“The damned could be sent anywhere and they would bring the Hell with them. Hell is the kind of place that wraps around the hellish thought.”
The Light From Behind the Sun, p. 176
The Hellfire Preacher
“When it comes to lurid descriptions of the damned, no one in the New Testament rivals an eloquent Dublin Jesuit from 1878, but there are moments when Jesus comes close. And only Jesus.”
The Light From Behind the Sun, p. 169
Aaron Renn and the Negative World
Introduction: In a recent article at First Things, in a piece entitled The Three Worlds of Evangelicalism, Aaron Renn does an admirable job hunting for the black box that will explain for us what happened ...
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Which Is a Surprise to Some
“The hellfire preacher of the New Testament is Jesus, not the apostles. Not Paul.”
The Light From Behind the Sun, p. 169
Some Mid-January Letters, and Why Not?
What are friends for? Letter to the Editor: Forgive my presumption and/or "cheekiness", but in your "Normal and Jesus" book snippet ("Light from Behind the Sun") on January 11, the ...
On Not Kidding Ourselves
“But whenever we are dealing with symbolic language, we must remember that the symbol is always less than the reality. The wedding ring is less than the marriage. The flag is less than the country it represents. This means that if the lake of fire is a literal lake of fire, then it must be really bad. But if the lake of fire is merely symbolic, then that means that the reality it represents is far worse . . . Saying that the fire and brimstone are symbolic does not fix our dilemma. Symbolic of what?”
The Light From Behind the Sun, p. 166
Bad Ideas and Balrogs
Introduction So I have been going on for some years now, or maybe a decade or two, about the prospect of a mere Christendom. A few years ago it all seemed pretty radical, but as time wears on, and as our mainstream corridors of power seem incapable of producing anything other than Bad Ideas and …
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Which Catches Them Off Guard
“In order to be formidable adversaries to the darkness confronting us, we have to understand that we will never look formidable to them.”
The Light From Behind the Sun, p. 163
Brighten the Corner Where You Are
Uncouth Good News
“But we proclaim Jesus. Not the Jesus who plays in ten thousand places, but the Jesus being preached by a hard fundamentalist prophet in a Flannery story.”
The Light From Behind the Sun, p. 161