November 2010
4 posts
The Grace College Blog Has Moved
I moved the Grace College Blog over to blogspot: http://graceslocollege.blogspot.com/
Please follow it over there from now on.
John Owen on the Mortification of Sin
In 1656, a Puritan theologian named John Owen wrote a book called The Mortification of Sin. On Sunday, we talked about the extent and seriousness of sin, and how to fight it as a believer. These are Owen’s 9 summary prescriptions for mortifying (killing) sin in your life:
1. Consider the symptoms that accompany a lust. 2. Get a clear and abiding sense upon your mind and conscience of the...
“What we want, if men become Christians at all, is to keep them in the state of...”
– The devil’s advice to his apprentice in C.S. Lewis’ The Screwtape Letters
“But you are a Christian. This means you cannot go to college just to get a...”
– Stanley Hauerwas, “Go With God: An Open Letter to Young Christians on Their Way to College”
October 2010
4 posts
Peter Hitchens on the University
Peter Hitchens on the modern university (He is an English Christian, and the brother of the atheist Christopher Hitchens):
“For many people, college is a corrupting, demoralising experience. They imagine they are independent when they are in fact parasites, living off their parents or off others and these days often doomed to return home with a sense of grievance and no job. They also...
JP Moreland on Intellectually Unsophisticated...
From Justin Taylor’s blog:
After refuting the claim by Hawking and Mlodinow (The Grand Design) that natural laws are consistent with creation appearing from nothing, J.P. Moreland explains why the influence of Hawking and Mlodinow’s claims are troubling:
In previous times when average people knew more philosophy, these claims would simply be laughable because they are philosophical...
A Realistic View of Life without God
Bertrand Russel on the ultimate meaning of life apart from God:
Such, in outline, but even more purposeless, more void of meaning, is the world which Science presents for our belief. Amid such a world, if anywhere, our ideals henceforward must find a home.
That Man is the product of causes which had no prevision of the end they were achieving;
that his origin, his growth, his hopes and...
“[Christ] did not cultivate self, even His divine self: He took no account of...”
– BB Warfield, Imitating the Incarnation
September 2010
3 posts
“Doctrine can never take the place of Jesus himself, but we can’t know him...”
– Joshua Harris, Dug Down Deep, p. 31
What About Bob? and the Transcendence of God
Yesterday at the college group I taught on the character of God. One thing we talked about is that God is transcendent, meaning that he is far above and other than us. Last night, we were watching the movie What About Bob?, in which Bill Murray plays Bob, an obsessive-compulsive who follows his beloved psychologist on vacation. At one point, Bob made a comment about his doctor that made me laugh...
Augustine's Prayer to Understand the Trinity
This week we will start going through the Apostles’ Creed, talking about the first clause: “I believe in God the Father”.
We will also be talking about the doctrine of the Trinity. It is something that people often ridicule because it cannot be fully explained or understood. Some people think that if we can’t understand something, it must not be real or true.
I came...
August 2010
2 posts
John Calvin Takes On Our Obsession with...
Calvin, talking about mankind’s propensity to pretend like nothing is wrong with him while taking credit for everything good about himself:
There is nothing more acceptable to the human mind than flattery, and, accordingly, when told that its endowments are of a high order, it is apt to be excessively credulous. Hence it is not strange that the greater part of mankind have erred so...
Abra Kadabra: Water is a human right
I just read that the UN has declared clean water a human right. Before reading further, understand that I think clean water is a great thing that I hope all people have access to. Moving on:
What really struck me about this declaration is that there is no attempt to give a basis for the human “right” to clean water except that a certain group of people don’t like what they are...
July 2010
2 posts
4 tags
The Moral Philosophy of the Misfit
We are starting a book club this week, reading Flannery O’Connor’s A Good Man is Hard to Find. One of the main characters, an escaped convict, is called “The Misfit” and muses on the meaninglessness of a life with no divine authority:
“Jesus was the only One that ever raised the dead,” The Misfit continued, “and He shouldn’t have done it. He shown...
“The main art in the matter of spiritual living is to know how to handle...”
– Dr. Martyn Lloyd-Jones, Spiritual Depression: Its Causes and Cure