I need to check and see if Congress declared this National Hitchens Week or something. His next chapter in God is Not Great asks the question: “Does Religion Make People Behave Better?” We have noted before that the question is framed improperly. It is like asking “Does Anything Going By the Name of Medical Treatment …
On Mulberry Street
In the first place, I think there must have been an editorial mishap in the assigned title of Hitchens’ next chapter. It was “The Tawdriness of the Miraculous and the Decline of Hell.” The chapter is about the former, and not about the latter at all. I can only conjecture that it was at one …
A Woman’s Only Real Friend in this World
We now finish the Mosaic exposition of the seventh commandment. But as we do, there are several things which we must keep in mind about the nature of sovereign grace. The first is that it is sovereign. The second is that it is grace. He that is wounded in the stones, or hath his privy …
The Holiness Code
We must remind ourselves, yet again, that every word that proceeds from the mouth of God is our life. We know that all Scripture is profitable for training in righteousness. The law of the nests considered in our previous installment week was called the least of the commandments by the rabbis, and yet Jesus still …
Would There be a Vice Squad in Hitchensville?
Okay, so the next chapter is Hitchens on health, to which health the religion of your choice is almost certainly hazardous. We are only on the fourth chapter, and it is of average length, but the mistakes Hitchens makes are starting to accumulate, so it might take a little bit of extra time to get …
Some Edifying Gossip
N.T. Wright has recently responded here to a new book, Pierced for Our Transgressions, and gives it a few whacks. Among other things, he says that it is “hopelessly sub-biblical” (largely on the basis of omissions and what he sees as failures of contextualization). HT: Mark Horne and Justin Taylor. What happened was this. A …
Good News and Bad News
A lawless culture is at war with more than just the “rules.” Antinomianism likes to posture and say that it is simply against tiresome restrictions. But the cultural effects of lawlessness touch far more than just the idea of law. When lawlessness has run its course, it has demolished the very idea of forgiveness. Of …
A Biblical Building Code
In this passage, we conclude the commentary of Moses on applications of the sixth commandment. In some fashion or other, all these commands concern a respect for life. And in all these commandments, we see the glory of biblical wisdom. Thou shalt not see thy brother’s ox or his sheep go astray . . . …
Enjoying Our Stuff
Cotton Mather once commented that the faithfulness of the people begat prosperity, and the daughter devoured the mother. Put another way, we may state it as a general principle that whenever Jeshurun waxes fat, he kicks. In some ways the irony is a perpetual one. When a man comes to Christ, and begins to obey …
Nancy Wilson’s New Blog
I am very pleased to announce that my wife, Nancy Wilson, has started a blog called Femina, which can be found here. The look of the blog will change over time (probably in the very near future), but she is getting started now with a standard template. She has a lot of material that she …