So I have made a great deal out of the Great Commission, where Jesus tells His apostles to disciple the nations. I have noted that the direct object of that verb is the ethne, the people, the tribe, the whole unit. This means the question has arisen whether I am overlooking the explanatory participles following …
Words and Water, Bread and Wine
Two great Christian heresies — Marxism and Islam — borrowed something from the Christian faith which Christians should actually ask to have returned. They borrowed it, used it to great effect, and Christians for some reason let them, neglecting this idea ourselves. That “thing” they borrowed was a sense of inevitable victory for their cause. …
Enough of Them Already
The advocate of mere Christendom, in which category I place myself, must at some point address the question of whether or not we should have an established church. And, if so, which one? We already asked the Holy Ghost Lightning Tabernacle, but they declined. There are layers to this, making it a fun activity, like …
A Holy Ghost Mashup
At the beginning of his Republocrat, Carl Trueman says quite rightly “that religious conservatism does not demand unconditional political conservatism.” The word conserve is a transitive verb, and there is no virtue or vice in any transitive verb. So you love, but what do you love? God? Ice cream? Child porn? The church you were …
That Half Pint Nietzsche
Modern secular academics are like the benign nihilists back in the early sixties who taught the next generation all sorts of cool stuff, which the younger radicals then went on to apply, much to the consternation of their mentors. Some postmodernists are like those radicals, being actual anarchists who want to burn the place down. …
The Shellfish Problem
Socrates famously said that he was the wisest man among the Greeks because he knew of his ignorance. Let us riff off this Socratic insight if we may, if riff is a term recognized by the philosophers. We are all smaller than tiny. We all have a tiny role to play, and the fact that …
Faint Heart, Fair Lady
In that great gallery of the Faith’s heroes, Hebrews 11, we see the same kind of person, over and over again, but different earthly outcomes. Since the city we are seeking, whose maker and builder is God, is not an earthly city, we are given a wide range of possibilities here. Those possibilities include both …
Steering Clear of the Regnant Scoundrels
When we consider the temptations of nationalism, we have to think through how conservative Christians might be drawn into that error — and it is an error. We are first presented with a false alternative. On the one hand, we see those who despise America and its symbols. Think flag-burning, those who defend flag-burning, and …
Dufflepudian Eschatology
One of the great difficulties we have with perspective, especially on cultural, historical, and political issues, is the difficulty we have with the scale of events. One of my favorite quotes comes from Christopher Dawson, when he said that the Christian church lives in the light of eternity and can afford to be patient. But …
That Fortress of Fraud Called Congress
One of the basic decisions confronting the secularists is whether they give priority to secularism, which is a result, or to democracy, which is a method. Democracy might wind up with a government that is not secular in the slightest, and a secular dictator might insist on a secular state despite the majority of his …