[sound doctrine pt. 5]

Something I think I’ve been learning lately is that Christian discipleship is largely growth in being satisfied in Jesus. We were created in God’s image to glorify and enjoy Him as the first question of the Westminster Shorter Catechism so directly reminds us:

Q. What is the chief end of man?

A. Man’s chief end is to glorify God and enjoy Him forever.

The tragedy is that, as sinners, we are bent and deviant from this end. We take God’s good created things–other people, our abilities and talents, prestige, sex, food, whatever–and try to make enjoying one or many of those created things our chief end. We are idolators. And we self-destruct in pursuit of these things that, divorced from the enjoyment of God, can never satisfy. Whenever delight in God is first, all of these lesser delights fall into their proper place and can be truly enjoyed with gratefulness toward their Creator.

The Gospel is the good news that God has given us Himself in the life, death, and resurrection of the God-Man Jesus Christ. He has paid the price of our idolatry, and wants to put away our sin so that He, the only One Who can satisfy, can be the treasure of our hearts again. As John Piper has put it, God Himself is the Gospel.

Once God has rescued our idolatrous hearts, we begin the painful and joyful process of cultivating joy in Him above all. We are all trying to get to the place where we can say with Asaph in Psalm 73,

25 Whom have I in heaven but you?
And there is nothing on earth that I desire besides you.
26 My flesh and my heart may fail,
but God is the strength of my heart and my portion forever.

There is nothing that I desire besides You; that is, literally, there is nothing I want as much as You. We have other good desires, but all of them ought to pale in comparison to our desire for God Himself and be tempered by gratitude towards Him.

So this song is a musical meditation on that Psalm, and hopefully it will be of some use to us in cultivating satisfaction in Christ. You can get the audio by clicking on the title.

All I Want (Psalm 73)
music and lyrics by Jonathan McGregor
I’ve looked around, and I’ve seen
All the violence and the riches of the proud.
I’ve looked around, and I’ve seen
That righteousness is vanity.
I’ve felt the rod of wrath,
And I have walked a hard and narrow path,
And I have found no rest,
Just a bitter bleeding in my chest.

[tag]

I look to You, and I see
Your glory in the sanctuary.
I look to You, and I see
You governing with equity.
You hold my hand, and I know
To be near You is good for me.
And You will spare no cost to bring
Me with You into glory.

[tag]

Oh, all I want is You.
Oh, all I want is You.

(It cost the cross to bring me near to You.
It costs my life for me to come to You.
My heart, my flesh will fail, but You will not.
You are the Rock Who bears up my heart.
You are my refuge; I will hide in You.
There is no one for me in heaven but You,
And none on earth I want beside You.
You are Your gift, and I receive You.)

[a perpetual forge: anti-idolatry resources]

“The human mind is a perpetual forge of idols.” -John Calvin

The theme of idolatry has figured greatly in my meditations of late. Here are some resources I have found helpful in seeing how the Gospel smashes the false gods of our hearts so that we may worship the true God.

Tim Keller:

Gospel Realization

Gospel Communication

Gospel Incarnation

These three sermons on Jonah come from The Evangelists’ Conference 2007: Smashing False Idols.

The Grand Demythologizer: The Gospel and Idolatry

This sermon comes from The Gospel Coalition Conference 2009.

C.J. Mahaney:

Discern Your Heart

This sermon comes from the New Attitude (now known as Next) Conference 2007.

David Clarkson:

Soul Idolatry Excludes Men Out of Heaven

Clarkson was a Puritan pastor who lived from 1621-1686.

Martin Luther:

The First Commandment

This study comes from the Reformer’s Large Catechism.

[seven stanzas at easter]

RIP, John Updike. (1932-2009)

“Seven Stanzas at Easter”
by John Updike

Make no mistake: if He rose at all
it was as His body;
if the cells’ dissolution did not reverse, the molecules
reknit, the amino acids rekindle,
the Church will fall.

It was not as the flowers,
each soft Spring recurrent;
it was not as His Spirit in the mouths and fuddled
eyes of the eleven apostles;
it was as His Flesh: ours.

The same hinged thumbs and toes,
the same valved heart
that—pierced—died, withered, paused, and then
regathered out of enduring Might
new strength to enclose.

Let us not mock God with metaphor,
analogy, sidestepping transcendence;
making of the event a parable, a sign painted in the
faded credulity of earlier ages:
let us walk through the door.

The stone is rolled back, not papier-mache,
not a stone in a story,
but the vast rock of materiality that in the slow
grinding of time will eclipse for each of us
the wide light of day.

And if we will have an angel at the tomb,
make it a real angel,
weighty with Max Planck’s quanta, vivid with hair,
opaque in the dawn light, robed in real linen
spun on a definite loom.

Let us not seek to make it less monstrous,
for our own convenience, our own sense of beauty,
lest, awakened in one unthinkable hour, we are
embarrassed by the miracle,
and crushed by remonstrance.

More (and Moore) here.

HT: Justin Taylor

[i got a mirror for christmas]

Ok, not really. That would be weird. But I did get The Complete Works of Francis Schaeffer, a nice French press and travel coffee mug, and a navy turtleneck sweater. Francis Schaeffer, coffee, and sweaters. That’s me.

[reformational politics redux]

As election night draws to a close, I’ve got politics of a less practical, more philosophical/theological sort on the brain. I thought I’d repost this from last year: the conclusion of a research paper I wrote last year, “Toward an Evangelical Politics: Abraham Kuyper, Francis Schaeffer, and Beyond.”

A Five-Point Proposal, Being a Starting Point for a Reformational/Evangelical Politics:

Theonomy: An Evangelical politics must embrace theonomy in its understanding of law. Abraham Kuyper calls for a subjective theonomy in the Lectures: “God’s Word must rule, but in the sphere of the state only through the conscience of the persons invested with authority.” (“Politics” 104) However, in our post-Christian culture there is very little of God’s Word in anyone’s conscience, let alone the politicians’. The “hard theonomy” of the Christian Reconstructionists, wherein the Old Testament law is adopted as the law of the land with its prescribed punishments, except where specifically superceded by the New Testament, seems to stray too far in the other direction. It smacks of theocracy. (Rogers) Francis Schaeffer’s “soft theonomy” has the constitutional law of the land resting consciously on Scripture as an unchanging standard of justice and right. This position maintains the Evangelical tension between the absolute authority of Scripture and the separation of church and state. It is also in line with the teaching of John Calvin himself. In his Institutes of the Christian Religion, Calvin calls the idea of rule by the totality of the Mosaic Law “perilous and seditious,” but he affirms that the law of the land must rest on the “moral law,” which he boils down to the principles of charity and equity. The eternal standard of the moral law prevents destructive sociological law:
“But if it is true that each nation has been left at liberty to enact the laws which it judges to be beneficial, still these are always to be tested by the rule of charity, so that while they vary in form, they must proceed on the same principle. Those barbarous and savage laws, for instance, which conferred honour on thieves, allowed the promiscuous intercourse of the sexes, and other things even fouler and more absurd, I do not think entitled to be considered as laws, since they are not only altogether abhorrent to justice, but to humanity and civilised life.” (Institutes 910)
Under this conception, justice, ethics, morality, and religious conviction are inseparable. Evangelicals have the right and duty to continue to push for legislation on ‘moral’ issues like abortion and gay rights as the highest priority, because they undermine the very foundation of state authority, which rests in just law.

Uncompromised principles: An Evangelical politics must be principled, not pragmatic. This is a direct result of embracing a theonomic concept of law. A denial of Scriptural authority is concomitant to denying legislative goals that are directly based on God’s moral law. According to J. Budziszewski, the confession of biblical authority is the theological distinctive of Evangelicals. (“Evangelicals” 20) So a move like Pat Robertson’s endorsement of Rudy Giuliani effectively forfeits one’s status as an Evangelical.

Limited Sovereignty: An Evangelical politics must limit the sovereignty of the state by proclaiming the ultimate sovereignty of God and recognizing sovereignty within individual spheres. Proclaiming the ultimate sovereignty of God ensures that Evangelicals know the basic presupposition on which their politics is founded and creates a bottom line past which subjection to the state is no longer good or right. (Schaeffer, Manifesto 126-127) It seems from the Genesis account that Scripture recognizes at least four spheres, with separate sovereignties implied by the separate institutions of society (Gen. 1:26-28), family (Gen. 2:23-24), church (Gen. 4:26), and state (Gen. 9:5-6). Applying this principle would require the government to retract its authoritative position in areas like education, as in the Department of Education and the No Child Left Behind Act. Schaeffer writes, “[I]f the United States is to move back toward the original Reformation basis, this would mean severely limiting the scope of Federal State authority.” (Manifesto 114) In fact, it would mean a very nearly libertarian conception of federal authority. Evangelicals should seek constitutional amendments specifically delineating societal spheres and denying the state sovereignty therein. Evangelicals must also determine how the sphere sovereignty doctrine would apply on an international level. It precludes ceding state sovereignty to international organizations like the U.N. and prohibits an interventionist foreign policy, both as violations of the sovereignty of individual nations.

Identification with Christian heritage: An Evangelical politics must make explicit the historically demonstrable connection between Reformation Christianity and liberty. Both Kuyper and Schaeffer go to great lengths to show the direct correlation between the degree of ‘reformation’ and the degree of freedom in Northern Europe and the United States. Kuyper locates the democratizing effects of Calvinism in its Presbyterian polity (“Religion” 63) and doctrine of unconditional election. (“Art” 166) Evangelicals should point unbelievers to the oppressive public squares of France and Turkey as ample proof that secular humanism does not lead to freedom, but tyranny. Even those who do not share the Christian worldview should welcome, rather than abhor, a Christian state because a Christian state alone provides a stable guarantee of freedom. An Evangelical politics must not compel belief or establish a state church, but it must of necessity preserve freedom of expression in the public square to maintain evangelistic efforts. (Schaeffer, Manifesto 136-137).

Plan for action: An Evangelical politics must provide a comprehensive strategy for achieving its goals on all fronts. Recognizing that Evangelicals are in a battle of opposing total worldviews, the fight must be taken to every sphere of life. Ethical personal living, raising strong families, theologically-informed art and science, petition, litigation, civil disobedience, running for political office, proposing legislation, production in every academic field—all of these must be practiced if Evangelicals take Kuyper and Schaeffer’s worldview theory seriously. Unfortunately, this is where neither Kuyper, nor Schaeffer, nor this paper can take us any further. Delineating strict action in these spheres would rise above a foundation and begin to define a total Evangelical politics, even a comprehensive Christian philosophy—a monumental work that waits for another scholar and another day.
“When the Spirit of truth comes, he will guide you into all the truth…” John 16:13

Sources:

Budziszewski, J. “Evangelicals in the Public Square,” in Evangelicals in the Public Square, Budziszewski, et al. Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2006.

Calvin, John. Institutes of the Christian Religion, tr. Henry Beveridge. Grand Rapids: Christian Classics Ethereal Library. 2002. <http://www.ccel.org/download.html?
url=/ccel/calvin/institutes.pdf>
Kuyper, Abraham. Lectures on Calvinism. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1943.

Rogers, Jay. “Van Tillian Presuppositional Theonomic Ethics.” The Forerunner. Accessed December 5, 2007. <http://forerunner.com/forerunner/X0518_vantil.html>

Schaeffer, Francis. A Christian Manifesto. Westchester: Crossway. 1981.

[edward knippers, artist of incarnation]

Check out this awesome artwork and commentary by Edward Knippers over at the Theology Forum blog.

(HT: Scriptorium Daily)

[the yct carnival and the limits of civility]

My school, Texas A&M, has been in the news lately for a demonstration held by the Young Conservatives of Texas. Our student newspaper, The Battalion, covers the event in this article, and CNN Online even hosted a video. As you can see, the event has caused quite a stir.

The first time, the “Anti-Obama Carnival” invited students to “throw away their nest egg” of retirement savings at a poster of Obama’s face. YCT indicated this was intended as a satirical attack on Obama’s “socialistic, liberal [economic] policies.” (CNN video) The policies, however, were not clearly displayed, and the carnival had the distinct appearance of an ad hominem attack. Lots of people were furious.

YCT responded to some constructive criticism, and a few days later re-worked the carnival. Students now threw their eggs “at a board with Obama’s policies listed on it, and underneath the policies were photos of Obama and other prominent figures of the Democratic Party.” (Battalion article) Despite this re-tooling, the crowd response was just as negative. Based on the Batt article and my own observations, the negative responses seem to fall into two main types:

The first response says, “Well, if all these guys can do is throw eggs at Obama, they must not have much of a counterargument to his economic policies.” This fundamentally misunderstands the obvious purpose of the carnival. It was a stunt, a marketing ploy, an attempt to engage people in conversation, not the conversation itself. Having spoken with YCT chairman Tony Listi at length about political matters before (we’re both University Scholars), I know that he can give a cogent apologia for a freer market than Obama proposes off the top of his head. You may not agree with their arguments, but they have them. These guys are not ignorant.

The second response cries “Foul!” and claims hate, pleads civility and champions respect. Check out the picture in the Batt article. I am all for a civil public discourse, but civility has its limits. It can quickly become opinion suppression if we’re not careful. Freedom of speech doesn’t mean the freedom to only say nice things. Shouting “Fire!” in a crowded theater and abrasive political satire are emphatically not correlative.

Certainly, this means that means that people had the right to virulently protest the Anti-Obama Carnival, too. But even then the only protests mounted were against the style of the carnival, not its substance. Plenty of people were there pleading for a softer rhetoric, but no-one was there vindicating Obama’s fiscal policies. YCT was there saying, “This doesn’t work,” and they were the only ones even attempting to engage the issues and arguments.

This was not the case, however, with YCT’s first iteration of the carnival. Without the policies being the immediate subject of the attack, and Obama himself only by virtue of espousing such policies, the egg-throwing was distasteful. And this, I believe, lost them their audience and doomed the carnival’s second (and clever and cutting and legitimate) iteration.

But the greater issue revealed here is this: Obama has become something of a sacred cow, and that should worry you. Just imagine how different the reaction would be if this was the Young Liberals of Texas chunking eggs at a President Bush poster. Whenever satire is automatically off the table against someone, you should be concerned. If it is politically incorrect to criticize Obama, simply because he is Obama, civility may become a fast track to tyranny.

[barstool economics]

Check out this parable:

Suppose that every day, ten men go out for beer and the bill for all ten comes to $100. If they paid their bill the way we pay our taxes, it would go something like this:

The first four men (the poorest) would pay nothing.

The fifth would pay $1.

The sixth would pay $3.

The seventh would pay $7.

The eighth would pay $12.

The ninth would pay $18.

The tenth man (the richest) would pay $59.

So, that’s what they decided to do. The ten men drank in the bar every day and seemed quite happy with the arrangement, until one day, the owner threw them a curve. ‘Since you are all such good customers, he said, ‘I’m going to reduce the cost of your daily beer by $20. Drinks for the ten now cost just $80.

The group still wanted to pay their bill the way we pay our taxes so the first four men were unaffected. They would still drink for free. But what about the other six men – the paying customers? How could they divide the $20 windfall so that everyone would get his ‘fair share?’

They realized that $20 divided by six is $3.33. But if they subtracted that from everybody’s share, then the fifth man and the sixth man would each end up being paid to drink his beer. So, the bar owner suggested that it would be fair to reduce each man’s bill by roughly the same amount, and he proceeded to work out the amounts each should pay.

And so:

The fifth man, like the first four, now paid nothing (100% savings).

The sixth now paid $2 instead of $3 (33%savings).

The seventh now paid $5 instead of $7 (28%savings).

The eighth now paid $9 instead of $12 (25% savings).

The ninth now paid $14 instead of $18 (22% savings).

The tenth now paid $49 instead of $59 (16% savings).

Each of the six was better off than before And the first four continued to drink for free. But once outside the restaurant, the men began to compare their savings.

‘I only got a dollar out of the $20′, declared the sixth man.

He pointed to the tenth man,’ but he got $10!’

‘Yeah, that’s right’, exclaimed the fifth man. ‘I only saved a dollar, too. It’s unfair that he got ten times more than I!’

‘That’s true!!’ shouted the seventh man. ‘Why should he get $10 back when I got only two? The wealthy get all the breaks!’

‘Wait a minute,’ yelled the first four men in unison. ‘We didn’t get anything at all. The system exploits the poor!’

The nine men surrounded the tenth and beat him up.

The next night the tenth man didn’t show up for drinks, so the nine sat down and had beers without him. But when it came time to pay the bill, they discovered something important. They didn’t have enough money between all of them for even half of the bill!

And that, boys and girls, journalists and college professors, is how our tax system works. The people who pay the highest taxes get the most benefit from a tax reduction. Tax them too much, attack them for being wealthy, and they just may not show up anymore. In fact, they might start drinking overseas where the atmosphere is somewhat friendlier.

David R. Kamerschen, Ph.D.

Professor of Economics, University of Georgia

For those who understand, no explanation is needed.

For those who do not understand, no explanation is possible

HT: Doug Wilson, by way of Justin Taylor

[vote as though not voting]

Make much of Jesus by voting as if not voting. Piper here.

[chuck baldwin... sigh]

Hmmm. I’m thinking about voting for Chuck Baldwin in the presidential election. I don’t agree with him on everything (like tarriff policy), and I don’t think he has a chance of winning. But I feel like the Constitution Party may be the only way I can aim my vote in good conscience. What say you?

[the power of words and the wonder of God]

Video from the Desiring God national conference this weekend is up here:

Conference Video :: Desiring God

I watched Sinclair Ferguson’s message on James this afternoon, and it was good stuff.

[making men with chests]

The following is an excerpt from my final paper in Art, Emotion, and Morality entitled “Fiction and Moral Education: Making Men With Chests”. The title is a reference to C.S. Lewis’ The Abolition of Man, a book I heartily recommend!

“When Socrates kicked poetry out of the Republic, he did it on the grounds that art, being a representation of the physical world which is itself a representation of the formal world, is two removes from the truth. Small wonder, then, that Homer is replete with errors about the gods and the afterlife. For anyone seeking to raise up a generation of ethically trained truth-seekers, education by fiction is, according to Socrates, counter-productive: These errors lead to the inculcation of false moral values like fear of death and doubt of the gods.

For those of us who reject Plato’s idealism, we may admit the possibility of stories that convey moral truth. But can such a story give us moral knowledge? Given that knowledge is justified true belief, it is not clear that fiction can provide epistemic justification except in special cases. As a Christian who accepts the divine inspiration of the Bible, I believe that Jesus’ parables can give moral knowledge. Their origin in God is justification for believing whatever ethical truth-claims are put forth or implied in the stories. But what about a novel like A Clockwork Orange, a short story like “Greenleaf” by Flannery O’Connor, or a movie like There Will Be Blood? Apart from divine inspiration, I am unsure that fictions can provide justification for believing the ethical content or accepting the ethical point of view represented therein.

But perhaps there is more to moral education than just the acquisition of moral knowledge. Perhaps the faculties we use to make moral choices based on such knowledge need development to be implemented effectively. After all, learning usually requires a transitional phase of training between the acquisition of theoretical knowledge and actual practice. For example, if you are teaching a student how to write critical essays for a standardized test, you will begin by teaching her the basic theory of literary criticism and essay writing. Then, you will have her hone her skills through writing practice essays. This practice will probably include reading and critiquing poor essays as well, so your student will know just what makes a bad essay bad. Only after this practice is she ready to put her theoretical knowledge, quite literally, to the test. Or one might think more readily of sport as an example. Coaches give their players theoretical knowledge of the skills required for their game. This knowledge is ingrained through drills, the repetition of correct actions until they become habit or ‘muscle memory’. The players supplement their drills with strength training, building up the muscle groups relevant to their sport through resistance. Thus trained, the players are ready to play an actual game where their actions count.

Just like writing a critical essay or making a rugby tackle, moral virtue must be learned through training if it is to be practiced in real life. This training includes both repetition, as in the practice essays and drills, and opposition, as in the bad essay critiques and strength training. Stories in the main may not provide knowledge to the head, but neither do they simply titillate the emotions of the gut. They work on what Plato called the ‘spirited element’, or what C.S. Lewis called, “The Chest—Magnanimity—Sentiment—these are the indispensable liaison officers between cerebral man and visceral man.” They can provide us with ethical training both through repetition and opposition. This position I call Virtue Training Theory.

“Repetition” in Virtue Training Theory means the process of positively rehearsing the patterns of right thought and emotion, or sentiments, necessary for good moral choice. This occurs when one reads (or watches, etc.) a work of fiction that manifests a true ethical attitude toward its content. It is important that it concerns the morality of the manifest attitude and not the content itself; reading a story that contains immoral content is still an exercise in repetition if the story calls a spade a spade. For example, reading A Clockwork Orange, though its anti-hero Alex perpetrates such immoral acts as rape and murder, is repetition because the immorality of his actions is implicitly acknowledged and even crucial to the novel’s exploration of the ethical dilemma of psychological conditioning and human free will.

“Opposition” in Virtue Training Theory means the process of negatively rehearsing right sentiments through engaging with a work of fiction that manifests a false ethical attitude towards its contents. The film There Will Be Blood manifests an attitude of moral nihilism, through twists and turns of plot getting the audience to feel sympathy for its reprehensible main character and, in the final scene, take pleasure in a brutal murder. In the end we are left feeling that statements about morality do not really say anything because they certainly cannot make sense of the situation presented in the film. Opposition to this film entails understanding its ethical viewpoint, considering its discrepancy with the truth that some attitudes and actions are actually wrong, and internally repudiating it. Both processes, repetition and opposition, contribute to moral education by inculcating just sentiments. [I believe the ideal fictional component of an ethical education would progress from total repetition in grammar school, exposing students only to works with true ethical viewpoints, to an even balance of repetition and opposition by the end of high school.]

I believe Virtue Training Theory finds a place for fiction in ethical education without wrestling with the tricky epistemological problem of grounding our moral knowledge in fiction…”

Throughout the rest of the paper I contrast Virtue Training Theory with another contemporary theory and answer possible objections. If anyone’s interested in reading it, e-mail me and I’ll send you a copy!

[notes toward a theory of art]

Metaphysics Chart:
(in other words, a chart representing what is)

Creation // God
||
The World // Man
||
Nature // Culture

[wolf // dog]

[forest // park]

[landscape // landscaping, landscape painting]

Where “// ” represents an antithesis,  “||” represents a subdivision, and what is in brackets “[]” is a concrete example. In sentence form:
Whatever is not God is Creation; whatever in Creation is not Man is The World; whatever in The World is not Culture is Nature. God is distinguished from Creation by His aseity and its contingency; Man is distinguished from The World by the imago Dei; Culture is distinguished from Nature by Man’s creative action upon the stuff of Nature.

I believe this consideration of what exists undermines “Art” as an ontological category. To divide artifacts of Culture into “Art” and “Non-art” is a spurious distinction. The artist and the engineer are both culture-makers, and airplanes may have beauty just as sculptures may have function. The Aesthetic is rather a hermeneutical-ethical aspect, a set of lenses through which we perceive an object to determine a specific meaning and value. Every piece of culture, from a rubbish bin to the Mona Lisa, has an aesthetic meaning and value, but some objects have more aesthetic value than others. Aesthetic meaning and value are based on the criteria of harmony (relation of parts to whole and form to content) and surprise (or nuance). For these criteria I am indebted to Herman Dooyeweerd’s Theory of Modal Aspects in his New Critique of Theoretical Thought, and I am generally indebted to Henry Van Til for his Calvinistic Concept of Culture.

[total war]

So often I confute the Spirit/flesh conflict that Paul talks about with a Greek idea of spirit versus body. That was the error of the Gnostics in the first century church! (Think about this: If Spirit versus flesh means spirit versus body, then Paul is talking nonsense when he speaks of “spiritual bodies” in 1 Cor. 15.) I make sanctification into a process of my mind’s high reason mastering my body’s low passion… which is a deadly simplification. The reality is that the corruption of sin extends much deeper than just bodily desires. My reason, will, and affections are, apart from Christ, just as corrupt as my bodily senses. There are sanctified, “spiritual” bodily desires, like that of a husband for his wife, and there are fleshly desires, like lust for a woman not your wife. There are spiritual affections, like the “joy inexpressible and full of glory” that Peter talks about (see Jonathan Edwards for more on that), and there are fleshly ones like the anxiety against which Paul warns in Philippians 4. And there is godly reasoning that recognizes the fear of the Lord as the beginning of knowledge (Prov. 1:7), and there are “arguments and every lofty opinion raised against the knowledge of God” (2 Cor. 10:5).

And all of these reside in me. “Wretched man that I am! Who will deliver me from this body of death? Thanks be to God, through Jesus Christ our Lord!” (Rom. 7:24-25)

Jesus paid the penalty for all my sins–sins of reason, emotion, and cupidity. And he broke the power of sin, even though it still abides in me in this life, so that my outer man, the fleshly man, is wasting away, and my inner man, quickened by the Holy Spirit, is being renewed day by day. So I can be confident to go after my sin in total war, on every front fighting in the power of the Spirit.

So with reference to this truth, I’m going to post a couple of things from my Art, Emotion, and Morality class on the blog–because Christian scholarship is spiritual warfare.

[a little groothuis action]

Check out this cultural commentary by Dr. Doug Groothuis:

1. On the proliferation of the word “like” in our conversation.

2. On how to keep your mind alive.

3. On the contemporary trend of self-absorption in writing.

[beware rob bell]

Read this at The Resurgence.