Dear visionaries, Susanna wrote: “Alternative visions like slavery, Doug?” To which I respond: Sure, given relativism, why not? Susanna needs to stop opposing slavery and racism as “her personal preference” (binding on no one) and start opposing it for principled reasons, as I do. Abandon your principled defense of relativism, which cannot be distinguished from …
Alternative Visions
Dear visionaries, I am concerned about the growth of absolutist fundamentalism on this list. Susanna listed a whole bunch of things that I am apparently “guilty of” that she appears to think are bad in every circumstance. Where is relativism when you need it? Let’s all work harder at embracing alternative visions! “Apologetics in the …
David’s Tent
Our Lord and God, when Shiloh fell, Your mercy on Your people was buried deep, hidden, in the rubble of disaster. When the ark of the covenant was plunder, Your invisible hand held it firm. When the covenant came back to Israel, Your hand was still there, and Uzzah’s hand was impudence. The silent tabernacle …
Limit the Damage
Once there was a husband and wife who thought that Christian marriage meant that the other person had to do certain things that were right there in the Bible, plain as day. The husband thought his wife ought to be respectful and submissive, and the wife thought the husband ought to be loving and sacrificial. …
Sweet Purple Doctrine
The Poems of Rowan Williams (Eerdmans, 2002, 111 pp. Rowan Williams is the current Archbishop of Canterbury. This is the second book of his I have read, and the first that I have finished. The first book, his treatment of the heretic Arius, was scholarly and well-written, but it lost me somewhere and I ditched. …
The Slavery of Relativism
Dear visionaries, Susanna has outed me. Was that nice? I ask you. First things first: she says, “In my ‘simplistically relativist’ world some things are always wrong . . .” I do not want to say that anything was wrong with your history courses, but something was seriously askew in your philosophy and ethics study. …
Preparing the Tongue for Worship
No man can tame the tongue, James tells us. But the Word of God also tells us that what is impossible for men is possible with God. What is impossible for the flesh is easy for grace. We have thanked God for the work He is doing in our midst. It is right that we …
Busy Pants Liberals
Dear visionaries, Joanne finds that what I have written in the past on the Confederacy is “morally repugnant.” I see that I will have to begin abbreviating. BWS? By what standard, henceforth BWS? Having a fixed standard of right and wrong found in the Scriptures enables me to admire that which was noble about the …
Stuff
Dear visionaries, Jon opposes the death penalty for various reasons, but one of them is that the innocent have sometimes been punished. But this is no reason for opposing the death penalty — it is an argument for judicial reform. We don’t want the innocent spending the rest of their lives in the slammer either. …
Audio Reading of Post
Pillared Majesty
Pillared majesty shapes the halls of God, Each pillar bears the weight of holiness. The floors of the colonnade are emerald green, With marbled streaks of glory. Shekinah smoke is clean like mountain air, And yet so dense that sinners cannot breathe. The central hall ascends to all the thrones, Where elders and their crowns …