Our standards also teach that one of the purposes of the sacraments is to “put a visible difference between those that belong to the Church and the rest of the world.” Being a Christian means that you have been washed in the waters of baptism and that you have free access to this Table. Those …
Secular Conservatives and Real Ones
I take it as a given that our standard right/left political dichotomy does not represent a Trinitarian approach to politics at all. I have argued this for quite a number of years now, with no appreciable sign that anything is getting through to anybody who is actually running the show. Nevertheless, let us keep on …
Is Green Baggins a Calvinist?
Lane thinks that our discussion of God’s covenant with mankind before the Fall has gotten interesting, and I agree. But it will take me a few installments to answer the various issues he raises here. The one I want to begin with is Lane’s (no doubt inadvertant) denial of Calvinism. I had said, “If Adam …
Getting Poetry Back to the People
Yesterday New St. Andrews had the great privilege of hosting Chris Wiman, editor of Poetry magazine, as he addressed us all at our weekly Disputatio. His talk and answers during the Q&A were really informative, and the reading he did of some of his poems was just fabulous. Our Aaron Rench has an interview with …
Robert P. Greedybuckets III
We have already established that wealth can be a blessing from God. But wealth is by no means the highest blessing which God can bestow. As you set your priorities for the vocation of money-management, a number of things should be in line ahead of profit. Before we get money right, we have to get …
A Kind of Sinning
The verb hamartano is used only once in Titus. In this passage, Paul is instructing Titus to reject the heretic after two admonitions. Those who won’t listen to such admonitions are already subverted, sinning, and self-condemned (3:10-11). We see here that Paul does not place a sharp dichotomy between intellectual errors and moral failings. Heresy …
Comes With the Territory
“Public men must expect public criticism, and as the public cannot be regarded as infallible, public men may expect to be criticized in a way that is neither fair nor pleasant. To all honest and just remarkds we are bound to give due measure of heed, but to the bitter verdict of prejudice, the frivolous …
No Kidding
“There is no arena in society in which the elite are able to acknowledge themselves unfit to govern” (Herbert Schlossberg, Idols for Destruction, p. 202).
Obedience and Works
Lane has come back from presbytery, apparently unscathed, and wants to resume our discussion. So here we go. He says: “I was saying that you were rejecting any overlap between obedience and works, such that you could say that the CoW was based on grace, and that obedience was required, but works were not. I …
Seeking Financial Wisdom
Many Christians tend not to think of their work, their business, their money, as being under the specific authority of God. We acknowledge that He owns it all, in a general way, but when it comes to money we frequently assume He is some kind of an absentee landlord, who doesn’t much mind what we …