quotations ⁽³⁰⁾

Arthur T. Pierson describes how the duties of Christian piety, though at first burdensome, in the end bring delight, as wings empower flight. We are reminded once more of the...myth about the “wingless birds,” who first took up their wings as burdens to be borne, but found them changing to pinions, which, in the end, bore them. We are the birds without wings. God puts our duties before us to be patiently…

Nancy M. Darrall, in her contribution to In Six Days, illustrates how random variation without intelligence-originated new information cannot yield evolution. DNA...is analogous to...paper and ink....Anyone who has sat down in front of a blank piece of paper in an examination will be aware of the need for something more than paper and ink in order to pass. We need ideas, concepts, plans, purpose, memory...—in other words, information....An accidental spillage of ink…

Edward F. Hills, in his Believing Bible Study, notes how Christian confidence should be grounded in faith, not faith grounded in Christian confidence. For many years the thinking of conservative Christians has been a house divided against itself, orthodox in some respects but rationalistic in others....This, however, is a sad mistake, for rationalism turns true religion upside down. It makes our faith in God and in His Word depend on our confidence…

Greg L. Bahnsen, in his Presuppositional Apologetics: Stated and Defended, offers insight on the properly pious Christian approach to apologetics. In Scripture, God requires Christian believers to subject every thought captive to the obedience of Christ. This is not done if the apologist attempts to use unbiased premises and non-committed logic to persuade his opponent....If every thought is to be subjected to Christ’s authority, then we must not attempt to set forth…

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…

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…

In the 2005 (second) edition of Did God Create In 6 Days? (Tolle Lege Press, Presbyterian Press, and The Covenant Foundation), Joseph A. Pipa asserts the following about the correct interpretation of Genesis 1: Although not everyone agrees that Scripture’s references to the sun moving and standing still may be dismissed so easily (some Bible believers do advocate geocentricity), Pipa does show that fair-minded exegetical analysis rules out any such dismissal of…

Philip Jacob Spener, in his 1675 book Pia Desideria (Pious Desires), addressed the origin of impious interpretive schemes at odds with the perspicuity (clarity) of Scripture. Theodore Tappert translates Spener’s remarks as follows: While it is possible Spener considered some reasonable inferences from all that Scripture says to have been “Subtleties unknown to the Scriptures,” his basic observation merits every Bible believer’s attention. Very complex and imaginative interpretations may be made to…

In To Be As God: A Study of Modern Thought Since The Marquis de Sade (Ross House, 2003) Rousas John Rushdoony reiterates how the consistent immorality of the Marquis de Sade is the course most logically consistent with unbelief. Because [the Marquis de] Sade was so consistently evil, he was more logical than most evil men and most churchmen, whose inconsistent profession of Christianity blurs their vision badly. Sade’s fundamental premise in…