Free Don Whitney Book for Kindle

Don Whitney's book Ten Questions to Diagnose Your Spiritual Health is free today for Amazon Kindle. From the publisher's description of the book:

Christians today are busier than ever before, doing the "spiritual" work they feel called to out of devotion for God. But are these earnest followers of Christ actually living their faith in a manner that is pleasing to Christ? Whitney (Spiritual Disciplines for the Christian Life; How Can I Be Sure I'm a Christian?) effectively challenges this "busy hands, empty heart" epidemic. Whitney poses intensely introspective questions to aid Christians as they gauge their own level of spiritual health. Do they have a driving thirst for God, as well as behavior dictated by God's holy standards? How loving to others and sensitive to the Holy Spirit are they? Do they experience genuine grief over personal sin and a willingness to forgive repeat offenders? Whitney also discusses the spiritual disciplines of prayer, fasting, meditating upon Scripture, taking communion and fellowship with others of like faith, showing readers how to transform these often automatic enterprises into faith-building activities. He advises Christians to spend more energy enjoying God and developing a Christlike nature, rather than accomplishing ever-accelerating goals. He notes that seekers must be acutely aware that following Christ is a lifetime commitment and that they should resist the temptation to seek "spiritual" shortcuts to intimacy with God. This timely text is full of gentle admonitions to unearth deeply entrenched habits and dig for the treasure found only in a carefully honed relationship with God.

"...An updated version of some of Johnathan Edwards' best work, this book poses the questions we need to ponder..." -- Mark Dever

"...the questions the he supplies for this assessment not only help us examine our spiritual health, but...impart divine nutrition..." -- Bryan Chapell

Hart Responds to Baylys

A few days ago, the Bayly Brothers reposted a blog containing a trenchant excoriation of 2K thinkers and pastors for not convening a Synod to address the present immorality of our government. Hart makes clear in his response that this sort of thing had been done before. I won't spoil any of the fun, but lets just say Hart offered a very helpful response involving the Presbyterian Church in the Civil War and Charles Hodge. Find it here.

Argument for Infanticide from Natural Law Fail

A while back Steve from Triablogue posted an argument meant to demonstrate the absurdity of natural law theory (he had Catholics in his sights at the time). When I originally read it I felt his argument did not deal fairly with natural law theory. Since then, Steven (not the same Steven) has posted a response in which he notes the confusion of "nature" and "natural." Read the post to get the meat of it.

The lesson for today?

natural law ethics is not the view that nature, as in the world out there in the jungles, seas, etc., determines what is good for us and bad for us, but rather that our natures (in a technical metaphysical sense) determine what is good for us and bad for us.

Thanks, Steve.

The Unprofessional Book Review: The Lost History of Christianity by Philip Jenkins

Philip Jenkins (a Catholic-turned-Episcopalian) has a way of making my world feel like it is on the verge of turning upside down. When I read The Next Christendom back in college, I started to feel my America-centric view of the universe coming undone. Now, thanks to The Lost History of Christianity I'm starting to lose my European-centric view of the history of Christianity. This needed to happen, and it was a long time a-coming.

In the same way that Americans think that World War II started at D-Day, we western Christians tend to forget (thanks, in part, to the book of Acts) that the Gospel didn't just go northwest after Pentacost, but rather, it went in all directions. I remember being in a history class and being told, "The Apostle Thomas may have gone east to India, but nobody really knows for sure. It could all just be legend." And I contented myself that something happened in the East, but that it was all lost knowledge.

Enter The Lost History of Christianity: The Thousand-Year Golden Age of the Church in the Middle East, Africa, and Asia - and How It Died. Quite a mouthful, I know. Enter Jenkins' book, smacking me across the face and reminding me what an anglo-European-centered Christian that I am.

Come to find out, there was a Bishop of Babylon, there were Christians in China, there were Christians in India, and Christians and Muslims lived along side of each other and influenced each other quite a bit in the Middle East (both for good and for ill). He spends so much time laying out the history of the Eastern churches that it's almost humorous when, in the narrative, the Catholic missionaries get to China only to find that these people already knew about the virgin Mary and were highly suspicious of these Catholics' orthodoxy.

Near the end of the book, Jenkins discusses in great length the reality that Christianity has not always been a successful religion in worldly terms. He says that Christians are used to success and often repeat quotes such as "The blood of the martyrs is the seed of the church," but Jenkins says that a lot of times, the blood of the martyrs was just the end of the church because they all got killed and everyone was too scared to follow Jesus. In one of his most insightful sections, Jenkins suggests that Christians need to develop a theology of failure in regard to missions. The reason is, according to Jenkins, that "The ruin of Christianity in a particular region might confound Christians who have long been accustomed to seeing the expansion of their faith as a fundamental expectation."

What if Christians do make disciples of all nations, but subsequently lose them or their descendants? How can we account for such devastating reversals as the annihilation of the church in North Africa, the crushing of Catholic missions in Asia, and, above all, the strangulation of the faith in the Middle East? Presumably, each of these failures happened regard less of countless fervent but unanswered prayers. In terms of its global reach, only in very modern times has Christianity resumed the span that it had achieved a thousand years ago. Christianization, obviously, is not an inevitable process, nor a one-way road.

Though Jenkins does offer several thoughtful answers, I couldn't help but wonder how a real dyed-in-the-wool post-millenial thinker who thinks that it is the Christian's duty to emphasize transforming the culture would deal with this book. See - the book is full of failure. Just full of it. On the one hand, we see a Christianity that is always spreading before the rise of Islam, and on the other hand we see a culturally transformative Islam that grabbed the Christian world by the throat and brought it to its knees by seizing political power. When Christians tried to play by the same game, Christians lost and their faith virtually disappeared from the Eastern world. The pragmatist within me believes that a healthy amillennial understanding of the present age vs. the age to come offers the best framework for making sense of suffering, loss, and extinction in terms of the history of far eastern Christianity.

Jenkins does make statements which some will find controversial. For example, he says that the Bible has more violent commands than does the Qur'an (using Jericho as an example) and does not spend a lot of time discussing it. He is mostly concerned that Christians see the log in their own scriptures and not think of Islam in strictly radical/fundamentalist/hateful terms. He also argues that many things which we associate with Islam were actually adapted from Christian traditions first. The foremost example is that of prostration. Today, Christians think that it was an originally Muslim practice to pray while fully prostrated across the ground. In reality, early Muslims found this practice humiliating but eventually adapted it to themselves. In essence, Jenkins says that if we'd gone back a thousand years, we would have seen a Christianity that looked a lot more like Islam (at least on the surface) than the European-looking Christianity we think of today.

For some as well, the decision to discuss Catholic, Protestant, Nestorian, Coptic, Western, and Eastern Orthodox all together as Christian may be controversial. In a sense, he is speaking of Christianity as more of a social phenomenon, though he does get theological in some places. The difficult question for me was, "How can the only Christianity which the eastern world knew for at least 500 years have been a damnable heretical Christian sect (the Nestorians)? There are no lazy answers to these questions.

In Jenkins' conclusions after reviewing all of the failures in the far east, he has a lesson to share.

Instead of seeking explanations for the loss of divine favor, Christians should rather stress the deep suspicion about the secular order that runs through the New Testament, where the faithful are repeatedly warned that they will live in a hostile world, and a transient one. Nowhere in that scripture are Christians offered any assurance that they will hold political power, or indeed that salvation is promised to descendants or to later members of a particular community.

Jenkins continues a little later, reminding us that all of the states which the Christians strove to become a part of or impose themselves upon eventually either killed them or assimilated them.

Looking at the sweep of Christian history, we are often reminded of this message of the transience of human affairs, and, based on that, of the foolishness of associating faith with any particular state or social order. Even the Roman Empire was not to exist forever.

The Good News for the Whole World

I've been reading Philip Jenkins' The Lost History of Christianity (which in most respects I recommend), and seeing this video causes me to react in a couple of ways. Yes, missions needs to happen - that is essential. However, reading Jenkins' book causes me to be suspicious that many areas and people groups whom we believe to be without the Gospel actually had it at one point. I'll talk about this after completing Jenkins' book, but for years Christians were arriving in places they thought did not know Jesus (Japan, for instance) only to find that there was already a centuries-old indigenous Christian presence in these places. This should be both a cause for optimism and also greater humility on the part of us western Christians - though such knowledge should not cause us to be lax at all in our enthusiasm to share Jesus with the world.

Thankful for Being Ignored

After reading through the comments on a month-old thread at Greenbaggins, I should stop complaining about not getting any attention from the transformationalists. After 700+ comments, Greenbaggins shut the discussion down. I think you'll agree after reading through the comments - I am not ready to try and moderate a screaming match like that.

The Spectrum of Christological Heresies

Denying Christ's Divinity	Ebionitism
	Subordinationism
	Adoptionism
	Arianism/Semi-Arianism
Denying Christ's Humanity	Docetism/Gnosticism
	Apollinarianism
	Monothelitism
Confusing the Two Natures	Monophysitism/Eutychianism
Dividing the Two Natures	Nestorianism

[Michael Horton, The Christian Faith: A Systematic Theology Page 475]

Does Edwards Deny Simplicity?

It is a maxim amongst divines that everything that is in God is God which must be understood of real attributes and not of mere modalities. If a man should tell me that the immutability of God is God, or that the omnipresence of God and authority of God is God, I should not be able to think of any rational meaning of what he said. It hardly sounds to me proper to say that God's being without change is God, or that God's being everywhere is God, or that God's having a right of government over creatures is God.

But if it be meant that the real attributes of God, viz., His understanding and love are God, then what we have said may in some measure explain how it is so, for Deity subsists in them distinctly; so they are distinct Divine Persons.

Jonathan Edwards; Unpublished Essay on the Trinity

At first glance, this seems like it could be a departure from Thomas and the Scholastics, I have a real question for our experts on the Fathers or the Reformed Scholastics. Is it a traditional characteristic of divine simplicity that modalities of God are God just as much as His real attributes are God?

Treasure the Pleasures

As I was working out today, I listened to my Kindle read Chesterton's Orthodoxy. I have an exquisite delight in Chesterton's elevation of the importance of art and poetry. This is largely because I have not a poetic bone in my entire body, and it is important to face our weaknesses head on or else spend eternity being hamstrung by them. Of all the things Chesterton says, I think the following may be my favorite:

I could never mix in the common murmur of that rising generation against monogamy, because no restriction on sex seemed so odd and unexpected as sex itself. To be allowed, like Endymion, to make love to the moon and then to complain that Jupiter kept his own moons in a harem seemed to me (bred on fairy tales like Endymion's) a vulgar anti-climax. Keeping to one woman is a small price for so much as seeing one woman. To complain that I could only be married once was like complaining that I had only been born once. It was incommensurate with the terrible excitement of which one was talking. It showed, not an exaggerated sensibility to sex, but a curious insensibility to it. A man is a fool who complains that he cannot enter Eden by five gates at once. Polygamy is a lack of the realization of sex; it is like a man plucking five pears in mere absence of mind. The aesthetes touched the last insane limits of language in their eulogy on lovely things. The thistledown made them weep; a burnished beetle brought them to their knees. Yet their emotion never impressed me for an instant, for this reason, that it never occurred to them to pay for their pleasure in any sort of symbolic sacrifice. Men (I felt) might fast forty days for the sake of hearing a blackbird sing. Men might go through fire to find a cowslip. Yet these lovers of beauty could not even keep sober for the blackbird. They would not go through common Christian marriage by way of recompense to the cowslip. Surely one might pay for extraordinary joy in ordinary morals. Oscar Wilde said that sunsets were not valued because we could not pay for sunsets. But Oscar Wilde was wrong; we can pay for sunsets. We can pay for them by not being Oscar Wilde.

In the meantime, I have also been reading very slowly through Walker Percy's wondrous novel The Moviegoer, which I will share my thoughts on at a later date. I felt quite spoiled today, however, having earlier in the day received this reminder from Chesterton to treasure the pleasures of life in whatever small measure they may come and then to see in Percy's novel the disconnection (and hence inability to enjoy) which comes from being a consumer rather than an enjoyer of what we've been given.

The Unprofessional Book Review: Inside Scientology

My wife and I have been married for over a decade. During our honeymoon in 2001, we went to Los Angeles and among other things visited the Sunset strip and Hollywood Boulevard - whose most outstanding feature was its series of depressingly shabby storefronts alternated with some of the fanciest locations we had ever seen. As we passed through what I now know to have been a central hub of Scientology, a pair of guys in suits asked my wife and I if we wanted to take a "stress test." I didn't know what to say, but my wife didn't even miss a beat: "I don't need a test to know that I'm stressed!" I thought it was funny, but I had no idea who these guys were until much later. If only I'd known at the time that I'd missed my chance to join an alien cult. Darn.

Janet Reitman's new book, Inside Scientology: The Story of America's Most Secretive Religion is an essential read. I don't qualify this statement. My guess is that it may be decades before a more thorough history of this mysterious and enigmatic organization will ever be written. Filled with interviews with dozens of individuals - many of whom have never spoken out before, Reitman takes the reader on a nearly unbelievable journey. Beginning back in the 30s and following the pulp fiction writer L. Ron Hubbard, we are taken on a tour of the man's life that makes no pretense of admiration for the man. From his bigamous marriage to his life spent at sea being served by boys and girls in hot pants, there is no way you can read this book and come away thinking that Hubbard was anything but a highly intelligent and creative scam artist.

The book is filled with interesting anecdotes about the Scientologists' attempts to get famous people to join their cult, but by far the funniest is Elvis. Evidently, some friends of Elvis had been positioned to bring him in and see if they couldn't get him hooked, so Elvis went into the Scientology center on Sunset Blvd. and he came out a few minutes later:

"Apparently they started doing all these charts and crap for him. Elvis came out and said, 'F*** those people! There's no way I'll ever get involved with that son-of-a-bit**in' group. All they want is my money.'" Though Lipton stayed in the group for a number of years, Presley, said Fike, "stayed away from Scientology like it was a cobra."

Although it is tempting to read up on the strange theology and mock the pathetic and unbelievably hilarious Zenu story that all OT3s are told only after spending thousands of dollars on auditing to get to that point of full disclosure, the fact is this book is a sad testament to man's need for redemption. I don't want to forcibly turn this book into a matter of Christian apologetics, but if there is one thing that rings through on every single page it is that Scientology seizes upon mankind's need for forgiveness and cleansing from sin. All of the Scientology enterprise from the auditing to the life of devotion in organizations like Sea Org (think of it as a monastary for Scientologists) are paths and methods for all of these individuals to find a way to escape from the things they've done, to repair their damaged souls, and to find that ever elusive peace of conscience. Page after page, anecdote after anecdote, we read in this book about people who are desperate to find escape from their past to find some sort of redemption. The problem is that, like ALL manmade religions, Scientology teaches that each of us is responsible to remove our own ills and that only we can bring rectitude to our damaged lives. In this respect, Scientology fits right alongside all the other religions, which teach that man is basically good, he just needs to cleanse himself.

The tale of Lisa McPherson, which occupies a large chunk of the book, is a fitting illustration of this as she is repeatedly told that if only she did this and that and certain forms of auditing and ascetic self denial - if only she would do all of these things, then she would find peace. In reality, she was a very sick woman whose need for salvation drove her to utter despair until she had a quite public meltdown in the middle of traffic. Her many sexual partners and years of drug abuse seemed to follow her from place to place, and no amount of auditing could remove the stain of sin. To my mind, this woman was forced to carry the weight of her own sin by a religion that told her that only she could cleanse herself. Eventually the weight was too heavy and she collapsed under the burden of it. Tragically, as well, she suffered a great deal physically at the hands of a group who had no idea how to care for a truly sick person until she eventually died. Even then, the narrative fascinatingly demonstrates how the organization suppressed her autopsy report, and managed to completely exhonorate themselves of her death in the eyes of the law.

Tom Cruise, for those interested, does occupy a fascinating branch of the narrative, and I couldn't help but wonder after reading the chapter on him in the book, whether the group might actually have some seriously nasty dirt on him and if he might not be stumping for them because he's been blackmailed. It is evidently a regular practice that any sins that are confessed during auditing sessions are not erased, but rather, recorded for future use (what a contrast to Christianity!). Upon hearing the story of Zenu for the first time, Cruise "freaked out and was like, What the f*** is this science fiction s***?" only to disappear for years. He then later re-emerged as the biggest advocate for Scientology that the world had ever seen, even damaging his career in the process. Your guess is as good as mine, but Reitman is unable to narratively account for the renewed enthusiasm in the wake of his films Vanilla Sky and War of the Worlds.

In the end, the book left me with the impression that Scientology is not growing and it is not becoming more popular, but that it is, rather, a highly culturally stigmatized group that is merely treading water and using its second and third generation Scientologists to keep itself afloat. Splinter groups have recently emerged who claim to be renewing Hubbard's original teachings in contrast to the current official church. Reitman at one point likens this splintering to the Great Schism of East/West (and implies the Reformation as well) of Christianity that certainly had its share of fractures and splits. Will Scientology even be around in fifty years? Probably, but it will hopefully be a much smaller, neutered version of what it once was. With the internet and the ability to disseminate the Zenu story as well as the stories of disaffected members, it is much easier today for people to know what they are getting themselves into when they find themselves initially drawn to Scientology.

Many of us may never actually encounter Scientologists (I certainly haven't seen any personally for over ten years). But just to be safe, the next time somebody offers to give you a stress test, please be ready with something clever.

Helm's Refutation of Christian Hedonism

I recall a few years ago, Richard Mouw argued against Christian Hedonism (CH). However, in my opinion he failed to really understand what Piper was saying (he got hung up on the unfortunate name). When I saw that Paul Helm addressed CH in his latest blog post, I wondered if he would fall into the same error as Mouw. I must say, I was pleasantly surprised. Helm appears to at least understand the subject and has some very fascinating thoughts on the subject.

CH (as popularized by John Piper) teaches that "God is most glorified in us when we are most satisfied in him." Put another way, Piper rearranges the Westminster Shorter Catechism's first answer by saying that "the chief end of man is to glorify God by enjoying him forever." This means that everything we do must be done with reference to God and result in human enjoyment of Him and not the thing being enjoyed for its own sake.

One of Paul Helm's biggest complaints is that the language of the WSC is meant to have an eschatalogical character, and the eschatological character of the answer is lost in Piper's paraphrase. Here is what Helm says, with reference to the WSC:

The chief end of man does not refer to the gain in satisfaction that each of our actions may provide as we perform them, but it has a distinctive eschatological strand to it. The chief end of man (here and now) is to glorify God and (at the last, when experiencing the vision of God) to enjoy him for ever. Here and now human life is to be dominated by glorifying God by what we think and do and feel, and endure, whatever the pain. Then, the Christian’s pilgrimage over, the faithful Christian will enjoy God when he shall be like him, seeing him as he is. It seems that Christian hedonism takes these two elements, the present Christian life and the life to come, and collapses them together.

Helm then argues that making the enjoyment of God the end of every action is not a fair characterization of how humanity is meant to glorify God.

And of course such glorifying of God is the ‘chief end’, not the only end. It provides a place not only subordinating what we do to God’s glory, but also for enjoyment, including the enjoyment of creaturely gifts for their own sake.

So that becomes the question then, doesn't it? Is it possible that something can be done for its own sake, without any direct reference to God and yet still bring Him glory? I am certain that Piper would say no to this. He does argue that "not only is disinterested morality (doing good "for its own sake") impossible; it is undesirable." However, Helm would probably affirm this. Helm is talking about things that do not have a moral dimension - such as collecting opera records. Piper would argue, however, that everything has a moral dimension. If something is done without reference to God, then it is immoral because it is a form of idolatry. Says Helm:

May we not find satisfaction in God in such innocencies as opera programme collecting? May he not be glorified in them? May God not be glorified for the provision of such innocent pleasures? A Christian hedonism may perhaps reply ‘Yes’. But if so then the link between satisfaction in God and glorifying him becomes more and more tenuous, and the claim runs the risk of being true by definition. Either the actions that express Christian liberty are ways of finding satisfaction in God, or they are not. If they are not, then Christian hedonism is at once refuted. If they are, then the idea of it is stretched, perhaps stretched to the breaking point of unreality, for then almost any action might count as one in which a person finds satisfaction in God.

At one point, Helm calls attention to a selection from his book Calvin at the Centre where he discusses Calvin vs. Augustine on uti and frui (use and love). In that book, he quotes Calvin (Institutes III.10.2) on the subject of the enjoyment of things:

Now then, if we consider for what end he created food, we shall find that he consulted not only for our necessity, but also for our enjoyment and delight. Thus in clothing, the end was, in addition to necessity, comeliness and honour; and in herbs, fruits and trees besides their various uses, gracefulness of appearance and sweetness of smell ... The natural qualities of things themselves demonstrate to what end, and how far, they may be lawfully enjoyed. Has the Lord adorned flowers with all the beauty which spontaneously presents itself to the eye, and the sweet odour which delights the sense of smell, and shall it be unlawful for us to enjoy that beauty and this odour?What? Has he not so distinguished colours as to make some more agreeable than others? Has he not given qualities to gold and silver, ivory and marble, thereby rendering them precious things above other metals and stones? In short, has he not given many things a value without having any necessary use?

With regard to the eschatological character of the first question of the Shorter Catechism, I think Helm is right. In which case, the WSC does not, on a de novo reading, offer prima facie support for CH. The question comes down to whether or not something in the bounds of Christian liberty can be enjoyed for its own sake, without direct reference to God. If so (and let me be clear, only if so), then I would agree with Helm that Christian Hedonism is indeed shown to be a somewhat inadequate expression of Christian experience.

Help Me Kill This Puppy

After my last two posts generated absolutely zero protests, I decided that we must be able to really push the envelope here at Bring the Books. If it wasn't controversial to put Calvin onto Arny's body or call Transformationalists dummies, then I'm sure nobody will object to my calling for the execution of this adorable little creature of God. So here it is - my first step into the world of controversy - lets join together and agree that this puppy needs to be gone. All together now!

Two Quotes from Calvin on Natural Law & Civil Laws

[T]here are some who deny that a commonwealth is duly framed which neglects the political system of Moses, and is ruled by the common law of nations. Let other men consider how perilous and seditious this notion is; it will be enough for me to have proved it false and foolish. (IV.XX.14)

Now, since that last quote is a bit of a tongue-twister, I thought I would restate it in a way that reads like English. So here it is - Adam's paraphrase:

If you don't think that a good nation should be ruled by the common law of nations and instead you think that a good nation's laws must include the Mosaic law, you are a dummy.

I didn't say it - Calvin did! (I didn't say it would be a kind paraphrase.)

In the next section, Calvin discusses the importance of Equity.

We [should examine]...these two things: the constitution of the law, and the equity on which its constitution is itself founded and rests. Equity, because it is natural, cannot but be the same for all, and therefore this same purpose ought to apply to all laws, whatever their object. Constitutions have certain circumstances upon which they in part depend. It therefore does not matter that they are different, provided all equally press toward the same goal of equity.

It is a fact that the law of God which we call the moral law is nothing else than a testimony of natural law and of that conscience which God has engraved upon the minds of men. Consequently, the entire scheme of this equity of which we are now speaking has been prescribed in it. Hence, this equity alone must be the goal and rule and limit of all laws.

Whatever laws shall be framed to that rule, directed to that goal, bound by that limit, there is no reason why we should disapprove of them, howsoever they may differ from the Jewish law and among themselves. (IV.XX.16)

You'll have to forgive all of the Two Kingdoms posts. That's what I've been studying and reading about lately; ergo... lots of 2K discussions. Or maybe I've just been looking for lots of excuses to Photoshop humorous images of Calvin onto other peoples' bodies...

Where Have All The (Natural) Lawmen Gone?

A few days ago, I posted a list and asked if Natural Law was clear enough to teach these things. Specifically, I wanted to know if there were any Reformed people who would affirm that Natural Law can offer any accurate guidance for the civil realm. The list included things such as duty to care for families, the obligation of promises, and also included the prohibition of murder, slavery, adultery, tyranny, and incest.

This list was compiled by Harro Höpfl in his book The Christian Polity of John Calvin. The list is a selection of things (often very specific; though not necessarily comprehensive) which - according to Hopfl - Calvin believed were informed by "'nature' or 'natural sense' or 'reason'" (p. 179-180).

I was so struck by this list because Reformed theologians today seem to be embarrassed of any sort of affirmation of so much clarity in natural law - especially of the sort Calvin was wiling to affirm. To many it smacks of inclusivism, liberalism, or rejecting Scriptural authority. To many, natural law doesn't matter at all, since all we really need to do is bring everyone - believer or not - under the rule of Scripture (in which case, natural law can go the way of the dinosaurs for all we care - am I right?)

Is it really such a "radical" idea that men ought to be held to the standards which God has placed them under? (Don't forget to add the 'R' to the 2K!) Perhaps what really needs to happen is for Reformed thinkers to develop a renewed interest in and appreciation of natural law. It is a part of our heritage - it's in our bones and sinew. Our forefathers believed in it (think Turretin, especially), and though it is hotly debated how natural law was to be applied to the civil kingdom, it wasn't always an embarrassing thing to acknowledge that men have in their hearts the knowledge of right and wrong as a clear standard by which the common kingdom could be held to by its own citizens.

Instead of a sermon, let me end with a question: whose fault is it? What happened to Natural Law, in other words? Do we lay our complaints at the feet of Van Til? Kuyper? Bahnsen?

Improving on the NASCAR Prayer

As far as I'm concerned, the now infamous prayer offered at the NASCAR race where the man publicly thanked God for his "smokin' hot wife" was pathetic and inexcusable. ... That being said, we now have this terrific autotuned version which almost justifies the horror of such an awful mockery of what might be called "prayer." I said almost.