Bully's Blog

Comedian Penn Jillette (of Penn & Teller) shares his experience of meeting a witnessing Christian.

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or The Killer Hermeneutic

An online acquaintance asked: “There’s a hermeneutical method that’s been used on this site called ‘systematic typology’. What is it? How does one apply it? Are there contexts where it is considered to be a particularly good or particularly bad fit? Where can one go to learn more about it? And where does it come from? (Who developed it, and based on what?)

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From Douglas Wilson’s Why Ministers Must Be Men:

Any discussion of women’s ordination will obviously revolve around the direct Pauline statements on the subject, and we will certainly spend the lion’s share of our space there. However, the Pauline instructions were not delivered in a vacuum and when he makes his appeals outside his immediate situation, he makes those appeals to the Old Testament, ground his appeals in both the history recorded there and the law given there.

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Scientism’s Credibility Crunch

One day, perhaps in a century or two, the word “Scientist” will be a term of derogation used to describe the cultists of the 20th century. Many things that the “Scientists” believed will be causes for ridicule. Their work has brought unimaginable benefits, but, like the alchemists, when they promised gold their grand claims were eventually exposed as fraudulent.

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Here’s some wisdom for witnessing from Chris Wooldridge (reposted with permission):

I have recently been reading Cornelius Van Til’s “Christian Apologetics” and it has really got me thinking about how the Church ought to be interacting with the world on some of today’s hot topics. I think all too often we are prone to affirming certain parts of the secular worldview without properly considering the consequences. So here are five things which the good Christian apologist should never agree with the secularist about. There are probably many others, but here are just a few. Continue reading

“Now therefore fear the Lord (T)
and serve him in sincerity and in faithfulness. (H)
Put away the gods that your fathers served (E)
beyond the River and in Egypt, (O)
and serve the Lord.” (S)
Joshua 24:14

40 Years of Harlotry

Israel famously wandered in the wilderness for forty years. They were tested, offered as a sacrifice and refined with the holy fire of the Law of Moses. This “threshing” process appears at the centre of the Bible Matrix. It is pictured as the time of harvest (Pentecost – the giving of the Law), and as the burning eyes of the Lampstand watching over Israel (sun, moon and five visible planets). In the Covenant pattern it is the “Ethics,” the bit where God lays out the rules for success. Threshing is also a biblical euphemism for sexual relations. At this point, under the Lawful eyes of God, Israel is either shown to be a faithful bride or an adulteress. Is the fire of her desire true or “strange” (foreign). We can see this pattern in James 1:15. It is a sick parody of the Covenant process because it begins with a “false word.”

[This post has been refined and included in Sweet Counsel: Essays to Brighten the Eyes.]
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John Dickson does a great job of showing how rubbish and pants the apocryphal “gospels” are, but he still believes that the real ones were written decades after the actual events. James Jordan has written some very convincing arguments concerning the Jewish practice of getting things into print almost immediately (a culture where not everyone reads and writes is not the same as an oral culture), but it seems the very names of people in the Gospels supports early dates of composition. Craig J. Hazen writes:
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“.
“Convergence is a simple word used to hide evidence for design.”

Last week, Peter Leithart commented on an interview with Professor Simon Conway Morris. I sent the link to my expert friend, Tas Walker, and he has discussed it a little less briefly:

Paleobiologist Simon Conway Morris, of Burgess Shale fame, says that examination of the fossil evidence demands a radical rewriting of evolution. Why so?

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A really helpful video. Website is here.

Here’s a brilliant video just uploaded by my online friend Daniel Foucachon. It levels the playing field in the Creation/Evolution debate.
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