually teaches and to strengthen their faith in Christ and trust in the Bible. But it will not convince homosexuals to change. This debate may have been about exegesis at some point in the past, but it no longer is. The Bible is no longer the real authority. The ultimate authority is my own experience. Below is a quote from a liberal New Testament scholar who believes homosexuality is fine. Unlike the author of God and the Gay Christian he is honest. He thinks the Bible is wrong and that his experience his right. All those “Christians” who think homosexuality is fine should just come out and say it as plainly as Luke Timothy Johnson does.

I have little patience with efforts to make Scripture say something other than what it says, through appeals to linguistic or cultural subtleties. The exegetical situation is straightforward: we know what the text says. But what are we to do with what the text says? … I think it important to state clearly that we do, in fact, reject the straightforward commands of Scripture, and appeal instead to another authority when we declare that same-sex unions can be holy and good. And what exactly is that authority? We appeal explicitly to the weight of our own experience and the experience thousands of others have witnessed to, which tells us that to claim our own sexual orientation is in fact to accept the way in which God has created us.

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On April 18, 2014 By In Scribblings

The Royal Banners Forward Go

Rembrandt

The royal banners forward go;
The cross shines forth in mystic glow
Where He in flesh, our flesh who made,
our sentence bore, our ransom paid;

Where deep for us the spear was dyed,
Life’s torrent rushing from His side.
To wash us in that precious flood
Where mingled water flowed and blood.

Fulfilled is all that David told
In true prophetic song of old;
Amidst the nations, God, saith he,
Hath reigned and triumphed from the tree.

O Tree of beauty, Tree of light,
O Tree with royal purple dight;
Elect, on whose triumphal breast
Those holy limbs should find their rest;

On whose dear arms, so widely flung,
The weight of this world’s ransom hung
The price of humankind to pay
And spoil the spoiler of his prey.

O Cross, our one reliance, hail!
So may thy power with us avail
To give new virtue to the saint
And pardon to the penitent.

To Thee, eternal Three in One,
Let homage meet by all be done
Whom by the cross Thou dost restore,
Preserve, and govern evermore.

Written by 6th century bishop Venantius Fortunatus, translated by John M. Neale.

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On April 18, 2014 By In Scribblings

Tasting Death

person of christ“Christ took death, ‘even death on a cross’ (Phil. 2:8). The subject of this dying—the One who dies–is God the Son. He obeys unto death. In his original form he was immune to death, but he assumed a form that was mortal. He went towards death, choosing it and tasting it, deciding not to be its master but its victim, and accepting a destiny according to which it would be a sin for him not to die. The Son of Man must suffer. Death was obedience. Not dying would be disobedience.

Besides death, it was death in its most aggravated form. Not merely because the cross involved indescribable pain, but because in his case it was the occasion, the instrument, and the symbol of the curse due to sin. He experienced death unmitigated and unqualified: death with the sting; a death without light, comfort, or encouragement. The long, long journey from Caesarea Philippi to Calvary was a long journey into a black hole involving not only physical and emotional pain, but a spiritual desertion beyond our imagining.

In his agony he would cry and not be heard. He would lose all sense of his divine Sonship. He would lose all sense of his Father’s love. Into that tiny space (his body, outside Jerusalem), and into that fraction of time (the ninth hour, Good Friday) God gathered the sin of the world, and there and then, in the flesh of his own Son, he condemned it (Rom. 8:3). On that cross, at that time, the Son knew himself only as sin and his Father only as its avenger.

Here was the singularity. The Logos, the ground of all law, became lawlessness, speechless in a darkness beyond reason. He so renounced his rights that he died; and he so made himself nothing that he died THAT death. He did not shrink from the connection with flesh. And when a second great step was called for, he shuddered, yet resolutely accepted the connection with death. He became flesh, then went deeper, tasting death.”

-Donald Macleod, “The Person of Christ”

(Hat-tip to my friend Justin Dillehay who posted this quote on FB this morning.)<>реклама на щитах стоимостьэффективная реклама услуг

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On April 15, 2014 By In Scribblings

Doug Philips accused by a woman named Lourdes Torres

We at Kuyperian have been keeping a close eye on the Doug Phillips unfolding drama, which came as a result of his inappropriate relationship with a woman.  With the recent news of the resignation of another famous patriarchal leader, Bill Gothard, the patriarchal movement has come to the center of several new investigations. Now, World Net Daily reports that the same woman–Lourdes Torres– is accusing Vision Forum leader, Doug Phillips, of inappropriate behavior far worse than originally implied by the resignation letter:

In the complaint filed in Kendall County District Court in Texas Tuesday morning, Phillips is accused of using a woman named Lourdes Torres, now 29, as “a personal sex object” over a period of five years.

Asked if she ever believed she loved Phillips, Torres, who was over the age of 21 at the time of the sexual contact, told WND, “Oh, yes, definitely.”

Torres said she met Phillips and his wife, Beall, at a homeschooling conference in November 1999 when Torres was 15 years old. Torres spent many hours in the Phillips home, cared for their children and helped run the family farm. She was invited on trips with the family to Hawaii, Virginia, Mexico, Florida and other states.

By 2007, according to the complaint, Phillips began “to pay special attention” to Torres, complementing her beauty and devotion to his family, giving her money, touching her, asking her personal questions about her thoughts and life plans and telling her he would take care of her.

READ THE REST

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On April 15, 2014 By In Scribblings

Iowa Governor Terry Branstad Calls Iowans to Repent

The Republican Iowa Governor known for growing government and raising taxes, makes an interesting proclamation. Watch for yourself.

 
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On April 15, 2014 By In Scribblings

Five Errors to Remove from your Easter Sermon

Andreas J. Köstenberger and Justin Taylor speak to five errors that are common in Easter sermons. Here is number one:

The common assertion seems reasonable that if Jesus “began his ministry” when he “was about thirty years of age” (Luke 3:23) and engaged in a three-year ministry (John mentions three Passovers, and there might have been a fourth one), then he was 33 years old at the time of his death. However, virtually no scholar believes Jesus was actually 33 when he died. Jesus was born before Herod the Great issued the decree to execute “all the male children in Bethlehem and in all that region who were two years old or under” (Matt. 2:16, ESV) and before Herod died in the spring of 4 B.C. If Jesus was born in the fall of 5 or 6 B.C., and if we remember that we don’t count the “0” between B.C. and A.D., then Jesus would have been 37 or 38 years old when he died in the spring of A.D. 33 (as we believe is most likely). Even if Jesus died in the year A.D. 30 (the only serious alternative date), he would have been 34 or 35, not 33 years old. No major doctrine is affected by this common misconception. But don’t damage your credibility by confidently proclaiming “facts” from the pulpit that are not true. READ THE REST

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On April 11, 2014 By In Books, Scribblings

Buy Bianco’s Book for a Buck

letters to my sons

by Marc Hays

Yesterday, I recommended M. G. Bianco’s book, Letters to My Sons: A Humane Vision for Human Relationships. Today, and only today, you can buy the Kindle version of this book for 99 cents. Yes, that’s right, 99 cents. As I commended it to you yesterday, I recommend it to you today and will be recommending it for years to come.

Here’s another quote:

“Fornication is not a game to be played. A failure to see and treat others as fully human images of God is a failure to love your neighbor. Treating others and becoming animal-like yourself–for that is the result of failing to love your neighbor–is to habituate yourself out of the Kingdom of God; it is to live according to habits that make you more like an animal than an image-bearer of God. It is impossible to desire and be welcomed into the presence of the Triune God when you have trained yourself to not want to be there.”

Here’s a link to buy Bianco’s book for ’bout a buck.

Here’s a link to my quote from yesterday.

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On April 10, 2014 By In Scribblings

A Humane Vision for Human Relationships

letters to my sonsIn January 2014, M. G. Bianco published Letters to My Sons: A Humane Vision for Human Relationships. I am thoroughly enjoying this book and will write a full review of it when I finish, but for now here’s a portion to whet your appetite. Although I have not finished reading it yet, I can already highly recommend it to everyone. It is a work worthy of reading. Twice.

Here’s the quote for today:

We need to recognize that to fail to treat others as they deserve is to objectify them. When we limit someone by the way we look at them we are objectifying them. To objectify another human being is to reduce them to something other than their full humanness. I will use the term “dehumanize” in these letters to refer to the way we treat others improperly. For many of these letters, we will consider how we dehumanize others with our eyes, our thoughts, and our sexual behaviors toward or with them.

Think of it in terms of the phrase, “Don’t judge a book by its cover.” What is meant, of course, is that you cannot know the true value of the words within the book simply by looking at its cover. How much more true is this of humans? The complexity of the human person prevents us from truly knowing their inner beauty and goodness, their value and dignity as humans created in the image of God. When we determine that someone is not worth getting to know or have a relationship with because of how we have judged their appearances with our eyes, we are objectifying them, we are dehumanizing them.

As M. G. Bianco states in the subtitle, he has a “humane vision for human relationships.” The purpose of these letters is to pass this vision along to his sons. Through the pages of these letters, now published, the non-Biancan reader can also see with new eyes that which is a very old vision, for it is the vision of the triune God, who created humanity in His very image.

Go to Amazon, and buy your own copy via this link. Hard copy or Kindle.<>автоматическая раскрутка а онлайн

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On April 9, 2014 By In Scribblings

Lectures on Dietrich Bonhoeffer (February 4, 1906 – April 9, 1945)

Dietrich Bonhoeffer was a German Lutheran pastor, theologian, dissident anti-Nazi, and founding member of the Confessing Church. He died on April 9, 1945.  I did a talk some months ago summarizing Bonhoeffer’s excellent book Life Together. Here is my conclusion:

Bonhoeffer was hanged less than a month before he would have been liberated by allied forces. He never for a moment believed that the world needed to be given over to evil. He believed in the redemption of this world, and he also believed that the Gospel called us to speak into all issues of life. When Christians retreat from the public square we are leaving room for another Hitler to rise. “The Christian faith,” he said, “could never be really intellectual theory…but a responsible, obedient action, the discipleship of Christ in every situation of concrete everyday life in private or in public.” Bonhoeffer believed that life together was a necessary testament to the Gospel. It was a taste of our life together in the resurrected world. This is why for him, death was not the end. One of the English officers described his last encounter with Dietrich Bonhoeffer:

Bonhoeffer was one of the very few persons I have ever met for whom God was real and always near….he had hardly ended his last prayer when the door opened and two civilians entered. They said: “Prisoner Bonhoeffer, come with us.” That had only one meaning for all prisoners—the gallows. We said good-by to him. He took me aside: “This is the end, but for me it is the beginning of life.”

Life Together now does not end at death. At that moment, it will be only the beginning of a much richer and purer life with one another.

As a way of celebrating the life of Dietrich Bonhoeffer who died on April 9, 1945, Wordmp3.com is offering four lectures on Bonhoeffer presented at the ETS National Conference for $9.99. E-mail me at wordmp3sales@gmail.com to receive the $3 DISCOUNT.<>внутренняя оптимизация  а

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