“In the highest aesthetic circles one now hears nothing about the artist’s duty to us. It is all about our duty to him. He owes us nothing: we owe him ‘recognition,’ even though he has never paid the slightest attention to our tastes, interests, or habits. If we don’t give it to him, our name …
Aesthetic Relativism
“Among conservative believers we at least have a concept of resistance to relativism in the areas of truth and ethics. We reject the idea that something can be true on Tuesday but false on Friday. We also reject the notion that sins in the first part of the week gradually lose their sinfulness by the …
A Brother Thing
“We instinctively tend to regard the fraternal relationship as an affectionate one; yet the mythological, historical, and literary examples that spring to mind tell a different story: Cain and Abel, Jacob and Esau, Eteocles and Plyneices, Romulus and Remus, Richard the Lionhearted and John Lackland. The proliferation of enemy brothers in Greek myth and in …
Sabbath Kindness Again
God and Father, we thank You for Your Sabbath kindness to us. You have shown that kindness to us over and over again, and so we continue to thank You for it. We are thankful for the food, for the wine, for the fellowship around this table, and for all the hard work that went …
A Fourth Decade of Psalms/Psalm 37
Introduction: One of the temptations that the righteous have to deal with is the temptation of envying the unrighteous. This is a psalm to set that temptation in its propher context, and so to help us deal with it. The Text: Fret not thyself because of evildoers, neither be thou envious against the workers of …
Westminster Ten: Of Effectual Calling
1. All those whom God hath predestinated unto life, and those only, He is pleased, in His appointed and accepted time, effectually to call (Rom. 8:30, 11:7; Eph. 1:10–11), by His Word and Spirit (2 Thess. 2:13–14; 2 Cor. 3:3, 6), out of that state of sin and death, in which they are by nature …
Westminster Nine: Of Free Will
1. God hath endued the will of man with that natural liberty, that it is neither forced, nor, by any absolute necessity of nature, determined to good, or evil (Matt. 17:12; James 1:14; Deut. 30:19). By virtue of creation, mankind was given a true and natural liberty with regard to all issues of good and …
Not Good Symptoms At All
“Artists also talk of Good Work; but decreasingly. They begin to prefer words like ‘significant,’ important,’ contemporary,’ or ‘daring.’ These are not, to my mind, good symptoms” (C.S. Lewis, The World’s Last Night, p. 72).
Poetry is the Point
“We do not have them master the grammar and the dialectic so that they can chop logic for the rest of their dreary lives. They should grow up into wisdom, rhetoric, glory, and again, poetry” (The Case for Classical Christian Education, p. 160).
Sacrificial Crisis
“The sacrificial crisis, that is, the disappearance of the sacrificial rites, coincides with the disappearance of the difference between impure violence and purifying violence” (Girard, Violence and the Sacred, p. 49).