I have been occupied with an unusual number of responsibilities the last several weeks, and so have not gotten to everything I need to. Responsibilities are like grapes; they come in bunches. One of the things I have needed to do is finish my review of Crunchy Cons — there are only two chapters left. …
The Argument from Gratitude
Students of apologetics are familiar with some of the traditional arguments for the existence of God – the teleological argument from design, the cosmological argument from first cause, and so on. I would like to suggest another one. I do not really know what to call it, but the argument is directed against one of …
Oriented by the Second Coming
We rarely notice our bones, and consequently, we rarely notice what is in them. Certain assumptions have been with us in the West for so many centuries now that we readily hold that this is just “how things are.” We think it is all so obvious, forgetting that our culture at one time was taught …
Not All “One True Gods” Are the One True God
“The proponents of an ‘Ecumenical Jihad,’ from President George W. Bush and Professor Forte to a Christian conservative like Peter Kreeft, share two fallacies. Their faulty understanding of Islamic theology leads them to imagine that ‘Allah’ is more or less interchangeable with the ‘God’ of other monotheists. Their incomplete understanding of the phenomenon of secular …
Beast of Burden
“The real break came in the late 1960s, when the counterculture went sour, and popular music began attracting people who were less interested in music than in using such a powerful medium for culturally radical purposes. The harbingers of this break were the Rolling Stones, who relished the blues but did not hesitate to make …
Impetuous Folly
“Rash men quickly take hold of the sword of justice to hack and hew. They think that what they do is according to reason, but they do not wisely weigh things in the balance of justice. Remember, justice has a balance as well as a sword” (Burroughs, Irenicum, p. 196).
Reformation and Revival
Important distinctions must always be maintained between true God-given revival and man-made revivalism – as capable writers are doing elsewhere in this issue. But at the same time, confusion on this entire subject is so rampant that we perhaps need to refine our vocabulary even further than this. Revival means “coming to life again.” Something …
Inflexible in the Joints
“Rigid, harsh, sour, crabbed, rough-hewn spirits are unfit for union. There is no sweetness, no amiableness, no pleasantness in them; they please themselves in a rugged austereness, but are pleasing to no one else in all their ways. They will abate nothing of their own, nor yield anything to others (Burroughs, Irenicum, p. 194).
Teachers and the Tongue
We sometimes miss the context of the oft-repeated teaching of James concerning the sins of the tongue. In the fifth verse of his third chapter, he shows us how the words of the tongue are a small spark that can create a forest fire, burning down a great wilderness. But he began that section by …
Islamic Fatalism
“Islamic predestination is particularly severe: it simplifies religion and so annihilates some theological difficulties, but at the price of a cruel fatalism” (Serge Trifkovic, The Sword of the Prophet, p. 66).