Where we have had recent disagreements with the folks over at christianculture.com, it is good on several levels to be able to agree with Monte Wilson’s recent post there on the need for more court jesters. As Mencken put it once, a horse laugh is worth ten thousand syllogisms. For those interested in a detailed …
Objective Exegesis
In a recent entry on his web page, Andrew Sandlin makes an important point about the incarnational nature of the Christian faith (“The Faith is What We Are”), but in my view misses the biblical balance dangerously. In rejecting an objectivity outside ourselves (that when detached from how we actually live should be rejected), I …
Evangelical Shills for Allah
I like President Bush. I like some of what he has done. I wish him well. We pray for him regularly at church, that he would come to govern in accordance with the Word of God. But because I like him, I wish that he would drop the theology of empire and listen to evangelical …
Demands for Apology As Weapon
One tactic that is used to advance the postmodern agenda is an adroit use of “demands for an apology.” I have noticed that many Christians would be suspicious if someone simply announced that the lines between right and wrong, good and evil, truth and falsehood, need to be blurred. Believing Christians hear something like this, …
The Patron Saint of Epistemology
St. John is the patron saint of epistemology. That is, he is patron saint of a biblical approach to believing and knowing. He is not the patron saint of unbelieving epistemology. How do we know? How do we know that we know? These are reasonable questions to ask at the foot of the cross — …
Relativism and the Invasion of Iraq
Dear visionaries, The role of debate in a free society is often misunderstood — it is too readily assumed that people disagree simply because they are disagreeable. We also tend to misunderstand the corrosive effects of relativism. When objections are made to topless car washes — let us say — the whole thing is dismissed …
Impudence on Stilts
Fundamental assumptions are like the backs of our heads. We all have one, and none of us can see our own. One of the most exasperating features of working through literature on postmodernism is the fact that, for all the talk, the postmodernists can’t deconstruct their way out of a paper bag. One basic assumption …
American Gospel
Dear visionaries, I believe a fundamental flaw in analyzing America’s foreign policy in the Middle East (or anywhere else) is that we persist in speaking as though the “two sides” represented are limited to the Mutt and Jeff of our two party system. The real issue of substantive debate in foreign policy is between the …
After Darkness, Light
In a recent post on postmodernism, I commented on the timidity of many who will not handle their discontents in a scriptural manner. This ties in with postmodernism because of the primacy of feeling in postmodern subjectivism. Interestingly, after posting that I got an (anonymous) critique that acknowledged the truthfulness of part of what I …
Hearts Full of Thorns
A number of years ago, I used to wonder what we were doing wrong. I knew that the Lord had promised hostility and opposition to all who were faithful in doing the work of His kingdom. So how was it that we were spending years in these placid waters? I felt something like that hapless …