“We are mistaken when we believe that culture and the humanities are being served by scholarship. The truth is that art and culture do not belong in a university. It cannot be a home for them, because culture proper and scholarship proper are diametrically opposed” (Jacques Barzun, The Culture We Deserve, p. 10).
Not An Abstract Principle to Affirm, But a Concrete Task to Complete
But who gave any of us permission to be an eschatological pessimist? Not Jesus Christ. He said that all authority in heaven and on earth was His, and that our job was to disciple the nations. He wasn’t giving us something to shoot for; He was giving us something to do” (Mother Kirk, p. 42).
Not a Philosophy Seminar
“The three friends try to obtain Job’s assent to the verdict that condemns him. This is the true purpose of their mission, since the efficacy of the scapegoat mechanism depends on it. This is no abstract discussion of the question of Evil” (Girard, Job, p. 111).
More Food
Eating is not a result of the Fall. When God created Adam and Eve, and placed them in the garden, He put them in a garden full of food. Food is not an unfortunate development. When Adam was cursed for his disobedience, the result was a curse upon the ground, a curse that meant that …
The Gods NASDAQ and DOW
We cannot understand the world around us apart from right worship. And yet, day after day, we see a world which cries out to be understood. We see conflict, distress, warfare, and oppression, and we sometimes despair of comprehending our role in it. This problem has been accentuated by the current war, but this actually …
Some Caricatures Really Lived
“So closely does Michael Wigglesworth approximate the unhappy popular conception of our seventeenth-century forbears that he seems more plausible as a satirical construction than he does as a human being. In their descriptions of a Puritan so obsessed with himself, with his own quest for salvation, that he suppressed or ignored all purely human experience, …
A Culture’s Life Cycle More Than Cultural Life Choices
“It has been shown that, normally, the rise and fall of great nations are due to internal reasons alone. Ten generations of human beings suffice to transform the hardy and enterprising pioneer into the captious citizen of the welfare state” (John Glubb, The Fate of Empires, p. 24).
Famous for Being Famous
“Judging by the time and space allotted to them in the Press and television, football and baseball are the activities which today chiefly interest the public in Britain and the United States respectively. The heroes of declining nations are always the same—the athlete, the singer or the actor. The word ‘celebrity’ today is used to …
Looking Up in Faith
“This doctrine of the triumph of the gospel encourages, and the fact that we need encouraging should be evident . . . A modern Christian has been watching the news on his nineteen-inch color TV set, in the living room of his home. He switches the set off and comments to his wife that the …
How Cathartic Healing Is Threatened
“If there is just one exception, if even one single voice is raised in disagreement with the unison against the victim, then there is no guarantee of a favourable outcome. The drug loses its effect; the group’s unity cracks. If the hatred appears in the least bit lukewarm, doubt may spread, comprising the cathartic effects …