“In the beginning,” Scripture says, “God created the heavens and the earth.” That first biblical affirmation points to the priority of the doctrine of creation within the system of Christian doctrine. Nevertheless, even the doctrine of creation presupposes a biblical notion of God and the authority of his revelation in Scripture. The Christian believer does not acknowledge the creation and then infer a Creator. Indeed, it is not God who must be explained by the creation, but creation which must be explained by the Creator. Today, Dr. Albert Mohler explores the doctrine of creation, and its crucial relationship to the Christian worldview.

Michael V. Fox doesn’t believe that faith-based scholarship of the Bible is possible–and he wants to see such scholars marginalized in the larger world of scholarship. In an essay posted at the Web site for the Society of Biblical Literature [SBL], Fox argues, “In my view, faith-based study has no place in academic scholarship, whether the object of study is the Bible, the Book of Mormon, or Homer. Faith-based study is a different realm of intellectual activity that can dip into Bible scholarship for its own purposes, but cannot contribute to it.” Is he right? Dr. Albert Mohler considers Fox’s argument in his commentary today.

I know this question has been bugging some of you for years — was George Washington a Deist? Some want to present him as an evangelical churchman (not an easy task) and others want to claim him as the father of American secularism (an even greater challenge). Many history books and biographies simply refer to Washington, along with many of the other Founding Fathers, as a Deist. While this may well have applied to a character like Benjamin Franklin, it does not fit Washington, whose words and deeds presuppose a God who intervenes in human affairs.

In Augustine’s time, as now, the doctrine of the Virgin Birth was under sustained attack. The key difference is that, in his time, the enemies of the doctrine did not often claim to be Christians. Here is a choice selection from William Griffin’s translation of Augustine’s sermons for festival days:

The Jerusalem Post reported this morning that Dr. Jerry Falwell had accepted a so-called “two covenant” or “dual covenant” theology, believing that Jews and Gentiles are covered by two different covenants, and that the Jewish people therefore do not need to come to faith in Christ. In essence, the two covenant theology was a response, largely on the part of liberal and neo-orthodox theologians such as Reinhold Niebuhr, to the crisis of the Jewish people before and after the Holocaust.

The Presbyterian Church (USA), based in Louisville, Kentucky, now projects a loss of 85,000 members in 2006, after an estimated 65,000 loss in 2005. That adds up to a projected loss of over 2 million members since 1967.

Not only does authentic worship begin with a true vision of the living God, but second, authentic worship leads to a confession of sin, both individual and corporate. Isaiah was “undone,” when he had seen the true and living God, when he saw God in his holiness. He came to know the majestic, moral nature of this God, and he came to see God's righteousness and his holiness. In reflection, Isaiah automatically saw his own utter sinfulness. He could not otherwise understand himself but as a sinner who was, by his own words here, undone, dissolved–silenced. He saw himself doomed to die.