“Reformation involves conflict, as we shall see in a moment, but how you fight makes all the difference. Should you fight like a cavalier, with swift sword play and witticisms, or like a thug and a wart on your nose? The besetting sin of ostensible reformers is the sin of shrillness and officious forms of …
The Light Is in the Sky
“The sun has risen. Christ has come. He is the king. the light covers the world. A return to heathen midnight is an impossibility. Those who walk in darkness now are doing so in a world suffused with light. This is hard to do — you have to remain blind, or hide in root cellars. …
Probably Not Big Enough
“Secular conservatism is like trying to use your pocket handkerchief to slow you down after the main chute has failed” (Rules for Reformers, p. 2).
Book of the Month/December 2014
Leif Enger’s other novel, Peace Like a River, was an earlier selection of mine for “book of the month,” a year ago today, in fact. And now comes his other novel So Brave, Young, and Handsome. Let me first say that I don’t really care for his titles. Peace Like a River is taken from …
Skin and Blood
As recent events to Ferguson demonstrate, lawlessness dislocates everything in the system, up-and-down the entire line. People are complicated, especially when they are in sin, and situations are complex. So when people make up their minds about a particular allegation based entirely on the color of the participants, they are establishing nothing other than their …
Gotta Move Fast
When You Say “Mean,” What Do You Mean by Mean?
Last week, my daughter wrote about the problem of theological cone bras, which is, as we all acknowledge, a very real problem. Well, the comments section erupted and a common theme in many of them is what I briefly want to address here. Let me assemble my own version of this objection as registered. “I …
The Old Gray Mare
The goal of the pansexualist movement is to remove all creational distinctives. They want to batter down every border, every barrier, so that when we are all done, every sentient being has been melted down into their great cauldron of lust. If you really think that when same sex mirage is a done deal, everyone …
Our Canvas Christendom
In some ways, Matthew Schmitz’s cavalier dismissal of objections to the Marriage Pledge seems to invite an old-fashioned fisking. But I resist the invitation. The confusions about marriage in our time are deep and profound, and many of them are present in the underlying assumptions of this Pledge, a Pledge seeking to preserve Christian marriage …
Present As Presented
The Lord is present through the Supper because the Lord is presented in the Supper. The Lord ascended into Heaven two thousand years ago, and His body is at the right hand of the Father. Since His body is there, it follows — since He has a true human body — that it is not …