So then, there has been a little Internet dust up over the death penalty, involving The Atlantic, Al Mohler, Jonathan Merritt, and Rachel Held Evans. Why should I stay out of it? Not being able to answer that question adequately, here goes. Before getting into the false dilemmas that regularly get posed on this question, …
Nature By Grace
All right. Now it is time to bring a number of threads together. The great American classicist Basil Gildersleeve once said that the American Civil War was fought over a point of grammar. He said that it was over whether we should say “the United States is” or “the United States are.” Other great and …
High Mountain Air
“The real litmus test, if I may be so bold, is to manage to be accused simultaneously of antinomianism and legalism. When you have gotten to the point where any stick is good enough to beat you with, then you really have something. This is like what one Puritan called the bracing experience of ‘living …
Book of the Month/May 2014
These are the best of times and the worst of times, to coin a phrase. For conservatives, I mean. These are the worst of times because a dedicated band of people is doing quite a demolition job on the republic, and it really takes a lot of work to get that much damage done. Impressive, …
Wordsmithy Prompt
Just a reminder that you ought — by this time, at any rate — have already signed up for the 2014 Wordsmithy workshop. In the off chance that you have not, here is a little clickity thing to help you out.
And Little Wool
I really should say something about outrage-fest that has mostly concluded over in the NBA and its environs. Clippers owner Donald Sterling got himself banned from NBA games and practices for life, and was fined 2.5 million dollars, because he managed to insinuate himself onto some audio, the playing of which audio proved to the …
Seven Theses on Submission
Part of the fallout from the Vision Forum mess has been the attempted discrediting of “patriarchy.” Since Doug Phillips definitely taught headship and submission in marriage, and since he sinned in the way he did, it is thought that the whole project should be abandoned in favor of something friendlier to women, like, say, abandoning …
Which Is Not Good
“Marginal Christianity is always tare-Christianity and not wheat-Christianity” (Against the Church, p. 89).
Just Getting a Drink
A recent jag in the feminist jihad has to do with what they are pleased to call microaggressions — what Jonah Goldberg recently worried might become nanoaggressions. So let’s talk about all that for a microbit. Conservatives will frequently make merry about this kind of fevered brow behavior, assuming that these women’s-study-center-people have utterly lost …
The Number of the Barns Doesn’t Matter
“We are invited (in numerous places in the Scriptures) to consider our earthly lives in the light of our ultimate destinations. The rich fool is not encouraged to say or think, ‘Well, I know I am lost for all eternity, but for a while there I sure had enough money to build some bigger barns!’ …