Green Baggins has come to the chapter of RINE where I seek to establish my Calvinistic bona fides. Some have interpreted the FV as though it were some form of Arminianism or semi-Pelagianism. So early in the book, I set aside a chapter to demonstrate that I wish that the Synod of Dort had promulgated …
Would There be a Vice Squad in Hitchensville?
Okay, so the next chapter is Hitchens on health, to which health the religion of your choice is almost certainly hazardous. We are only on the fourth chapter, and it is of average length, but the mistakes Hitchens makes are starting to accumulate, so it might take a little bit of extra time to get …
Some Standard Misunderstandings
I have been on the road, and have only now had the opportunity to read the recently released PCA report on the Federal Vision. This is just an initial response; more will probably be forthcoming. First, I appreciated the response of the Bayly brothers, which can be found here. And, like Mark Horne, I greatly …
Foolishness to the Greeks
Chapter Three is “A Short Digression on the Pig; or, Why Heaven Hates Ham.” Since it is a brief chapter, it warrants a comparable response. In this chapter, Hitchens has a case of the cutes — there is a lot here to make fun of, this is something he is good at, and so he …
Wet Streets Cause Rain
The second chapter of Hitchens’ book is entitled “Religion Kills.” Well, in this world of hardscrabble Darwinism, nature red in tooth and claw, what doesn’t? Religion kills, but so does cancer, old age, hunting accidents, radiation from the sun, other predatory species, too much mayonnaise, and the music of Andrew Lloyd Webber. Actually, we need …
Lo, the Bombasticator Cometh
Comes now Christopher Hitchens in his new book, God is Not Great, and he thwacketh us believers upon the mazzard. The book promises to be an engaging read; Hitchens writes fluidly and well, and he knows how to go over the top rhetorically, but not by too much. More on this shortly. His rationalism is …
Crisis of Faith
Christians still have to get used to the idea that non-believers are the establishment. And once they are accustomed to that notion, they have to come to realize that it is at bottom good news. In the last century, when the orthodox Christian establishment capitulated to the incoming waves of modernism, liberalism, Darwinism, and collectivism, …
B Follows A
“As the bumper sticker says, if you outlaw guns, only outlaws will have guns. Likewise, if (as Europe has done) you marginalize religion, only the marginalized will have religion. That’s why France’s impoverished Muslim ghettos display more cultural confidence than the wealthiest enclaves of the capital” (Mark Steyn, America Alone, p. 47).
And Guess Where We Are
“I must also leave you to analyze the cultural decline of Western art and literature. In the cycle of a great civilization, the artist begins as a priest and ends as a clown or buffoon” (Malcolm Muggeridge, The End of Christendom, p. 18).
Cooking and Eating
“Of course we know that Word and sacrament go together. But how do they go together? In the minds of many believers, the two go together like ham and eggs, two disparate but complementary elements combining in a pleasing way. But perhaps they go together in another way entirely — one suggestion is that they …