The Superlative Animal

I've recently re-read J.D. Salinger's Raise High the Roofbeam, Carpenters, and have remembered my love for it. It's truly one of my favorite novellas (along with the other related stories revolving around the Glass family—Seymour: An Introduction; Franny and Zooey; and Nine Stories. Catcher in the Rye doesn't do it for me, however; Holden Caulfield is an annoying pric). The title of this story comes from Sappho's fragment 88, which the narrator's sister, Boo Boo, scrawls on the bathroom mirror with a sliver of soap (in light of her other brother's forthcoming marriage):   Raise high the roof beams, Carpenters!      Hymenaeus! Like Ares comes the bridegroom!      Hymenaeus! Taller than...

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Born-Again Baldwin

Forget the widow and orphan, Stephen Baldwin needs your help. God forbid Stephen Baldwin gets a job and lives a quiet, lower middle-class life...

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Strawmen: A Fundamentalist’s Trojan Horse

My head is about to burst into flames. I don’t publicly disagree with friends lightly, but here goes: the resignation of Bruce Waltke from Reformed Theological Seminary is a blemish on an otherwise decent history, at least in my experience there (as a full-time student from 2000 to 2002 at the Orlando campus). Equally distasteful are the majority of reactionary blog posts—for and against (view this for a good illustration that depicts why). One more thing, in the interest of transparency, I'm fairly ignorant about modern scientific theories, and still I remain unconvinced of the entire neo-Darwinian synthesis, yet I am even less convinced of young-earth creationism—for both biblical and scientific reasons. Interestingly, Modern...

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Freedom and Its Obligations

If ever there were a free man, Adam was he. And all he and his wife had to do was exercise that freedom to the glory of God. But somewhere along the line, disobedience seemed like a viable option. Scripture isn’t exactly clear how and when sin crept into the minds of that first couple. All we see is Eve suddenly giving a greater value to the tree, its fruit, and wisdom—over against God’s word. This was not a simple grasp at more information, as if mere “knowledge” was lacking in them both. Rather, this was a power-grab at what the potential of greater knowledge might bring—autonomy, or freedom from the Creator’s way. All too ironically, Eve decides this is “good” (Gen. 3:6); now she is the one who, like the Creator in Genesis 1, judges what...

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Yet 40 Days and You Will Read This, part 3

See the first and second parts of this series on reading canonical prophetic literature.In sum, we left off with the argument that prognostications found in Scripture have tacit conditions attached to them. This applies to every form of prediction found in the canon: 1) those explicitly qualified by conditions; 2) those explicitly qualified by assurances; and 3) those with no explicit qualifications (see part 2 for more on these classes of prophecies). But what about Deuteronomy 18:22? We're still left with: "…when a prophet speaks in the name of Yahweh, if the word does not come to pass or come true, that is a word that Yahweh has not spoken; the prophet has spoken it presumptuously. You need not be afraid of him." Could it be that black-and-white?...

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Destiny of the Evangelical Species

Bruce Waltke has been taken to task for his recent comments (the video has since been taken down) about how the (evangelical) church will be destined for "cult" status if, in the course of time, all the data points decisively to something akin to the neo-Darwinian synthesis and the church still denies that reality. In short, its destiny is spiritual death, he argues, if it chooses to simply stick its head in the sand. Update: See Waltke's even more recent clarification on the BioLogos video. Update #2: Waltke resigns from RTS. But he's old; surely the timing is coincidental? Update #3: Question answered. Update #4: The last? Waltke offers some final thoughts on the brouhaha. First, this is like pub-talk for me; I don't think this discussion...

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