“By insisting that most art, high and low, exists for the sole purpose of reinforcing bourgeois-capitalist consciousness, the ‘critical theorist’ gets to be a revolutionary. But by dictating the handful of exceptions that achieve true ‘negation,’ he also gets to be a snob” (Martha Bayles, Hole in our Soul, p. 78).
And They Snap Easily
“Hearts that are stout and willful are dry and sapless” (Burroughs, Irenicum, p. 202).
Refined Seven Fold
In the contemporary debate on the authority of Scripture, the only real concern I have with words like inerrant or infallible is that they are not strong enough. The doctrine of sola Scriptura has two components. The first is that Scripture is the only infallible authority we have. The second is that Scripture is the …
Aping the Enemy
“There was more than just a whiff of Muhammad in the papal guarantee of plenary absolution—a direct pass to heaven to the Crusaders should they die, or great riches if they lived” (Serge Trifkovic, The Sword of the Prophet, p. 98).
Isaiah 5:20
“But it [perverse modernism] did foster a climate in which artists were seen, by themselves and others, as implacably opposed to the values of ordinary people; and in which contempt for morality was seen, by elites and common people alike, as a mark of superiority” (Martha Bayles, Hole in our Soul, p. 45).
Balance
“A man must not be one thing one day and another on another day, not like a weather vane, carried up and down with every wind. Neither must he be willful and stout, like a rusty lock that will not be stirred by any key” (Burroughs, Irenicum, p. 201).
Fear of Feasting
Augustine exhorted us somewhere to love God and do as we please. This makes us nervous, and more than a little bit jumpy. Of course the protection resides in the first clause – loving God affects what will please us. Psalm 37:4 says that if we delight in the Lord He will give us the …
Republican Ra Ra
Well, here is the last post on Crunchy Cons. I have to get this one out of the way before I start in on Americanism: The Fourth Great Western Religion. There are parts of this section, particularly when Dreher is focussing on diagnosis, that are magnificent. There are other places where his implied solution (or …
Spurgeon the Great
We live in a time when preachers are told they must not really be preachers, but rather entertainers, facilitators, masters of ceremonies, or whatever the next hot-selling guru book for preachers will say they must be instead of preachers. This is all done in the name of making the gospel relevant and palatable to the …
Another Point of View Certainly
“The Crusades were a belated military response of Christian Europe to over three centuries of Muslim aggression against Christian lands, the systemic mistreatment of the indigenous Christian population of those lands, and harassment of Christian pilgrims.” (Serge Trifkovic, The Sword of the Prophet, p. 97).