What I think. What I know. What I think I know.
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love theologically
I learned today that a prominent evangelical pastor warned in a sermon that we must not let our theology get in the way of our love. I didn’t hear the message myself, as I rarely listen to podcasts besides “Wait, Wait, Don’t Tell Me” and “Planet Money.” But I trust my friend who told me,…
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new creation
Now that my grades are in, I can give a recap of last month’s Gospel Coalition conference, “Coming Home: New Heaven and New Earth.” Click here to listen to my session, “Teaching Your People to Become Worldly Saints.” TGC is an inspiring time of preaching, singing, and making and renewing gospel friendships. The plenary sessions…
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fun dozen
In the spirit of fun and with an awareness of how easy it is to become a heretic when you’re in a hurry, here is this semester’s funniest student bloopers (with my parenthetical comments). I have italicized the funny parts. “Article 8 names the persons of the Trinity separately and notes that one of the…
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Gnostic Sex
A lot of us have been thinking the last couple of days about how our culture came to be where it is. The religious freedom piece may be the most important, but for now I want to focus on how our society came to believe that homosexual activity and changing one’s gender are perfectly natural…
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Let’s Talk
For the second week this month, the Grand Rapids Press posted an editorial on LGBT issues. The last one declared it was a disgrace that Michigan hadn’t yet made LGBT a protected class, and yesterday’s appealed for calm and a conversation. Here’s the backstory. After an owner of an auto shop brazenly (and sinfully) said…
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God’s face
The comments from yesterday’s post on seeing God pushed me to ponder this question a bit more. Here are a few thoughts. When Moses asked God to draw him closer, “Now show me your glory” (Ex. 33:18), God declared “You cannot see my face, for no one may see me and live” (Ex. 33:20). Then…
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will we see God?
Recently I heard an evangelical leader say that glorified human beings are the only creatures that are able to see God. He said that while angels must hide their faces in God’s presence, yet humans, because we bear God’s image, will one day be made fit to gaze directly upon God. He based this on…
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TGC Sale
I’m leaving home for “Coming Home,” The Gospel Coalition’s national conference. I am interested in learning how many of the speakers have an earthly vision of the final state and how many have a spiritual, heavenly view. I don’t know how to believe in both the resurrection and a non-physical, heavenly view of the end,…
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don’t give in
This is the final post of a five part series. Like today’s coerced obedience to the state religion of “tolerance,” so Rome demanded that its citizens show their allegiance to the empire by worshiping the deity of dead emperors and the “genius” of the living emperor (“genius” was loosely defined, somewhere between an external soul…
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play offense
This is part four of a five part series. A third lesson from Tertullian’s Apology is that he didn’t merely defend the Christians from Roman calumnies but he aggressively put the Romans back on their heels. For instance, the Romans accused the Christians of committing incest, but Tertullian noted there is a better chance that…
Mike Wittmer 