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Latest Posts & Commentary

- 2 Peter
- 2 Peter 1:1-11

The Character of Virtue

The first part of a brief consideration of virtue in scripture

Put simply, Peter’s description in 2 Peter 1:3-8 makes for a traceable account of the Christian life. It helps us understand how faith remains an enduring feature of the Christian identity, just as it was prerequisite to the woman’s health in Luke 8:43-46. Faith is highlighted—not merely for the fact that faith is commanded to men, but for reason that only faith may take account of God’s ongoing work.

Photography

Photography: January 1, 2025

A sample of recent photography

Image credit: RAH Below is a sample of photography that has recently been uploaded to the website. Click any one image to view it and the other photographs in a lightbox. Additional photographs are available for viewing on the photography page.

Commentary & Exposition

- Judges
- Judges 6:1-32

The Character of a Prophet’s Speech as Divine Testimony

The unnamed prophet of Joshua 6 recalls the words of Joshua, revealing a need for Israel’s savior

In both cases, the word fear is used in connection to Israel’s disposition: Israel was to fear the LORD and not fear the gods of the Amorites.

Commentary & Exposition

- Judges
- Judges 6:1-32

The Scripture’s Account of Gideon: Preliminary Considerations

The narrative of scripture as a bulwark against moralism

It is true that [the preacher] must highlight the historical and practical significance that describes and prescribes human obligation; but most fundamentally, he must speak to those revelatory features of scripture that highlight the character and work of God.

Photography

Photography: November 1, 2024

A sample of recent photography

A sample of photography that has recently been uploaded to the website

Select Quotations

Smashing the Kingdom of Jove

Charles Norris Cochrane’s summary of Augustine’s critique: In misapprehending God’s kingdom, man misappropriates power

"[T]he error of Classicism may be summarily described as a failure to identify the true source of power and, therewith, its true character and conditions."

Recently Uploaded Photos

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Edits & Rewrites

Defacing the Truth, Destroying the Conscience

Terrence Malick’s film reminds us that the present becomes a horrible future after we join hands to misconsider the past

“What we do is just create sympathy. We create…we create admirers. We don’t create followers."

Ascribed & Prescribed (Notes on Ideas)

What Text will now Define & Describe Ontology?

Being & Act in a Brief Assessment of Vedantic Philosophy

If Western modern philosophy is to be faulted for its own Enlightenment presuppositions—ironically ill-disposed as it became to the Biblical revelation, also—so must the Indian schools face the nature and source of their own most basic assumptions.

“To love at all is to be vulnerable. Love anything and your heart will be wrung and possibly broken. If you want to make sure of keeping it intact you must give it to no one, not even an animal. Wrap it carefully round with hobbies and little luxuries; avoid all entanglements. Lock it up safe in the casket or coffin of your selfishness. But in that casket, safe, dark, motionless, airless, it will change. It will not be broken; it will become unbreakable, impenetrable, irredeemable. To love is to be vulnerable.”

C.S. Lewis
The Four Loves

“See the heinousness of sin by this, that Christ was made a curse…

…if thou wouldst know what sin is, go to mount Calvary.”

Thomas Goodwin
Christ our Mediator

“Holiness does not consist in mystical speculations, enthusiastic fervors, or uncommanded austerities; it consists in thinking as God thinks, and willing as God wills.”

John Brown
Expository Discourses on 1 Peter

“Everybody, soon or late, sits down to a banquet of consequences.”

Robert Louis Stevenson

“Grace knows no jealousies except for the honor of God.”

Geerhardus Vos
Seeking and Saving the Lost

Scripture Notes & Commentary

- Commentary & Exposition

- Colossians
- Colossians 1:1-29

The Time & Space Between Faith & Love

Acknowledging the rule & power of God in the church by its expressions of love

This is how redemption mimics the original creation: What begins in the act of God as an instance of creation—a man’s new birth, much as a germinated seed—also blooms and then blossoms again among the other flowers in a field of perennials.

- Commentary & Exposition

- Colossians
- Colossians 1:1-29

Awareness & our Earliest and Natural Obligations of Love

The obligations in family predict their display in the church

- Notes on Scripture

Redemption: The Purchase of a Postscript

Noting the persistence of God’s will in the nature of redemption

See All Notes & Commentary

Assorted Articles

- Ascribed & Prescribed (Notes on Ideas)

The Dharmaśāstras: The Reordering of the World, One More Time

The emergence of the Hindu Dharmaśāstra texts in India as polemical rhetoric

To say, as the Dharmaśāstras do, that some people know dharma is to also say that others do not. There is, then, not only a stated purpose to the Dharmaśāstras, but one that is set in a telling awareness of disagreement and debate.

- Reflections (& Refractions)

Life’s Rhythms & the Telling of Time

Contemplating affection for eternity in the passing of days

- Ascribed & Prescribed (Notes on Ideas)

The Stump Speech Becomes Secularism’s Sermon

Flattery, politics, & the search for power

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Read & Overheard

- Select Quotations

An Ironic, Apprehensible Summary of a Problem

A brief and well-known excerpt taken from C.S. Lewis’ 1941 sermon, "The Weight of Glory"

“We are far too easily pleased.”

- Select Quotations

Moral Awareness: Caught up in the Middle of Things

Moral obligations are discovered in moral experience

"It would be nice to test the ground of morality before we step on it. But to all such proposals there is one inevitable reply: they come too late."

- Select Quotations

Religion is Contemplated in God’s Gift of Redemption

A Selection taken from Herman Bavinck’s The Wonderful Works of God

"Without special revelation the religion of men and the philosophy of thinkers do not have a right knowledge of God, and hence no right knowledge of man and the world, and of sin and redemption."

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Featured Posts

- Commentary & Exposition

- Matthew's Gospel
- Matthew 19:1-30

Come & Follow Whom?

The two tables of the Law & the deity of Christ

Indeed every phrase in the short section possess a corresponding part, so that the purposed order of the entire conversation becomes very obvious. The Lord was not merely confirming the young man’s sinfulness, but he answered the young man’s question regarding eternal life. But to the point, he made himself God, and the worthy object of the ruler’s faith, saying, “come and follow me”

Reflections (& Refractions)

Refitting an Analogy

Jesus Christ makes the mercy of God apprehensible

Commentary & Exposition

- The Book of Revelation
- Revelation 20:1-10

A Prelude to Eternity

Eschatology: Eden & the Millennium

Select Quotations

The Christian Can Hope Perfectly

Geerhardus Vos on the Christian’s hope

Commentary & Exposition

- 1 Corinthians
- 1 Corinthians 15:12-34

Conceiving a Fiction

Paul asks his readers to imagine the circumstances were the Christian account actually mistaken

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