Theology That Bites Back
Dear visionaries, In our discussions, we have to beware of racism inflation. In contemporary public discourse, such charges are too readily leveled as the all-purpose trump card. Why don’t we agree to reserve it for those who believe and affirm that one race is (racially) superior to another? With this more precise definition, it would …
If anyone wants to read something by N.T. Wright that would indicate why I find him such an edifying writer, I would recommend Bringing the Church to the World, put out by Wipf and Stock. I am edified by him as much as I am because few contemporary writers make the case against false and …
“For example, in the fifties, when something became hot, something on the order of hula hoops, everybody had to have one. And they had to have on because they had to be like ‘all the other kids.’ But snookered by our new consumerist culture, we now see that everybody has to have the latest hot …
Minister: Lift up your hearts! Congregation: We lift them up to the Lord! We praise Your name, oh God, for You are the living and triune God. The idols have mouths, but do not speak. You have no physical mouth, and yet You speak the eternal and everlasting Logos, the Word over all, the Word …
God has assigned a task to the Church in the world, and that task is to throw down all idols, and to establish the right worship of God throughout the earth, from the River to the ends of the earth. But looking around, we have to come to grips with the fact that idolatry in …
The psalmist praises God because God prepared a table for him in the presence of his enemies. Surely this would include the presence of the great enemy, death. Now rightly understood, this table is the central example of that gracious provision, and rightly understood, this table is one of the great weapons in the arsenal …
Dear Joel, Once we get past our agreement that perseverance in the faith should be considered a good thing, the doctrine of perseverance creates a large number of questions. Some of the disagreements that arise out of this are extremely subtle, so it is important to define our terms very carefully at the outset. According …
Morning, everybody. Tim Bartnick asks two reasonable questions. The first is that if folks locally can discount what Johnson says and does, then why do we need to defend ourselves against him? First, the answer is that we do not have to. The point was not to defend against Johnson’s charges, but rather to point …
Dear visionaries, First, lest there be any more misunderstanding, I will do my level best to have this post be simple and straight, no goofing around. Humor works by means of startling incongruity (although there are mysteries beyond even this). Thus, when I and Christ Church were accused of racism, I undertook to defend our …
In the course of the French Revolution, when the monkeys escaped from the monkey house, and captured the zoo to run it for themselves, Voltaire once said this, “Is not the fanaticism of your irreligion more absurd and dangerous than the fanaticism of superstition? Begin by tolerating the faith of your fathers. You talk of …
