Latest Posts
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Time Travel & The First Christmas
Read more: Time Travel & The First ChristmasToday (Dec 13) I am flying home after my first term at St Andrews. It feels like time has sped up ever since I arrived. An hour seems a bit shorter than I remembered in the States. Whole weeks have felt like insignificant blocks of time that pass by all too quickly. Why does time…
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Would I teach MY kids about Santa?
Read more: Would I teach MY kids about Santa?For the reading audience, this comes as part three of a themed week focus on the tension between celebrating Christmas, as specifically Santa, alongside the advent of the Messiah. For those of you who have not read John’s misnomer[1] article titled “Why I Wouldn’t Teach my Kids About Santa” posted earlier this week, I would recommend…
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Rockin’ Around the Pagan-derived Christmas Tree
Read more: Rockin’ Around the Pagan-derived Christmas TreeThe commercial and symbolic culture of Christmas has been lost on no one. The true meaning of Christmas has. In America, Christmas is a month-long celebration full of tradition. It’s more a season than merely a date on the calendar. Radio stations and department stores play nothing but Christmas music from late-November on. Houses and…
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Out of Egypt: The Final Exodus
Read more: Out of Egypt: The Final ExodusAs we find ourselves in another Christmas season, it is always good to return to the Gospels and remind ourselves why it is we celebrate. For me, that means returning to Matthew’s account of the birth of Christ, reading and pondering Matthew’s side of the story. But this story of the birth of a baby…
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Why I Wouldn’t Teach My Kids About Santa
Read more: Why I Wouldn’t Teach My Kids About SantaI don’t actually have a problem with Santa Claus. In fact, I enjoy the general holiday cheer, even if it isn’t specifically Christian. I’m fine with songs like ‘Santa Claus is Coming To Town,’ ‘Frosty the Snow Man,’ ‘Silver Bells,’ etc… Its all good fun. But of course, I appreciate the Christmas songs that contain…
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How Many Kingdoms? Abrogation and Illegitimacy
Read more: How Many Kingdoms? Abrogation and IllegitimacyOver the past couple weeks I have attempted to lay a framework for the one-kingdom v. two-kingdom debate. I have done this by providing a brief sketch of crucial post reformation thinkers on the issue such as Abraham Kuyper and the later neo-Calvinists. Here we saw that while Kuyper was nowhere near an outright departure…
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Combating a Crotchety Christmas
Read more: Combating a Crotchety ChristmasConfession: there is a part of me that hates Christmas time.* We might be quick to throw stones at Dr. Seuss’s scornful Grinch for his hatred of inarguably one of the world’s most celebrated holidays. And perhaps in part it is because his heart was 3 sizes too small. But regardless of his heart size,…
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Apologetics: To What End?
Read more: Apologetics: To What End?Last week I talked about advertising and evangelism. As a related issue, I also want to discuss the way in which Christians do Apologetics. How far can Apologetics take us? Do we assume that someone can be argued into the Kingdom? Is the goal of Apologetics merely to convince? Is being convinced the same as…
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How Many Kingdoms? Covenants of Commonality and Particularity
Read more: How Many Kingdoms? Covenants of Commonality and Particularity“…historic Reformed doctrines affirm a sharp distinction between the church as the non-violent kingdom of Christ and the sword bearing, coercive state. Hence, the state is not and cannot be the kingdom of Christ and… the demise of Christendom can be celebrated rather than mourned.” This quote from David VanDrunen in his book Natural Law…