Beyond The Gates (also known as Shooting Dogs) doesn’t have the star power, script, skill or reviewer good will of Hotel Rwanda, but I found it to be far more affecting. If you can appreciate a movie about genocide, filmed on location at the site of mass murder and using many actual survivors in the cast/crew, then you may, like me, find this to be an outstanding movie. If you want to involve Christians in a consideration of the issues of evil, Africa and the western response, this may be the best movie I could recommend. [Continue reading]

Let it be presupposed that every good Christian is to be more ready to save his neighbor’s proposition than to condemn it. If he cannot save it, let him inquire how he means it; and if he means it badly, let him correct him with charity. If that is not enough, let him seek all the suitable means to bring him to mean it well, and save himself. -Ignatius of Loyola

God is love. God loves his own glory most of all. God is holy. God pursues his own holiness most of all. God loves human beings. God manifests his glory by saving persons who find their joy in his glory.

God is merciful and compassionate, to the praise of his glory and grace. God is righteous. He is a covenant making, law giving God. God manifests his glory in the perfect justice that upholds his law. His mercy and holiness are not at odds, but are perfectly joined together.

God saves by forgiving sin and imputing righteousness. The imputation of his righteousness is the core of justification by faith alone. The imputation of Adam’s sin and the imputation of Christ’s righteousness are the double-sides of the Gospel message. [Continue reading]

Want to know what Phillip Pullman himself has to say about the Golden Compass and his books that inspired the film? Christian film critic and blogger Peter Chataway interviews Phillip Pullman and asks all the questions you’ve been wondering about. No more need to wonder what Pullman had on him mind in the books or what he thinks of the movie, Lewis, LOTR, etc. It’s all here. A great interview.

The idea of Christians and atheists talking civilly like this will certainly upset some people, but I much prefer it to the usual screech and screed.

This is the only interview you will ever read with the phrase “I’m a Church of England” atheist in it. Someone tell Mr. Pullman that he may hate Lewis’s writing, but he’s apparently one of the characters in The Great Divorce.

Read: Chataway’s interview of Phillip Pullman.

For another approach, here’s Bill Donahue of the Catholic League on a recent CBS station clip.

UPDATE I: From the original posts’s comment thread, here is an apology to Dr. Sungenis and a reply to one of the original questions.

Robert Sungenis has written a detailed reply to the questions in the “Catholic Questions Part 2″ post, and has also replied to many of the comments in that comment thread, especially those dealing with his orthodoxy.

Here’s the original post: Catholic Questions Part 2.

I want to thank Mr. Sungenis for taking the time to answer the questions in detail, and his answers are VERY helpful to me. If, as Amy Welborn has said on here, my understanding of Catholicism has some glaring holes in it from time to time, Robert has answered many of my questions with answers I can understand.

Now…what you Catholic folks think of him is another story

Some of you that have clicked the link have already figured out that it’s a .doc, and no, I’m not going to convert it. Sorry.

Does everything we do bring glory to God? Separating Christmas from that other celebration.

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This essay would be appreciated most by those who read my essay recounting my history of appreciating Roman Catholicism. Sadly, I could not write that essay today.

I took an hour out of my time this afternoon and reread a large section of Thomas Merton’s outstanding spiritual biography, The Seven Storey Mountain. I was looking for a single sentence, and I finally found it.

Merton is attending mass for the first time. He’s not yet a Christian or a Catholic. As he comes into the church, he comments that the people gathered for worship were there to pray and there was no sense that they were aware of one another. This, he says, is different from Protestant churches where it seems that everyone is conscious of being in a crowd and has half an eye on the other people present.

I wanted to find that sentence because, as far as I know, it’s the single instance that I recall of even a moderate criticism of Protestantism in Merton’s writings. [Continue reading]

I think we all have to give a round of applause to the ordinary folks at Oral Roberts University who said “Enough is enough.” Richard Roberts- while far from being the worst offender in this collection of Tetzels- exemplified everything that is wrong with the Tulsa/TBN version of Charismatic evangelicalism. Smarmy, unscrupulous, self-serving and slick: Roberts’ departure should encourage the “little people” in abusive ministries everywhere to blow the whistles and tell the truth.

Wade Burleson has taken the current obsession of the leadership of several Baptist state conventions- teetotalism- and goes to the next level in an outstanding piece of satire on the Biblical case for abstaining from tea. It’s about time someone started pointing out the Monty Python-esque nature of this windmill hunt. No one ever expects tha Spanish Inquisition, of course. [Continue reading]

UPDATE VII: Ochuck makes a good contribution to the topic.

UPDATE VI: James White on the whole debate. Two things you can be sure of: 1) The longer the discussion goes on, the more likely that Witherington will eventually be called out as an apostate. 2) The longer the discussion goes on, the more it will morph into the discussion that Calvinists always want to have.

UPDATE V: Piper answers Witherington. Will that be the end of the “discussion?”

UPDATE IV: True to form, Triablogue announces that Witherington isn’t a serious scholar (like the guys at Triablogue, I guess) and is a TV celebrity. Then Steve Hays takes off on Witherington’s post.

UPDATE III: Timmy Brister chimes in, and quotes me from a discussion at Thinklings. You might want to read that discussion to get my quote in context.

UPDATE II: The discussion has moved to Denny Burk’s blog.

UPDATE: Thinkling Jared finds BW’s post over the top.

It’s been a long time coming.

The influence of John Piper’s theology has expanded enormously in the past 5 years, and few non-Calvinists have been willing to mount any kind of response. There are signs, however, that the responses are on the way.

Ben Witherington III, reacting to a volume of New Testament theology it won’t take too much detective work to identify, asks why the Bible doesn’t say “God so loved himself….?”

Is the self-centered God of Edwards, Piper and company a narcissist? More importantly, is Piper’s theology leading scholars and pastors to an imbalanced reading of the Bible?

Witherington is asking questions that many will loudly protest, but Piper has anticipated and discussed these objections in many of his books. Let’s hope his defenders will let Witherington contribute to the most overdue, much needed conversation on the theological web: a true critical discussion of Piper’s theology.

Be sure and read all of Witherington’s comments in the meta.

UPDATE III: If this post has been construed as anti-Catholic, I’m sorry. I assure you that was never my intention. Commending Dr. Witherington for offering up a theology of the supper for those of us who are not Catholics or Calvinists doesn’t seem to me to be ipso facto an attack on Catholics.

UPDATE II: A lot of the book is available in Google Reader.

UPDATE: If you go to “categories” and click “Baptists,” you’ll find several posts dealing with the Lord’s Supper. Here is the first one, which includes an interview with Professor Peter Gentry at the end.

I’m quite sure that when it comes to the sacraments, many of us feel overwhelmed by the amount of Roman Catholic dominated material that is on the net. (NOTE: Amen) Catholic apologists- almost all former Protestants and former Calvinists- are convinced that scripture and tradition are on their side on the issues of the Lord’s Supper and Baptism. Publishers either agree with them or there’s simply nothing being written that’s worth publishing. [Continue reading]

Strengthen your marriage now. Our own magisterium?

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It is the tradition of this web site to hear my confessions, my struggles and my emotions. “Confessional” blogging on my part has touched hundreds of readers and convinced one or two that I am unfit to be in the ministry or even a professing Christian. So be it. This is what’s set on my table these days. I can’t explain it to you; all I can do is write and pray. Trusting God is hard. His ways are not my ways, and his ways are unthinkably difficult for me right now.

So if you don’t understand these kinds of posts, I’m sorry. My journey. My struggles. My questions. My wrestling with God.

My Bible classes watch a lot of the “Turner” Bible movies. I’ve seen them all so many times that I frequently get them confused with scripture itself. Their storylines and scripts are embedded in my mind and I have to, occasionally, sort things out.

For example, in the movie “David,” the prophet Nathan tells David, “God makes it difficult to be a king.” Scripture never says that (at least not that I know of) but it is appropriate for the story of David and his particular failures. [Continue reading]

Sometimes I don’t need to hear about success. I need to hear about why I matter. I need an antidote to discouragement that reminds me its OK to just be me. A classic IM piece that is meant to lift up the downcast with some seldom heard interpretations of well known passages.

READ: “The Sanity Verses.”

John Piper has enough truth in this sermon to revolutionize evangelicalism—if anyone is really listening. Read it several times. It’s absolutely on target.

Memorize those church planting statistics, young preachers/church planters.

The connection between church planting, evangelism and ministry to the poor is a balance evangelicals need to embrace in a way that shapes everything we do. Education. Preparation. Cooperation. Leadership. Finance. Evangelism. All our priorities. Thank you, Dr. Piper, for making this connection clear.

LINK: This is a bit of a follow up to last year’s (almost to the day) essay, “Do Chinese Students Need An American Jesus?”

In his book Christianity’s Dangerous Idea, Alister McGrath discusses the relationship of church architecture and the modernistic sense of the absence of God. In reference to the “whitewashing” of churches following the lead of Geneva, McGrath writes. [Continue reading]

Today in chapel, one of my co-workers told his life story. That’s pretty common at our ministry, but this was anything but common.

Doc [not his real name] came to us about three years ago, along with his new bride. Middle-aged and a recent Bible college graduate, looking for a beginning in ministry. Of course, one look at Doc and you know Doc is different. He looks like he survived a war, or a major car accident, or both [Continue reading]