Directly to the forehead

by Phil Johnson

Michael Touhey at "Strangers and Exiles" posts an insightful riff about Red-Letter Christianity, and as a follow-up, he links not only to Dan Phillips's "Ed McMahon" post, but also to a post by our very own Frank Turk, from Frank's other world-famous blog.

Stephen Clouse, in his own BlogSpotting post, also linked to both Dan and Frank.

Scott Aniol raised some interesting questions about John MacArthur, contemporary music, and "contextualization." I promised to get a reply directly from Pastor MacArthur. Scott is looking forward to the answer. (Just a note: It may be a couple of weeks before I can post on this—or even a few days longer, since things are hectic around here during the Christmas season. But I won't forget.)

The question Scott Aniol raised stemmed from a discussion this week at SharperIron.org, the blogosphere's largest bastion of fundamentalists. Bob Hayton gave an analysis of that thread, in which he said, among other things, "Phil Johnson has jumped into the discussion with only a matchbox rather than a Pyromaniacs blowtorch." I couldn't tell whether he was pleased or disappointed by my diminished firepower, but his post, and the comments that follow, give a nice shorthand summary of some of the backstories in that thread. Fundies. This is why I love them.

Annette at "Fish and Cans" (there's a blogname with some graphic possibilities) found us via Dan Phillips's other blog. Wow. See? People do read your blog, Dan.

Our good friend Carla Rolfe enjoyed the video Adrian Warnock posted. I should mention that my own lovely wife, Darlene, was the videographer there—though I think that's pretty obvious, since she kept giggling in the background.

Jon Thorsen was just thinking about Ed McMahon the other day.

Jeff Wright likewise thought Dan's post made good reading material.

A lot of people, including Mark La Roi, recommended that same post.

On the other hand, longtime Pyro-critic Rod Pickett ("PastorRod") thinks we (and Spurgeon) are out to lunch for not thinking innovation is a good thing in theology. Rod borrows several gems of wisdom from a fellow at Harvard School of Business who is something of an expert on innovation techniques for secular business. Rod thinks we need to apply this guy's ideas to the church, treating the gospel as our "product." ("All truth is God’s truth, after all," Rod solemnly reminds us.) Our response to Rod's post would echo the opinion of his first commenter: "Could we run any of these ideas through the filter of Scripture?"

Nathan White, who is about to be a father, enjoyed Dan's other post this week.

Mathew Sims posts a good summary and overview of what we have said here about the lordship issue. Mathew definitely gets it. I think it's interesting that the point Mathew finds "decisive"—the biblical teaching about church discipline—has been utterly and completely ignored by the proponents of no-lordship doctrine.

J. Michael Wender (nice seasonal blogdesign!) lists the best o' "Where I am Right Now"® links.

Paul Huxley, whom I met in London, blogged about it. He's cool.

. . . and if Dave Bish is reading this, hi again. I gave Huxley a decal for you. Be sure you get it from him. I don't want him sticking it like graffiti on one of London's porta-loos or something.

Brian Thornton has no clue how vast my collection of Pyro-T-shirts is.

Andrew Jones, Tall Skinny Kiwi, wants an eye kept on me. Andrew, if you see this: I'm definitely going to try to meet you on my next trip to the UK. I'd suggest the Starbucks at Waterloo with Adrian Warnock—but given my track record with Adrian, I'm afraid a meeting like that would bring the whole world to a screeching halt.

Sadly, that's all I have time for today. There are many other links I haven't BlogSpotted yet, and I apologize to anyone who got passed over. Keep linking here and eventually, we'll link back.

And go to church tomorrow.

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