Reflections on God … Man … Life
Classes begin today. This will be the start of my 25th year of teaching at the college level and my 8th at SEU. My two courses today are the American history surveys—one from the colonial era through the Civil War, the other post-Civil War. Yet I give both sections the same introduction because there are some basics the students need to be reminded of. First, I offer a brief testimony of what the Lord has done in my life and… Read more »
After Charles Finney’s overwhelming conversion experience, his pastor, the Rev. Gale, undertook the task of trying to train him for the ministry. The theology he tried to convince Finney to accept didn’t seem right to him. As he explains in his autobiography, Soon after I was converted I called on my pastor, and had a long conversation with him on the atonement. He was a Princeton student, and of course held the limited view of the atonement—that it was made… Read more »
I spend a lot of time writing about principles. One of my key warnings is that we remain principled in our thinking and our actions; pure pragmatism is dangerous because it neglects the basic truths. Yet that doesn’t mean that principled people shouldn’t be wise. Jesus told His disciples to be shrewd as serpents and innocent as doves. He said that as He sent them out to deliver His message. On occasion, Jesus even told people He had healed to… Read more »
Charles Finney had a definitively non-Calvinistic view of how the atonement of Christ worked to take care of the sin problem in man. For the record, I believe he has provided a great corrective to the usual explanation. We have to begin with certain questions. What does God, the governor, do when people who break His law and are bound for eternal punishment are truly sorry for their disobedience? Can He simply say that their sorrow is sufficient and He… Read more »
When I teach, I try to impress upon students certain truths. I know that sounds impertinent to the ears of some. “What is truth?” they may say. I seem to recall a historical figure named Pontius Pilate who asked the same thing. Jesus, standing before him, had already made it clear He was the truth. So, yes, I believe truth exists. There are certain things I’ve gotten in the habit of telling students over the years, so last summer, before… Read more »
All day Tuesday, I was seeing tweets via my Twitter account that expressed optimism that the Supreme Court would uphold the Defense of Marriage Act [DOMA] because it wouldn’t want to repeat the mistake of Roe v. Wade. I was not nearly as optimistic. Technically, the optimists were correct; the Court stopped short of declaring that same-sex marriage should be legal throughout the nation. But the effect of its decision in Windsor—and its punt on the Prop 8 case—is not… Read more »
Our tour of historic southeastern Virginia continues. Tuesday was a full day at Monticello, Thomas Jefferson’s home. I’ve been to Monticello numerous times, but every time I learn more. Particularly interesting was the interpreter’s talk about slavery at the plantation. He interspersed the overall picture with vignettes from the lives of various slaves who labored there. There were three levels of slavery at the plantation: farm workers; artisans/craftsmen; house servants. One family—the Hemings—was almost slave royalty, resented by those who… Read more »