Sir William Blackstone is often praised for laying the groundwork for American jurisprudence with his Commentaries on the Laws of England.  Blackstone's Commentaries were one of the most widely read books in the colonies, and his views of the laws of England were often incorporated into the laws of America.  One portion of Blackstone's Commentaries that has largely been forgotten by modern legal scholars but which played a significant role in forming the thought of founding fathers like James Wilson was Blackstone's answer to the question of where laws come from.  What follows is a condensed version of Blackstone's somewhat loquacious answer to that question.

I was listening to Dr. James White’s podcast the other day and heard him defending the Calvinist TULIP and criticizing other floral acrostics attempting to provide a contrasting view of salvation.  I’ve always disagreed with the doctrines of Calvinism, but I’ve never attempted to organize my disagreement into a simple acrostic which could stand toe-to-toe with the TULIP.  That is, I’ve never done so before now.  While listening to Dr. White’s podcast, I came up with a simple acrostic that I think defeats the TULIP with ease.

The idea that the lost will suffer eternal punishment has often been questioned by Christians who doubt that a God of mercy would condone such cruelty.  Instead, they often come up with other ideas about the punishment of the lost such as the idea that they will simply be annihilated or that they will only suffer for a period of time before being given another opportunity to turn to God.  There are several logical problems with attempting to reconcile either of these views to the accounts of Scripture, but in order to see that, we must actually know what the Scripture says about the punishment of the lost.  Unfortunately, I have discovered that very few Christians have ever actually studied this aspect of God’s Word.

In the book The Faiths of the Founding Fathers, Christian historian David Holmes made the following statement about John Adams:

Like many of his contemporaries, he brought the religion in which he was raised into the court of his reason and common sense and judged it by what he found ... "Let the human mind loose," Adams once wrote in an outburst of Enlightenment passion.  "It must be loosed; it will be loose.  Superstition and despotism cannot confine it."  He followed these words with the assertion that Christianity would surely triumph if the human mind were loosed.  This statement indicates that Adams belongs somewhere in the category of Unitarian Christian or Christian Deist.

In yesterday’s article, I presented a view of the inspiration of Scripture which I think is more consistent with the actual contents of Scripture than any other view.  In considering that view, we looked at several statements that both Peter and Paul made about their writings.  Today, I’d like to look at a few pieces of circumstantial evidence which support that view.

Over the past couple of days, I’ve been doing a lot of reading on the topic of the inspiration of Scripture.  This is a subject that I had always viewed in a more or less straightforward manner.  I’ve been reading and studying the Bible for as long as I can remember, and I sort of developed a view of inspiration along the way.  In all my years of study, I never found any reason to change my view on this issue, and now, after reading several books and articles on the subject, I still have not found any reason to change.  I have discovered, however, that many renowned Christian philosophers have published views on this subject which differ from my own.  In light of that, I decided to put my view of inspiration into writing and submit it to my readers for their consideration.