Category: Books and Culture

“Culturally engaged Calvinism is a world-shaping force. It is potent. It has built more than one civilization and is going to do so again. There is more than one seminary professor who likes to write learned monographs about what this particular giant use to do before it went to sleep, but who is extremely wary about any attempts to wake the giant up. That might make a mess, and the secularists might then revoke our library privileges.”

The Auburn Avenue Chronicles Vol. 2, p. 786

“When the various controversies came raining down upon our heads eight years ago, along with a few dead cats, Nancy asked me, ‘What is this?’ What I said to her then has only been confirmed by repeated and numerous blessings that could not have come to us in any other way. The last eight years have been a time of unparalleled blessing. I told her that this was my big promotion, and it was.”

The Auburn Avenue Chronicles Vol. 2, p. 786

“I could multiply such qualifications, but to do so would be tedious. And besides, the people for whom such qualifications are made appear to be steadfastly refusing to read them. They can ignore them faster than I can type . . . I can only conclude that the members of the committee must have spent a good deal of time winding their rear ends and scratching their watches.”

The Auburn Avenue Chronicles Vol. 2, pp. 782-783

“I have noticed before that one of the things that the fundamentalist mindset does well is identify the logical trajectory of an idea fifteen minutes after it is first stated. In contrast to this, there is a sophisticated and nuanced academic mindset that likes to fiddle, discuss, analyze, count, and try on different readings of, whatever idea it is in the discussion. The weakness of this latter approach is the the discussion gets frequently wrapped up in everything except what the actual point of the discussion is. It is like a guy who is very concerned to count the reading lights above every seat on the airliner, but who doesn’t know where the plane is going.”

The Auburn Avenue Chronicles Vol. 2, p. 779

“If there is one thing you can count on a discernment blog to do, it is to show very little discernment. Discernment blogs are often little more than ‘bottom-of-the-monkey-cage’ blogs, which can usually be found at flingpoo.com.”

The Auburn Avenue Chronicles Vol. 2, p. 778