justice and grace

There is a passage in the epistle to the Romans which states that the provision of redemption in Christ Jesus, and the setting forth of Christ to be a propitiation, is emphatically something which shows God to be just, as well as the justifier of those that believe in Jesus. Two comments on this passage [...]

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making us unfree

Here’s a recent article by AC Grayling on the government’s latest effort to chip a little bit more away from our freedoms: “In the Queen’s speech this autumn Gordon Brown’s government will announce a scheme to institute a database of every telephone call, email, and act of online usage by every resident of the UK. [...]

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the grammaticality fairy

Over on Language Log, Geoff Pullum argues that this sentence is “clearly ungrammatical”:

This accounts for the fact that family sizes of seven, eight, or nine children were common in the nineteenth century but rare today.

- he argues that it doesn’t conform to the syntactic conditions on ellipsis (ie when you supply “were”, you end up [...]

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the means are decreed

Having just quoted what Boston says on how to live and act within a providence – and a scheme of redemption – that has been foreordained down to the last detail, I’ve now unearthed a note of something similar to go along with it.
“God, having most certainly decreed everything, executes everything irresistibly – not in [...]

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the means he has appointed

Here is a lengthy excerpt from Thomas Boston’s famous book – the part where he explodes the myth that since sinners are so sinful as to be unable to save themselves, therefore there is no need to concern ourselves about our own salvation. He clearly explains that we must have a care for our own [...]

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theta rolls for phonologists

While Antony Worrall Thomson recommends spicing up your salads with henbane, the Linguist List has some alternative suggestions.
Assimilation Delish
Ingredients:
1 small vocalic system
2 voiceless obstruents
2 alveolar sibilants
1 tsp of homorganic riser
Cooking Instructions
First, carefully wash all vowels until all nasality disappears.
Fully open the mid-high vowels over a white cloth, and let them settle until the drift [...]

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little sinners

Robert Traill says:
“The greater the sinner be, the greater is his need of a Saviour, and the saving of the chief of sinners brings the chief honour and glory to the Saviour. … Though there be greater and smaller sins and sinners, yet no man ever did, or can, believe as a little sinner.
Least, and [...]

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hitchens vs lennox

I know it’s a bit belated, but I have to tell you about the debate I was at on Saturday, between the famous atheist Christopher Hitchens and the also relatively famous Christian apologist John Lennox. The motion they were debating was, ‘The new Europe should prefer the new Atheism,’ a motion which gives plenty scope [...]

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extenuating circumstances

You don’t need to look far for evidence that humankind labours (now, post-Fall) in what the Shorter Catechism calls “a state of sin and misery.” And even though sin and misery can sometimes be dissociated, it is often the case that misery enters human experience as a result of sin.
A question for your consideration is, [...]

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guthrie’s inheritance

I recently picked up a second-hand copy of Christ and the Inheritance of the Saints – a collection of sermons by the nineteenth century minister Thomas Guthrie.
Although in more than one place the sermons in this volume are perhaps too elaborate in their rhetoric for my taste – settling down to read it, the first [...]

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