A Chilling Effect

Visionaries, Angie says, “It sure is chilly out there.” Actually, it really is chilly. There are people “out there” who use “racism” as the all-purpose category to describe anything they don’t like or disagree with. Then they have trouble making distinctions between worldviews that are utterly and entirely different. In this view, there are two …

The Impossibility of the Contrary

Visionaries, I appreciate Andy’s use of our sources because I honestly think he is trying to understand what we are saying before critiquing it. And I would just like to add one additional note to his summary of our presuppositional approach, which was generally quite fair. All finite creatures must have an axiomatic starting point …

Is Slavery Good?

Visionaries, Roger asks this, a reasonable question: “The two Dougs from Christ Church cannot have it both ways. Either slavery is evil or it is not. Which Doug are we to believe?” Actually both of them, since we agree completely on this issue. Now I want you all (or at least anyone interested in something …

Historical Mojo

Visionaries, The psalmist, in one of his controversies, lamented the fact that every day his words got twisted (Ps. 56:5). Sometimes the twisting was deliberate, and sometimes it was probably just a matter of somebody not getting the joke. And now comes Joan, trumpeting the mojo of local professional, credentialed historians, men who do not …

Shrill Relativistic Crusades

Visionaries, Rootless relativism and the high moral indignation of a shrill crusade do not go well together. If some things are absolutely wrong (every day of the week, in every century, in every culture), then surely it should be easy for those fundamentalists who are propounding such absolutism to answer some simple questions about it. …

Black Sheep and White Goats

Visionaries, Just a brief response to Andy: I actually do think that R.L. Dabney had some racist assumptions, and these assumptions sometimes came out in truly odd ways. My favorite is found in his Systematic Theology, where he takes on redheads who do not know that they are objectively inferior. These racist assumptions of his …

The Browner Parts of the Globe

Visionaries, Two comments, if you all have moment. I separated “y’all” into “you all” as a concession to others on a sensitive topic. First, I agree completely with Roger’s exposure of the hypocrisy that pervades this kind of issue. A color-blind society should mean one of two things: either nobody gets to do it, or …