Letter to the Editor: What's with all this reason and dispassionate rationality. I don't buy it!!! Mike -- Doug responds: Mike, you know, I just can't help it sometimes. ...
Our New Year’s Resolution Was to Write Some Letters
The Gratitude Argument
“If I am the end product of atoms careening through a mindless universe, there is no one to whom I may show my gratitude, and yet my ethical need to be grateful is genuine. There, there is a God, and I thank Him for the green hills I saw yesterday.”
The Cultural Mind, p. 254
An Open Letter to the Good People of Moscow
To all the good people of Moscow, greetings. I trust that you had a wonderful Christmas with your families, and as we are now on the threshold of a new year, I hope to do what I can to brighten the prospect of that year just a little bit. If I were in full possession …
Audio Reading of Post
To the Last Ditch
“When it comes to the ‘ecumenical question,’ we appear to have divided between two positions. The first says we should accept all kinds of heretical ‘Christians’ with all friendliness. The other says we should reject their heresies, along with their title to the name Christian. We have two positions. The first is that husbands cannot commit adultery, and the second is that adulterers are not husbands, and hence not adulterers. What never occurs to anyone is the duty of fighting our fellow Christians to the last ditch, as Athanasius did with Arius.”
The Cultural Mind, p. 247
A Common Mistake
Under Authority
“The Bible is not a grab bag of infallible truths, thoughtfully provided by God so that we could have an axiomatic starting point for our subsequently autonomous reasoning. The Scriptures are authoritative. We are men, with our breath in our nostrils. We are creatures with little pointy heads.”
The Cultural Mind, pp. 243-244
Euclidian Inerrancy
“Of course the Bible does not contain errors. But neither does my claim that triangles have three sides. What is the difference between the Bible’s inerrancy and my occasional bursts of it? The difference is the other essential component of sola Scriptura—ultimacy.”
The Cultural Mind, pp. 242-243
Pharaohs and Herods
One of the lesser known doctrinal themes in Scripture is the idea of ethical reversals. Sometimes the reversals are connected to classes of people, and other times to ethnic groups or nations. Whenever ...
The Teacher, Not a Student
“Similarly, the Bible meets no standard; the Bible is the standard. Defenders of the Word too often act as if the Bible is an exceptionally bright student, always acing every test we might devise for it.”
The Cultural Mind, p. 242
Last Letters of a Bedraggled Year
Letter to the Editor: I was wondering if you are familiar with cognitive dissonance theory. I had heard of it, and just recently heard an argument that the New Testament writers followed ...