pious eye site archive ⁽¹⁸¹⁾

No matter how clever, sophisticated, erudite, linguistically astute, or stunningly beautiful in its complexity your interpretive scheme may be, if it requires you to ignore or dismiss patently clear passages of Scripture, or to interpret them to mean what any honest reader will admit they do not mean, your interpretive scheme cannot be correct.

Initial Post In My Friend the Holy Spirit, San Diego area pastor, Mark Peterson, a Charismatic (and a friend of the friend who gave me this book), makes many interesting claims. The following two claims seem typical (quotations are from the Kindle edition, 3% and 22% marks; paragraph breaks removed; contextual information about inebriation added in brackets in the second quotation): And then I felt it. The Holy Spirit revealed to me…

This site’s old “About” was a depressing piece of business, no doubt about it. Though my convictions were strong, I was “not a happy camper.” Truth be told, I remain a melancholy individual. Except for some alleged cheerfulness during infancy, in fact, I’ve always been such. I don’t foresee this changing radically in the future. — D.M.H., 03 May 2024< Though for a time the site’s founder made an effort to cultivate…

Originally written for a course at Luther Rice University & Seminary in August 2011, under the title “Zen & The Art of Gospel-Evasion: An Interview with Commentary.” On Thursday, 4 August 2011, the writer interviewed a priest and assistant instructor at a Zen center in San Diego County, California, where the writer resides. Because the interviewee shared some information the writer deems private, he has not included the interviewee's name or the…

Originally written for a course at Luther Rice University & Seminary in August 2011, under the title “Zen: Accepting Reality As It Isn't.” This post, please note, in not yet “complete”: Some revisions, such as introduction of relevant links, remain pending. This paper will survey central metaphysical and epistemological tenets of Zen philosophy and examine two Zen practices growing out of these tenets. The philosophy, and practices based upon it, will be…

Norman Geisler and Frank Turek observe an inconsistency in U.S. lawmaking. On the one hand, use of government force to discourage smoking is deemed appropriate because studies find that smokers die, on average, seven years sooner than non-smokers. On the other hand, though at least one study indicates that homosexual practices correlate with a much greater reduction in life-expectancy than smoking, government force is not only not used to discourage homosexual behavior,…

In the 1984 Baker edition of The Biblical Basis For Modern Science, author Henry M. Morris refutes the argument that earth’s being an open system makes the law of entropy irrelevant to the creation-evolution debate. He writes: Of course, the application of scientific reasoning required here presupposes things about the trustworthiness and reliability of human faculties (sense, perception, reason) that those who reject the rational and trustworthy God of the Bible seem…

In The Fountainhead (1996 Signet paperback edition), Ayn Rand, atheist philosopher-novelist and widely known proponent of a godless and (to my eye) Nietzschean version of capitalism, caricatures the mystical mindset, with its frequent appeals to the “mysterious” and the “ineffable,” in the person of her character Peter Keating. She writes: Since humans can have experiences that they either are not permitted to verbalize (2 Corinthians 12:2–4) or that they are unable to…

“Humble Presuppositionalism: Newbigin’s Fallibilist Coherentism, with a Dash of Plantinga,” originally written in June 2009 for a course at Bethel Seminary San Diego. Bracketed comments carrying my initials (DMH) mostly date to 2011 (when I first prepared a version of this paper for the Web), though later comments are also possible. I should note, by the way, that my conservative theological and political convictions would generally put me on the side of…

Backstory ˅ I prepared this paper for an independent study at Bethel Seminary San Diego, where I earned an MA in Theological Studies, in March 2009. A branch campus of Bethel Seminary in Saint Paul, Minnesota, Bethel Seminary San Diego closed in 2019. The Saint Paul campus now maintains all records for San Diego alumni. Most San Diego professors who have not retired or moved away are now teaching at Pacific Theological…

Some suggest that pious Christian faith includes belief that the logically contradictory is true, such as in a divine realm beyond the laws of logic and all distinctions. In By Scripture Alone (2002 Trinity Foundation edition), W. Gary Crampton rejects this as impious nonsense: As I’ve noted in brackets, what is to be rejected is belief in contradictions that are true. It is in the sense of insoluble contradictions that, I believe,…

Gordon H. Clark, in the 1963 Presbyterian & Reformed edition of his Karl Barth’s Theological Method, argues that letting Scripture-based theology reign as queen over the sciences yields the unity of knowledge that reason requires. He writes: This proposal may strike even some Christians as odd today, since many so-called apologists now look to science for evidence upon which to base their version of Christian “faith.” In this scheme, science is queen…