my burg

Bible reading for weekend March 8 -- 9 Mar 8 -- Job 37 and 2 Corinthians 7 Mar 9 -- Job 38 and 2 Corinthians 8 "Do you know the ordinances of the heavens? Can you establish their rule on the earth?" (Job 38:33) ELIHU FINISHES (ch 37) . Elihu finishes his speech, and in these last two verses he speaks of several of God's attributes: "The Almighty -- we cannot find him; he is great in power; justice and abundant righteousness he will not violate. Therefore men fear him; he does not regard any who are wise in their own conceit" (vv 23-24). God is omnipotent and great in power; he is infinite and inscrutable, that is, beyond our full comprehension; and he is completely righteous, with an impeccable standard of justice. Again, Job and his friends have only been considering a limited view of God, specifically his temporal judgments in human affairs. Elihu's conclusion is that our knowledge of God -- and our lack of knowledge about him -- should lead us to humble o...

"To think independently of other human beings is impossible, and if it were possible it would be undesirable. Thinking is necessarily, thoroughly, and wonderfully social. Everything you think is a response to what someone else has thought and said. And when people commend someone for 'thinking for herself' they usually mean 'ceasing to sound like people I dislike and starting to sound more like people I approve of.' ... People in my line of work [ academia ] always say that we want to promote 'critical thinking'—but really we want our students to think critically only about what they’ve learned at home and in church, not about what they learn from us." ~ Alan Jacobs, How To Think (Currency / Random House, 2017), page 37.   “'Critical thinking' is a form of intentional deracination and displacement. Its basic assumption is that students enter college or university with a set of under-explored moral commitments that they have inherite...

Photo by Hunter Bryant on Unsplash "The fear of the LORD is the beginning of knowledge;  fools despise wisdom and instruction."  (Proverbs 1:7 ESV) It's a strange thing to receive a lecture from a fool.  Or to have amoral people pronounce moral judgments upon you.  This seems to be the  operating principle behind much of the arrogance in social media today.  What seems to be lacking is not only wisdom, but the "meekness of wisdom" (James 3:13).  I have spent the last couple of months in the book of Proverbs.   The book opens with a refrain -- and repeats it in various forms -- "the fear of the  Lord is the beginning of wisdom..." (See 1:7; 4:7; 9:10: 15:33.)  Over and over again, we are told to listen, to heed, to think about, to ponder, to  humble ourselves, and to diligently pursue wisdom.  And it's always God's wisdom, which is a moral, obedient wisdom, not the fool's kind of  arrogant wisdom.  Teac...

Over twenty-five years ago, Carl Henry gave a lecture, first to the Baptist Union of Romania (September, 1990), and later to the Tyndale Seminary faculty (the Netherlands) and at Trinity Evangelical Divinity School, entitled "Christianity and Resurgent Paganism".  As with all of his writings I am continually amazed at Henry's prescient insight into Western culture and its trajectory.  Where Henry refers to "modernism" we can easily substitute the term "post-modernism." This is the second post with a few quotes from this talk.   "Modernity, therefore, needs to be liberated not only from the shackles of unbelief, but also from its bondage to wrong beliefs.  Prominent among these beliefs is the notion that science, as mathematical physicists ideally pursue it, is the only reliable method of knowing.  Modern empiricists sponsor an ideological totalism of their own when they confer explanatory crown rights on a theory of truth that cannot decide the ...

Spiral Galaxy edge-on photo by NASA Hubble telescope We must begin by knowing that we do not know.   Caspar Hare, Associate Professor at MIT, asks, "Can science teach us everything there is to know about reality?"   In other words, is it true that everything that can be known can be known through science?  If we say that is true, then what about that very statement?  How do we know it is true? The scientific method can help us know the things that science can deal with.  But w e need to know there are things outside of and beyond us, things which may not be validated by the scientific method.  Science can tell us much about the what  of creation, but not the Who  behind creation.  We don't know who God is, what his will and laws are, and what the purpose and destiny of humanity is, unless God himself chooses to reveal these things to us.  These truths are shadowed upon our human nature and in the beauty of the world around u...

Herman Bavinck on the relationship between faith and assurance (or certainty, as truth relates to us)... "Faith is certainty and as such excludes all doubt. Whoever is stricken by guilt and crushed and honestly seeks refuge in Christ is already a believer. To the degree that he exercises a shelter-seeking trust he also possesses an assured trust.  How else would a sinner convicted of his own guilt ever dare to approach God and evoke His grace unless in the depth of his heart, without being consciously aware of it himself, he shared in the certainty of faith and the hope that the Father of Jesus Christ is merciful and great in loving kindness? ... "The assured trust is thereby included in this shelter-seeking trust. And both develop together. The stronger the shelter- seeking trust becomes, the stronger becomes the assured trust.  And if the latter is small and weak, we may confidently conclude that the first too is needy and incomplete. Faith, therefore, does not attain ...

I am coming to appreciate Alvin Plantinga's work, especially in epistemology.