As God writes the story of His covenant people in the world, with this Table at the center, we see that traitors and treachery are an important element in the story. All four gospels have the story of Judas, which is certainly one indication of its importance. When Jesus talks about the Table of the …
Bureaucratic Poetry
“The subject is worthwhile, because our authors are capable of changing rhetorical gears quite rapidly. Sometimes they write a turgid and purple sort of bureaucratic poetry, flowing across the page like rapidly cooling magma” (Contours of Post Maturity, p. 28).
Against Philosophy
As I have been pursuing this little postmodern jag of mine, reading folks I wouldn’t ordinarily read, I have been struck with how much postmodernists share in common with the modernity they think they are rejecting. Shared assumptions leap off the page, invisible both to them and their modernist targets. Here are some obvious shared …
The Shroud of Turin: Toward a Mystery Solved
To come right to the point, I believe that my son, Nathan Wilson, has figured out how the Shroud of Turin was originally made, and he has duplicated the feat on the roof of the New St. Andrews building (although, we confess, the building is not currently zoned for Shroud duplications). He figured it out …
Sun Dogs
Driving north through brittle air, bright sun behind us. Snow on the ground, as cold as it gets here. Crystal motes float everywhere, an infinite number suspended, cold children of Abraham. Behind my wife and me, and rising straight up, ascending to glory, a straight rainbow, a rainbow unbowed-a rainbow unbent, and three times too …
Feeling Orthodox
“Our authors have not left behind their commitment to the forest noises of biblicism, with a brook-like murmuring of orthodoxy off in the background” (Contours of Post Maturity, p. 24).
The Scots/Irish
Just finished reading Born Fighting by James Webb, a book with tremendous explanatory power. It is a history of the Scots and Scots/Irish from their early conflict with the Romans, to the times of William Wallace, to the settlement of Protestants in Ireland, and then to the great migration to America. The latter half of …
The Heart of Lust
As Jesus applies the law of God in this sermon, He continues the same pattern. Obedience to the law is not merely a matter of external conformity; it is a question of heart loyalty. Put another way, the well-respected and pious tend to think about sins. The godly are constrained by the teaching of Christ …
True Harvest
Our Father in heaven, we thank You for this weekly day of Pentecost, the ancient Jewish festival of harvest, and our festival of the evangelistic harvest-the time when You began bringing into your barns the countless souls that have been saved since that first Pentecost Sunday. We thank You for establishing Your new covenant Church …
Exegesis As Escape Route
“But all is not bliss in our new Arcadia. As the metanarrative emerges from our reading of the canonical literature, we find more than a few stones from the driveway in our narratival Cream of Wheat. The Bible, alas, contains some uncooperative, “angular” texts. Try as we might, we cannot get those puppies to fit …