One of the things I do from time to time is draw lessons for the United States from the history of Israel in the Old Testament. I know that this must exasperate some good folks, making them dance beside their computers in frustration, exclaiming to their ceiling fan that I clearly don’t know that America …
Converging on the Intersection
“Suppose the Great Eschaton is ten thousand years off. It remains a stubborn but persistent fact that my launch into that Eschaton is no more than fifty years off . . . The eschatological scythe harvests every individual long before it harvests the world” (Against the Church, p. 163).
The Word Count of Righteousness
I am currently reading a (very good) book on preaching by William Willimon. The book is entitled Proclamation and Theology, and Willimon is a bishop in the United Methodist Church. He plainly got to his position of influence there because of intelligence, learning, grace, and wisdom. But. He is in a liberal denomination, surrounded of …
Say It With Ink
I have been busy of late, and so haven’t gotten to a plug of what my friend Steve Jeffery recently said about tattoos. But I am now in a position to remedy my shortcomings, and so here is the link. While I am at it, I shall also include a New Yorker cartoon for your …
Like a Fist
As Iraq continues to spiral toward chaos, and is doing so in the Facebook era, the one thing we should want to avoid is directionless or aimless outrage. Anger under such circumstances is certainly appropriate and necessary, but like a fist, it needs somewhere to land. I am writing primarily about the treatment of Christians …
Taking All the Texts Together
“Covenant faithlessness in no way removes or erases covenant obligations or connections. There are multiple texts that show that the baptized faithless are connected to Christ in an important and very real sense. This is why it can truly be said that I believe in the objectivity of the covenant. But there is another sense …
The Root of the Disease
In Eichmann in Jerusalem, Hannah Arendt writes this: “Without Jewish help in administrative and police work — the final rounding up of Jews in Berlin was, as I have mentioned, done entirely by Jewish police — there would have been either complete chaos or an impossibly severe drain on German manpower” (p. 117). She goes …
Not Whether Efficacious, But What Kind of Efficacy
“Baptism is never empty; baptism is never a meaningless act. I deny that baptism operates ex opere operato for blessing, but I do affirm that it operates ex opere operato in formally ratifying the baptizand’s relationship to the covenant” (Against the Church, p. 161).
Or a Terrible Mixup
“If a kid was baptized, educated in the covenant, catechized until his eyes bulged out, and all the rest of that drill, and apostatized in a terrible flame-out as soon as he left home, what does that do to the promises? Nothing! Let God be true, and every man a liar. But notice what saying …
Merchants of Resentment
Is it possible to sow the wind and reap the whirlwind (Hos. 8:7)? Well, of course it is. We live in a world where disproportional effects can follow hard after trivial causes. Not only so, but the disproportional effects can be unevenly distributed. Two toddlers disobey their mothers in exactly the same way, and one …