A few months back I mentioned here some fun news about a short story that my son Nate got published in The Chattahoochee Review. Here is that story again. But something else shook loose as a result of that venture that has also been kind of fun, and worth mentioning here. A new editor at …
More of What You Subsidize
“At thy right hand there are pleasures for evermore” (Ps. 16: 11) Growing Dominion, Part 112 “A man of great wrath shall suffer punishment: for if thou deliver him, yet thou must do it again” (Prov. 19:19). This passage provides one application of a general biblical principle. This deals with wrath and anger (which of …
The Bubble Bath of Orthodoxy
Scott Clark is at it again on his blog, and since he disabled the comments feature there, it is not possible for me to comment in that venue. So I will comment in this one. My comments are bold. “How I am redeemed from all my sins and misery.” The Heidelberg Catechism was written not …
Yo Mama Wants Obama
As Christians consider the implications of the Lordship of Jesus Christ over the public square, they have to take great care to get outside the cafeteria mentality that currently afflicts us. Christian engagement with the world does not mean that “Christ is Lord” is a mantra that will help us decide whether to eat this …
A Bowl of Sawdust Paste
In this last Dawkins installment, I want to do two things. The first is to briefly summarize his last chapter and respond to it. The second task is to develop something I mentioned in an earlier post — viz. that Dawkins is more than half ashamed of what he is doing — and for good …
In the Zone
The ninth chapter of Dawkins’ book is entitled “Childhood, Abuse, and the Escape from Religion.” The chapter is almost impudent in its intellectual dishonesty, and more than impudent in its proposal. Dawkins begins by telling a heart-wrenching story from 19th century Italy, in which a young Jewish boy (Edgardo Mortata) had been secretly baptized by …
Rabbitless Rocks
In the next chapter, Dawkins seeks to answer the question, “Why are you so hostile?” So believers in God are delusional. So what? Why get that datum wound tight around your axle? He also has to explain why, given his adversarial stance toward Christianity and creationism, he never takes “part in debates with creationists.” With …
Pina Coladas, and Walking in the Rain
The next chapter in Dawkins is called “The ‘Good’ Book and the Changing Moral Zeitgeist,” and it is one of the strangest bits of business I have encountered in some time. The first part of the chapter is dedicated to proving how the Bible exhibits “sheer strangeness” and is “just plain weird” (p. 237). To …
One Last Thing
Not a lot of complaints about the last essay in this volume, a chapter on justification and pastoral counseling by Dennis Johnson. Like some of the the others, this chapter was just great also, with a sub-standard federal-visiony footnote jury-rigged into the argument. Like I said, not a lot of complaints about the text proper. …
Stuff I Heard in the Hallways
The next chapter in CJ&PM (should’ve done that before) is by Julius Kim and is entitled “The Rise of Moralism in Seventeenth-Century Anglican Preaching.” What might this have to do with the current federal vision controversy? Well, nothing, but that doesn’t keep it from being a fine and instructive article. A very good article, in …