I have been busy of late, and so haven’t gotten to a plug of what my friend Steve Jeffery recently said about tattoos. But I am now in a position to remedy my shortcomings, and so here is the link. While I am at it, I shall also include a New Yorker cartoon for your …
Like a Fist
As Iraq continues to spiral toward chaos, and is doing so in the Facebook era, the one thing we should want to avoid is directionless or aimless outrage. Anger under such circumstances is certainly appropriate and necessary, but like a fist, it needs somewhere to land. I am writing primarily about the treatment of Christians …
Taking All the Texts Together
“Covenant faithlessness in no way removes or erases covenant obligations or connections. There are multiple texts that show that the baptized faithless are connected to Christ in an important and very real sense. This is why it can truly be said that I believe in the objectivity of the covenant. But there is another sense …
The Root of the Disease
In Eichmann in Jerusalem, Hannah Arendt writes this: “Without Jewish help in administrative and police work — the final rounding up of Jews in Berlin was, as I have mentioned, done entirely by Jewish police — there would have been either complete chaos or an impossibly severe drain on German manpower” (p. 117). She goes …
Not Whether Efficacious, But What Kind of Efficacy
“Baptism is never empty; baptism is never a meaningless act. I deny that baptism operates ex opere operato for blessing, but I do affirm that it operates ex opere operato in formally ratifying the baptizand’s relationship to the covenant” (Against the Church, p. 161).
Or a Terrible Mixup
“If a kid was baptized, educated in the covenant, catechized until his eyes bulged out, and all the rest of that drill, and apostatized in a terrible flame-out as soon as he left home, what does that do to the promises? Nothing! Let God be true, and every man a liar. But notice what saying …
Merchants of Resentment
Is it possible to sow the wind and reap the whirlwind (Hos. 8:7)? Well, of course it is. We live in a world where disproportional effects can follow hard after trivial causes. Not only so, but the disproportional effects can be unevenly distributed. Two toddlers disobey their mothers in exactly the same way, and one …
The Mystery is a Fact
“If a person goes to Heaven when he dies, this means, necessarily, that God intervened at some point in his life — the time stamp of which is usually unknown to us, but which is always known to the God who did the intervening” (Against the Church, p.158).
The Politics of the Tithe
I think it was Luther who said that a man required two conversions, the first of his heart and the second of his wallet. Have you ever noticed how some people are preeminently quotable, such that all sorts of pithy sayings get attributed to them whether or not they said it? So Luther, or maybe …
The Spirit Gets There First
“I have to hear the gospel preached before I can believe it, but I don’t have to hear the gospel preached before the Spirit disposes my heart to listen to that preacher” (Against the Church, p. 157).