How far is too far in the war against drunk driving?

Check this out, must have been late nights in the marketing department.

Blessedness In Practice: Gratitude

"To you that have any good hope through grace that you have a title to blessedness, let me say as the Levites did to the people, 'Stand up and bless the Lord your God for ever and ever' (Nehemiah 9:5). What infinite cause have you to be thankful that the lot of free grace is fallen upon you! Though you had forfeited all, yet God has provided a haven of happiness, and he is carrying you thither upon the sea of Christ's blood, the gale of his Spirit blowing your sails. You are in a better condition through Christ, than when you had robes of innocency upon you. God has raised you a step higher by your fall. How many has God passed by and looked upon you! Millions there are who shall lie under the bitter vials of God's curses, whereas he will bring you into his banqueting-house and pour out flagons of wine and feast you eternally with the delicacies of heaven. O adore free grace; triumph in this love of God. Spend and be spent for the Lord. Dedicate yourselves to him in a way of resignation, and lay out yourselves in a way of gratulation. Never think you do enough for that God who will shortly set you ashore in the land of promise."
THOMAS WATSON

A favorite puritan of mine, he has always been encouraging to me, perhaps he will be to others as well.

The Escape From Our Inner Child, Narcissus

Heidelberg Catechism 60

Question: How are you righteous before God?

Answer: Only by true faith is Jesus Christ. Although my conscience accuses me that I have grievously sinned against all God's commandments, have never kept any of them, and am still inclined to all evil, yet God, without any merit of my own, out of mere grace, imputes to me the perfect satisfaction, righteousness, and holiness of Christ. He grants these to me as if I had never had nor committed any sin, and as if I myself had accomplished all the obedience which Christ has rendered for me, if only I accept this gift with a believing heart.

A reminder that our confidence, our assurance is not found inward, it is not found in the piety or theological savvy we may display. No, rather it is found in the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus. It is an accomplished, historical act; we can add nothing, we must only accept this gift with faith.

A Day of Reckoning

Yet another example as to why ecclessiology is so important. Check the story out in Christianity Today here.

Dr. Kim Riddlebarger has an excellent response to this issue of a malformed or altogether absent ecclessiology here.

I think that at some point that we have all wanted to do this.

http://iparklikeanidiot.com/

Late night ramblings

Yet we must insist that the Divine speech both heralds and provides the necessary interpretive framework for redemption. Apart from his speech as the referent of his actions, the purpose of God in history would be unintelligible, supervised by the autonomous subjectivism of the creature rather than a unified, objective construct provided by the Creator.

What is Good?

A friend recently asked me to define "good" for him, he seems to be under the impression that it is not possible; an apparent paradox of this life. My initial response was that God was good and that the question itself pressupposed not only the possibility of definition but one actually. My supposition was that in regards to language, that content precedes communication and thus an actual, historically valid concept of good exists.

Yet, the more that I thought about it, the more I thought about how we know anything in regards to what is good. Now, this is a work in progress and thus might at times lack cogency, but I think that the general problem I have is that I think that the question itself is invalid, that rather one must ask who is good rather than what is good and in doing so we come to Paul rather than Athens, remembering that he said that no one was good - referring to created persons - and that all had fallen short of the glory of God. This being so we must assume that God alone is good and that that is displayed to us in both his speech and his actions; that our knowledge of good and thus evil find reference in what God does and says and what those who are not God do and say. So our knowledge is participatory and revelational rather than rationalistic; in this sense I mean attained by contemplation and speculation.

Some might say that answering the question, "What is good", would be a rather easy one. That one might say that good is ultimate perfection, allowing for no moral or ethical failure. Yet it seems to me that an answer like that would simply beg the question. Rather I follow a principle of epistemology that I believe is found in the early chapters of the book of Genesis, that creation- or in this conversation, content- precedes communication and identification. And in doing so I think that it follows that we must ask who is good, because behind that I believe lies the answer as to how we can formulate such a question.

So in this first post I am attempting to reformulate the question into a legitimate query. For the question. "What is good"; seems arrogant and autonomously oriented.

A Question of Foundations

I have often wondered if the debate going on between the confessionally reformed and the federal vision camps- I do make a distinction, though it is not meant as a slight, but rather one of denotation- is in fact a secondary or consequent- though valid and necessary- argument and that the real battle is over a theology containing a works/merit and faith/grace paradigm and one that rejects a works/merit paradigm wholly in favor of a single covenant model of faith/grace. Thus it often seems that the subliminal war over the epistemological foundations for the theological enterprise at large is largely between the camps of Kline and Shepherd. And that being so, though we are often told that the debate is about what the gospel is it seems rather that it is actually about what lense we acquire to read the text in order to actually define the gospel.
Any thoughts or insight is not only welcomed but sought, though perhaps no one will ever read this anyway.