What does it mean that God is love, that he loves us, and that we are to love him? Contrary to popular claims, love is not a desire to promote the true flourishing of another, since this definition is incoherent when applied to Love himself. Rather, biblical love is, so to speak, “one­togetheness.”

Numbers 12 makes clear that the quality and character of prophetic gifts will not be like the perspicuous public revelation of scripture.

If you’re speaking in tongues and you don’t know what you’re saying, you’re not speaking in tongues. You’re babbling like a baby.

Voting is an act of representative rulership. As such, it fundamentally represents Christ, and is subject to his clear laws. Christians therefore do not have the option of voting for anyone other than a man after God’s own heart.

Contrary to a common objection bandied about today, there is nothing sectarian about head covering, and to disallow it on such grounds is grossly inconsistent with how these very same people approach other important doctrinal disagreements.

It is impossible for the covering that Paul is speaking about in 1 Corinthians 11 to be merely the woman’s hair. Verse 6 makes this reading incoherent, and verse 15 directly signals that it is wrong by using a different word for covering than the rest of the chapter.

Prayer and prophecy in scripture can be supernatural gifts. But they can often be exercises of our natural faculties too. Paul’s use of these terms is broad, and certainly encompasses what women do in worship today.

Don your fighting trousers.

John Reasnor’s analysis of my views on faith and justification contains errors so critical and obvious that it’s hard to imagine he is writing in good faith.

At what point does a difference of opinion about submission to state authority become a difference in worship? When the submission to state authority functionally unseats Christ as the head of that worship.

Why are so many Christians today pretending submission to God while they openly defy his authority? Why are they encouraging hatred of neighbor and approving of rebellion, while condemning other believers who are seeking to submit?

Facing false charges in a judicial process that denied the presumption of innocence, the right to be fairly tried before being condemned, and the right to speak in my own defense, I was found guilty of slander, false teaching, and division, and excommunicated from Trinity Reformed Baptist Church.

Years ago, I assessed what the Bible says about marital corporal punishment. Contrary to wise counsel, I did some of my thinking out loud among my enemies. Now, screenshots of my comments are used to perpetuate a rumor that I support wife-beating. This is false, and always has been.

While head covering debates get mired in disagreement about cultural customs and what Paul meant about the angels, they ignore the central logic of 1 Corinthians 11—that only one glory should be on display in worship. Veiling still matters in the modern day because God’s glory still matters in worship—and that is what is at stake.

Deborah is widely regarded as a feminist icon; the only woman to rule God’s people well. But close attention to the text reveals that her rulership, though good, was a shame to Israel—not a glory.

Once the cultural blinders are removed, the evidence of scripture against women ruling society is difficult to ignore. There are clear teleological, a fortiori, exegetical, inductive, and missional reasons for Christians to regard the rule of women, in the words of John Knox, as monstruous.

The problem of ubiquitous feminist icons in media is not that they violate God’s design for women, nor that they are often one-dimensional Mary-Sues—it is rather that they generally glorify that which God declares inglorious.

Despite modern, feminist-conditioned sensibilities, carefully trained by modern, feminist media icons, both nature and scripture reveal that women in combat or enforcement roles are the sort of thing the Lord spits out of his mouth.

In antiquity, the key distinction between contract and covenant was one of performance versus loyalty. This was widely understood and accepted; so how plausible is it that first century Judaism treated God’s covenant as a contract requiring performance, rather than as what it claimed to be—a covenant requiring personal fidelity?

Final justification does not add anything to the conditions of justification; nor does it entail that God grounds his verdict in our works rather than in his Son’s. On the contrary, final justification is on account of the very same faith that first joined us to Jesus and his vindication—and our works are a proper part of that faith.

Why did the latest Star Wars installment receive fawning critical adoration, but widespread contempt from average movie-goers? Because average movie-goers didn’t realize that it was a film made to stimulate the engorgement of virtue, rather than to tell a story.

The common assumption that Matthew 18 and Acts 12 give us glimpses of guardian angels is probably mistaken. Rather, the term angel in these passages is referring to human spirits.

Part 6 of 6, in which I consider and confute the objection that an unlimited satisfaction would not actually secure or guarantee salvation for anyone.

Part 5 of 6, in which I refute the objection that unlimited satisfaction entails either universal salvation, or a double payment for sins.

Part 4 of 6, in which I interact with the objection that unlimited satisfaction requires that God be at cross-purposes with himself, entertaining frustrated desires which he cannot fulfill.

Part 3 of 6, in which I forward the argument that limited satisfaction undermines the assurance of salvation at exactly the times we most need it, by removing the objective grounds for faith.

Part 2 of 6, in which I argue that limited satisfaction is inconsistent with the universal gospel call—whether conceived of as an invitation, or as a command only.

Part 1 of 6, in which I show that limited satisfaction is inconsistent with what is revealed in Scripture about federal headship and forensic imputation: two doctrines central to Jesus’ penal substitution.

In which I introduce the case I will forward for a particular redemption grounded in an unlimited satisfaction on the cross.

Inspiration and canonization are two components in the larger, holistic process of inscripturation.

Molinism tries to eat its cake, and still have it too, by incorporating both CCFs and PAP. But if counterfactuals of creaturely freedom are true, then the principle of alternate possibility is necessarily false, and vice versa.

Molinism removes the metaphysical machinery that underwrites God’s knowledge of free actions (i.e., his knowing what he will cause), but does not replace it with anything. Thus, middle knowledge is a just-so story; an assertion we are supposed to accept “because reasons.” Only…there are no reasons.

The Molinist’s governing intuition is that people can’t be responsible for choices which (i) do not ultimately originate in their own wills or (ii) they could not have done otherwise. This intuition is flatly contradicted by Jesus in John 6:44; so Molinism should be rejected as false.

Molinism as a system begins with human intuitions about responsibility, and then reads these back into God’s word; rather than beginning with God’s word, and conforming our intuitions to it. In this regard it is no different than any other man-made religion.

All the contextual evidence and literary parallels indicate that the straightforward reading of Proverbs’ rod is correct: physically hitting children is a good and valid form of punishment. To deny this is ultimately tantamount to making God’s word subordinate to modern secular parenting theories.

Molinists and Arminians are quick to condemn Calvinism for impugning God’s character. A perfectly good God cannot cause evil. God is a loving father, and loving fathers don’t cause their children to hurt each other (or themselves).

Formulations of inerrancy always conceal the most important issue: what it means for scripture to teach or claim or affirm.

What would this tell us about the Hebrew worldview, and about inerrancy?

In a synergistic framework, what is the explanation for some people responding affirmatively to prevenient grace, while others do not? Is it because of the grace they receive? Then God shows partiality. Is it because of their character? Then they have reason to boast. Is it neither? Then salvation is down to luck.

Six exceedingly odd yet equally common arguments for sending your child to a state school (instead of homeschooling). Refuted, obviously.

Arminians object to determinism because it makes God the “author of evil”—but although they disagree with Calvinists about the nature of God’s sovereignty, their own theology commits them to an equally deterministic view.