John Murray on God's Loving Nature

"It is necessary to underline this concept of sovereign love. Truly God is love. Love is not something adventitious; it is not something that God may choose to be or not be. He is love, and that necessarily, inherently, and eternally. As God is spirit, as he is light, so he is love.

Yet it belongs to the very essence of electing love to recognize that it is not inherently necessary to that love which God necessarily and enternally is that he should set such love as issues in redemption and adoption upon utterly undesirable and hell-deserving objects. 

It was of the free and sovereign good pleasure of his will, a good pleasure that emanated from the depths of his own goodness, that he chose a people to be heirs of God and joint-heirs with Christ. The reason resides wholly in himself and proceedes from determinations that are peculiarly his as the "I am that I am." The atonement does not win or constrain the love of God.

The love of God constrains to the atonement as the means of accomplishing love's determinate purpose."

~John Murray, "Redemption, Accomplished and Applied"

Douglas Wilson on the Five Smooth Stones of Theocratic Libertarianism

Reformed writer Douglas Wilson proposes five things that must be done in order to reform the government and, by extension, American society. 

He stresses that liberty is a Christian value. Therefore, he wants liberty for secularists not because secularism is a good thing in itself; it isn't, even if some things within secularism are biblical and reflect the heart of the creator. I have always thought that if secularism is true, then it should be able to withstand free debate (no coercion). Truth wins out, right?

Read Wilson's The Five Smooth Stones of Theocratic Libertarianism

Note that the first stone is not the same as the fourth. Formally professing that Jesus Christ is Lord (the first stone) is not the same as fourth (allowing preachers to be free to preach the gospel).  But a formal declaring is necessary, he argues, and I agree.

Also, professing mere areas of agreement is not the same as establishing a national church. He wants none of the latter.

Here are some notable quotables:

If you protest that this would kill the great secular experiment that is America, I would reply that the great secular experiment that is America appears to have already gone out behind the barn and shot itself.

….we must have countless preachers of the gospel, faithfully declaring the death, burial and resurrection of Christ. The role of the government here is to stay out of the way, allowing such preachers free access to the people, and thereby encouraging them to have at it. 

There is a straight line blessing that runs from free grace to free men, and from free men to free markets.

Using their own money, voluntarily donated, the secularists and atheists may build their own schools, write poems and novels, produce plays and movies, build cathedrals, compose concertos, and so on.

The Most Calvinistic Spoken Word Poem (feat. NIQ)

NIQ spits the most Calvinistic spoken word poem I have ever heard. I wonder if she even knows that she delivered such as thing.



Did you just say that even each time the opposition scores it's a part of a fixed game? ~NIQ


WOOOWWWWW!!! ~The crowd's reaction.


Does the crowd know?



Her poem "Not Even Sin" starts around 3:37 after the male poet.

What would a biblical government look like?

Via Darash Press:

Therefore, in seeking a Christian reconstruction of the institution of civil government, it is imperative that we make our standard the only inspired, infallible model on godly civil government that we have: the Hebrew Republic established by God through Moses. 

Note that we use the term “model.” This is because the Hebrew Republic had elements unique to its own time and place in redemptive history. Hence, it is an error to seek to reduplicate today, in all of its particulars, that Republic (e.g., hereditary kingship, a central tribunal presided over by Levitical priests, cities of refuge, some of the laws of inheritance and warfare, a division of the nation into 11 tribal units, or the exact jurisdictional unit of the city and its gates, etc.). 

The Hebrew Republic does not provide us with a detailed blueprint for all the specifics of civil government or civil law, but it does give us a sufficiently clear model for framing a government and laws that are according to the will of God. We must remember that every detail of the Hebrew Republic was based on the unchanging righteous standard of God’s moral law. Our interest is in discovering, through proper historical-grammatical exegesis, the moral law that informs each particular, and then applying that law to the nations of the New Testament dispensation.

 The Biblical Model For Civil Government, William Einwechter

Video: Dr. Carl Trueman on John Owen (Westminster Video Library)

Westminster Theological Seminary's Dr. Carl Trueman discusses John Owen. I recently read Owen "The Mortification of Sin" and it has been really helpful to me in killing sin. God provides tons of arrows in our quiver to combat sin, the flesh.

You can buy the book here from Banner of Truth.

Here is my favorite excerpt from the Banner of Truth edition:

"Let a man seek as he will for healing and peace, let him go to the true Physician, let him seek in the right way and let him quiet his heart in the promises of the covenant. Yet when peace is spoken, if it is not attended with hatred and abhorrence of the sin which caused the wound and was the reason for all the trouble, then this is not God's peace, but a peace of our own making.

It is but a covering over the wound, while the infection underneath continues to fester, corrupt and corrode, until it breaks out again with greater foulness, vexation and danger. Let not the poor souls that walk in this path ever think that they will have true and solid peace. They are more concerned with the trouble of sin than the pollution and uncleanness that accompanies it. They call to the Lord Jesus Christ for mercy, but they still keep the sweet morsel of sin under their tongue!" John Owen, The Mortification of Sin, pages 105-106

Rami Shapiro should stick to talking about prophets -- not panentheism

Sometimes I feel that I am still living off of the intellectual capital of my undergraduate education; that is, I'm still living off of the inspiration I once received by taking a "Prophets of Israel" course. This book reminds me of where my sense of justice and love of the rule of law all started.

But am I really living off the same capital of my undergraduate education? Or are new deposits of intellectual capital in formation? I think it's the latter.

Panentheism aside, this is a good book, specifically because it reminds us what it means to be a Hebrew, or biblical, prophet. If you started reading from the background chapter on the prophets, you would have no clue it's a panentheist book, at least in the early parts of the book.

Rami Shapiro's "The Hebrew Prophets" is very good when it sticks to talking about the Prophets. Where he talks about panentheism, the fall, it is confusing.

Here is a gem from page 2:

"The prophet is often reluctant to speak, knowing that the message will bring the messenger much pain. But in the end the prophet has no choice, and is compelled to speak by a blazing sense of God's presence and urgency. This is what it is to be a prophet: to risk a life of derision and torment because your love of God and humanity is so great that you cannot but do otherwise."

New things on the site for 2014

Most of the following are things that I started to do in 2013.

Economics Notes. As I complete my economics courses, I plan on blogging about what I learned in the process. So be prepared to see things about economic philosophy, the Federal Reserve system, the Great Depression, and free-market economics current application to U.S. politics. Because I discontinued my weekly health care posts in late 2012 (see below), I will occasionally, if not frequently, write about solutions to U.S. health care. Similarly, I will also write about the environmental policy occasionally.

Book reviews are in the works as well (see Theology notes section for style).

Theology Notes. I'm not taking any classes, but I do read theology and Christian apologetics books from time to time. And of course, there's always my weekly bible study. I plan on writing reflections on theology and book reviews of theology books. I plan to emulate book reviewers from various sources including Books and Culture, The New Yorker, and The American Spectator, but primarily the first two.

Miscellaneous Notes.  I need some freedom to cover a large range of topics; so to serve that need I will be creating this section. This may cover poetry (I've been reading lots of poetry books), literature (novels, short stories), nutrition, pop culture, Christian culture, philosophy, and journalism, but I really am not sure.


Discontinued in 2013

Last year, I discontinued my "Weekly Health Review," a weekly wrap-up of important health care related news. However, I made it to Vol. 14 before doing so. Overall, those posts were pretty popular features of this site. Looking at the posts' view counts, they ranged from 18-70+ views each, but they mainly were between the 30-40 view range.

Theology Digest

A friend of mine is the Associate Editor under his Bishop and writes an article for each issue.

Open publication - Free publishing - More theology

Economics & the Resurrection

Here are a few lectures -- one on economics and the other on resurrection of Jesus -- by two scholars whom I greatly admire, especially N.T. Wright.

I set the links to Gary North's columns and website in the "Inform Your Worldview" column on the right side of the screen. However, the Wikipedia article is pretty informative on who Gary North is. I understand that many people don't like (or never heard of) Gary North, but I find his demeanor kind even if his past theology was in error. I am ambivalent towards his presuppostionalist philosophy, but as a Mises scholar and writer for Lew Rockwell, he is very informing. He has written many books including an economic commentary on the Bible, which I hope to subject to academic review as I pursue my Masters in Theology (or Masters in Divinity) and possibly my Ph.D (that's really far ahead in time; I'm think I should focus on my Master's first).

As for N.T. Wright, he is a New Testament Scholar and the Bishop of Durham. He is a fascinating scholar and an eloquent speaker and I suggest his lecture below. His unofficial website is awesome and it has plenty of writings and audio available. He is an advocate of New Perspective theology and his views on the resurrection are, in the words of a fellow religion major at La Salle, "refreshing and challenging." I also have a playlist on Youtube comprising of N.T. Wright videos which is much shorter than the videos below.

Why Does Jesus' Resurrection Matter? Considering Its Relevance for Today Part 1 of 2 from The Veritas Forum on Vimeo.

Why Does Jesus' Resurrection Matter? Considering Its Relevance for Today Part 2 of 2 from The Veritas Forum on Vimeo.