“Why would the time of anticipation of salvation be so liturgically celebratory, while the times of fulfilled salvation be so liturgically glum”? (God Rest Ye Merry, p. 83).
Semi-Gloss Obfuscation
I am afraid that The Gospel Coalition has not only given away the store, but also the entire inventory from three whole warehouses on top of that. The article is here. The upshot of the article is that Christian parents should care about whether or not their children grow up to be godly, and that …
When Preaching the Gospel Isn’t Preaching the Gospel
As the diameter of our cultural sinkhole continues to widen, a few words are necessary for those Christians who want to check out of the SQCW — scare-quoted culture wars. Why all this emphasis on the sins of those worshiping the great god Orgasm? Why are conservative Christians so obsessed with sex? This charge stings …
If the Season is Penitential, You Are Doing It Wrong
“Traditionally, both Lent and Advent are penitential seasons — not times of overflowing celebrations. This is not something we have sought to cultivate at all, even though we do observe a basic church calendar, made up of what the Reformers called the five evangelical feast days. Our reluctance to adopt this kind of penitential approach …
One Way or the Other
“We will define our time by some system. The year is an inescapable year. Who is the Lord over it? How do we mark our days? Because we live in time, the rhythms of that time will either be Christian or not . . . Christians must define the year in an explicitly Christian way, …
The Dutch Have Taken Holland
I noticed the other day — as who could not? — that our president was gathered with a bunch of world leaders in Paris, in order to deliver a solemn warning to the world. This message, brought to us by our global elites, was that we should let our global elites intervene to save us …
Book of the Month/December 2015
If you were to try to sum up the significant contributions of Anglican theologian Richard Hooker in the words of a Broadway musical, you could do no better than to point to the lyrics of Gershwin’s It Ain’t Necessarily So — referring of course to the chorus and not the verses. Now I am not …
The Camp of the Saints
In 1973, Jean Raspail published a novel The Camp of the Saints, about Muslim immigrants overrunning Europe. Another novel had a similar theme, this one by Charles Williams, but I don’t remember which one. Since I read that book it has been lo, these many years — but enough years to make Williams seem really …
Athanasius Punks the Internet
Athanasius, father of orthodoxy, had his enemies. One time, some of them held an Internet trial and accused him of messing around with the occult, and on top of that they said he had murdered a rival bishop named Arsenius. He had chopped off his rival’s hand for use in his magic arts. Athanasius was …
That, and Writers’ Memoirs
