INTRODUCTION: We have made the distinction between direct and indirect obedience. In the realms of indirect obedience, we noted the importance of starting close to home, and starting with the obvious. As God gives more grace, we may move out from the center. We will be able to see to do this because the beam …
Deep Affection for America
Today is the 4th of July, and we have been free of the tyrannies and predations of the House of Hanover for 232 years now. Tyrants and predators have not disappeared from the earth however, and so this evening I would urge everyone to set off a firecracker or squib as a kind of taunt …
In Every Generation
This word of exhortation is addressed to our young people, to those of you who have been growing up in the covenant. Most of you are in a very different position than your parents—they have been on a pilgrimage from unbelief, or from other, very distinct expressions of Christian faith. For them, as a matter …
Eating Out of the Zeitgeist Can With a Spoon
Rodney Clapp says a number of structurally admirable things in his conclusion, but he can’t get them to add up. He states, rightly, that baptism is a political act (p. 121). He says, also rightly, “for the baptized, nothing can be more basic or more significant than their baptism” (p. 122). Batting a thousand, he …
Secular Conservatives and Real Ones
I take it as a given that our standard right/left political dichotomy does not represent a Trinitarian approach to politics at all. I have argued this for quite a number of years now, with no appreciable sign that anything is getting through to anybody who is actually running the show. Nevertheless, let us keep on …
They Come in Crates of Twenty-Four
What might seem like the simplest problem in the world — just forgive the debts, man, how hard can it be? — turns out to have massive complications. These complications are not offered as an argument for doing nothing, but rather as an argument for taking the time to get it right. There are a …
The Caricatured Puritan
One of the things I like to do is stick up for Puritans. If there is ever a contest for “most misrepresented” groups within the history of Christendom, the Puritans will certainly be in the final four, and would probably win the championship. Caricatured as stuffy, priggish, censorious, prim, prudish and more, the Puritans have …
Is the Christian Faith Right-Wing?
As the crisis in our country deepens, we must recognize the culpable role of the Church in bringing this crisis about. Not only has it been a culpable role, it has been a central culpable role. Because we have not been people of the Word, the result has been virtually no prophetic ministry to the …
Christ Hidden in Your Calling
INTRODUCTION: First we must begin with a statement of our problem. Many glorious truths were recovered in the Reformation, and one of them was the doctrine of vocation. Unfortunately, this is part of our Protestant heritage that we have shamefully neglected, and have almost lost. One of the principal indications that we have lost this …
Concrete Secularism
The last chapter of Darryl’s book is obviously the one in which he steps up, wraps up, and sums up, and of course it is also the place where some of our more obvious disagreements come to the fore. Darryl’s basic assumption is that the coming of Christ ushered in a new relationship between church …