Category: Engaging the Culture

“We are all aware of the hazards posed by fastidious sabbatarians—our Lord collided with them more than once, and once modern sabbath-keeping because the norm, it was not long before peck sniffs started to roam the city, putting padlocks on swing sets, lest any antinomian eight-year-olds swing themselves to perdition.”

Chestertonian Calvinism, p. 25

“What does the word puritanical bring to mind? We think immediately of a stuffed-shirt wowser, with a buckle on his black hat, trying hard to affix a scarlet letter to the blouse of yet another wayward woman.”

Chestertonian Calvinism, p. 24

“Over time, due to the effects of slander and the inexorable effects of wineskins getting old, the Puritans gained a reputation for being, well, puritanical. But by this I mean what that word has come to mean, which would make them the guardians of all forms of pious buzzkill. The problem is that this sad reality did not really start to unfold until a century or more into the project—it took quite some time before all the blankets got wet.”

Chestertonian Calvinism, p. 13

“Too much Calvinism, without the exuberant liveliness that comes from writers like Chesterton, will turn the reader into three hundred pounds of wet sand, and no fun at all at parties”(Chestertonian Calvinism, pp. 5-6).

“The argument of the book does not unfold like a Monarch butterfly unfolding from a chrysalis but is rather more like a moth taking fifteen runs or so at the same light bulb.”

Chestertonian Calvinism, p. 5