“Le Corbusier was the sort of relentlessly rational intellectual that only France loves wholeheartedly, the logician who flies higher and higher in ever-decreasing concentric circles until, with one last, utterly inevitable induction, he disappears up his own fundamental aperture and emerges in the fourth dimension as a needle-thin umber bird” (Tom Wolfe, From Bauhaus to …
Galloping Legalism
“We should therefore see that there are two types of order. When a formal church is unhealthy, it is because their arrangement is the order of china figurines on a shelf. When a formal church is obedient and healthy it is because their arrangement is that of well-disciplined troops preparing themselves for battle. An opposing …
So Much Venom
“But envy only opposes that which is good, and all good; therefore there is nothing in it but evil and an universal evil . . . all the poison in the old serpent is in this sin, as if it had emptied itself of its poison and vomited it in this sin; so much venom …
Plug and Chug Legalism?
Kevin Johnson quotes from an article in the most recent Credenda, and admonishes me for something I didn’t say in it. “Correspondingly, the Reformation was first about our repentance and embracing of Christ something which Wilson never mentions in this article. This was curious on two counts. First, it should be possible to write an …
A Widow’s Cruse of Oil
Minister: Lift up your hearts! Congregation: We lift them up to the Lord! Father and God over all, we gather before You to honor Your name, and so that You might bless us, Your people, as we seek to honor Your name. We come before You as an empty people, but we come in order …
Mutual Indwelling
Jesus explicitly prays for His followers to be one, just as He and the Father are one. This is the basis for the likemindedness that we find frequently commended in the pages of the New Testament. But too often we just glide over this, thinking that the unity we are to have is a mere …
Organic Allegiance
The world is a sacramental place. By this I do not mean to say that you should be hearing some kind of spooky music everywhere you go, but rather that God has built into the world the inescapability of what might be called “rites of allegiance.” This in fact is where our word sacrament comes …
Jess and Natali
The Scriptures are full of metaphors that describe the glory of fulfilled longing. That longing, the kind of thing that is frequently no fun at all, is nevertheless the basis for one of the deepest kinds of joy. One illustration used for fulfilled longing is the imagery of “return from exile.” Psalm 126 puts it …
More Than One Use for Pretty Much Anything
Well, it turns out that Ron Paul has more shekels in the bank than John McCain, one of the front runners. And so just what is a front runner anyway? Might it be anyone who is deemed to be such by the media? Is this a great country or what? HT: Tom Brainerd And as …
Those Chapters
I have to say honestly that the book of Romans has caused me a great deal of trouble over the years. At the same time, I also have to say that it is trouble for which I am profoundly grateful. Although these were difficulties which I did not request, a retrospective look is cause for …