“Of course this should not be taken as anything like approval of any form of sacerdotalism. But if a man is going to base his worship around ceremonies and traditions of human devising, then it makes far better sense, humanly speaking, to opt for the traditions that were invented in the fourth century, as opposed …
The Ancient Respectability of the Accuser
“Words, too, form a crowd; countless, they swirl about the head of the victim, gathering to deliver the coup de grace. The three series of speeches are like volleys of arrows aimed at the enemy of God. The accusations descend on Job like so many adversaries, intent upon the destruction of tyhe some friend. Their …
With Boisterous Psalms
Minister: Lift up your hearts! Congregation: We lift them up to the Lord! O come, let sing before the Lord; Let us offer raucous praise To the Rock of our salvation. Let us come into His presence with thanks, And sing boisterous psalms to Him. For He is a great God, And greater in majesty …
Courtships Are Interesting
Because of how God made the world, with the marriage of His Son to the Church central to the story He was going to tell, and His determination to picture this in every human marriage, the fact is settled that courtships are therefore interesting. But we are sometimes too interested, or, in another way of …
Reading Or Eating?
God has given us this meal as a sign and seal of the unity we have with Him, and consequently of the unity we have with one another. But, not surprisingly, we have responded like a nation of dufflepuds, using the meal of unity as one of the principle points of disunity. We have read, …
Grim Victory
“Women are beautiful, and men are necessary. It has been the great victory of the feminist movement to make women unlovely by persuading them that men are not needed” (Anthony Esolen, in Touchstone, December 2006, p. 5).
Building Bridges, Not Walls
I saw a piece by John Piper that Justin Taylor linked to, which I actually thought made quite a few good points. And I even believe he made a number of similar points to what I had argued here. But then I saw Mark Horne’s response to Piper, and Mark didn’t seem that keen on …
Spurgeon On Anonymous Attack Blogs
“Never write what you dare not sign. An anonymous letter-writer is a sort of assassin, who wears a mask, and stabs in the dark. Such a man is a fiend with a pen. If discovered, the wretch will be steeped in the blackest infamy.” Charles Spurgeon
The Sensual Puritan
“We can, however, examine Puritan appeals to both the sensuous and the sensual in man. Such an examination reveals that one who believes that Puritans avoided sensuous and even erotic imagery in expressing religious doctrine or describing spiritual states does so in the face of considerable evidence to the contrary” (Daly, p. 22).
Postmodernism Much Larger Than Its Theorists
“Modernism, however, is being replaced by the new secular ideology of postmodernism. This new set of assumptions about reality—which goes far beyond mere relativism—is gaining dominance throughout the culture. The average person who believes that there are no absolutes may never have heard of the academic exercise of ‘deconstruction.’ The intellectual establishment may disdain the …