Carl Trueman on Evangelicals and Lent

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s2smodern

Carl Trueman is always fun to read.  He offers some zinging words on the recent trend for some Evangelicals getting very interested in Lent.  His comments are here.

Moore and Moore

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s2smodern

Russ Moore is a good guy, but I suspect Douglas Wilson has the best of him here on recent events in Alabama.  This issue is concerned with the nature of authority, and the nature of governmental authority in particular.

 

Christianity and Liberty

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s2smodern

We have seen in recent days (and months and years) an increasing impatience with, and intolerance toward, the most basic tenets of Christian morality.  Most recently, a Christian couple in Idaho is being threatened with arrest (read again: with arrest), because they cannot as Christians agree to perform the "wedding" ceremony of gay persons (they own and operate a wedding chapel).  This should not be a news flash.  Of course a traditional Christian couple would not want to perform such a ceremony.  Since Christianity's inception, Christians have considered marriage much more than a simple legal and social contract.  Rather, Christians consider marriage between a man and a woman to be a picture of the relationship between Christ and the Church (see Ephesians 5:22 and following).  So of course a Christian committed to basic Christian ethics would refuse to perform what traditional Christianity considers to be completely out of bounds morally (the "marital" union of people of the same sex).  I want to write a longer essay or set of essays on this phenomenal development that we are witnessing.  But one issue which it forces us to consider is the relationship between Christianity and political order.  Much has been written, but here is one book recommendation: Douglas Kelly, The Emergence of Liberty: The Influence of Calvin on Five Governments from the 16th Through 18th Centuries. It is a very good book, and would be a good primer for someone wanting to think through the relationship of the Christian faith to political order.  Kelly simply works through--in five case studies/countries--the way in which one strand of the Christian faith has influenced political order, and contributed to such realities as: consent of the governed, the limitation of centralized power, why political tyranny is illegitimate, etc.

D.A. Carson on Systematic Theology and Biblical Theology

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s2smodern

A good essay by Don Carson on systematic theology and biblical theology.

Donald Livingston on Lincoln on the Union

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s2smodern

Donald Livingston is one of the finest scholars I know.  Here he is on Lincoln on the Union.

 

The Need to Read Real Men

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s2smodern

Having been at this a while (I am 48), I am increasingly convinced that one truly needs to find some real men, and learn from them.  They are a dying breed.  My dad is a real man.  And if you want to be a real man, seek them out.  Here is a piece by someone who is not afraid to speak his mind, Clyde Wilson: "Liberalism and its Discontents."