Theology That Bites Back
Dear John and Sally, I wanted to follow up our session together with a few reminders and some further exhortation. Everything I am going to say revolves around the meaning of forgiveness—what it means and what it does not. We covered much of this in person, but this will (I hope) serve as a helpful …
[Concerning Phil. 3:9] “Let us get one thing clear at the outset—if Paul is to be justified by righteousness, whose will it be? For starters, Paul says not mine. ” (Papa Don’t Pope, pp. 133).
“The human race is constituted as a race. Individual persons are not like individual rocks in the driveway, but rather like individual leaves on a tree. Each leaf can be made out distinctly, but anybody who seeks to understand leaves without reference to the tree is not following the path of wisdom. So when Adam …
“Given the penchant for organization displayed by the human mind, which is in its turn a reflection of how God made the world, it is impossible to leave one error without heading toward another one. It is not possible to leave an error forcefully without creating a situation in which you are forcefully headed toward …
Introduction: So then, Nadia Bloz-Weber, reigning queen of the ecclesiastical division of the Épater la bourgeoisie vibe, achieved peak relevance recently by gathering up a bunch of purity rings, melting them down into a fair approximation of her theological rigor, and then fashioning them into a sacred vagina thing, like a little bowling trophy. She …
“The reason that the use of images in worship was not controversial in the first generations of the Church was because nobody was doing it. Centuries later, when they began to do it, the controversy came” (Papa Don’t Pope, p. 113).
“The veneration of icons in a Christian synagogue in A.D. 57 would have gone over like a big pile of greasy bacon at their men’s prayer breakfast” (Papa Don’t Pope, p. 112).
Intransigence is Such a Great Word: Regarding your well detailed essay on godly intransigence I have experienced significant whiplash on this matter. Back in 2004 I had moved to my new home in an area populated with Democrats. Since this was a presidential election year I knew the overall sentiment was for John Kerry based …
“In another instance, when the people had been told to ‘look to’ the bronze serpent, over time this looking became devotional looking, and Hezekiah had Nehustan destroyed. To which we should respond, good for old St. Hezekiah, patron saint of righteous iconoclasts” (Papa Don’t Pope, pp. 110-111).
