When the Constitution first came out of the convention, the opposition to it (as it then was) was identified with the anti-Federalists, led by men like Patrick Henry. The support for it was called Federalist, led by men like James Madison. In the resulting clash between the two factions, the Federalists compromised enough to agree …
Probably Really Good
For those following the recent blog posts, there has been a goodish bit of interaction on the subject of Eastern Orthodoxy here and here. It all began with a brief clip from CanonWIRED. In that clip I recommended a book on EO that I had not read — Through Western Eyes by Robert Letham. I …
Understanding the Requirement
“At thy right hand there are pleasures for evermore” (Ps. 16: 11) The Basket Case Chronicles #49 “Dare any of you, having a matter against another, go to law before the unjust, and not before the saints?” (1 Cor. 6:1). Before we delve into the reasons Paul gives for his standards about lawsuits, we need …
But Enough About Kant
“If you need to hang some really heavy things from your sky hook, make sure to fasten the socket for that sky hook at least fifteen feet higher in the air than you otherwise would. The bolts work better a little bit higher like that” (The Deluded Atheist, p. 17).
Illustration in the Right Amount
“A building without windows would be ‘a prison rather than a house . . . we dare say they [children] often wish that the sermon were all illustration even as the boy desired to have a cake made all of plums.’ But, of course, a cake cannot be all plums, any more than a house …
Here and There Both
The Pharisees were characterized by missional zeal. Unfortunately, it was missional zeal for Pharisaism, but you can’t have everything. “Woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! for ye compass sea and land to make one proselyte, and when he is made, ye make him twofold more the child of hell than yourselves” (Matt. 23:15). Actually, …
The Explanatory Power of Explosions
“A factory, for example, full of fantastically complex machinery and robots for the manufacturing of various ingenious devices of intricate design, is something that cannot itself be designed. For when confronted with a world full of designed things, it is not unscientific to allow that many of them were in fact designed, so long as …
The Power of Sermonic Illustration
“We human beings find it very difficult to handle abstract concepts; we need to convetrt them either into symbols (as in mathematics) or into pictures. For the power of imagination is one of God’s best and most distinctive gifts to mankind . . . Illustrations transform the abstract into the concrete, the ancient into the …
Four Kinds of Idolatry
Richard Baxter once said, “It is almost incredible how much ground the devil takes when he has once made sin a matter of controversy: some are of one mind, and some of another; you are of one opinion and I am of another.” Nowhere is this more apparent than when we discuss the use of …
A Grotesque Parody of Holy War
INTRODUCTION:In the Gospel of Mark, we read the account of Jesus feeding the five thousand (Mark 6), but this occurs immediately after John the Baptist’s head was brought before Herod, at a banquet, and it was brought out on a platter. There are two kinds of kings, two kinds of rulers—those who feed the people …