Thankful Thursday

I’m thankful that I can see the light at the end of the tunnel on the basement organizing job. Sometimes I get discouraged because the home maintainance projects are all my responsibility now. Keeping up a house the size and and age that mine is can be a never-ending job and I frequently feel intimidated by the responsibility. I often pray for strength, focus, and wisdom to be the sole home upkeeper. So far, everything has worked out alright, and for that I am thankful. While I’m at it, I’m thanking God that I have the physical health and strength to tackle big jobs, and that the struggle I have with this responsibility is mostly mental and motivational, not physical.

I’m thankful, too, that I have a home.

I’m thankful for morning sunshine and a full day ahead.

On Thursdays throughout this year, I plan to post a few thoughts of thanksgiving along with Kim at the Upward Call and others. Why don’t you participate by posting your thanksgiving each week, too? It’ll be and encouragement to you and to others, I promise.

Self-Attesting Authority

In yesterday’s status report I mentioned that I was afraid that the Greg Bahnsen book I was reading was one of those weird things that I enjoy but no one else would. That remark peaked more interest in Always Ready: Directions for Defending the Faith than if I’d actually reviewed and recommended it.

So here’s a selection from this book for you. This list, which is a summary of the first six chapters, is found in Chapter 12.

CHRIST’S EPISTEMIC LORDSHIP

1. God’s knowledge is original, comprehensive, and creative. There are no higher principles or standards of truth to which He looks and and attempts to bring His thoughts into conformity. There is no mystery surrounding His understanding, for it is infinite. God’s mind gives both diversity and order to all things thus guarantying the reality of particulars (multiplicity) and yet assuring that they are intelligible (unity).
2. All knowledge and wisdom have been deposited in Christ, the source, standard, and embodiment of truth.
3. God’s word thus has supreme, absolute, and unquestionable authority in the realm of knowledge as well as morality.
4. This also means that God’s word must be the final standard of truth for man, in which case it cannot be challenged by some more ultimate criterion.
5. Consequently, the teaching of Christ in Scripture has self-attesting authority; Christ clearly speaks with the authority of God, is the repository of knowledge, and is subject to no authority or standard more basic than Himself as “the way, the truth, and the life.” He alone is adequate to witness to Himself and His word.

See what I mean? So far—I’m on chapter 12 out of 34 and an appendix—there are no stories, no illustrations, just text that is very repetitive, some might even say tedious (but in a clarifying sort of way, of course), and that reads more like a collection of classroom lecture notes or something. Not your typical book.

I’m finding it fascinating and very easy to understand, at least compared to other presuppositional apologetic stuff I’ve read. You might like it, too. Just don’t expect a conversational book like Tim Keller’s The Reason for God.

Round the Sphere Again: Just for the Fun of It

Just for the fun of it.

Advanced Door Painting
This year I plan to paint the garage door a kind of goldish yellow like the doors on the house. But my freshly-painted garage door will not be nearly as awe-inspiring as  these. (The Toy Zone)

Speaking of Artwork
Only a one letter difference: Can you tell a Monet from a Manet? (mental_floss Blog)

Speaking of Different
She was a big hit at my house, inspiring at least one Halloween costume and a lot of imaginative play. Here are 10 things about Pippilotta Delicatessa Windowshade Mackrelmint Ephraim’s Daughter Longstocking (mental_floss Blog). Did you know, for instance, that the Pippi stories started, not as bedtime stories, but as sick-bed stories? What’s more, they were recorded for us because of a slip and fall.