David M. Hodges ⁽¹⁸⁵⁾

Image of harvested trees (don’t worry, they’ll grow back) © Copyright Alan Stewart and licensed for reuse under this Creative Commons licence. If, like me, you set yourself hard deadlines and make formal appointments only when you have to, but still you’ve found your lightly-planned lifestyle requires more planning space than monthly planners or standard calendars provide, the House of Doolittle Academic Weekly Appointment Planner 16 July 2014 – 02 August 2015…

Wallace, John B. Starting at the Finish Line: The Gospel of Grace for Mormons. Pomona House Publishing, LLC: 2014. 202+X pages. ISBN 978-0-9914622-0-9. I cannot recommend Starting at the Finish Line as an outreach tool, however, because it also has some negative qualities that, taken in combination, convince me that other outreach literature should be preferred. If you’re one of those people who reads lots and lots of books rapidly, drawing out…

Government as morality-corrupting, anti-Christian influence, San Diego County edition: El Cajon Library hosts celebration of sexual aberrance

Minor modifications completed on old item https://www.davidmhodges.net/pious-apologetics//

Image: Aliens hear no evil, see no evil, and speak no evil, courtesy Aaron Logan (Creative Commons license). Heard of distributed computing? If you have, you’ve most likely heard about it in relation to the search for space aliens. Why people who believe life originated by chance are so exited about searching for extraterrestrial intelligence has never been entirely clear to me. Especially was it unclear to me when my professed agnosticism-sometimes-atheism…

Chester, Tim. Titus for You. The Good Book Company, 2014. Hardcover, 121 pages. ISBN 978-1-90991-961-7. Mostly, this book is very good. It is doctrinally reformed (“The Spirit gives the desire and the ability to respond to the gospel. Because God has made us alive, we hear the gospel and respond with faith” [15]; “God has done the choosing, so God will do the persuading” [17]) and does not try to evade widely…

In matters of formatting and citation, the Pious Eye site will generally follow the Chicago Manual of Style, 16th edition, and Turabian’s A Manual for Writers of Research Papers, Theses, and Dissertations, 7th edition. Adherence will not be slavish, however, and readers may note consistent divergence from these standards in certain matters. For instance, the “15 November 2016” date format will be preferred over the “November 15, 2016” date format even when…

Shapira, Itzhak. The Return of the Kosher Pig: The Divine Messiah In Jewish Thought. Clarksville, MD: Lederer Books, 2013. xii+318 Pages. ISBN 978-1-936716-45-6. The author of The Return of the Kosher Pig (hereafter, Kosher Pig), Itzhak Shapira, is a Messianic [Jesus-accepting] Rabbi “born and raised in a traditional Sephardic Jewish home in Israel” who says that “he found the Messiah [Jesus] within the Hebrew writings,” meaning not just the Hebrew Bible but…

 Berding, Kenneth. Bible Revival: Recommitting Ourselves To One Book. Wooster, OH: Weaver Book Company, 2013. 121 pages, paperback. ISBN 978-0-9891671-3-0. Correcting deficiencies of the contemporary church has been the focus of a number of recent texts. Deficiencies found in need of correction have included a “gospel” that fails to properly emphasize repentance and tangible obedience as evidences of genuine conversion and failure of professors of the faith to commit themselves to a…

Washer, Paul. Gospel Assurance & Warnings. Grand Rapids: Reformation Heritage Books, 2014. ISBN 978-1-60178-294-6. Some years ago, perhaps, a man asked you, “If you died tonight, are you sure you'd go to heaven?” You couldn't answer “yes” but did indeed want to go to heaven, so you accepted the man's offer to tell you how you could be sure. You were told you needed to admit you were a sinner, needed to…

Gilson, Tom, and Carson Weitnauer, editors. True Reason: Confronting the Irrationality of the New Atheism. Grand Rapids, MI: Kregel, 2013. ISBN 978-0-8254-4338-1. Abridged versions of this review may be found on Amazon and Goodreads. Associated with such high-profile names in Christian apologetics as the Christian Apologetics Alliance and Ratio Christi, True Reason originated as an e-book response to the New Atheists' 24 March 2012 Reason Rally and is now reissued (with modifications)…

Not long ago, lack of reliable funding for automobile fuel had me visiting some churches a little closer to home than the one of which I'm officially a member. It also had me wishing that active involvement in a local church were not required by Scripture—but, then, my preference for solitude (or at least social anxiety) has always made “forsaking the assembling” (Hebrews 10:25) an especially appealing sin. One church I visited,…