“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 …
Head and Heart
“We all put off the cause of our divisions from ourselves. Few would give St. James’s answer: ‘They are from hence, even from our lusts.’ There would not be such evil distillations from the head if it were not for the malignant vapors that arise from the stomach. Curing the heart will sooner cure the …
Deemphasis or Denial
I said a few days ago that I was going to say something about why I accept N.T. Wright’s assertion that he holds to penal substitution. This will be brief, and may not be adequate for those with questions, but here it is. It is a methodological issue. I am uncomfortable with assertions of what …
Judas the Christian
In his treatment of my chapter on whether or not Judas was a Christian, Greenbaggins does a good job catching the distinctions I was seeking to make. He hears my qualifications, and is willing to believe them. He says that he has no real problem with the chapter, and had just a few quibble/questions. One …
Living Like a Trinitarian
I recently told a class of tenth-graders that what our culture needed was a return to trinitarian bubble-gum commercials. They were a little nonplussed, and so I hastened to explain. Individuals with one set of ultimate commitments have the capacity to live in alien soil, that is, a culture with a different set of commitments. …
A Few More Links
I realized that I forgot to put the link to Bishop Wright’s article. Here it is now. And, for good measure, here are some other responses. There is this one, and David Field, mentioned in my post yesterday, says this. I want to draw particular attention to the grace evident in David’s last paragraph — …
Irrelevant Details
I had seen on Richard Dawkins’ blog that he was going to be on the O’Reilly Factor, which he in fact was. He and Bill skirmished, as could have been predicted, and I only want to say one thing about it. O’Reilly brought up Stalin and Hitler, good job, and Dawkins pointed out that both …
Some Edifying Gossip
N.T. Wright has recently responded here to a new book, Pierced for Our Transgressions, and gives it a few whacks. Among other things, he says that it is “hopelessly sub-biblical” (largely on the basis of omissions and what he sees as failures of contextualization). HT: Mark Horne and Justin Taylor. What happened was this. A …